Vanessa Gordon – Grounds

The series of works explores the space where external landscapes and emotional geography meet.

Working under the name rabbit and dust creative, Vanessa creates layered acrylic paintings that explore the shifting relationship between landscape, memory, and identity. Her work blends classical composition and structured forms with washes of colour, unfinished gestures, and abstract marks. The resulting works are both familiar and elusive, recognisable but not tied to a specific place.

Her practice is a quiet investigation into how people carry inner worlds into the environments they move through, and how those environments, in turn, shape a sense of self. Her landscapes are not literal depictions; they are filtered through memory, emotion, and the many roles and histories we inhabit and what we hold dear. Echoes are misplaced throughout her work as an interiority in the wilderness. Ultimately, they create a space for slowness. They invite the viewer to pause, to connect with something personal, and to consider how we experience ourselves in the landscapes around us.

This exhibition exposes the imperfect but comforting ways in which we recall, process, and belong. The work asks us to reflect on the fences of meaning we build around wild landscapes, creating defined grounds based on the layers of our internal world, and yet, the landscape is quietly shaping us in return.

“The works came from a process of asking friends for their favourite domestic object, a landscape they most loved, and a time of day. From a bed in the arctic at night, to a chair in the bush mid morning. This set a unique challenge of how to represent these in a way that echoes a memory, like a slideshow or polaroid that combined high resolution with more surreal elements.”

PREVIEW THE WORK

Opening drinks, 6pm–8pm, Thursday 19 March