Reset, Renew, Create: Painting Workshop
Towards a Practice of Material Intelligence
At Romulus Folio, the gallery functions as an active environment where material action, emotional awareness, and perception converge. This approach shaped Reset, Renew, Create, a palette knife painting workshop facilitated by artist and PhD researcher Angelina Mirabito.
The session operated as a structured, embodied inquiry into transition. Painting was approached as a disciplined practice of sensing, decision making, and material negotiation. Participants engaged with process as a way of shaping future direction through physical action, attentiveness, and sequence.
The Materiality of Transition
The workshop unfolded through a four stage sequence of reflect, reset, renew, create, translating experiences of change into material conditions such as pressure, drag and movement. Grounded in breath work, the practice sustained attention on the relationship between bodily sensation, colour and material response, reflecting Romulus Folio’s commitment to embodied knowledge and process-led learning.
A central focus was reductive mark making. Using the palette knife blade, participants scraped back layers to create space within the surface. These traces were intentionally retained, allowing previous decisions to remain active within the work. The resulting surfaces carried visible records of accumulation, adjustment, and evolution.
Pacing and Resolution
A defining value within the Romulus ethos is slow, considered practice. Participants worked with restraint and timing, developing sensitivity to when a surface reaches resolution. This awareness of resolution as a material and perceptual state formed a key point of reflection within the session and reflects a core principle of contemporary material practice.
Reset, Renew, Create reflects Romulus Folio’s broader curatorial mission to cultivate dialogue between material intelligence, spatial context, and human perception through sustained, rigorous engagement.
Upcoming Curatorial Program
THE COLOUR OF LOVE
Saturday 14 February | 3.00 PM to 5.00 PM
ROMULUS Gallery at The Gladstone, South Melbourne
Participants are invited to join the next session in this ongoing series of material inquiry.
The experience includes:
• Methodological framework with guided breath work and creative prompts exploring the relationship between emotion, colour and materiality
• Material provisions including canvas sized 40cm x 50cm, pigments, and palette knives
• Atmosphere of wine and light refreshments within an intimate, inclusive setting with places strictly limited to twelve participants
• Outcome of a resolved work on canvas reflecting an individual trajectory of love
Register your interest for The Colour of Love
