PODspace is an exhibition and education program managed on a voluntary basis by a group of emerging curators and artists.

PODspace stopped operating as a traditional gallery at the end of 2012, before experimenting with pop up exhibitions in 2013. During 2014 PODspace will again retain the pop up exhibition format, working with partners to activate spaces around Newcastle.

NOTE: THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED. For all the latest news and events from PODspace, go to http://octapod.org/podspace/

PLEASE ASK permission before using any images from this site: podspace@octapod.org

December 11, 2012

MADE IN NEWCASTLE - Madeleine Kelman 11

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 12 December - Saturday 22 December 2012
Opening Night: Friday 14 December 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wed - Sun 12-5pm>


December 4, 2012

art + work = life - 3rd year TAFE students

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 21 November - Saturday 8 December 2012
Opening Night: Thursday 22 November 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wed - Sun 12-5pm







glancing - Peter Lankas

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 31 October - Saturday 17 November 2012
Opening Night: Thursday 1 November 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wed - Sun 12-5pm>


Artist’s Statement
This series of paintings continues a fascination with the ordinary and mundane everyday glimpses. The work is an eclectic mix of service stations, airport terminals and shopping centres with a sprinkling of urban and suburban imagery. The paintings capture a moment in time, simple and ordinary that we often take for granted, with social or personal narrative arising from each individual scene. The camera was a contributing factor in this work, where images are often captured at a glimpse, in a fleeting moment.
The light, natural and artificial is a linking factor; the exterior landscapes are carried by specific light and time of day, the interiors with their strange light of fluros and their glow in the night of the ‘servos’.

There is an ongoing research and fascination in the painting process itself. Some paintings have been painted in the old masters tradition using a tonal grisaille under-painting with colour glazed on top. Following my long involvement with ‘en plein air’ painting, working directly outdoors, all the work in this show has been painted in the studio, ‘alla prima’ (in one session), in the case of the old masters approach, extended ‘alla prima, where each of the two stages are done directly in one session. I want to capture the narrative related to a particular moment in time, keeping a freshness and simplicity of meaning without changing and adding intellectual process and refinement by subsequent layers or days of painting.

These paintings continue the experimentation with an oil painting technique attributed to the old masters prior to the use of solvents or the use modern chemical paint additives and mediums. Aside from some modern synthetic pigments, the entire process is fully organic, without any toxic or solvent substances, putting the studio alchemy back to full artistic control.







Cut and Paste - Mandy Robinson

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 10 October - Saturday 21 October 2012
Opening Night: Thursday 11 October 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wed - Sun 12-5pm


Cut and paste is an exhibition of collages in various forms. As a basis for
these I have used a variety of found images and objects, in combination with
my own drawings, to which I have applied scissors and paste, needle and
thread, and some digital assembly techniques.

In most cases the subjects were suggested by the found images or materials.
The series of pictures of the transit of Venus was triggered by a Google
image search at the time of that event. The sock series was inspired in part
by the work of Rosalie Gascoigne (and her celebration of the inherent beauty
of the materials she used) and in part by the cleaning out of my sock
drawer.







August 20, 2012

Homelands - Tim Messiter and Anne McLaughlin

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 29 August - Saturday 15 September 2012
Opening Night: Thursday 30 August 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wed - Sun 12-5pm


I have always been drawn to the challenge of landscape which for me is to transform the visible and actual into compositions that acknowledge and reflect the multi-layered personal and human experience of place.
These works are about certain significant places that I have lived in or visited in past years.

Sketches done at the time were the starting point for these new works and the resulting variety of forms came about as I strove to let each place and my questions about it work on and through me.

Anne McLaughlin


Homelands is an eclectic mix of street views, pubs and old miners cottages, in and around Dudley, which gives the suburb its uniqueness. The banality of the simple urban backyard is my inspiration.
Tim Messiter

Studies: National Art School Sydney, Royal Art Society Sydney / Scholarship, City of London Guild Art School
Professional Engraver & Graphic Designer, Painter
Awards: Caltex Contemporary Art Prize Griffith 1973, Local Artist First Prize Griffith 1973/74, Finalist Cricket Art Prize 2011


August 2, 2012

Gunyahnut - Michelle BRODIE

EXHIBITION DATES:Wed 8 August - Sat 25 August 2012
OPENING NIGHT:Thursday 9 August 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS:Wed - Sat 12-5pm

