2025
In celebration of Gray Street Workshop’s 40th anniversary, JamFactory presents Beautiful Tensions, a major touring exhibition honouring the momentous legacy and talent of the workshop by showcasing new work by the four current partners: Jess Dare, Lisa Furno, Sue Lorraine and Catherine Truman. Witty, playful and poignant in equal measure, each body of work is distinctive, yet share certain themes and formal concerns.
Established in 1985 by Anne Brennan, Catherine Truman and Sue Lorraine, Gray Street Workshop is one of Australia’s longest running collectively run studios for artists working in the field of contemporary jewellery and object making. The uncompromising commitment of this group of artists to their work and to studio-based practice has enabled Gray Street Workshop to evolve into one of Australia’s most exciting and respected workshops.
Lisa Furno is also driven by environmental concerns, responding to the impact of consumption and the waste it generates through creating masks made of the domestic detritus generated by her family and friends, which she then documents in a series of photographic performances.
This timely exhibition articulates the group’s shared commitment to the value of making and the power of objects to transmit meaning. The way their shared themes are articulated so differently in the exhibition is a cogent expression of how the group works, in their own words, ‘separately together’.
2025
The exhibition will be launched at JamFactory Adelaide before touring to 12 venues nationally across SA, VIC, TAS, NSW and QLD.
The exhibition is accompanied by Beautiful Tensions, a 152-page hard-cover monograph co-published by JamFactory and Wakefield Press. The publication is written by author Anne Brennan, who was also a co-founder of Gray Street Workshop.