In Situ showcases the creative talents of five local and interstate artists who capture the incredible landscape of the Northern Rivers region: Kaleb Clements, Mark Dober, Emily Imeson, Sarra Robertson and Nicola Taylor. Bringing their unique perspectives to the genre of landscape painting, each artist focuses on the immersive process of creating in the very environment they seek to capture.
Working in situ allows the artists to engage directly with the natural world, drawing inspiration from its ever-changing forms and atmospheres. This offers a rich and layered exploration of the landscape through the eyes of artists who seek to engage with it on a personal, connected level.
Kaleb Clements is an emerging artist based on the Gold Coast, QLD. As a self taught artist, he embarked on his painting journey in 2020 and has continued to be driven by his passion for creativity and a desire to explore the medium of oil paint.
Kaleb prefers to use the method of alla prima, a technique that involves completing a painting in a single session while the paint is still wet, an approach which demands not only skill and precision but also a deep understanding of color, form, and light. This creates works that are meticulous and vibrant, capturing the essence of the subject matter with immediacy and emotion.
www.kalebclements.com.au @kalebclementsart
Mark Dober is a landscape painter based in central Victoria who works on site and responds to the world around him with directness and immediacy.
Mark frequently attends artist residencies where he creates wall-sized works on paper in the landscape around him. These large scale works are often shown at the galleries supporting the project. In the last few years Mark has exhibited at Geelong, Mildura, Wagga Wagga, Castlemaine, Bathurst, Swan Hill, Tuggeranong, Wodonga, Benalla and elsewhere. His work is also shown in commercial galleries and has been included in many contemporary art prizes.
The artist’s work is a celebration of experience and nature’s beauty. The heightened colour of his work, and his obvious delight in gestural mark making, working with negative and positive shapes, and a delight in patterning, reveal the influence of Modernist pioneers such as Cezanne and Van Gogh, as well as contemporary English artist David Hockney.
Mark has a PhD in Painting from Monash University and is a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute.
Emily Imeson is a Northern Rivers artist exploring ideas of care, bush regeneration, recycling, and the macro/micro to expand understandings of landscape painting. She holds an honours in Visual Arts and has been supported by multiple scholarships to develop her practice. 2018 – 2020 Imeson travelled Australia, living and working from a car and in 2019 was awarded the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize for the work Alive in the Dead of Night. In 2020, she received a Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and in 2022 her work When the Mud Dries (Lismore) won the Paddington Art Prize.
Sarra Roberston is an Australian artist and aesthete whose art practice has evolved and spanned over 25 years. Sarra’s work, predominantly derived from theoretic enquiry, is based on a partially abstracted and contemporary painting and drawing style. Her works are reminiscent of America’s Cy Twombly and Australia’s Mike Parr. Most pieces are created as a large-scale series, usually ‘fit for (exhibiting) space’, and hold their own place in contemporary mark making enquires.
Sarra lives and works in the Northern Rivers and has family extending 5 generations. She is a freelance creative, is the owner and founder of Land & Sea Therapy, former assistant Art Lecturer to Anita Hochman, and is a former ASP Longboarder (1992-2004). She is the proud mother of 2 incredibly creative and quirky little boys and holds degrees in Psychology, Contemporary Visual Art, and Education.
Nicola Taylor is a South African-born visual artist living on Bungalung Land. Her practice explores internal landscapes, consciousness and external landscapes with deep reverence. Through a closed eyes somatic drawing process, Taylor attunes to physical sensations and responses, allowing the body to provide subtle content that guides her work. This intuitive process opens up vast internal landscapes, with the artwork expanding into images that reflect both inner and outer worlds.
Taylor works in oil paint, performance and video installation offering space for contemplation and for viewers to reflect on their own embodied experience.
She studied in the UK, Italy, and South Africa from 2003–2009. Since 2010, Taylor has presented five solo exhibitions, participated in numerous group shows and residencies both in South Africa and internationally, and her work is held in private and public collections globally.