Five artworks to see at 15 Artists exhibition at Redcliffe Art Gallery

Redcliffe Art Gallery's invitational annual art prize, 15 Artists, showcases some of the state's most promising early- to mid-career creators.

Curator Hannah Williamson says this year's artists explore themes relating to their relationship with technology, such as AI, as well as identity and their place in the world.

"This is the second year of this prize where all of the artists either live in or have a strong connection to the state of Queensland, so I think … it gives almost a temperature check of what contemporary art is like in Queensland at the moment," Ms Williamson tells ABC News.

The $20,000 prize has been awarded this year to Meanjin/Brisbane artist Savannah Jarvis, whose work will be acquired into the gallery's permanent collection. 

Here are five artworks to see at the exhibition:

Two patients try to explain nociplastic pain to one another — Savannah Jarvis

This diptych by Savannah Jarvis is part of a painting series, Conversations between Patients, which explores varying symbolic and linguistic approaches to communicating chronic pain.

"With Savannah's work, I think what really appealed to Katherine [the judge] is that the work is something that really rewards slow looking," Ms Williamson says.

"It doesn't really reveal itself to you straight away. You have to spend time with it.

"It's really rich for your eyes to see; it's a bit of a feast for the eyes. There's this pearl work with this text embedded through it next to this beautiful oil painting.

"And I guess that concept of how do you explain pain because it's such a subjective and intangible thing that you experience … it's not something that you can really visualise. I think the way she has captured that intangible quality is what really drew Katherine to that piece."

Feral Fantasy (Unravelling on the Interstitial Plain) — Sally Molloy

Artist Sally Molloy says Feral Fantasy (Unravelling on the Interstitial Plain) gestures toward the uneasy relationship between Australian landscape painting, colonial history, unfolding climate chaos, and her own non-Indigenous body.

"The one thing with Sally's painting is the scale of it. It truly has to be seen to really understand the impact, or the 'epicness' is the word that she uses to describe it," Ms Williamson says.

"What really works with it is it is confusing; it's that jumble of these different motifs or subjects that you're trying to make sense of. 

"I think that's also how Sally feels — that strangeness of living on this land and acknowledging this really dark history and reckoning this through painting.

"[It's] also understanding who is telling the history as well and knowing that what has been potentially shared within mainstream context isn't always the full story or the true story, and there are multiple narratives and accounts that are always at play."

Garden Room — John A Robinson

In this work, John A Robinson explores stability and illusion in a time of global upheaval, with the Garden Room representing a safe and rejuvenating space.

"This one is John trying to understand how we can find moments of peace, and quiet places to step away from the chaos and the noise of the current world," Ms Williamson says.

"If you see the image of the artwork, it's made up of 25 individual boards … it's almost a pixelated effect, so he is playing with that visual language of digital screens in this slow process-driven oil painting.

"It's really clever in that it pulls you in and gives you this false sense of peace and calm and security, but when you get close to it you can see he's carved into the boards as well so there are different points of disruption … and that makes you feel uneasy."

The Banig and Par Four (Sakla), after The Card Players — Adrian Charles Smith

Adrian Charles Smith draws from Paul Cézanne's quiet observation of figures gathered around a game.

"He's really known for these large-scale, really vibrant paintings," Ms Williamson says.

"When you see it in person, at first, it really does look like an abstract image — you can't really make sense of it. Then you continue to stand in front of it, and you start to realise these figures that emerge."

Smith created the artwork after the recent passing of family members in a remote village in the Philippines.

The title refers to Par Four, a card game played during wakes in the village Smith's mother is from. The marks reference the pattern of the Filipino banig, a traditional woven mat.

"This is a reflection on the roll of the dice that you have in life — it's left to chance who you're born to, who your parents are, where you grow up and the circumstance in which you grow and move through the world," he said.

Looking for the pink opal — Karen Stephens

Karen Stephens is a descendant of George Cragg, who in 1888 initiated the opal mining industry in Western Queensland. In 2023, Stephens says she was approached by a spirit medium with an urgent message from George that spoke of a discovery of something unseen near her home town of Winton.

This series of artworks embraces the search for the unknown to investigate the meaning behind George Cragg's message as well as other messages visible in the landscape.

"Her painting practice is very much looking at these very regional remote landscapes in Queensland," Ms Williamson says.

"Karen uses this term 'picture mirrors', so these paintings, when she starts to paint them, it's not a carefully planned out prescribed set of subjects; it's much more instinctive, and so the paintings reveal themselves to her when she is working, and she likens that to the fossicking for opals, these elusive mineraloids that you have to work really hard to find them.

"The use of colour is reminiscent of the opal itself … there's a fantastical element to them, but they’re also very much connected to the country that she lives on."

15 Artists is on at Redcliffe Art Gallery until November 7. Competition judge Katherine Dionysius will be hosting a tour of the exhibition on October 17.