GROUNDING & ASCENDING

A Duel Exhibition
by Jaqueline Burgess & Liesel Edis

OUR
STORY

Gallery Alchmey seeks to represent work across painting, drawing, photography,sculpture and mixed media. With a focus on contemporary and emergingartists with the gallery featuring work with a modern, figurative sensibility that is emotionally rich and poignant, and also conveying wit and humour.

Gallery Alchemy represents emerging and established artists that demonstratea sensitivity to the conundrums of modern life. With the galleries owninfluences stretching from Artemisia & Caravaggio to Van Gogh, to YellowHouse to Duchamp, Dada, Brett Whitely and Charlie Sheard.

Featured artists often reflect a sensibility for light, colour, purity of craft and ahint of neuroses and angst of modern life that ultimately gives way to beauty. “Idon’t believe in Art, I believe in the Artist”
– Marcel Duchamp

JAQUELINE BURGESS

Born in South Africa, Jaqueline Burgess is an Australian painter. As a finalist in the Lethbridge 20000 in 2023, the Arts In The Valley in 2022, and a semi-finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2016, Jaqueline moves between
landscapes, portrait painting and still life paintings.
Jaqueline resides on the east coast of Australia, where she paints from her home studio, creating works that reflect her experiences with the Australian landscape.
In her most recent works, Jaqueline immerses herself in the ‘rockscapes’ on the East Coast of Tasmania. Burgess’s work deftly captures the power of these ancient forms, linking the land to the sea. The boulders and the rocks are symbolic; the cracks and crevices are a lifeline of time and existence, revealing a natural order that has been balanced carefully for millennia.
Jaqueline reflects, ‘As I paint these rockscapes, they begin to take on a life of their own. The paintings have a memory of place but transition the beauty in the unremarkable into ethereal abstract forms. These ancient forms speak to me, reminding me that there is a sublime powerful energy within us all.’

LIESEL
EDIS

All my life I’ve been drawn to and intrigued by the water. My interest began as a diver of many years. However, my passion for underwater photography blossomed when I had the opportunity to photograph the majestic humpback whales of Tonga.
This is where my passion for the water and my photography collided.
I feel that when I am underwater with the model and challenging the boundaries of photography, I can utilise weightlessness to create a story, which explore the depth of fluid movement and composition.
“Underwater is an extraordinary place to lure the audience; down under the surface where the magic unfolds through the elegance and movement of the human body in a suspended dance.”
With my pieces, I like to create a space that doesn’t look quite real; the perspective that is not of this world or in a dreamlike state. The air of mystery and connection to a different time and place provokes thoughts and conversations.