WATER’S EDGE

Sally Rasmussen, Sara Phemister & Suzie Riley

15-30 August

Water's Edge

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SALLY RASMUSSEN

  • Sally Rasmussen is a fibre artist who grew up on Worimi Country by the ocean in Forster. She now lives and works in Yass, on Ngunnawal country with her family.

    Sally completed a Bachelor of Arts (textiles) at ANU in 2003 and since then has been raising a family, worked in Steiner Education, and a Transpersonal Art Therapist.

    Her love of making art with fibre, explores natural forms and human connection. Working primarily with reclaimed and sustainable fibres. One of the Sally’s signature materials is copper wire reclaimed from electrical wire, which, when manipulated, takes on a life of its own.

    As light interacts with the work, it casts intricate shadows that imbue the pieces with a dynamic presence and an evolving relationship to their environment.

    The pieces act as metaphors for the way humans relate to each other and the world around them—constantly shifting, interwoven, and in constant dialogue with their surroundings.

    Through these works, Sally seeks not only to highlight the potential of sustainable art-making but also to invite the viewer to pause and reflect on the way light, shadow, and texture can tell stories about the world and our place within it.

  • “The Water’s Edge is a place my mind wanders to.”

    “These artworks connect the familiar landscapes to the emotions that come as a response from gazing on the water; flowing, crashing and still.”

    “The memories, the calm and the clarity of thought. Every way the mind can wander.”

    Sally Rasmussen, 2025.

SARA PHEMISTER

  • Sara completed an associate diploma of fine arts in 1995. She has exhibited in group and solo shows every year since 1997 in the Yass, Canberra and South Coast region, including her 2024 show at Tyger - At Home With. 

    In the past two years she has undertaken many commissions and her work is held in private collections in Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, America and the UK.  

    Sara has been consumed with drawing in the company of a dog since she was a child. That obsession has only intensified.

    Sara is endlessly inspired by capturing and illuminating daily life - her dog asleep in the morning sun, objects on a shelf, her now adult children absorbed in a task. It is a collection of these moments that Sara wants to remember.  

    Sara’s sketch book is most often the starting point for her paintings - drawing is the basis of her practice.  Sara paints in oil, onto board and is increasingly interested in the application of paint – how it suggests line, light and form.

  • "We are watery beings, it makes sense of the deep seated need so many of us feel, to be beside or in the water."

    "When the opportunity came up to exhibit with Sally Rasmussen and Suzie Riley, it made perfect sense that our theme would be one of the water’s edge. This is a theme that recurs for all of us."

    "The body of work I have made for this show reflects my life-long love affair with the water element."

    "I wanted to try and depict how water runs through all the deepest feelings and loves I have. Lakes, rivers and seas are emotional bodies that I carry with me all the time in my mind’s eye and consciousness. They symbolise and epitomise the emotional connection that I feel, and I think so many people feel - not only to nature, but to our people we love most and even to the best bits of ourselves."

    "These paintings depict the actual water’s edge and found treasures from the water’s edge and things that become possible because of the water’s edge - understanding, connection, peace and joy."

    Sara Phemister, 2025.

a black and white photo of artist Suzie Riley with her arms crossed in front of her paintings

SUZIE RILEY

  • After studying Art in Fremantle, Riley returned to her home state of South Australia where she lives on Bunganditj country in the seaside village of Robe.

    Immersed in this coastal  landscape that is central to her work, daily walks are a ritual that give her an opportunity to notice subtle shifts of light and shadow, colour and form.

    These impressions are first captured in small plain air sketches in pastel or gouache, which act as seeds for larger works in oil. In the studio, she builds each painting through transparent glazes and dense impasto, layering calligraphic marks with confident brushwork to create surfaces that seem to record the slow accumulation of time.

    Drawing on a sensitive knowledge of pigment, and a confident use of tone she explores how opposites reveal each other, seeking a balance of order and chaos, stillness and movement, a natural rhythm in the landscape. 

    We are left with a body of work both thoughtful and spontaneous, carefully observed but defined by memory. 

    Her work has been recognised nationally, with selections in The Paddington Art Prize, the Hawkesbury Art Prize and more.

  • “There is a peace that I love in an untouched landscape, where nature finds its own balance, a purity and surprise in organic, irregular shapes and patterns.”

    “A childhood spent in a family shack at Little Dip National Park, has been key to this appreciation.”

    “Endless days spent roaming free on the beaches and dunes of the southern coast. Evenings telling stories around a campfire beneath a sprawling, twisted tea tree, afforded me a freedom, I only now fully appreciate. Seeds for my imagination and memories that guide my hand, they enable my story of this landscape.”

    “A wild rugged coastline sculpted by southern winds that erode and inscribe, soothed by the cleansing horizon of salt lagoons and sunset skies. Carpets of samphire and saltbush, russet, pink and ochre, woven with smokey sage and a violet haze. Salt lakes tinted dusty hues of pink, and vast lagoons that reflect the sky.”

    “I am simply in love with it all.”

    Suzie Riley, 2025.