Group Show / IMMERSION
DRAW Space presents Group Show / IMMERSION. Opening 6-8pm Thursday 13 November until 5pm Sunday 7 December, Kristy Gordon (curator) and the DRAW Space board invite you to join the artists to celebrate.
IMMERSION dives deep into drawing processes where excessive, cumulative and durational mark-making takes the artists into a state of utter immersion in their process, in the terrains of their drawings and in their own subjective worlds. Across diverse materialities and scales, these drawings present as dense sensorial webs of these artists’ living, breathing time.
Featured artists:
Belinda Yee,
Bridget Hillebrand
Claire Tozer
Damian Moss
Isobel Rayson
Jade Gillis
Kristy Gordon
Matti
Natasha Dubler and
Sally Blake.
Curatorial note:
“Amidst contemporary speed culture that perpetuates an accelerating pace in everyday life, art can offer an alternative pace; another mode of thinking, doing, and being. IMMERSION invites an experience of slowness, through the rhythms of repetition. The artists engage with repetition in many forms and for various reasons: to soothe an anxious mind; for self-control; to pursue aesthetic experience; to closely examine place; and to deeply connect with the natural world. These can be important practices for remaking our ways of being in the world.”
Kristy Gordon
About the drawings
Belinda Yee
Marking Time With You (Silver) (2025)
When mum died, I struggled to find the space and quiet time to digest what had happened. I started a drawing with a simple task - drawing cells across a page - to give myself the time and headspace I needed. I worked with headphones on, listening to music from my childhood and thinking about the moments we shared. The paper became a live space of engagement, a physical place to connect with her, a stage, a threshold through time. The paper holds the trace of that shared time, across those hours, days and now months. A seismograph of sorts, the small marks and clusters capture the flow of feelings. Now years on, I sometimes return to this process because it connects me to mum in a grounded, physical way.
The process of making this work involves covering the paper with another sheet. The top sheet has a small, two-inch hole torn in it, through which I can see the drawing below. This process helps me maintain focus on the present and it prevents the habit of thinking ahead about composition. These physical constraints are material reminders that there is only this – the pen as it moves across the paper.
Bridget Hillebrand
The Deep (2023)
The Deep is part of an ongoing series of work informed by the rapidly shifting ecology of our oceans and river systems. The undulating dimensional properties of the printed washi paper reference a broad ocean swell. Through reiterative actions of drawing, printing and folding, the underside is brought to the fore. Just as the dynamics of the ocean reveal spaces beyond its surface contours, The Deep exposes openings and hidden surfaces that engage the moving viewer.
Shift III (2024)
Printing on engineering felt, I experiment with dimensional properties through the act of folding, layering and stitching. The interplay of repetitive printed marks suggests refraction of light on water, cradled, protected and held.
Claire Tozer
Bundanoon Cave (2019)
This artwork was motivated by the ‘Glow Worm Glen’ cave in Bundanoon (just south of Moss Vale). I started drawing a series of lines to show the forms of a cave wall. I then continued building up tonal marks, working up layers to portray ancient wear on a rocks surface.
It’s observing each stroke of the pen, pencil, pastel; changing directions as I go along. Imagining the marks of water which had dripped down the rock, the stains, old plant life that once grew attached to the surface with crevices, shadows and light.
Damian Moss
Celestial Cartography No 15, No 20 (2020, 2023)
My drawing practice reflects an interest in mark making and the mechanics of repetition. All compositions in the ‘Celestial Cartography’ series start with a grid, a system which provides pictorial structure while allowing for endless variation.
The process is slow and instinctual. One mark is made, and then another and another, until the final composition resembles a complex music score, a map of the sky or traces of data.
Thousands of marks are made using a pin or etching scribe to lift the inked surface of the paper, each tear revealing the white of the paper. Each mark is placed on the intersection of a horizontal and vertical line. No two marks are the same.
