Beautiful Tensions: Gray Street Workshop celebrates forty years

In celebration of Gray Street Workshop’s 40th anniversary, JamFactory presents Beautiful Tensions, a major touring exhibition honouring the momentous legacy and talent of the workshop by showcasing new work by the four current partners: Jess Dare, Lisa Furno, Sue Lorraine and Catherine Truman.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Art Gallery at Royal Park for this exhibition opening event.

3pm to 5pm, Saturday 30 May 2026

Queen Victoria Art Gallery at Royal Park, 2 Wellington Street, Launceston.

RSVP by Friday 29 May 2026.

Established in 1985, Gray Street Workshop is one of Australia’s longest running collectively run studios for artists working in the field of contemporary jewellery and object making. The uncompromising commitment of this group of artists to their work and to studio-based practice has enabled Gray Street Workshop to evolve into one of Australia’s most exciting and respected workshops.

Beautiful Tensions brings together new work by the four current partners and is the culmination of two years of work and research. Witty, playful and poignant in equal measure, each body of work is distinctive, yet share certain themes and formal concerns.

This timely exhibition articulates the group’s shared commitment to the value of making and the power of objects to transmit meaning. The way their shared themes are articulated so differently in the exhibition is a cogent expression of how the group works, in their own words, ‘separately together’.

The exhibition will be launched at JamFactory Adelaide before touring to 12 venues nationally across SA, VIC, TAS, NSW and QLD. It is accompanied by a 152-page hard-cover monograph, co-published by JamFactory and Wakefield Press, and written by author and Gray Street Workshop co-founder Anne Brennan.

Image: Supplied.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher QVMAG