Garden Party: My 3rd DIY Exhibition
- Setken
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
For 5 hours on Sunday April 13th my home of 10 years became a gallery of 54 paintings (plus an installation) of my work over the last decade. The earliest work was from 2012 and the latest included many from the last few months. Some 25 or so people attended, all personally invited.
It was a full moon in Libra that day. Was the timing right? I’d say so. But there were other factors in play too.
The making of a home studio DIY art exhibition
In 2024, I had intended to stage a themed exhibition called Enchantment, but as it relied heavily on government funding that I was unable to secure (and other funding I pursued was not successful either) I made the decision not to go ahead with it.
At the end of last year, I began toying around with the idea of an open studio exhibition. Bayside Council where I reside were doing a Creative Month in February 2025 and this got my attention. However, my application to be part of this was also rejected. I guess I’m just not creative enough!!!
The idea of an open studio did not fade however, and then the last piece of the equation arrived during the Creative Month that I was excluded from[1]: a notice to vacate the premises[2]!
The vacate notice got cancelled 8 days later, but by now the idea of a last hurrah amongst all of my packing boxes had firmly taken root.
Learning about the inclusion of my painting Winged Sekhmet on a craft beer label[3] sealed the deal with a beverage seemingly made for the celebration.
Paintings galore
Because my house has picture rails in every room, I was able to display many paintings not seen since NeoPharaonic[4] in 2018, and earlier ones that didn’t make it to that exhibition too!
During my eight day vacate dilemma, I had investigated storage units for my paintings and found that it was cost prohibitive. A friend had mentioned her new house had lots of space and a one day exhibition would work well there. This really got me thinking.
The Open Studio I had always wanted to have lingered in my mind even after the vacate notice thankfully got reversed[5]. And so it was: I engaged my friend Paul Compton as my gallerist for the day and who pretty much curated the whole thing too.
Things were moving forward.
Obelisks
The other artists I wanted to join me for the planned Enchantment exhibition were aware that being part of my project was subject to the same funding application rules as me – if the funds were not forthcoming, we could not go ahead.
Alex from AB Create had put some time in to designing the obelisks for that show, and it bugged me that they couldn’t be realised.
I remedied that for Garden Party, and they were a hit![6]
In fact, my first talk of the year for ‘A Monumental Egyptian Tomb In Melbourne’ the day before had people enquiring about the light sculptures after the presentation! They had seen them on my Instagram page.
The event
We had an unseasonably very warm day for my Garden Party – in fact it got hot. But that didn’t stop peeps from coming.
The beer Sekhmet’s Rage was served cold to the great delight of attendees, and folks looked at over a decade of my paintings displayed throughout my entire home - and outdoors in the yard too!
Setken TV played on the television, and if peeps wanted they could engage with my previous exhibitions, as I had them playing on loop along with my praying mantis god doco, and the vids of me opening the boxes for the books that arrived featuring my work in and on them. I also included the 5 minute film I made for my talk that had its first airing the day before, ‘Walter Butler Writes A Letter To Annabella Syme’[7].
Edvard Munch, Blue Poles, Mondrian and Rothko
As my rather monumental weekend approached, I had been deep diving into modern art world history, especially through the biographies of artists like Mondrian and Rothko.
Commentaries on their legacies as well as that of Marlow Moss, and the wonderful Tom McIlroy book about Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles being purchased by the National Gallery in Canberra have really got me thinking, especially about my legacy, and the machinations of legacy.
Of course, David Syme’s legacy is also present in my mind in the form of that wonderful tomb, and the talk I had presented for the first time to a public audience the day before.
I wonder what’s next?
Conclusion
Garden Party was not only my most successful show, but it was also the best fun. With the help of beer meister Kenton Miller and curator Paul Compton – both artists in their own right – the day rolled on blissfully and joyously.
Great people came, Sekhmet’s Rage was a hit, many works sold to great homes, and the obelisks worked their magick!
[1] It has been interesting setting the Garden Party exhibition up amongst the dramas rattling the “art world” this year: Khaled Sabsabi’s participation in the Venice Biennale and a MUMA retrospective were cancelled, and further Creative Australia horrors were bought to light in Casey Jenkins’ being cancelled by the same individuals in that organisation just a few years earlier, settled out of court as recently as late last year
[2] For my overseas readers: I am told that Australia has amongst the worlds worst rental laws for tenants, and without turning the post into a rant about that, I essentially had 60 days to pack my house and studio, find a new place to live in a country experiencing its worst housing crisis since the 1800’s, and vacate on the Easter weekend – meaning extra challenges for moving during a public holiday including considerably higher moving and professional exit clean fees – my request to shift the date a few days later to avoid this was refused; thankfully the notice to vacate got reversed
[3] This will be expanded upon in a future post
[4] NeoPharaonic was my first exhibition in February 2018
[5] No, I don’t know why, other than that the landlords changed their minds
[6] Also for another post; the obelisks sit in my studio now and are magnetic, imposing and magickal
[7] Butler’s letter contains important information about the Syme monument that allows us to understand it more thoroughly; rather than read it during the talk, I made the film an optional extra to play for those that wanted to stick around afterwards, as most did; in the film I read the letter as Butler, using imagery from the tomb, Egypt, and my paintings to convey its message
It was a really enjoyable exhibition and I'm glad it was so successful for you.