Central to these drawings are a series of juxtapositions: the mechanical and the hand-made, the analogue and digital, the macro and micro, precision and chaos.
Isobel Rayson
What Lingers I, II, III, IV, V (2025)
The act of making is integral to my artistic practice. Each body of work is guided by process-based methodologies and shaped by material experimentation. I approach my work methodically, engaging in repetitive and often laborious processes. This immersive practice cultivates a welcome sense of distance from the complexities of contemporary existence, providing moments of solace and space for contemplation.
Wall-based relief wood carvings form the foundation of my multidisciplinary practice. I'm drawn to the reductive process of carving, its immediate and permanent mark, and the immersive and contemplative state that emerges from this approach.
Throughout my work, I explore our fragile and impermanent nature, as well as the instinctive need to seek order and structure, often expressed through repetitive processes that mark the passage of time. These themes regularly intersect with ideas of protection and the physical and emotional boundaries we construct in response.
Lived experience and the natural environment serve as enduring sources of quiet yet essential inspiration within my practice. Observations of formal elements in the landscape, such as form, pattern, and texture, alongside moments of personal reflection, inform initial concepts and the development of new work.
Jade Gillis
bedside happenings (2025)
The spaces I inhabit – the familiar – remain the greatest inspiration for my work. The little unassuming corners of the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room; the sweet poetics of the everyday.
Each drawing of mine is a revisiting of a photograph, of a quiet moment suspended in time. Moments of warmth, and of quaintness. At the heart of my practice is this sense of revisiting. Revisiting, reimagining, replaying a fleeting moment over and over, and attempting to eternalize it, through mark making.
The process of stippling, for me, floats somewhere between meticulous labour, and a sort of contemplative, meditative process. Repetition has a way of slowing down time and seemingly reveals to the eye intricacies once overlooked. The depths of a shadow, the veins of a leaf, the heat seeping from a sunbathed window pane.
Yet such laborious revisitation has a way of distorting memory. A once clear moment in time becomes instead scattered matter, a fuzzy recollection. My recurring windows fragment scenes, and so too do my markings which simultaneously dissolve and reconstruct objects, scenes, moments. This tussle between permanence and impermanence – alive at my bedside, draped across the dining room floor, the sofa – continues to be a constant source of curiosity for my practice.
Kristy Gordon
Water Drawings (2024-2025)
My drawings hold experience like my hands hold water. Traces of feeling left where the water was.
Drawing water is my slow reverie, a way of remembering and reimagining my time spent below the surface. Fleeting observations and fragments of sensory memories first experienced in the space of a breath and a dive are laid down as layers of colour, light and mark. The arc of a dive, the shape of a wave, filtered sunlight, kelp dancing over seafloor. Fast sweeps of gestural line and fields of colour become bodies of water, producing atmospheres that cast a watery mood over my drawing state. And there I dwell for prolonged hours, working on fine, detailed lines deep within the terrain of the drawing. Repetition in my process leads me to think more deeply about, attend to, and know more intimately, the feeling of water and of time itself.
Matti
One Million Marks of Anxiety (16/10/2023-27/03/2024)
I used tally marks to count and record one million moments of anxiety. Doing so for a one-hour, self-directed art therapy session every working day for five months, allowed me to immerse myself in the creative zone and ease my emotional state, as my brain was so preoccupied by the marking and counting that it didn’t have the capacity to generate feelings of anxiety, ruminate on the causes, or catastrophise about the outcomes.
When anxiety attacks, disordered sensations come at me from all sides in ways I couldn't have imagined before the triggering event. Hence, four layers of coloured ink (green, red, blue, and black) align with each side of the paper to represent the incessant spikes of terror that underpin the generalised anxiety I had been living with for over a decade, as well as then-undiagnosed PTSD.
The act of drawing externalised the alarm I felt and smoothed my emotional landscape. It is also likely that switching back and forth between my drawing hand and my counting hand accidentally recreated the bilateral stimulation that characterizes a PTSD treatment called EMDR.
