Gisela A. Züchner-Mogall’s eighth solo exhibition, 360° – A Visual Journey, spans 25 years of art-making and engages with the relationship between materiality and visual perception.
True to its name, the exhibition flows with circular motion through Mandurah Performing Arts Centre’s Alcoa Mandurah Art Gallery space. This eclectic collection works well as a whole, despite comprising vastly differing artworks. Züchner-Mogall’s practice – which includes printmaking, mixed media, sculpture and painting – is represented sectionally within the gallery space, categorised by artform rather than chronology or theme.
The exhibition’s 90 artworks include etchings, paintings, monoprints and a handbound book, in addition to a range of sculptures and three-dimensional artworks. Some of these sculptural works, such as the CONSTRUCT series (painted timber and acrylic glass, 2025) encourage the viewer to question stability and form. Others, like Red Fibre (resin and polyethylene on masonite, 2023) and Red Strings Attached (wire, polyethylene and masonite, 2022) utilise texture to incite the forbidden urge to touch.
A wall of semi-abstract oil paintings depict strong winds and gentle breezes, in addition to the more physical aspects of beaches and sand dunes. They convey atmosphere more than literal form, with repeated shades of blue, grey, yellow and beige weaving individual pieces into a recognisable whole. Painted between 2001 and 2025, these artworks represent decades of the artist’s active translation of environmental experience into textured colour.
360° – A Visual Journey: recent monoprints and temporo-spatial displacement
A collection of layered monoprints adorn the back wall of the exhibition space. Unlike the oil paintings, Züchner-Mogall’s monoprints were all created in 2025, suggesting a more recent engagement with this artform. The artist’s own photography forms the basis of these prints, which represent subjects ranging from landscapes and architecture to books and abstract shapes, communicating perspective through the union of photography and printmaking. Subjects include glass, books, museums, mines, old growth forests and bauxite mines, with particular attention to light and shadow.
A Pocket-size Museum: Galleries You Can Hold (2025) consists of nine rectangular perspex prisms containing mini 3D galleries, complete with tiny paintings and people. Each gallery has its own theme, spanning French impressionism, Dutch still life, Australian animals, well-known portraits, and dogs. One particular prism, Mini Gallery: Mandurah (mixed media, 2025) attracted significant attention during the opening due to its celebration of the exhibition’s location. Iconic landmarks (including Mandurah Performing Arts Centre, where the exhibition is held) are depicted as artworks on the wall of this miniature gallery. This creates a sense of temporo-spatial displacement by virtue of peering into a representation of the viewer’s immediate space.
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A series of large-scale text-based artworks based on the writing of Gertrude Stein, Kirk Varnedoe and Robert Hughes include a 64 x 45.5cm print of The Making of Americans – #1 (black ink on paper, handwritten, 2008). By layering text over text, the artist makes her depiction of Gertrude Stein’s writing unreadable, which evokes frustration in the viewer and forces a shift in perspective. Anyone familiar with Stein’s work will appreciate this challenge to expectation, and will recognise the layers of symbolism communicated through Züchner-Mogall’s chaotic complexity and patterned repetition.
Repetition, environment, perspective and translation are common threads of Züchner-Mogall’s art, and these threads are woven throughout the varied media, formats, and styles explored in this exhibition.
360° – A Visual Journey opened on October 26, and will remain at Mandurah Performing Arts Centre until November 21 2025.
