Current Exhibition:

SLOW GROWTH by Karla Marchesi

Slow Growth: Recent Paintings from Europe

A mass of plants wrap around disembodied limbs and severed digits. Chandeliers sink, waterlogged, into the swamp. Tropical fruit, torn apart with hearts and flesh exposed, sit on the cusp of decay, still giving off a sickly sweet air.

In Slow Growth, I explore the tension between attraction and repulsion through neo-rococo excess—ornate, exaggerated, yet unsettling. Instead of soft, romantic landscapes, these scenes are sharply defined. The stage lights are glaring, the focus intense. Hyper-awareness and self-scrutiny dominate. Life’s lessons often come slowly, almost too slow to notice, like the gradual growth of stalagmites. We only recognize their weight and splendour from a distance. But even when we pause to reflect, the tension doesn’t fade. Time keeps moving, sediment piling up from beneath, and erosion wearing us down from above.

My work reflects the anxieties of our present time—questioning what it means to be human in a world shaped by late capitalism and human-centered thinking. I intertwine personal stories with larger critiques of ideology, using humour and pathos. The absence of human figures speaks to deeper human concerns. Slow Growth is personal, yet universal, drawing from my experience of living between geographies, balancing the emotional tension of concurrent lives lived, and longing for connection despite feeling displaced.

In these imagined ecosystems, non-human subjects—plants, objects—become the main characters, representing agency, growth, and possibility. They expose human flaws—especially my own. Through a con- temporary twist on still-life painting, I’ve developed a unique floral lexicon, staging theatrical scenes that are at once tragic and comedic—places where I can both hide and be seen.
In this mix of horror and delight, there is hope—a chance to imagine a future that embraces change, hybridity, and collaborative creation. But these lessons are slow to reveal themselves, and for me, they are best explored through the act of painting.

Karla Marchesi

Karla Marchesi was born in Brisbane in 1984 and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. In 2004 the artist graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University and later in 2007 received her Honours in Fine Art from the College. During her undergraduate studies in 2003 Marchesi received the Philip Bacon Galleries Prize for Excellence in Drawing which allowed the artist to study for a semester at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the United States.

Marchesi’s visual arts practice explores relationships forged with domestic objects and spaces, and how the aesthetic depiction of these establishes subliminal connections to past places, rituals and memories. Since graduating from The Queensland College of Art with the University Medal for academic excellence and the Honours Thesis Prize (Art Theory), Marchesi has had numerous solo shows in Australia, exhibiting in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.  In 2012 she undertook a studio residency at Atelierhaus Mengerzeile, Berlin. Following this Marchesi made her international solo debut with the exhibition entitled, Every moment lives together (2013) at Kunsthalle M3, Berlin, Germany. She has since participated in a number of international group exhibitions.

In 2013 Marchesi received an Australia Council for the Arts Early Career New Work Grant.  In 2012 she was awarded the inaugural Wilson Visual Arts Award and in 2010 she attained 1st Prize in the Redland Art Awards. Her work features in a number of public collections such as The University of Queensland, Southern Downs Regional Art Collection, Stanthorpe, Redcliffe City Gallery and Pine Rivers Shire Gallery.