The first exhibitions of 2025 at FireWorks gallery will present A Choir of Dogs (Ground Floor Gallery) by local artist and sculptor Alick Sweet and a group show Carry-Over Champions (Mezzanine Gallery).

A Choir of Dogs features over 50 large and small sculptural dogs that the artist has been developing as an installation for over seven years. Suggesting fictitious choruses of canine tenors, baritones and sopranos, Sweet’s dogs will be arranged in duets, trios and quintets both on and around a stage-set installation. Operatic soprano Lisa Gasteen has also contributed to the exhibition, naming Sweet’s sculptures as classical characters including Papageno and Papagena from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and Dapertutto from Offenbach’s Les contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann).

In the catalogue accompanying A Choir of Dogs, Louise Martin-Chew comments that “The dogs are simply rendered. Disparate materials stamp their personality, with the head, its positioning and the way it speaks to the proportionality, shape and style of the body working closely with often highly coloured markings, abstracted to lead the eye compulsively”. Sweet captures a playful and inquisitive essence in the dogs, their tilted heads and lifted legs.

Upstairs, Carry-Over Champions will showcase recent works from prominent local and interstate artists including several time capsule works by Kathleen Ngal, Margaret Loy Pula and Queenie McKenzie. Alice Springs-based artists Rod Moss (Image 5), and Walala Tjapaltjarri offer unique views of physical and metaphysical landscapes set against mythical figures in bronze of the tumbling Icarus by Phillip Piperides.

FireWorks Gallery director Michael Eather described A Choir of Dogs as “absurd and humorous” and Carry-Over Champions as “a diverse group of artists with appeal for a broad audience”.

Artwork prices range from: $1,200 - $29,000