Natasha Dubler
Between the Turns of Tide (2025)
Where the tides draw in at the edge of the sea, you lose the shape of things.
Standing on the shore of the River Severn in southwest UK, the tessellated mudflats stretch some ninety metres to meet the water’s edge. My feet slowly sink into the miry ground below as I watch the water steadily advance, folding over itself and erasing the tessellations on the way into shore.
To remain here long enough is to sense that within the repetition of the tides lies insistent variation. There is no boundary here, only gradients, delays, and overlaps.
In the sound installation work Between the Turns of Tide, field recordings made along the 350-kilometre length of the River Severn are modulated by predictive tidal data for the year 2035. Both speculative and grounded, the piece reflects on the inevitability of tidal motion and on our shifting relationship with what is forecast, expected, or yet to come.
Cast in three sections, the work moves from the deep propulsion of underwater currents, through the resonances of beached ships at Purton, and into the wholly unforeseeable, catastrophic, and uncharted.
What is it to be held within the intertidal?
Not as a moment. Not as a place.
But as a duration,
drawn out, returning, never still.
Sally Blake
Geyser series (2025), Wellspring series (2025)
Earlier this year I spent 11 days in Iceland and was captivated by its wild landscape shaped by both volcanic fire and glacial ice. The thermal pools and geysers became my inspiration for two series of artworks.
In the Geyser series, my process begins at the outer edge of each circle, using repeated pen marks to gradually work inwards. As each drawing progresses, the image appears to fold and gather upon itself, evoking a sense of movement. The works are drawn in ochre and sulphur hues, echoing the colours of Icelandic geysers, while the silvery tones reference the deeper, churning pools of water.
The Wellspring series exists in the expanded drawing field and are made of woven and wrapped copper wire and beads made from semi-precious stones, Czech glass and Baltic amber. I have lived in Europe for the past 18 months and the ornateness and gilding of European architecture has encouraged me to include these beads in my wire drawings.
Both series are grounded in repetitive mark making and gesture, fundamental processes in my practice. Through these methods, I explore the intricate relationships between humans and the natural world. My research has drawn on paediatrician Donald Winnicott’s theory of potential space—a state of mind that allows individuals to negotiate inner and outer realities with openness and playfulness.
Art historian Claire Pajaczkowska articulates the impact of repetitive making in the context of knitting: “the rhythmic repetition of the simple actions absorbs the free, floating anxiety and allows the knitter’s mind to roam freely across the landscape of thought. Pajaczkowska’s observations forge a connection between repetitive drawing and the achievement of a mental state in which thoughts can ‘roam freely’.1 This creates a space where the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, and between self and nature, become more permeable, and distinctions between them less certain. I understand this state of mind as potential space—a realm where thoughts and feelings move spontaneously, unimpeded by the demands of everyday life.
About the artists
Belinda Yee
(Gadigal/Sydney)
Belinda Yee draws across media. Her text-works, poetry, and sculpture function as forms of drawing — ways of holding presence through trace and line. Embracing impermanence, her work resists documentation and invites in-person encounter. Often politically engaged and always materially grounded, her practice favours quietude over assertion, reflecting on what it means to witness, remember, and resist.
Yee lives and works on Gadigal land. She holds an MFA (Drawing) from the National Art School, a BVA (Painting) from Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney), and a Bachelor of Industrial Design (Honours) from the University of Canberra. She has exhibited in Australia, Hong Kong, the UK, and France, with works held in the collections of the National Art School, Tamworth Regional Gallery and Capella Sydney. A finalist in the National Works on Paper Award, Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, and Hadley’s Art Prize amongst others, Yee is also co-founder of DRAW Space gallery. Yee has a curatorial practice, which she approaches as a form of research and an extension of her art practice, and is the recipient of an IMAGinE curatorial prize.
