Transitions Exhibition

TRANSITIONS, Group EXHIBITION

Gerard Russo - Andrea Vargas - Keith Ross - Fiona Johnston - Anita Mirabito

December 5th - 25th January 2026

Transitions, an exhibition exploring change as a continuous state of being, a "lived experience". This show distills eight months of the gallery’s own evolution at The Gladstone from an instinctual space to an artistic anchor, witnessing the constant transformation of artists, materials, emotions, and community. Together, the works invited viewers to find beauty in the in-between moments of shifting and becoming.

Exhibition Gallery

The exhibition featured five artists who explored the language of transformation through diverse media:

Gerard Russo's series Intervalle, ten charcoal works, use the immediacy of mark-making to investigate time. Influenced by historical motion studies (Muybridge, Marey) and the erasure-based animations of William Kentridge, Russo captures bodies as temporary states, existing at the threshold between stillness and movement. This entire body of work is dedicated to the life and loss of Ivy Ruth Dakis, "The girl who loved to dance." Each piece holds a dedication in her honour, carrying her vitality forward.

Andrea Vargas exhibited two additional ceramic works from her Water series that evoke the poetics of water, referencing Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Water serves as both subject and method, symbolising migration and the shifting weight of belonging. The rippling surfaces and settled glazes suggest forms that have only recently solidified from a fluid state.

Fiona Johnston's work reveals a deepening of her practice through stronger pigments and heavier tactile fields. Her pieces explore transition through material accumulation and sediment, mirroring the slow, layered process of geological change rather than sudden rupture.

Keith Ross introduces four new works that embody the small, intimate shifts within human connection. Depicting moments of relation such as a man holding wattle and a couple sharing a drink, Ross's clear, vibrant color palette brings emotional immediacy, reminding us that transition is deeply personal.

Anita Mirabito's crochet work offers a quiet counterpoint, with a piece shaped like a suspended teardrop. The slow, temporal method of crochet and sequenced color bands map emotional geometry in fiber, revealing transition as softness and accumulation.

Centering the space was a silent video by Scott Ross, a part-documentary loop that pulses as a record of Romulus Folio’s life over the last eight months at The Gladstone: the rearranging, the negotiation of space and community, and the rhythm of exhibitions.

The monthly transitions of the Impact Wall, a large scale luminecent piece by interdisciplinary artist Angelina Mirabito. Painted to the sustained rhythm of Raign’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door played on repeat, the work evolved through physical scale, repetition, and accumulation. Each mark acts as a point of transition; a shift in memory, movement, and material continuity. This wall is a study in how change becomes tangible, how the body records transformation, and how a surface can hold the tension between what is ending and what is forming.

Transitions created a cross-media dialogue about change. It is a declaration of a future still being shaped, an invitation to engage with art and space that are always mid-formation.

A Note from the Gallery

Romulus Folio Gallery Dedicated Transitions to Ivy Ruth Dakis.

Although we did not know her personally, the memory of her has found a way onto our walls and her story into our hearts

OPENING NIGHT