Friends
Anna Bonshek
Anna Bonshek’s exhibition Friends evokes the idea of connection, relationship and interdependency. Bonshek’s sculpture installations, created from locally-harvested Ironbark and SheOak timber, sandstone and volcanic bush rock, invite us to appreciate materiality, presence, and play in her work. Inspired by the potency of the forested bush – a rich and complex ecosystem – and the substance of natural stone, Friends speaks to existence, connection, cooperation and togetherness.
Bonshek’s paintings ‘Dreaming of Hampi’ (India), and Zarafshan Sobti, portray her friends and herself offering a world of layered memory. Completed after a trip to Vijayanagara, Karnataka, ‘Dreaming of Hampi’ (India) presents three friends in traditional attire; one sari is made of fabric woven by local, Anegundi weavers—an eco-friendly, biodegradable, fibre, made from plantation banana leaves. While the figures float, they are focussed around an architectural diagram.This composition references 16th-century artist, Sofonisba Anguissola’s painting of her sisters engaged in intellectual pursuit, entitled The Game of Chess (1555), in the National Gallery of Poznań, Poland. One sister, Minerva, has a hand raised. Likewise, in Bonshek’s painting, Aparna’s hand is raised, catching the viewer’s attention, inviting us to consider Dreaming of Hampi.
With its rich multilayered meaning, Bonshek’s work ”creates an archive of memory—a memory bank, a memory palace—which she embellishes and feeds into her work”, and “rhythms and cycles—the rhythm of nature, the rhythm of human beings, the rhythm of an activity; rhythms that are larger and smaller, rhythms that are not always apparent, rhythms that collide with each other”, Manu P. Sobti observes.
Anna Bonshek’s Friends invites us to pause, reflect, and consider the inexplicable as familiar.
‘Friends’ will open alongside ‘Embodied Trauma’ by Keziah Craven, and ‘Guide to Surreal Urbias’ by Eliot June O’Dowd.
Image: Anna Bonshek, Dreaming of Hampi, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.
Exhibition opening event: Thursday 2 July, 2026, 6 – 8pm
Gallery opening times: Wednesday to Sunday, 12 – 5pm
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