@belindayee
www.belindayee.com
Bridget Hillebrand
(Naarm/Melbourne)
Dr Bridget Hillebrand is an interdisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne and completed her practice-based PhD at Monash University and a Master of Arts (Fine Art) from RMIT University. Her artworks have developed through a variety of forms including print, audio, video, art objects and installations and explore links between image making and the corporeal experience of place.
Winner of the 2021 Experimental Print Prize at Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria, she was appointed Australian Commissioner for the Ulsan International Print Festival in South Korea in 2024. Her large-scale installation ‘River’ was exhibited at the Arsenale Nord in Venice, Italy and Université du Québec à Trois Rivières, Canada. She has been a finalist in numerous awards including the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (2024), Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (2023) Adelaide Perry Prize (2023) and Muswellbrook Art Prize (2023).
Her work is represented in major public and private collections in Australia and internationally including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW, and Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum Chiang Mai, Thailand.
@bridget.hillebrand
www.bridgethillebrand.com
Claire Tozer
(Darkinjung/Yattalunga, Central Coast)
Australia’s dry outback plains, the bushlands, coastal grasses and shrubs, which Claire has spent a lifetime exploring, have heavily influenced Sydney and Central Coast artist Claire Tozer’s contemporary drawing practice. Claire works predominantly with ink pens, pastel, watercolour and pencil to build up layer upon layer of marks that in turn produce an atmosphere of the natural environments she experiences.
To Claire, drawing is vital. It is expression, observation, understanding and thinking.
Claire’s works have won prestigious prizes including: Hornsby Art Prize, Drawing Category (2025, 2019); The Korean Australian Arts Foundation (KAAF) Art Prize (2018); Gosford Art Prize (2022); Northbridge Art Prize, Works on Paper Category (2018); and 5 Lands Art in The Open Prize (2022). She has been a finalist in the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2017, 2020, 2024); the KAAF Art Prize (2017, 2018, 2019, 2023); the Dobell Drawing Prize (2021, 2023, 2025) and her work was included the Dobell Drawing Prize Touring Exhibitions (2021, 2025). Her work has been aquirced for important collections including Kedumba, Wentworth Falls Gallery; the Korean Cultural Centre, Gosford Regional Gallery and Sydney and the Central Coast Council Art Collections. Claire’s works are always available through Bloomfield Fine Art Gallery.
@clairetozer.art
Damian Moss
(Gadigal/Sydney)
Damian Moss is an artist, lecturer and curator. He has lectured at the Faculty of Art & Design, University of NSW and the National Art School, Sydney. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) and Master of Fine Art (MFA), UNSW, and has held numerous solo exhibitions in Sydney.
Damian has work in collections at the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Macquarie Bank and the University of NSW and has been a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize, The Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, The Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award and The KAAF Art Prize.
Damian co-manages the Boom Gate Gallery at Long Bay Correctional Complex, Sydney, the only art gallery in NSW dedicated to supporting inmates in NSW Correctional Centres through the exhibition and sale of their artwork.
@damianmoss
www.liverpoolstgallery.com.au/damian-moss-2017
Isobel Rayson
(Ngunnawal/Carwoola ACT)
Isobel Rayson is a mid-career Australian visual artist based in Carwoola, New South Wales. Isobel graduated with First Class Honours from the Australian National University School of Art in 2014 and was selected for the coveted Canberra Contemporary Artist-in-Residence award.
Isobel is known for her highly finished and professional works, which have been presented in fifteen solo exhibitions. She actively contributes to group exhibitions and has been invited to display her work in public and commercial galleries across Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Geelong.
Isobel has been selected for both local and international artist residencies, including a month-long residency on Vancouver Island, Canada, in 2019, which culminated in an exhibition of works developed during her stay.
In September 2025, Isobel was the recipient of the Young and Early Career Artist Award for her work Enclosed, submitted to the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award. Throughout 2025, she was named a finalist in several national art prizes and awards, including the Kedumba Drawing Award, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Hornsby Art Prize, Eckersley’s Art & Craft Prize, Strathnairn Arts Small Sculpture Prize, Georges River Art Prize, Omnia Art Prize, St Columba’s Art Prize, and Blacktown City Art Prize. Her work is held in private collections across Australia and Japan.
