Art world experts know HERE + NOW as an exhibition series to watch, with past shows launching the likes of India Mark, Christopher Zanko and Alinta Maguire. Now the secret to spotting rising stars is out, with a record opening night crowd at Wollongong Art Gallery last month.

“It was astonishing,” says HERE + NOW’s curator, Matthew Grayson. “They said it was the biggest show that they've had all year. There were over 300 people here – the place was absolutely packed, you were literally like sardines in a can.”

For 2025’s exhibition – titled There’s No Place Like Home – Matthew has gathered six young artists whose works are shaped by memory, migration and belonging, asking them to examine the meaning of ‘home’ in a time of global upheaval.

“I find home in a lot of people,” says Matthew, an emerging artist and curator who came to Wollongong for uni, and stayed for its appealing mix of energy, small-town quaintness and close-knit art community.

“I couldn't have been more ecstatic in curating an exhibition … when Daniel [Mudie Cunningham, the gallery director] called me to tell me that I got it, I was literally running and screaming around the house.

“Being in the creative industry, it's so hard to get the experience that you need without places like Wollongong.

“Wollongong Art Gallery is very much a stepping stone towards bigger sort of galleries. They give you more leeway into experimenting and that's what emerging artists need.”

The meaning of 'home' 

During a walk through the gallery, Matthew told the Illawarra Flame about the origins of the show, which builds on ideas that art historian Imogen Racz presented in her book, Art and the home: Comfort, alienation and the everyday.

First up are Abbey McQueen’s rust-dyed textiles, a body of work that reflects on relationships with people, place and memory, and includes The end – a bed marked by rust dye, notes to self and Abbey’s own sheets, an ode to Tracey Emin’s seminal sculpture that was the talk of the Tate almost 30 years ago.

On the walls are Abbey’s From dirt series, displaying works on fabric ‘buried’ in the tea-tree waters of Lake Ainsworth at Lennox Head. “She took it down there, left them in the water, then she sort of dug them up,” Matthew said. “I feel very drawn to it – it tells a very universal experience of living in a rural area, and I grew up in a rural area, being from Bateman’s Bay.”

Next is L(earn) your Reo by Alicia Nahona, a poem lino-printed on plywood expressing the complexities of cultural identity.

“Alicia’s work explores her Maori heritage in like a poem-slash-patterned work,” says Matthew, who knew as soon as he saw her art that he wanted it in the show.

“Originally we were going to print it – we were going to do it physically on the wall. Then she had the idea of doing this pattern, which is from Maori culture, to balance out the work.”

The repetition of words and lino block patterns creates layers of dialogue, telling stories of belonging and displacement. It supported Matthew’s central idea of conveying different experiences of ‘home’.

“Home is not always a destination,” he says.

It could, for example, be a feeling, a person, a culture, a space or even a tethering point in tough times, as in Bridie Nicholls’ felt-tip pen on paper drawings of iconic suburban homes.

“With Bridie’s, home was in the places and spaces that she inhabits,’ Matthew says, pointing to The long way home. “This is from one of the houses that she would walk past during Covid. So it's almost like an anchor point for her to ground herself, in this sense of normality.

“All of these works have very much a three-dimensional story to them, which is, I guess, the artists’ lives.”

Old photos reimagined 

Matthew moves to the “uncanny realism” of William O’Toole’s paintings – in oil and spraypaint on coconut coir doormats. When they were UOW together, Matthew remembers Will painting a series on another challenging surface – astroturf – that went on to the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. Will's current works reflect 90s culture, which Matthew finds fascinating.

“I see this imagery, and it just makes me think of specific places within Wollongong. The fish one, immediately it made me think of the Figtree fish market.

“I just love how he conveys such a crisp, but also such a blurred image. When you're looking at it from far back, it looks like a whole image, but then you go up and it's just strokes that hang on, literally, bristles.”

In contrast, the works to the right of Will’s are delicate, free-motion embroidery.

Described as “an act of preservation against the pace of the digital world”, Jessica Martin’s intricate images were made on a sewing machine, using cotton thread and inspired by everyday photographs.

Her vision of home was inspired by a familiar student space.

“Jess explored being share house culture, being with her friends in these shared spaces, Matthew says, adding that each work took about a week. “They're so technically complex. And so extraordinary, everyone in this show, definitely, they took what I wanted and just went and knocked it out of the park.”

Shining a light on the everyday

Our final stop is the room containing Naia Webb’s immersive installation, Confessional in lampshades, with wool roving on silk-covered wire frames sourced from op shops.

Running through a 10-minute light program, her work switches the focus to everyday routines in a meditation on how we live.

“It's to do with the idea of the lights being turned on and off in a house between 7.30 and 8am,” Matthew says. “The private rituals, the sort of stuff that you do in the morning before you leave the house.”

There’s a bedroom scene, a hallway, a lounge room, a bathroom. His favourite lampshade features fish and monstera leaves. “They're very cartoonish, but in the  best possible way. I just love the way that she does her imagery … it’s so interesting how crisp of an image you can get with just from literally pushing the felt through.”

The fifth and final HERE + NOW exhibition is not just a chance for young artists to make their mark; it's a leap in Matthew’s own career. His attention to detail is evident in everything from a central display of couches draped in crocheted blankets (a tribute to his grandparents) to his handwriting, which features in the catalogue and exhibition signage.

“I'm honestly so privileged to be have the opportunity to curate the show in this space," he says. "I was in this show as an artist last year. This was my wall. I had a 3m embroidery-slash-performance work, which I did over the three months …

“It was a very big work, I’m still working on it. I’m hoping one day that Wollongong Art Gallery might buy it.”

HERE + NOW V: There’s No Place Like Home is at Wollongong Art Gallery until 23 November 2025. Artist talks will be held on October 15 and 23, details on the gallery's website.