AQUATIC Illuminations, an exhibition showing the work of two local artists at Nexus Community Gallery at the Old Buttery Factory, Bellingen, will open on Sunday 14 January 2024.

The artistic pair will be in attendance from 2pm for the afternoon.

A collection of paintings by Kim Satchell (PhD) and the ceramics of Michaela Kloeckner form a collaborative project that addresses a passion for beachcombing, creative practice and the crisis of ecology.

Living at opposite ends of the Coffs Coast they instantiate a conversation attuned to the rhythms alongshore and the ocean.

Kim Satchell resides in Emerald Beach with extensive experience in adult education and community work.

As a life-long surfer his pursuits are steeped in the local vernacular and an intimate relationship with the immediate surrounds.

Michaela Kloeckner calls Nambucca home.

“I have been fortunate to have been closely connected to the earth, namely clay, for over 40 years,” she told News Of The Area.

Passions for travelling and artists exchanges have taken her to various parts of this world and many students have benefited from her passion for and her knowledge of clay.

Both artists share a deep connection to the ocean and a concern for the environment clearly evident in the
pieces.

In Mr Satchell’s artist statement he writes: “The ephemeral dynamism of water and light particularly in the liminal zone of the shoreline figures in the aquatic illuminations the works exhibit.

“A deft poetry of form and fractality produces affective notations in a mediative aesthetics.”

Mr Satchell’s ecological sensibilities stem from the sensuous geographies of everyday life taken up in moments of rendered epiphany and self-realisation, he says.

Ms Kloeckner relates to the notion that life does not exist in a vacuum and everything in the universe is interconnected and interdependent.

“Nothing and no one exists in isolation and as such our actions and non actions affect the world around us,” she said.

In curating Aquatic Illuminations, Satchell’s delicate and sensuous watercolour paintings inspired immediate and unprecedented responses reflected in Kloeckner’s new ceramic work.

Ms Kloeckner describes the collection of works on show as making for an “unusual, thought provoking and memorable exhibition…and definitely worth a visit”.

The artists say this exhibition is of particular interest to interior designers, collectors, creatives and local businesses who value building the cultural capital of creative work steeped in a unique sense and experience of place.

Aquatic Illuminations opens at Nexus Community Gallery in the Old Butter Factory in Bellingen on Sunday 14 January, running until Friday 9 February 2024.

By Andrea FERRARI