July 17, 2012

FETISH - curator Eleanor Jane Robinson

EXHIBITION DATES: Wednesday 18 July - 5 August 2012
OPENING NIGHT: Thursday 19 July 6-8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wed - Sun 12-5pm
Nine artists respond to Fetish.
A fetish can be many things. It can be an object regarded with awe as the embodiment of a potent spirit or idea, one which elicits reverence, respect or devotion. It can be a course of action to which one has an excessive commitment, or something that causes a habitual erotic response.
The nine artists who accepted the challenge of responding to the theme of Fetish have explored its many permutations in very different ways, resulting in an exciting range of works including sculpture, printmaking, photography, painting and fibre art.
Leonie Andrews employs long stitch to portray objects she has stumbled across which seem to have a kind of animation about them. In her hands, everything from parking meters to fishing floats might become fetish objects.
Sally Dooner is an avid collector of objects both natural and man-made and suggests that her actual art practice and processes of assemblage and sculpture are themselves a kind of fetish. Her collected material is here displayed in light boxes and photographs.
Sarah Jones likes her work to both hide and reveal at the same time. Her long fascination with the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge results in wonderful layered prints incorporating painting and stitching. Gina McDonald has responded to a Brancusi quote featuring ‘fetish’ with delicate, sensitive prints.
Sylvia Ray casts body parts in fine clay to create works that are mischievous, provocative and amusing. Using friends and family members as subjects and models, she explores the ideas of pleasure, play and fun in ways that are light-hearted and sometimes profound.
Eleanor Jane Robinson has always loved walking at night and seeing glimpses of people’s lives like little lit tableau. She also believes that in an age of surveillance cameras, cctv and reality television we all live complacently in a voyeuristic culture. Her drawings of ‘gazes’ (the lookers) and ‘glimpses’ (what is seen) have been stitched on swathes of cloth reminiscent of curtains.
Daniel Smith, a man with ‘way too many projects and not enough time’, has nevertheless found the space to create quirky little dioramas portraying some of the myriad sexual foibles and fetishes we humans are prone to.
Rose Turner , initially inspired by sci fi film, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, explores a flower/human morph which brings the body and the plant world together in a disturbing union. Her painting realises the idea of probing and fingering the fine depths of a flower.
Clare Weeks has a fascination for relationships between seemingly disparate co-existing elements. By taking found road kill, placing and photographing it on wallpaper, she creates a new artificial landscape which portrays man’s impact on nature and the desire to bring the natural world into the domestic environment.

June 26, 2012

And the Queen of Rust Tinkers in Her Own Time - Steampunk inspired work - WILLOW MORGAINE

EXHIBITION DATES: Wednesday 27 June – Saturday 14 July
OPENING NIGHT: Thursday 28 June 6 - 8pm
GALLERY OPEN: Wed - Sat 12 - 5pm



ARTIST STATEMENT Ever since I was a child, the interior workings of machinery have fascinated me, gears and cogs, pistons, nuts and bolts, to me, they all combine to create a magical happening, but without just one of them, things wont work.Growing up on an orchard and spending time around farm machinery nurtured this fascination. Now, as an adult, these things are part of the fascination that has become the Steampunk genre, fantasy, fashion, machinery, all blending together to become yet another magical happening. Since I became truly comfortable in my Fine Art degree, and began to trust my conceptual ideas, I have found myself steering my art towards this genre, and creating pieces with elegance and industry combined. My wish is to show the audience that rusty old machinery still has it’s use and can become a thing of beauty and intrigue once again, through the use of many mediums.

May 24, 2012

through a glass, darkly - PENNY DUNSTAN

Wednesday 6 June - Saturday 23 June 2012

Opening night: Thursday 7 June from 6pm-8pm

GALLERY OPEN: WED - SAT 12-5PM

May 23, 2012

A Poetry of Inifinate Possibilities - LEZLIE TILLEY

Wednesday 16 May - Saturday 2 June 2012

Opening night: Thursday 17 May from 6pm-8pm

GALLERY OPEN: WED - SAT 12-5PM

April 12, 2012

DIAMETRIC - Simone PATERSON

Thursday 26 April - Saturday 12 May 2012

Opening night: Thursday 26 April from 6pm

GALLERY OPEN: WED - SAT 12-5PM

Visual art offers us the opportunity to reflect on the human condition and provides us with a way to transform our understanding. In a time of increasing reliance on technology it is the practice and study of new media itself, the aesthetic and philosophical concerns that can clarify our position within the world. In the exhibition DIAMETRIC I employ a range of contrasting art-making techniques unconditional craft, such as sewing and fabric casting, as well as computer technologies such as interactive software, digital video visual effects and digital imaging. The combination of techniques is a deliberate strategy to blur the boundaries between art, craft and digital reproduction.

March 24, 2012

Landscape - Eliza ADAM

Wednesday 4 April - Saturday 21 April 2012

Opening night: Thursday 5 April from 6pm

GALLERY OPEN: WED - SAT 12-5PM


do you see what I see? - Thadeous Ikihega

Wednesday 14 March - Saturday 31 March 2012

Opening night: Thursday 15 March from 6pm

GALLERY OPEN: WED - SAT 12-5PM











Mix Media Drawings & Photographs by Thadeous Ikihega

Thadeous drawings are right up my alley. I love ink, charcoal and nice paper, so I’m rather bias. Thadeous commented about the importance of the paper and brushes used when making studies in ink. I agree and the quality of these studies is enhanced by the Archival paper and goat hair brushes used by the artist.

Thadeous worked at David Jones in retail in another life and I guess the numerous, moody studies of the now vacant DJs store are explorations of that past existence, as well as very beautiful gestural studies of the architecture of that old shopping hub, now gone quiet. I love the gestural studies in neon of traffic jams. Who would imagine a traffic jam to be so vibrant?

The photographs are taken at night and the artificial street light scenes are hard to describe... lonely & beautiful. The photos remind me of quiet nights in the centre of town, the solitude of the empty city streets of Newcastle after midnight when pretty much everything is closed. The images are raw and unframed, which gives an opportunity to see the work intimately, without the formal glass and frame barrier usual when art is exhibited.

For me this is what these works are; seeing beauty in the everyday and mundane, traffic jams, street lights and the familiar buildings of the decrepit town centre. I do see what you see, I think Thadeous. Newcastle's landmarks, that we see every day as we wander or rush past the same buildings, trees and Hunter Street traffic, stopped at the lights. Thank you for reminding me. It is easy to forget to look with wonder, with fresh eyes. It is even more challenging to capture that mood and wonder in a gestural study or digital photograph.

Fern York
http://culturehunter.org/notice-board/review-do-you-see-what-i-see