THIRD SPACE
Jane Bartier, Amber Smith & Anindita Banerjee
2 May > 9 June 2024
THIRD SPACE anchors the co-location of time, space, memory, and connection through the works of the disparate yet analogous creative
practices of three artists: Jane Bartier, Amber Smith, and Anindita Banerjee.
Inspired by experiences of hidden boundaries and locations, depths and histories, and life forces that peep out, leak out and explode
onto the surface of this earth, Jane Bartier looms where she walks and uses materials at hand that leave a mark to her reimagining of
the air. Looking at material culture as a mass infinite network of adjacent and cosmic associations Amber Smith addresses the
individual’s constant battle against the inevitable dispersal and (dis/re)organisation of the interconnected and multifarious nature of
things, simultaneously creating and destroying elegant musings and clusterfucks of information. Testament to a migrant’s yearning for
an authentic sense of home through unsolicited recall of involuntary memory, instigated by a place or a thing, Anindita Banerjee
examines the muddled up reality of stories and experiences of the past altering perceptions of the present. Through the shared
reimagining of the air, the (dis/re)organisation of information and perceptions of muddled reality, the artists examine their place in
this time, they question the profundity of (un)highlighted edges and normalise the idea of the third space, of thinking and dreaming at
multiple spaces at the same time.
IMAGE > [Top] Anindita Banerjee,THIRD SPACE, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
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Jane Bartier is a visual artist and has recently submitted her exegesis for examination through Deakin University. In this
enquiry Jane sought to unravel understandings of place and process in her practice of looming and walking. Jane ventured off loom and
off track as she worked with human manufactured materials at hand such as hay bale twine and plastic hay bale wrap that were available
where she walked. Jane knotted on fence lines to re-see landscape and boundaries and slowly moved an insular practice into ways of
working that connected the responsibility of a seasonal creek flowing into the P/Barwon river. Knowledges of hydrology, culture,
histories and more emerged in increasingly technical and engaging ways. How Jane interpreted and challenged her thinking and perceptions
was in working through this with material at hand, untethered to a final object or a final point of resolution. As part of this ongoing
work and in presenting at a conference, writing a paper and revisiting the swamp as headwater of the river continues to conjure up
expanding and valued ways of working.
Amber Smith is an artist, curator, and writer working within the sphere of objects, thing theory and collection practices. Amber Smith holds a PhD from Deakin University in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. They also hold a Bachelor of Design Arts (Visual Arts) from the Australian Academy of Design and a First-Class Honours Degree in Creative Arts at Deakin University. Amber is the Senior Curator at Platform Arts and an academic at Lasalle College International, Melbourne (LCIM) and Deakin University.
Amber has worked on projects with the Victorian College of the Arts, Public Art Commission, Geelong Advertiser, Midsumma Festival, Port
Fairy Folk Festival, Deakin University, Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company, National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Headspace, Art
Gusto, Geelong After Dark, Geelong City Council, Geelong Arts Centre and Geelong Gallery, along with being a founding member of The Good
Excuse Guild and Studio 112 in Geelong. They’ve been a finalist in the Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Prize (2019) and
have exhibited across Melbourne at Platform Arts, Montsalvat, Craft Victoria, Deakin Art Gallery, Allpress Studios, Fawn Gallery, Noir
Darkroom, Lovers and BSG, and internationally in Bogotá, Colombia. Amber created the female and non-binary led and devised symposia and
exhibition Energetical and the Brackets Art Prize in regional Victoria. Amber Smith has released their first
self-published work Social Envelopes and Umbilical Blemishes, a book that accompanies their final PhD work Constellations.
Anindita Banerjee is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher that lives and works on the land of the Wadawurrung people
of the Kulin Nation. Her creative research interest includes cultural otherness, authentic identity, and the sense of home. The memories
of ritualistic ceremonies and mark-makings and her reconstruction of them informs her practice. Using gestural portrayals of hybrid
rituals, she wonders where her place is as an immigrant to the unceded indigenous lands of present-day Australia.
IMAGES > Jane Bartier, Footfall, 2022, Photograph: Patrick Callow. Courtesy of the artist and Platform Arts.
> Amber Smith, Urns, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. > Anindita Banerjee, HOLM, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
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