Echoes Exhibition: Resonance, Memory, and Transformation

From October 10 – November 3, 2025, Romulus Folio Gallery presents Echoes, a group exhibition, at The Gladstone in South Melbourne. This curated exhibition brings together the practices of Arabella Strachan, Fiona Johnston, and Lynda Sterns, three Melbourne-based artists whose diverse approaches converge into a resonant dialogue around memory, presence, and transformation.

At its core, Echoes explores how individual artistic voices, when placed in relation, amplify one another. The exhibition examines the reverberations of colour, texture, and gesture as carriers of both personal narrative and collective experience, situating the works within broader conversations around materiality, abstraction, and the tactile dimensions of contemporary art.

The Artists and Their Practices

Arabella Strachan

Working in textiles, Arabella combines traditional and contemporary rug-making techniques with embellishment and craft processes. Her practice foregrounds the intimacy of touch and the symbolic potential of pattern. By embedding emotion and hidden desire into her motifs, Arabella extends textile traditions into the realm of conceptual and experiential art, offering surfaces that invite both visual and haptic engagement.

Fiona Johnston

Fiona’s work spans watercolour, acrylic, and monoprint, cultivating an abstract style that foregrounds light, depth, and atmosphere. Her process embraces improvisation, layering intuitive gestures into compositions that balance warmth and structure. Her palette reflects lived experience—family, travel, and natural environments—translating these encounters into a language of abstraction that privileges resonance over representation.

Lynda Sterns

Initially working in children’s decorative painting, Lynda has transitioned to contemporary art, where she explores figuration through the lens of culinary imagery, hands, and portraiture. Her works often emerge from everyday moments, yet her emphasis on darker tonalities introduces psychological complexity. This tension between domestic intimacy and broader human themes positions her practice within current dialogues on embodiment and the quotidian in art.

Curatorial Intent

In bringing these three practices together, Echoes seeks to highlight how diverse mediums and approaches—textiles, abstraction, figuration—can operate in harmony while retaining their distinct voices. Rather than dissolving difference, the exhibition amplifies it, allowing each artist’s work to echo through the others. The result is a multi-sensory environment where the viewer is invited to consider resonance as both a formal and conceptual device.

Exhibition Details

Echoes

Romulus Folio Gallery, Tower B Lobby, The Gladstone, 55 Gladstone Street, South Melbourne

October 10 – November 3, 2025

Opening Night: Friday, October 10, 5–7pm

Romulus Folio Gallery remains committed to accessibility and inclusivity. The exhibition space offers wheelchair access, seating, a low-sensory environment, and accessible bathroom facilities.