It is with pleasure that The Commercial presents Alpha Tauri, a group exhibition of new and recent works by Francis Carmody, Matthew Harris and Amanda Williams.

The exhibition brings together cyclical themes — geomagnetism, astronomies, meteorology and biology — represented in sculpture, painting and photography. The exhibition title refers to one of the brightest stars in the sky that at this time of the year in South-Eastern Australia has its first appearance above the pre-dawn horizon, roughly coinciding with the first frosts and changes in plant and animal behaviour, a marker of seasons. Alpha Tauri is a ‘cool giant’. Given its brightness and distinctive orange-red colour, it figures prominently and is named in the astronomical systems and mythologies of many cultures.

FRANCIS CARMODY (b. 1998, l. Bulleke-bek/Melbourne) proposes speculative and playful narratives via research-based sculptural scenarios that call upon a wide range of expertise specific to each enquiry. Central to his work-to-date has been a tracing of networks and natural structures to arrive at propositions of origins and possible future destinations. His work Laschamp Cycles: Aurora takes its name from a geomagnetic event c. 42,000 years ago whereby the earth’s magnetic fields reversed, as evidenced in the geological record. This period of relatively high radiation is thought to have accelerated the evolutionary course of species exemplified in the work by the abstracted morphology of a pea plant, known for its responsiveness to magnetic fields and suggested in Carmody’s mobile forms.

Carmody received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, and completed a year-long honours course at Goldsmiths, University of London. Carmody has been the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards. Between 2022–2024 he was a Gertrude Studio Artist at Gertrude Contemporary and presented a solo exhibition at Gertrude Glasshouse (2023). His work for Alpha Tauri was commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and exhibited in The Charge That Binds (2024-2025), curated by Shelley McSpedden. He is currently working towards a number of major projects including for Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, curated by Tim Riley Walsh.

MATTHEW HARRIS (b. 1991, l. Yállabirrang Naarm/Melbourne) is an artist of Koorie and European descent. His recent paintings and sculptures have employed minimal serial abstraction in critique of the institutional theft of First Nations’ cultural objects and the broader violence of colonisation. He creates sculptures embedded with familial narratives, often expressed through material choices and their histories. Harris frames difficult subjects with subtlety and humour—“a laugh and a tear” (Destiny Deacon)—weaving protest and tenderness through his practice of disarming irony. The star map paintings in the exhibition depict the skies at the moment of particular historic events both human (massacres) and astronomical (explosions in distant galaxies). In the title of his 2024 solo exhibition at The Commercial, Sky without stars, Harris invoked the before time scenario mythologised by many cultures in the view from his balcony, “On my tenth storey balcony in the middle of the city I get the sun, wind, rain, fog, thunder, lightning, earthquakes and the moon — but never the stars.”

From 2020 to 2023, Harris was a Gertrude Studio Artist at Gertrude Contemporary and presented a solo exhibition at Gertrude Glasshouse (2022). His recent exhibitions include the 8th Yokohama Triennale (2024), Between Waves, curated by Jessica Clark, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2023), and Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria (2022). Murray Art Museum Albury and Wangaratta Art Gallery have made recent acquisitions of his work along with the National Gallery of Victoria who acquired Harris’ six-part painting series, The British Museum, currently on view as part of Wurrdha Marra at Federation Square. In 2024, Harris completed a public art commission at 602 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, addressing critical issues surrounding homelessness. His work is currently on view in Unbecoming at La Trobe Art Institute, curated by Tim Riley Walsh, exploring queer identity and alienation in rural Australia and is preparing for a two-artist exhibition with Tyrone Te Waa at Tauranga Art Gallery in Aotearoa/New Zealand in solo exhibition later this year at Wangaratta Art Gallery on his familial Country.

AMANDA WILLIAMS’ (b. 1975, l. Gadigal/Sydney) research-driven practice focuses on analogue photographic techniques and the interconnections between the history of photography and natural environments. She has an interest in the potential of the photograph as a material object, with particular attention paid to fieldwork and the hand printing of images. Williams works with a range of cameras, camera-less techniques and rare darkroom equipment that enables her production, including her signature mural-scale silver gelatin hand prints documenting alpine landscapes of high conservation value, colour-saturated phytograms (the interaction between the chemistry of plants and silver sulphide surfaces), architecturally-scaled photograms and portraiture. The two large cloud images in the exhibition were taken on New Year’s Eve 2019 during the worst of that summer’s fires as Williams returned to Sydney from alpine regions. The camera-less flower image is an exposure onto large format contact film printed in 1:1 scale of a Flannel flower —Actinotus helianthi — whose generic name metaphorically refers to a ‘starburst’ describing the flower’s petal-like arrangement of bracts.

Williams was awarded a Master of Fine Arts by Sydney College of the Art, the University of Sydney, and her work has been acquired by public institutions including a major acquisition by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and recent acquisitions by the Art Gallery of Ballarat. In 2023, Williams completed The Last Stand, a permanent installation of thirty artworks for Powerhouse Sydney that documents the site of its new building at Castle Hill, the outcome of a Powerhouse Creative Industries Residency. She exhibited in The National 4: Australian Art Now, MCA Australia, curated by Jane Devery (2023) and Archie Plus at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, curated by Isobel Parker Phillip (2020-2021). In 2018, Williams was awarded the National Photography Prize judged by Isobel Parker Philip at Murray Art Museum Albury.