PORTAGE

PORTAGE brings together paintings, sculptural forms, ceramic vessels, and sculptural light to explore journeys shaped by wind, water, myth, and memory. The title refers to the act of carrying a boat across land to reach new waters — an enduring image of migration, resilience, and the search for new horizons. It echoes Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo, where a steamship is hauled over a mountain in pursuit of an impossible dream. In PORTAGE, that same gesture becomes a metaphor for movement, for risk, and for the persistence required to cross from one world to another.

Andrew Murphy presents sculptures whittled from native Tasmanian timbers alongside paintings of reconfigured animals and imaginary vessels. His works consider the body, the boat, and the hybrid forms that emerge in transit.

Mark Redden shows paintings inspired by currach voyages he has undertaken in boats he has constructed, paired with sculpture informed by traditional boat building techniques. The work traces a lineage of craft, labor, and navigation rooted in regeneration, reconciliation and wanderlust.

Aibhainn Wheeler creates ceramic vessels bound to earth and water myths. The forms act as containers — of substance, of story, and of the memory carried across generations.

Gildas O Laoire contributes a series of light sculptures and Verdigris Surface Studies that explore the forces of ocean currents, trade winds, and navigation. Through illumination, texture, and structure, the works evoke guiding lights, tidal forms and distant horizons, reflecting the enduring relationship between movement, orientation, and the sea.

Together, PORTAGE reflects on the vessel in all its forms — as boat, ceramic object, light source, and bearer of stories — while considering how migration, landscape, folklore, and the sea continue to shape our understanding of place, belonging, and journey.