CURIO: A CELEBRATION OF ART, DESIGN AND CONNECTION
Presented by Belle in partnership with GlobeWest and Saint Cloche, the event brings together GlobeWest’s new limited-edition Curio series with a specially curated selection of contemporary art by Saint Cloche.
Curated by Saint Cloche Founder and Gallery Director Kitty Clark, the presentation reflects the gallery’s distinctive curatorial language: bold colour, layered relationships and a considered interplay of scale, surface and form.
Colour acts as a structural device, creating rhythm, tension and connection throughout the presentation. Saturated hues, tactile surfaces and sculptural forms enter into dialogue with GlobeWest’s architectural language, while references to the graphic confidence and material richness of the 1970s and 1980s are reinterpreted through a contemporary lens.
The selection also reflects Kitty’s longstanding interest in contrast: restraint and abundance, soft and hard, minimalism and maximalism. Rather than seeking uniformity, distinct artistic voices and singular objects are brought together through proximity, balance and visual exchange.
Central to the presentation are Saint Cloche artists Evi O, Hannah Lange and Fiona Barrett-Clark, three artists whose relationships with Kitty reveal different aspects of Saint Cloche’s curatorial approach.
Multidisciplinary artist, designer and publisher Evi O has been part of Saint Cloche’s story since its early years. Kitty and Evi share an immigrant background and an expansive approach to creativity that moves across art, design, publishing, fashion, food, travel and nature. Their longstanding collaboration included Saint Cloche’s inaugural Sydney Contemporary presentation in 2019, where Evi’s solo exhibition Fantasia sold out. Colour remains central to Evi’s practice, distilled through finely balanced, abstract compositions.
Kitty first encountered Fiona Barrett-Clark almost a decade ago through a small art prize hosted by Saint Cloche. Fiona’s cool, hyper-real sensitivity to suburban life and the transitional light of dusk immediately resonated. Her paintings heighten the familiar, drawing attention to overlooked thresholds between architecture, nature and habitation.
Hannah Lange, a proud Wiradjuri woman, brings another register of attentiveness to the presentation. A mother, nurturer and nature lover, her practice is grounded in an intimate relationship with Country, drawing upon landscape, memory, culture and kin.
Despite their distinct practices, Kitty sees a shared sensibility across the three artists: an attentiveness to life, place, nature, light and experience, and the care with which each translates these into their work.
For Kitty, the relationship between art and design is not about one supporting the other. Each should retain its own integrity while sharpening the presence of the other. The aim is art that makes you notice, changing the way a space is read and experienced.
This thinking also extends through Saint Cloche Atelier and its program of art-led events, where art remains the catalyst around which design, food, sound, florals and performance can gather. At the centre is the human experience: the people who come together around art to exchange ideas, share perspectives and experience a space collectively.
Kitty will join Evi, Hannah and Fiona for a panel discussion moderated by Tanya Buchanan, Editor-in-Chief of Belle. The conversation will explore the relationship between art and design, creative originality, colour, collecting and the role of lived experience in shaping an artistic voice.
At its core, Curio is about connection: between art and design, artist and audience, object and space, and ultimately the people who gather around them.
