05.03.2026—05.04.2026
Launch: Wednesday 4 March 2026, 6-8PM
r.a.g.e. - random acts of gentle expression explores the duality of passion and
frustration that arises within the development of an arts practice. Bringing together a collection of works born out of the monthly discussions from Trocadero Projects’ Peer-to-Peer Program aimed to support emerging and mid-career artists – Aldona Kmieć, Stephanie Siu, Florence Wang, Catalina Labra Odde and Fiona Barbetti ask the question, ‘how do I sustain a creative practice?’ In these works, concepts of time, conflict and growth become tangled in their intertwining paths. r.a.g.e. illuminates the silent negotiations that artists make in order to sustain a creative practice.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Aldona Kmieć
Situated at the intersection of memory and identity, Aldona Kmieć’s practice explores belonging, displacement, and the traces of personal and collective histories. Working across analogue and digital photography, installation, and archival methodologies, her work creates spaces where fragments of past and present converge, forming intimate narratives within diasporic contexts. Since migrating to Australia in 2009, she has exhibited widely, including Hills Hoist (2025), Veil (2024) and Under the Floorboards (2013), and has been recognised in major awards, including a 2025 City of Melbourne Arts Grant.
Stephanie Siu
Stephanie Siu is originally from Hong Kong based in Naarm/Melbourne. Through representing self-portraitures in a variety of compositions, she meanders her way through bizarre processes of discovery and healing. Her work explores themes of memory, nostalgia, grief, and identity. Siu captures the strange and disorienting emotions of navigating life events, where belonging and personal identity are continuously being reshaped. These uncanny representations reflect an ongoing dialogue between the real and imagined that is heavily inspired by surrealist imagery and dreamscapes.
Fiona Barbetti
Florence is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her current practice in painting focuses on the narrative aspects of subject matters and using them for storytelling. She primarily paints in oil and acrylic, and takes an interest broadly in portraiture, still life, and landscape that represent or is part of everyday experience.
Catalina Labra Odde
Catalina is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in her experience as a woman existing across multiple realms. She embraces the in-between spaces of identity and making through experimentation with a combination of mediums. Through visual storytelling she invites viewers to reflect: What does it mean to move forward while drawing from our past? And what does this mean in the world context we find ourselves in? How do we create and imagine for a better future?
She recently participated in Trocadero’s Peer-to-Peer Program, mentored
by Gian Manik and Manisha Anjali.
Fiona Barbetti
Barbetti is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, painting and installation. Her practice reflects lived experience, exploring identity, everyday moments and nostalgia through evolving bodies of work. Her work turns inward
to domestic space, observing plants, objects and shared time with her young son. Engaging a lineage of female artists, she considers identity, care and the human condition. Barbetti holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, is an arts educator, and exhibits
regularly.
All images courtesy of the artist, poster design by Stephanie Siu.
