Home Grown: Surface Tension

Next date: Thursday, 03 September 2026 | 11:00 AM to 05:00 PM

Exhibition dates: 3 September to 4 October 2026

An exhibition exploring notions of visibility

For 2026, Home Grown: Surface Tension brings together works exploring notions of visibility, particularly the ways artists trace intangible and imperceptible histories. These include migration stories navigated through memories rather than maps, cultural lineages glimpsed through obscured arrangements, and portraits contorted under the weight of censorship. Works in this exhibition do not reveal these histories entirely so much as play with the tension of making them visible. 

In the same way surface tension describes the invisible membrane that water forms, so too does this exhibition act as a surface that delicately suspends us over these stories of disparate times and places. But the term carries a second resonance: the risk of being read only at surface level, and the deeper understanding that can form when viewers look beyond it. Works invite a gentler approach, a deeper inquiry into meaning and storytelling. They invite viewers to consider their own intangible histories – what could never be rendered completely visible, but rather shared or experienced in other ways.

Home Grown is an annual exhibition that showcases the work of artists with connections to City of Willoughby.

Artists: Thomas C. Chung, Terhi Hakola, Pamela Leung, Anne Levitch, Claire Engkaninan Low, Kathie Najar, Gaia Starace, Alma Studholme and Susanna Chen Chow, Fangmin Wu and Sairi Yoshizawa.

Home Grown: Surface Tension is part of the Emerge Festival 2026, presented by Willoughby City Council

 

Image: Claire Engkaninan Low, MERCY, 2024, ALL MONSTERS ARE REAL, 2023 and THE JOY IN YOUR ENDEAVOURS, 2025, acrylic paint on used skate decks

When

Location

Art Space Gallery – The Concourse, 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, 2067, View Map