FireWorks Gallery will be showcasing two solo exhibitions by Tasmanian-based master printmaker Milan Milojevic and First Nations artist Fiona Omeenyo who resides between Lockhart River and Cairns, Queensland.

The Land that never was (or Is) will be Milojevic’s first solo exhibition at FireWorks Gallery comprising of nine limited-edition prints. Contemporary cultural identity and the complexities of a cross-cultural position are explored through imagery evolving from two worlds – one evocative of a European landscape and the other reminiscent of a Tasmanian one.

Milojevic utilises a combination of digital (computer) technologies and analogue (traditional etching and woodcut) print techniques to create highly patterned chimeras of fictitious flora and fauna. Exemplary examples which are included in this exhibition upstairs at FireWorks gallery are: Night and Day (The Tree) 2016 (FW21595), a series of 32 panels inspired by diverse sources such as 18th and 19^th-century engravers/naturalist artists, Japanese woodblock prints, Hieronymus Bosch, psychedelic music/art, Jorge Luis Borges and Edvard Munch’s Frieze of Life; Tide after Tide (Ed.5) 2021 (FW21628), a celebration of the sea and what it offers up to us; and, Ten Days (Ed.3) 2023 ( FW21659), which was commissioned for Tasmania’s recent ‘Ten Days on the Island’ festival.

Downstairs, Double Trouble echoes Omeenyo’s ongoing interest in figurative compositions that connect ancestral spirits with her kin relationships which appear almost supernatural. The distinctive rock formation imagery Double Stone represents a prominent site at Quintell Beach near Lockhart River, a location which sits on the coast adjacent to Iron Range National Park where the lush tropical rainforest meets the remote white sand beach country. Here, numerous creation stories have been passed down through the community of the history and spiritual forces that are said to inhabit the region.

For this exhibition Omeenyo presents eight acrylic paintings on canvas - demonstrating the artist’s distinctive line and space compositions - including:  Double Stone & Spirit Stone at Lockhart 2017 (FW17515), Cloudy day on Double Stone 2022 (FW21171), and Looking out for each other 2021 (FW20177). Alongside the paintings, two newly created LED (neon) wall-mounted light sculptures will be displayed showcasing the artist’s life size linear figurative compositions.

Michael Eather comments, ‘Both Milojevic’s and Omeenyo’s art practices sit comfortably in ‘other worldliness’. The attraction of opposites is another coincidence; Milojevic looks at ‘night and day’, or the sentimentality of a ‘homelands’ within brave new world whilst Omeenyo looks at the passage between natural / human forms connecting into the supernatural.

Price range: Milan Milojevic artworks $900 - $24000; Fiona Omeenyo $880 - $22000

Images can be downloaded from Dropbox here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/g3bblvqb5x8jrr46lc6a2/h?dl=0&rlkey=ze6m72x51dzoqlh18zzldstr8