28 October - 8 November 2026
Red Gallery
Exhibition
The Past is Present - Lynley Traeger, Karl Millard, and Mark Edgoose
Artist Talk
7 November 2026
1 pm - 2 pm
In collaboration with this year’s Radiant Pavilion, Red Gallery had the fortunate opportunity to sit down with artists Lynley Traeger, Karl Millard, and Mark Edgoose and discuss their latest body of work, The Past is Present.
Karl, Lynley and Mark collectively advocate for a material-first approach when creating and presenting works. These materials, be it steel, copper or titanium, act as guide throughout the making process.
Installation view of The Past is Present, featuring works by Lynley Traeger, Red Gallery, Melbourne, November 2026.
For Traeger, the material guides her process- from how the steel yields to her chisel, to how multiple elements interact with each other. Technique serves in equal stature, with Tragar’s curriculum in her career as an educator providing consistent inspiration. Easter egg foil features prominently in this body of work, glinting deliciously off panels of steel and silver. Traeger has collected these foils for some time, having been captivated by its ability to entice both our hunger for beauty and sustenance.
The form each piece ultimately takes is often shaped by personal memory, with tiare flowers, moa oni and moa ufa from her partner’s homeland making a feature.
Installation view of The Past is Present, featuring works by Karl Millard, Red Gallery, Melbourne, November 2026.
The notion of memory is similarly echoed with Karl Millard’s pieces, with his body of work reflecting a time in which cutlery sets were extremely personal, and would accompany their owner along their travels to inns and meeting houses. The feeling of each piece is critical to this body of work. How each piece feels when it is held differs ever so slightly across the body of work- echoing this nuance, harkening back to a time when skilled craftsmanship was paramount to the production of these sets.
The presence of the maker features once more in the symbols and stamps that appear throughout Millard’s body of work. The most prominent of these is the arm hair set- a strikingly personal touch that echoes the hair trinkets shared between loved ones in the Victorian Era.
Material is pushed to the fore once more in Millard’s work, most notably in the copper atom symbols, and the pipe display that accompanies his grinders, forming an altar to found materials that form the foundation to his practice.
Installation view of The Past is Present, featuring works by Mark Edgoose, Red Gallery, Melbourne, November 2026.
Mark Edgoose’s regard for material borders on reverence, making note to acknowledge how each element makes a “contribution” to his final pieces. The relationship Edgoose’s rings form with the body is central to this body of work. Multiple rings joined by hinges, crafted in the image of knuckledusters (though I must stress, these are not actually knuckledusters), are formed with a view to protect their holder. Crafted in response to the ongoing threat of violence commonly faced by women, Edgoose sought to create pieces that protected from violent acts, as opposed to perpetuating them.
Installation view of The Past is Present, Red Gallery, Melbourne, November 2026.
These works collectively make plain the value inherent in the material that forms them. Silver, steel, copper, titanium- all resources regularly valued and traded in the stock market. Their value to the economy is equally found in their function to society- used in building cities, computers and machinery. And this understanding of value exists separate to the value it holds to their makers, where it forms the basis of their practice. Yet this value the economy ties to these materials inevitably shapes their practice, with the rising costs of production forcing makers to adapt, turning to steel, easter egg foil, and recycled resources.
We witness a body of work that exists within the intersection between many opposing ideas. Pieces that exist between the intersection of art and design, form and function. Structurally, these pieces hold a function, and adhere to traditional design principles, be it the ornament of jewellery or the functionality of tableware. Yet beyond these constructed elements, we see something more complex; jewellery rendered pictorial by Traegar, functional items imbued with material reverence and embedded in history by Millard, and objects intended to ask questions of the viewer through elements presented in opposition by Edgoose.
Yet when these notions of opposition are presented to this group, they respond to it with a sense of ease. Their practice is an embodied one, guided by a marriage of intuition and an expertly refined skillset. From these practiced hands they construct objects that transgress time- bringing the craftsmanship that was championed in their youth, to the complexity of the contemporary age.
Written by Pascalle Bailey, a member of Red Gallery team.
Exhibition Moments
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