Steve (right) and his friends represent Aria’s collection of hand-sewn soft sculptures. Photo: Chris Roe.
Fresh from completing the HSC, up-and-coming Wagga artist and performer Aria Amore Middlemost is kicking off 2025 with her first solo exhibition at The Curious Rabbit.
Subconscious features a quirky collection of paintings and sculptures that reflect just a fraction of works created throughout Aria’s prolific final years at The Riverina Anglican College.
“While everyone was on their fifth work, I was on my 100th,” she said with a laugh.
“I was just painting and painting and painting because I was just having so much fun with it and loved playing with the shapes and the textures and the movement.
“As I continued to research different artists like Frank Auerbach and Ernst Kirchner and even Picasso, I ended up finding more and more inspiration and bringing it into my body of work.”
Reflecting on the HSC, Aria said she enjoyed the opportunity to expand her artistic practice and play with a variety of different materials and styles.
As well as abstract-expressionist painting in oils, Aria incorporated her love of textiles and sewing into the artistic deluge.
“There’s one large soft sculpture in the exhibition that is probably as tall as me. His name is Steve,” she said, describing the large, shaggy creature dangling cheerily from the ceiling.
“He’s entirely hand-stitched and I remember working on him at Easter and I was stuffing his butt with big blankets and I looked in the mirror as I was doing it and I thought, oh my gosh, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever done in my life!”
Aria describes her artistic output through her senior years as ‘prolific’. Photo: Chris Roe.
With such a large body of work, Aria said the carefully curated solo exhibition looks back on the experience and emotions of senior high school years and grapples with “being odd, confused, and expressive”.
A talented singer and performer, the 18-year-old said creativity in all its forms was an essential part of life.
“A lot of people say that they’re not creative, which I think is just not possible because it’s just such an important part of human nature,” she said.
“I have always been doing something and I love sewing, I love painting, I love writing music, I love singing and in this particular field, when it comes to visual arts, I find that it’s a comforting and comfortable way for me to be able to express what’s going on in the subconscious.”
Heading into a new year, Aria has been accepted into the National School of Art in Sydney and is looking forward to refining her artistic talent and continuing to produce work that reflects her inner world.
“It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me, but when it does make sense to other people, it’s life-changing and I really love it when people get my work.”
Aria Amore’s exhibition Subconscious opens at The Curious Rabbit at 6 pm on Friday, 3 January 2025, and will run until 3 February.
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