12 - 14 Meagher Street Chippendale, NSW 2008
Gallery Hours:
9am - 5pm Monday to Friday
11am - 4pm Saturday
Exhibition opening
Thursday, 13 November,
6 to 8pm
In Kim Spooner’s debut exhibition with Nanda\Hobbs, she brings us a suite of paintings and drawings born from her own manuscript—a reflection on her life, her generation, and the shifting cultural currents that have shaped both. What began as a physical need to paint and draw whilst writing soon evolved into a distinct visual language; one full of metaphors, puns, and poetic associations which chart the pages of social history through Spooner’s personal lens. BOOKMARKS emerged, quite literally, in the margins: spontaneous visual responses to phrases, pauses, and moments of emotional punctuation within the text.
Each triptych in the series functions like a stanza: a visual refrain that echoes, amplifies, or playfully distorts the written word. Spooner’s long-standing practice of coupling literature and image finds new expression here. Each bookmark acts as an autonomous visual meditation, suspended between memory and commentary.
There is no doubt that Spooner is deeply intelligent and unabashedly witty. She delights in the pun as a mode of understanding; playfully teasing as language slips into image and back again. She is also precise in her selections, distilling a phrase or idea into palpable visual metaphors. This format allows Spooner to emphasise rhythm and duality: the repetition of motifs, the tension between irony and sincerity, the layering of image as a form of thinking.
The underlying manuscript that inspired BOOKMARKS is, in Spooner’s words, “a dialogue of cultural events of my life—a social history—rather than a biography.” Across its chapters, the narrative traces her endurance through decades of social transformation, connecting the artist’s personal experiences with broader cultural phenomena from the 1950s to the present. Spooner’s reflections on displacement, belonging, motherhood, and artistic survival unfold alongside the social icons and upheavals that defined the baby boomer generation. The resulting story is by turns humorous, tragic, and deeply human. She explores how one navigates the precarious balance between freedom and responsibility, individuality and history.
Viewed together, BOOKMARKS form a constellation of moments; fragments of a life refracted through cultural memory. They are visual footnotes to a manuscript that is itself an act of self-archiving. Placed together, Spooner’s choices reflect how the residue of words can materialise as image, and how art can act as both mirror and map for a life lived between eras. In this act of resilience, Spooner reminds us of a practical truth: a bookmark can be many things, but at its core, it provides us with a place to pause before turning the page.
Anthea Mentzalis
November, 2025
\ Exhibition featured works
Kim Spooner
A colourful stream of memories
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
A trail with no idea of destination
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
An elegant but simple ceremony
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
And kissed me among the flowers
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Dialogue with Breugel, moral tales II
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Dialogue with Breughel, moral tales I
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Elegant and graceful in movement
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Empress without clothes
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and charcoal on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Her love of colour was indulged
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Hook, line and sinker
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Hook, line and sinker II
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
I decided to keep it simple and opted for purple
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and charcoal on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
In strange silence
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
It was the romance that appealed
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Ladies of the River Bank
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and charcoal on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Natural emblems to be proud of
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Nautical Knots I
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Nautical Knots II
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Plumes of smoke ascending plumin I
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Plumes of smoke ascending plumming II
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
She spun around the room to the music
2025 \ Watercolour and gouache on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
She was never flustered by nudity or genitalia in art
2025 \ Watercolour and charcoal on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
The red syrup streaming
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
The ritual of fishing
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
There was one in every family
2025 \ Watercolour and conte chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
They ruled with quiet moral authority
2025 \ Watercolour gouache and charcoal on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
Kim Spooner
Wrapped in brown paper and tied with string
2025 \ Watercolour and conte sepia chalk on cotton paper \ 21 x 29.7cm
\ Other exhibitions
12 - 14 Meagher Street
Chippendale, NSW 2008
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday, 9am - 5pm Saturday, 11am - 4pm Easter 2025: The gallery will closed from 18 - 21 April Closed Public Holidays (and Easter Saturday)
Monday to Friday, 9am - 5pm Saturday, 11am - 4pm Easter 2025: The gallery will closed from 18 - 21 April Closed Public Holidays (and Easter Saturday)