This year Art Incubator has supported emerging artists Victoria Hempstead and Nadia Odlum to develop and present ambitious new bodies of work through the Art Incubator grant program. These highly anticipated solo exhibitions are scheduled for October and early November 2020.
Victoria Hempstead’s solo exhibition KINDLING will be held at Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert from 1 – 25 October and Nadia Odlum’s solo exhibition Temporary Frictions will be held at STATION Sydney from 10 October – 7 November.
Art Incubator was established as a support program for emerging Australian artists by Teresa and Andre Biet. Since its inception the initiative has supported 14 artists through providing a financial grant to develop an ambitious body of work, mentorship in professional practice and arranging a solo exhibition in an established commercial gallery.
Art Incubator founder Teresa Biet has said “COVID has intensified the pressure on all artists. It’s more important than ever to value their contribution to our cultural lives as they continue to be the voices of our time.”
The 2020 Art Incubator grant recipients Victoria Hempstead and Nadia Odlum have been supported through the program to create bodies of work that reflect on vital issues of our time.
Victoria Hempstead has highlighted the environmental stressors on the Australian bush in KINDLING, in response to the recent NSW bushfires her large scale works combine her metal practice with singed debris from the fires. Nadia Odlum has explored the experience of navigation through urban environments in Temporary Frictions, responding to the impact of COVID on public space through drawing on the aesthetics of hazard signage and street barriers.
Victoria Hempstead has said “Teresa and Andre Biet’s Art Incubator initiative fosters an environment to grow and cultivate one’s practice, without infringement or parameters. As an emerging artist, this type of support has been vital and it speaks to the strength of this program.”
Nadia Odlum has said “The Art Incubator grant has been a real game changer. Particularly in this difficult year it has given focus, drive and support to my practice. It has enabled me to create my most refined and ambitious body of work to date.”
These anticipated exhibitions were rescheduled several times due to COVID-19 gallery closures and now overlap in October 2020. Hempstead and Odlum have embraced this as an opportunity for collaboration, joining forces to create Ether, a public art walk between their separate inner city Art Incubator solo exhibitions. The artists have re-imagined this public space between their two exhibitions as a ‘community garden’ where art experiences can grow and ideas can be seeded.
For Ether the public will be invited to walk the 900 metres between Odlum and Hempstead’s exhibitions using a collaborative artists booklet provided at each gallery. This booklet will guide participants on the ‘scenic route’, inviting them to make artistic interventions, capture moments and notice their surroundings along the way. Odlum and Hempstead have created an Instagram page @the_ether_project to document the project, sharing the password with the public and encouraging them to upload the moments they capture on the walk.
Victoria Hempstead has said “We are creating this booklet which individuals can pick up from one or the other space and take it with them. It invites them to not only get from A to B, but to find their own little special moments or discoveries along the way.”
Nadia Odlum has said “We will be going into the public space each day and using Instagram to communicate how we alter things in the space. We are trying to think about types of interactions in public space, and how this can translate to digital space.”