Three Artists — One Place
Exhibition dates — 26 March to 19 April
Anne Grant, Johanna de Roder and Paula Koert-Bain are friends and neighbours living in Smiths Lake, NSW. Each works in a different medium, but all are inspired by the same environment — the lake, the ocean and the surrounding coastal landscape. This exhibition brought all three together in a celebration of creative practice, friendship, and the shared inspiration of living within a coastal community.
The artists
Anne Grant is a visual artist whose practice is grounded in drawing and technical composition. Inspired by the observation of coastal environments, her work is informed by her background in technical drawing and her 2024 Bachelor of Creative Practice — Visual Art from TAFE NSW. Working across drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture, she draws on the compositional clarity of the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements, extending ongoing investigations into map-making, spatial rhythm and balance. Exploring the premise that subtle shifts within an environment can alter the whole, Anne uses precision and restrained palettes to consider perception, interconnection, and the dynamic relationships that define place.
Johanna de Roder is a ceramic artist and print maker inspired by the coastal environment of Smiths Lake. Her hand-built vessels, sculptural pieces and prints reflect the textures, colours and vitality of marine life, vegetation and shoreline landscapes. Working from her own photography and sketches, Johanna develops designs that move between two-dimensional prints and three-dimensional ceramic forms. Colour is central to her practice, bringing energy and joy to her interpretations of nature and celebrating her deep connection to place. With a background in cartography and environmental science, she combines precision with creative exploration, offering tactile and expressive works that invite viewers to touch the surfaces and engage.
Paula Koert-Bain's textile art explores the interplay between natural and constructed landscapes, expressed through fabric, texture and stitch. With a background in technical drafting, European fashion studies and decades of experience as a tailor, seamstress and designer, she fuses technical precision with creative interpretation. Her works often begin with walks, drives or observations in nature, translated into sketches, photography and fabric collages. Using linens, cottons, silks and upholstery textiles, she treats fabric not as a backdrop but as an integral textural element — stitching functions like brushstrokes in painting, adding warmth, depth and narrative rather than simply joining materials. Techniques such as staining, dyeing and layering enhance the tactile quality, while depictions of flora and fauna provide context and scale. Paula's intuitive hand-stitching process invites close inspection, encouraging viewers to touch and engage with the delicate contrasts of hard and soft materials.
The exhibition works
Geometric, organic, embroidered and sculptural — the works in this exhibition demonstrate how a single place can be experienced and re-imagined through entirely different materials, techniques and approaches. Together, these three artists present connected yet distinct perspectives of the landscape in which they live.
The exhibition showed for three weeks at Gloucester Gallery — a much-loved community exhibition space established in 1999 and located in the historic School of Arts building in the heart of Gloucester, at the foot of the World Heritage-listed Barrington Tops. Entry was free with all artworks for sale. Many works were purchased and curators comments indicated sales exceeded previous gallery records.
Outcome
The exhibition was warmly received by gallery visitors and the Gloucester arts community. Strong attendance, enthusiastic engagement with the works, and sales that exceeded previous gallery records all confirmed the appetite for coastal-landscape work interpreted through three distinct creative practices.
Just as importantly, the exhibition re-established the Smiths Lake - Pacific Palms area as an engaged and active artistic community — building recognition, both locally and more broadly, of a place of serious creative practice, worthy of a wider arts following.
The three artists have been invited for a return exhibition in 2028.
Key Facts
- Exhibition — Three Artists — One Place
- Dates — 26 March to 19 April 2026
- Venue — Gloucester Gallery, 25 Denison Street, Gloucester NSW
- Artists — Anne Grant, Johanna de Roder, Paula Koert-Bain
- Media — drawing, ceramics, printmaking, textile art
- Duration — three weeks
- Outcome — sales exceeded previous gallery records
- Return exhibition — invited for 2028
View or Follow Johanna on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jderoder_art/
Gallery details
- Gloucester Gallery - 25 Denison Street, Gloucester NSW 2422
- Open Thursday to Saturday 10am – 4pm and Sundays 10am – 1pm Monday to Wednesday by appointment — call 0437 608 796
- Full exhibition details — https://www.artsgloucester.org/items/three-artists---one-place Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/GloucesterGalleryNSW
Sources: Gloucester Gallery — GACCI https://www.gloucester-arts.com.au/gloucester-gallery · Exhibition media release and artist statements supplied by the artists. Content compiled for Villagefirst.