The Places We Carry
30 September - 11 October 2026
Red Gallery
Exhibition
Gallery 1 & 2
A map that can be rolled up and carried. A face that keeps returning in sculpture. A laneway gradually altered by redevelopment. These were some of the images that stayed with me after listening to Bernadette Pilli, Marija Patterson and Terence Nott speak at Red Gallery. What struck me was how their very different ways of working seemed to converge around the same question: as our lives and surroundings change, how do we stay connected to where we have come from, and find our way towards what comes next?
Across Bernadette and Marija’s Departures and Terence’s Pitched, place holds both physical and emotional meaning. It carries memory and hope: somewhere we have known, somewhere we long to return to, or somewhere we have yet to find.
Installation view of Departures, featuring works by Bernadette Pilli, Red Gallery, Melbourne, 9 October 2026
Bernadette’s maps begin with a wish to return to landscapes she has experienced. She paints only places she has visited, grounding each work in a personal encounter. On tough, translucent film, maps, landscapes and figures overlap, disappear and emerge again.
Yet a map also raises the question of what happens when we have no route to follow. Bernadette’s reflections on refugees and women leaving violent relationships bring that uncertainty into focus. Departure can be urgent; the future can remain unknown. Left unframed, her works can be rolled up and carried, giving these reflections a tangible form. There is something moving in the resilience of the film: how little we may carry, yet how much it can mean.
Installation view of Departures, featuring works by Marija Patterson, Red Gallery, Melbourne, 9 October 2026
For Marija, memory lives in the hands. Her mother’s life became the starting point for her exploration of women’s stories. It also gave her a way to approach loss, while viewers found echoes of their own families in the work. Her mother continues to appear in that familiar face, shaped so often that it has become part of her body’s memory. There is a deep tenderness in these unexpected reunions.
Over time, what began as an act of remembrance has grown into something larger. The connection she carries with her mother has led her towards the lives of other women. That tenderness remains, finding new expression in the lives and stories of women she feels drawn to explore.
Marija’s journey as an artist carries another kind of hope. “I want to be an artist,” she wrote, years before leaving her career to study art. In time, she gave that wish a life. There is something of that resolve in the quiet strength of her work: the courage to make room in one’s life for something deeply desired.
Installation view of Pitched, featuring works by Terence Nott, Red Gallery, Melbourne, 9 October 2026
Terence’s drawings attend to the lives held within a neighbourhood. Reused materials, improvised gates and unusual handles reveal how residents made their surroundings their own. As these details give way to redevelopment, his drawings preserve their character, carrying his affection for the ingenuity, humour and traces of everyday life found in familiar places.
Familiarity can make such details easy to overlook. We assume that what we see every day will always be there. Terence’s drawings invite us to look while it still is. In choosing what to record, which marks to preserve and which stories to follow, he makes drawing a personal act of care.
Artist Talk featuring Terence Nott, Marija Patterson and Bernadette Pilli, Red Gallery, Melbourne, 4 October 2026.
A place, a person, a dream: each is held dear, and that care draws their different practices together. The people, places and experiences we carry help shape the lives still ahead of us. In these works, they take form and are shared with others, allowing new connections to grow. Through making, we explore our place in the world—what we cherish, where we belong, and who we might yet become.
Written by Sonya Zeng, Red Gallery team.
Exhibition Moments
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