What value do plants and green space provide in our everyday lives? What may the future of green space in Brisbane look like?
February 2019 heralds the inaugural exhibition for Onespace Gallery by impressive Gold Coast artist Nicola Moss. Moss brings her longstanding City and Nature project to the gallery, examining a changing ecology – a place where town planning, heritage and personal aesthetic, mixes with maintenance regimes and sense of well-being. On this occasion the project has resulted in Greenspace, an exploration of the inner-city Brisbane gardens of postcode 4101 – South Brisbane, West End and Highgate Hill.
Her work shares in local discussion, melding stories of the varied roles of greenery in our inner-urban areas. Moss’ art process utilizes questionnaires to glean information from garden owners which helps her explore the value of a healthy environment to communities and individuals, with a particular focus on the sense of well-being contact with plants can provide in our everyday lives.
Commencing her full-time practice in 2006, Moss has exhibited work regularly in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, regional areas of Australia and overseas in Japan, the US and Sweden. Her paper-based collage artworks resonate with ideas around themes of identity, lifestyle and sustainability. She utilises processes of en-plein air painting, expanded drawing, conversation and site visits.
The result of Moss’s ongoing investigation is a delight: compositions of organic forms made from cutting and layering paper and working with a variety of media – charcoal, watercolour, oil crayon, ink and ochre. Through her observations, Moss finds that paper has the ‘ability to record nuances of experience and place’, as she explores that innate human desire to connect with nature.
Ultimately her investigation asks: What value do plants and green space provide in our everyday lives? What may the future of green space in Brisbane look like?
Opening Event: Please join us for drinks with the artist on Saturday, 2 February 2019 from 5pm to celebrate the exhibition.
RSVP via info@onespacegallery.com.au
ONExchange | Nicola Moss in conversation with Diana Warnes:
Saturday, 2 February 2019, 4:15pm
Artist Biography – Nicola Moss
Nicola Moss is a visual artist making fine art with paper, driven by a burning question – What is sustainability? Moss engages people in considering the value of a healthy environment, exploring possible futures where conservation and development find balance. Residencies in 2017 at Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo and ARNA, Sweden, initiated cross-cultural exchange and international engagement with communities in the discussion of local/global green space issues. Embodied experience and optimism are evident in her world view; reflecting on a sense of well-being, contact with green space, can provide in our everyday lives.
Born in Melbourne, Nicola Moss spent her early childhood years in Scotland, before returning aged 10 to Australia in 1978. The green ‘blanket’ vision of vegetated hills viewed on return flight; and extensive travel as an adult, have impressed a philosophy of connectivity to all life and energy around her.
Commencing her full-time practice in 2006, Moss has exhibited work regularly in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, regional areas of Australia and overseas in Japan, the US and Sweden. Notable commissions include Moss’s first public art mosaic collaboration for Brisbane City Council, featured as part of the Children’s Trail at Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt. Coot-tha 2009; a digital print public artwork wrapping the 7th floor atrium lift shaft of the new Gold Coast University Hospital, 2013; and Mater Children’s Hospital Commemorative Commission for the refurbished Salmon Building, Brisbane, 2015.
Moss won the Moreton Bay Region Art Award in 2012 and was Highly Commended in The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize 2014. She has been a finalist in numerous art awards including:
- The Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour Prize in Landscape Painting in 2017,
- the Sunshine Coast Art Prize, 2017 and 2014;
- the 2014 Calleen Art Award and Noosa Art Award;
- 2013 Gold Coast Art Prize;
- 2012 Geelong Contemporary Art Award and Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize.
Moss’s work has been collected in public and corporate collections including:
- Moreton Bay Regional Art Collection,
- Bathurst Regional Art Gallery,
- Redland Art Gallery,
- Sealy of Australia,
- Gadens Lawyers (Brisbane) and
- Jupiters Hotel and Casino
Her work is also held in numerous private collections throughout Australia, in London, the USA and Japan.
Onespace Gallery and Nicola Moss acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and waters on which this gallery stands. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and future
