Conjurings at The Lost Ones Contemporary Art Gallery
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Conjurings at The Lost Ones Contemporary Art Gallery

Known for its heritage appeal, The Lost Ones Contemporary Art Gallery exhibits artworks from artists who pose thought-provoking ideas through their visual flair for studio crafted aesthetics, challenging the generic conventions of society.
Coming up this August, the gallery are hosting the joint exhibition ‘Conjurings’, commencing on August 8.
Featuring new works by Kyneton artist Michael Needham and Melbourne artist Paul Compton who are drawn together by a darkness, ‘Conjurings’ dives into the void and what may lie beyond, invoking a sense of unease and uncertainty through a collection of collage, ink on paper and sculptural work. These works, inspired by spiritualism, religious iconography, death, loss and mourning, will take visitors on a compelling journey as the artists play on the fragile nature of our own existence and ego.
Paul’s work is as much about meditation and exorcising personal thoughts and experiences as it is about the finished piece, with his titles reflecting personal tales where real life happenings blend with imagined and spiritual tones, eg. “I was a teenage wet blanket”, “jealous jerk” (a self-portrait) and “I stole from your medicine cabinet”. With his pieces consisting of small, repetitive line strokes, cut out sections and layered up areas of paper, the finished forms tend to evoke broken, ghostly apparitions or playfully conjured portraits.
Michael Needham, however, presents a playful plunge into the uncanny, deliberately delving into strangeness as a force holding attention by disturbing the ordinary. His practice expands upon symbolic conventions around death, melancholia, loss, mourning and remembrance, all of which feed a corresponding examination into cultural machinations of memorialisation.
For ‘Conjurings’, Michael presents a new body of sculptural work, both cast and carved, that stage psychological unease laced with a quiet yet waggish humour taken from the likes of Tales from the Crypt, The Twilight Zone and other B grade horror productions from the 80’s and 90’s.
The powerful exhibition will draw you into the void and take a peak into the strange and captivating beyond.
The exhibition runs from August 8 – September 16 at The Lost Ones (located at 14 Camp St, Ballarat Central).