COME BACK, ALL IS FORGIVEN

JUSTIN ANDREWS
STUART BAILEY
LEAH BULLEN
TREVELYAN CLAY
HELEN SHELLEY
NOËL SKRYZPCZAK
BRYAN SPIER

Curated by ALEXANDER BOYNES

15 July - 28 August 2022

For young artists who were emerging in Kamberri/Canberra during the late 1990s and early 2000s, their allegiance to the capital was a dirty little secret to hide from the cool crowds when visiting Naarm/Melbourne or Warrane/Sydney. As graduates packed their cars and hit the Hume Highway, they would whisper, “Don’t tell anyone I’m from Canberra!” eager to leave what they perceived as an artistic backwater for more culturally sophisticated cities.

In the last two decades Canberra has gone from not only being an excellent place to study and cut your teeth in the visual arts, but has also grown and matured into somewhere to put down roots and develop a career. These days you’re more likely to hear artists hissing “Don’t tell anyone about Canberra!”

Come Back, All is Forgiven brings back a selection of strong and talented artists who graduated from the Australian National University School of Art & Design (ANU SoA&D, then called the Canberra School of Art) in the late 90s and early 00s. These artists first exhibited at Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) as fresh-faced graduates, before leaving the capital to “make it”. The exhibition features original works from their formative years in Canberra, alongside new and recent works produced after two decades of working as practising artists. By using the gallery as a space to reflect on the career progression of each artist and the evolution of their craft, presenting their early and current work side by side allows audiences to engage with different moments that occur within a creative practice. This hopefully gives emerging artists an insight into potential career progressions, encouraging them to persist.