@isobelrayson
https://www.isobelrayson.com
Jade Gillis
(Gadigal/Sydney)
Jade is an emerging artist based on Gadigal land. Her practice seeks to capture the fleeting moments of her everyday. She is particularly engaged with the interplay of light and shadow, and how the two reveal and conceal the spaces she occupies. With a foundation in drawing, her meditative mark-making practice calls for quiet contemplation and pause.
Jade graduated from UNSW in 2024 with a BFA. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions across Sydney and she has been a finalist in several prizes including the 2024 Tim Olsen Drawing Prize.
@greenoliveink
https://jadegillis.squarespace.com
Kristy Gordon
(Gadigal/Sydney, Darkinjung/Central Coast)
Kristy Gordon is an artist and researcher working on Gadigal and Darkinjung Country. Her current practice-based doctoral research, in the field of expanded drawing, investigates slow art and contemporary slow aesthetics through digital and analogue drawing, sculpture and multi-practice installation. Kristy foregrounds time, attention and contemplation through the practice of drawing water, and connects physical experiences of wild nature and of drawing with metaphysical states of reverie. Methods of embodied gesture and cumulative, repetitive mark-making, with iPad and pencil, power drills and carving tools, explore how ‘fast’ materialities can paradoxically generate slow affective experiences. This is a critical artistic approach to contemporary speed culture and crises of time and climate, and aims to reframe slowness as a generative artistic mode for the contemporary moment.
Kristy’s work is held in commercial and public collections, including permanent installation in the main foyer of St Vincent Hospital, Darlinghurst. She has been awarded art grants and residencies in Australia and Denmark; has been a finalist and highly commended recipient of Australian art and drawing prizes; and in 2022 she won the public art prize, Eden Unearthed. Kristy has conducted participatory drawing events and moderated artists panel talks and interviews. Immersion is her first curatorial project.
@kristygordon_art
www.kristygordonart.com.au
Matti
(Gadigal/Sydney)
Matti is a disabled, queer, migrant artist living in Sydney. His interests include art-walking, documentation, and random acts of senseless beauty expressed through drawing, graffiti, installation, land art, painting, and photography.
He has completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at the University of New South Wales where he won the Mental Health Month prize and was highly commended in the Jenny Birt Painting Award and Tim Olsen Drawing Prize. He was also shortlisted in the Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour prize and the Mornington Peninsula Gallery National Works on Paper prize.
@mattidoingart
www.mattidoingart.com
Natasha Dubler
(Gadigal/Sydney)
Natasha Dubler is a multidisciplinary artist working across sound installation, music performance and sculpture. Her work looks at how resonance as a material phenomenon can mould and shape landscape at or below the Earth’s surface, and how memories of these subtle shifts are etched into the material histories of a site.
@natashadubler
https://www.natashadubler.com
Sally Blake
(Ngunnawal/ACT, Brussels)
Sally Blake is an Australian visual artist currently based in Brussels working across textiles, drawing and sculpture. Through her practice she visualises the complex patterning and connections between the human and natural worlds, particularly interested in cycles of death, renewal and regeneration and the points where transformations may take place. Her previous careers as a paediatric nurse and midwife deepened her understanding of birth and death cycles.
In Sally’s contemporary textiles, cyclic patterning and the interconnected whole are explored, as well as the consequences of their undoing.
Sally was awarded her PhD from ANU SOAD in 2015. She has held solo exhibitions throughout Australia and has participated in group shows both nationally and internationally. and is represented in the collections of the Canberra Museum and Gallery, Australian National University, Australian National Botanical Gardens, the ACT Legislative Assembly, Tamworth Regional Art Gallery and many private collections worldwide.
@sallyblakeartist
www.sallyblake.com