Do You Read Me
Return to the City 2000 Mandy Gunn (detail)
I managed a quick visit to the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery on Sunday to catch Do You Read Me while it’s still on — so glad I did. A couple of my favourites
From my area of South Gippsland is a work by local legend, artist and educator Mandy Gunn
Return to the City (2000),
crafted from public transport tickets meticulously layered on corrugated cardboard.
Mandy’s work never fails to amaze — her precision-cut pieces are sharp, exacting, and beautifully constructed.
She weaves and layers various papers and card into grid-like compositions that, at first glance, highlight colour and form. But a closer look always reveals an extraordinary reimagining of found materials, transformed into something entirely new.
In the Echo Chamber (If I Were You I Would Do More Listening Than Talking), 2024 This striking work by Australian artist Jennifer Mills combines gouache, watercolour, ink, pencil and oil pastel on paper.
A young girl appears twice in the composition — squatting, hunched over, absorbed in her headphones. The repetition of the beautifully rendered figure and posture suggests a state of introspection or immersion — perhaps caught in the feedback loop of her own world, reaffirming the idea of the "echo chamber."
Woven throughout the background is the text: If I were you I would do more listening than talking. The phrase is hand-drawn repeatedly in different media, subtly saturating the space with its message — insistent, reflective, and quietly confrontational.
Return to the City 2000 Mandy Gunn
In The Echo Chamber (If I were you I would do more listening than talking) 2014 detail Jennifer Mills
