2024 Exhibitions
Human Expression in Marble
10 December 2024 - 9 February 2025
Exhibition curated by Elena Murgia, featuring works made by students and Usama Alnassar himself during his Intensive Marble Carving Workshops.
This exhibition aims to celebrate the work of students and guest marble carving teacher Usama Alnassar. The theme is timeless, the human expression trapped in a stone or released from it.
From figurative works to some degree of abstraction in a couple of small-scale torsos, these sculptures capture the eloquence of representation. The exhibition showcases the carving process from refined to unfinished pieces, inviting the viewer to both look at the intermediate phases where possible alternatives can be considered, and to simply engage with the beauty of the medium itself as the figure emerges from its roughness.
Elena Murgia, Clara Street Gallery Curator
Exhibition featured: Usama Alnassar, Helen Alajajian, Wendy Black, Jennifer Do, Simon Gandevia, Amanda Harrison, Tina Koutsoullis, Virginia Lloyd-Tait, Liselle Mei, Anthony Mitchell, Brendan Toole, Letitia Tunmore, Bridget Whitehead, Martin Williams, Merridth Zagami. Not all work pictured.
Director’s Choice Exhibition 2024
28 September - 20 October
The Director’s Choice Exhibition features sculptures that were selected from the 2024 Annual Studio Exhibition by TBSSS Chair Carol Crawford and TBSSS Board Member Gabrielle Allam.
The exhibition featured TBSSS students: Helen Alajajian, David Alexander, Judy Bunt, Michela Caffagna, Rhonda Cooper, Christophe Cornard, Tony Dunn, Bella-Luna Fomiatti, Laurel Hixon, Dominique Lett, Virginia Lloyd-Tait, Anerys McMahon-Ford, Elizabeth Peddell, Rachel Rikkone, Caitlin Robson, Paul Rovali, Andrew Strauss, Martin Williams, Merridth Zagami.
The winners of the 2024 Prizes were: Director's Choice Prize: Merridth Zagami, Highly Commended: Elizabeth Peddell.
Sculptures by Tom Bass AM
6 July - 9 August
An exhibition of a selection of sculptures by our founder Tom Bass AM (1916-2010), following our special anniversary event. To read more about this special event, click here. To view the full catalogue from the special exhibition, click here.
Several sculptures are available for purchase, please get in touch for more information.
Elizabeth Peddell: The Gift of Sight
23 March - 13 April 2024
An exhibition by scholarship Elizabeth Peddell. Click here to view Elizabeth’s sculptures.
Usama Alnassar: Life & the Other Forms of Life
6 Jan - 3 March 2024
An exhibition of sculptures and paintings, recently completed by Alnassar.
About the artist:
Alnassar was born in Damascus in 1975. He comes from a family of artists, both his maternal uncles are famous sculptors. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Damascus and in 1999 he arrived in Italy to finish his studies at the Accademia di Carrara.
Like many other sculptors before him, he chose the Apuan mountain as the ideal place to work and develop his artistic talent. His studio is at the foot of the same mountains in which the quarries used by Michelangelo, " Cave Michelangelo” - a magical place, in the midst of an evocative landscape. It was here that Alnassar constructed an amphitheatre and other inspired construction made with marble.
Alnassar is a visionary artist, he paints and sculpts using different materials. Some of his works reflect his experience as a migrant, coming from Syria to Europe, and bringing with him a world of stories and images. This encounter with other culture fascinated him and made him become sensitive to the changes in humans life and relationships.
Alnassar does not want to immortalise the moment but he wants to record the time.
