Project8 Gallery

Chaohui Xie’s ‘Gilded’ series brings together digital print, laminated glass and mirror, layering photographs of her late father’s Chinese ink paintings with colour, reflection and her own interventions.

The images were made from paintings Xie photographed as they were being lost, preserving them at a threshold between presence and disappearance. Through the mirrored surface, the viewer is briefly folded into these surviving traces, keeping memory, authorship and grief unresolved and in motion.

On view in ‘Ineffable’ until 24 October.

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Images, left to right: Chaohui Xie, ‘Gilded Blue Memory’, ‘Gilded Past’ and ‘Gilded Red Memory’, 2025. Digital print on laminated glass and mirror, 60 × 40 cm each.

Project8 will be closed this Friday, 25 September, for the public holiday.

We reopen Saturday, 26 September, with INEFFABLE on view as usual.

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Photo by Lucy Foster

A few moments from the opening of ‘Ineffable’ at Project8.

Thank you to everyone who joined us on Friday evening ✨

Featuring works by , , , , and .

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Photos by Lucy Spencer Lucy Foster

‘Ineffable’ continues this week at Project8.

Oil paint is applied over a photograph of an original 1999 painting in The Ghosts of Nothing’s Aflame, 2026. Part of the ongoing Sounds of… series, the work sits within a broader investigation of abstraction and saturation, bringing disparate elements into close contact to create layered and open-ended meanings.

On view until 24 October. Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.

Image: The Ghosts of Nothing, Aflame (from Sounds of Fire), 2026. Oil paint on photograph of original 1999 painting, 38.5 × 43.5cm (framed). Photo by Lucy Foster Lucy Foster

‘Ineffable’ opens this Friday, 18 September, 6–8pm.

Lewis Gittus’ The Mysteries of Udolpho: Volume 4, Chapters I to IV, 2026, draws on Gothic romantic literature through processes of obfuscation, with text overwritten and blacked out to introduce absence and uncertainty into the act of reading.

On view 19 September–24 October.

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Image: Lewis Gittus, ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’, 2026. An Oxford World Classics 1966 edition of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, altered with permanent markers and water-based inks, 670 × 260. Courtesy of the artist.

Claire Lehmann for ‘Ineffable’

Beginning with copper sheeting, Lehmann folds and unfolds the metal before casting the result in wax. The wax is then manipulated by hand and lost-wax cast in solid bronze. Approaching metal as though it were paper, the works began with an interest in making a painting out of bronze. Studio Lehmann

‘INEFFABLE’ opens Friday 18 September, 6–8pm.
On view 19 September–24 October.

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Portrait: Isabella Capezio. Studio images: Claire Lehmann.

Project8 Presents: INEFFABLE
Opening Friday 18 September, 6–8pm.

'Ineffable' draws together artists working with the hard to describe, almost impossible to articulate and the unexplainable. This can mean following a particular feeling or teasing out something vague or yet to be articulated. It is the ground that keeps changing shape as you run across it and the dream that cannot quite be remembered. There are no firm definitions here, with the indefinable travelling through sound, shape, texture or sensation.

Featuring: The Ghosts of Nothing, Lewis Gittus, Claire Lehmann, Christopher Theofanous, Karina Utomo and Chaohui Xie.

Curated by Kim Donaldson with Jiayang Zhang.

Exhibition continues 19 September–24 October.

Christopher Theofanous in the studio, ahead of ‘Ineffable’.

Theofanous’ practice contemplates and romanticises the diasporic studios of 16th-century Venice, Crete and Cyprus, retracing the visual grandeur of Maniera Greca Orthodox icons and the architecture that once housed them. Neither a theologian nor a nonbeliever, he looks to painting as an act of faith.

‘Ineffable’ opens Friday 18 September, 6–8pm.
On view until 24 October.

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Images courtesy of Christopher Theofanous.

A first look at ‘Ineffable’, a curated group exhibition at Project8.

In ‘Kuala Jagad (Confluence of Realms)’, 2025, Karina Utomo experiments with the sonic frequencies of a worker bee’s wingbeat, the human voice and the gong, bringing these sounds together to consider the intersection of sound, spirituality and the unseen realm.

‘Ineffable’ opens Friday 18 September, 6–8pm.
On view 19 September–24 October.

Image: Karina Utomo, ‘Kuala Jagad (Confluence of Realms)’, 2025. Commissioned by Monash University Museum of Art. Installation view, ‘Knowing Otherwise’, Monash University Museum of Art, Naarm/Melbourne, 2026. Photography: Christian Capurro.

Final day to see 'Impractical Companions' at Project8, closing at 5pm ✨

Thank you to everyone who visited 'Impractical Companions' and spent time with the works.

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Images:

1. Installation view with works by John R Neeson and Ravi Avasti.
2. Aldo Bilotta, 'Delage D8 Bonnets', 2026.
3. Installation view with works by Aldo Bilotta, Ravi Avasti and Aleks Danko.

Photography: Lucy Foster.