Excursions outside the orangery

Excursions outside the orangery explores painting as a space of care and cultivation of quiet resistance. Drawing on the metaphor of the greenhouse, the exhibition considers how softness, beauty, and maternal forms of nurture can become acts of resilience in an increasingly harsh world. Through the tactile combination of sand and oil, the boundaries between inside and outside and grit and softness dissolve. The paintings propose tenderness not as fragility, but as a powerful force for growth and hope. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Kew gardens, the exhibition traces a journey from ordered botanical spaces with clear framing devices, toward untamed landscapes with no horizon line, suggesting a rewilding of the self beyond prescribed roles. Emma Itzstein holds a Bachelor of Laws and Arts from the University of Western Australia. Finalist in the Paddington Art Prize (2022) and winner of the Macquarie Emerging Artist Prize (2020), the City of South Perth Emerging Artist Award (2014), Mid West Art Prize Youth Award (2013) and Mandorla Art Emerging Artist Award (2010), Emma is recognised for her painting and unique state printmaking. Her portraiture has been selected for inclusion in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (semi-finalist 2022) and the Lester Prize Salon des Refuses (2013). Her work has been published in Vogue Living Australia and is held in the collections of Macquarie Bank, Fiona Stanley Hospital and St John of God Hospital.