Walawaani Njindiwaan.
Ngayaga bundj nguumbun muladha gumara muruul yuwinj wanggan njin dhugandha.

Welcome.

We recognise Aboriginal peoples as the first people and custodians of Country.

The South East Centre for Contemporary
Art acknowledges and pays respect to the traditional custodians of the lands, waterways and airspace of the Bega Valley Shire.

South East Centre for
Contemporary Art / Bega

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Artists in Conversation: Caren Florance & Tara Penales

When
5 — 5 Apr 2025

Images left to right: Tara Penales. Image courtesy the artist. Tara Penales ‘Altered 3’, 2024. Stoneware, blue metal, 27 x 7 x 8.5 cm and ‘Altered 1’, 2024. Stoneware, blue metal, crushed stone, cuttlefish, 20.5 x 10.5 x 11.5cm. Installation view as part of ‘Kindling: Kil.n.it Experimental Ceramics Studio and Far South Coast artist’s exchange’ exhibition.

Caren Florance, ‘Nor any drop to drink’ (detail), 2025. As part of the ‘TIDELAND’ exhibition. Artist image: Caren Florance. Image courtesy the artist.

Join us in the gallery for a special In Conversation event with SECCA Gallery Director Janice Falsone, and artists Caren Florance, featured in the Tideland exhibition, and Tara Penales, featured in the Kindling exhibition.

When: Sat 5 April 

Time: 11am – 12pm

Free event, all welcome.

Caren Florance is a queer-identifying artist and writer who lives and works in Bega, NSW, within the Yuin-Monaro Nations. Her typo-bibliographic practice, often produced within the imprint Ampersand Duck, is deeply material, using handset letterpress and other processes to explore overlaps of visual poetry and text art via artist books, zines and other print formats. She likes to collaborate with poets and artists and aims to present text in ways that extends gallery boundaries to intrigue and provoke the public into unsolicited reading and participation. Her artwork is collected by national and international institutions, mostly libraries. In 2019 she published a commercial visual poetry volume called Lost in Case with Cordite Books.

Tara Penales identifies as Anishinaabe and FILx person from Turtle Island (CAN). She is a Mother and Artist with a deep interest and expression in identity, history, body, and land. Her inquiry is in the beauty and trauma found in these spaces and within the conversations found here, it’s what she aims to uncover. Currently, she is exploring the creation of art, beauty and storytelling while speaking to the capture and destruction of finite resources and people and the changes in narratives held up against them over time. Does Indigeneity and minority status carry a certain weight in art culture – what is its value and who is it valuable to? Historically, items and people were stolen and put on display. What have been the changes over time and what is being collected now?