Inside Agnes Contemporary: The Travelling Art Gallery Stopping Off In Brisbane This Month
ART FOR A NEW AGE
By Victoria Lewis | 18th August 2025Taking over the walls of cathedral-turned-European restaurant August, Agnes Contemporary promises to be a colourful dance of art, food, culture, and design. You’ve got artists from all walks of life, all mediums, and all corners of Australia: abstract and landscape pieces, furniture objects, glasswork, sculpture, and even edible still life will come together for a month-long restaurant residency.
Light in touch, heavy on layering. It’s all in the subtle gestures and abstract strokes. Where different colours merge – it’s fresh, unexpected, with a feeling of effortlessness. This is artist Sarah Darling’s ‘MO’ when creating her works, or as she calls them, “thought pieces.” Darling is your quintessential creative – authentic, relaxed, and deeply intuitive. She finds it hard to talk about her own work, but her paintings speak for themselves – dreamy, ethereal. To her, a “thought piece” is an intimate work: sitting down, small, thoughtful movements, and getting lost in the process. She says looking at her previous work can transport her back in time to feelings she once possessed. “It can’t escape the time in which I made it.”
The New-Age Travelling Art Gallery
In the same way she creates emotional connections with her brushstrokes, Darling and her fellow painter, Skye Jamieson, hope to bring the community together, forming a new-age travelling art gallery, existing “both in the physical realm and the digital.” Agnes Contemporary will be kicking off with a collective exhibition in a very fitting setting – right in the heart of Brisbane’s creative hub, West End. At a pivotal time where the arts have been left vulnerable – with events canned, falling victim to funding cuts and an enduring cost-of-living crisis – Darling says “it’s time to reinvent the wheel.” She hopes to shift the narrative, create a non-restrictive setting for artists to showcase and sell their work, all while leaving ample room for experimentation.
Who’s showing?
Drawing on their beloved art community, the pair have culminated over 40 names, established and emerging, to show in one room – a collection Darling lovingly jokes is “the big feral group show.” She says it’s a “no-pressure”, ‘come-as-you-are’ exhibit, run by artists for artists. Included in the mix are the whimsical musings of Darling and Jamieson themselves, along with other creative talents like Elle-Louise Burguez, Jordan Malane, Miri Badger, Cosima Scales, and Jordan Azcune.
Where canvas and creativity can run wild and free, intermingling with waitresses piled high with plates, Agnes Contemporary is a true creative playground and embrace of the local creative community. With the white noise of energetic conversation and the subtle pulse of connection wafting over the space like the scent of fresh baguette, this one-of-a-kind exhibit will hang in place from 7 August to 2 September.
Imagery: @agnescontemporary
