Boundless; From patio to parlour,
urban to rural,
and everything in between: Scattered Grounds

📅 20-30 August 2026  
📍Palangi Gallery
Level 1/59 Flinders St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
🥂 Thu. 20 August  6-8PM

Living in the digital age of rapid advancement, urbaness around the world now possess a universal demeanor engulfed with screens, glass, and steel. Where infinite geometrical duplicates are puzzled in congestion, it constantly pendulates us between estrangement and belonging, as if a fish is out of water. Seeking a sense of belonging, a fade of topographical identity inspires individuals to find existential values in enduring personal and earthly memories. Such liminal spaces that possess minute moments, stimulations that may occur of a sudden but last everlastingly—allow one to engross oneself in a flash of sheltered embrace.

We present Scattered Grounds—holding the initiative of growth, exchange, and discourse. This exhibition brings together emerging artists affiliated with Sydney College of Arts (SCA, USYD), University of New South Wales (UNSW), and Parsons School of Design New York (TNS, NYC). Gathered across a transnational scope, these responses explore the complex interlock of land and memory, channeling themes of home, natural sublime, nostalgia, and more. Whether the bustling metropolis, the underground, the outdoors, or the indoors, tightly packed or loose, artworks enact as retrospective scaffolds, a self-portrait paving a sense of self. From distinct minds and regions, audiences are invited to step inside each of their 'memoryscapes,' to be strayed in the moment, and to inhale the stillness among the hurtles that alters the hollow gaze of ‘where we are’ into a passionate one—that might lead us to seek character in them.

Tracing familiarity among the estranged, this exhibition provokes a gradual pull to ask one:

Where is home?
Where do I belong?
Where am I?
Where should I be?

…and to constantly pendulate between estrangement and belonging. Answers are never fully given; they simply break the uniformed silence to polyphonic reminiscences.



Artists
Amber Koroluk-Stephenson
Annabelle Demarino
Emilia B. Levin
Emily Beattie
Felixe Rives
Gemma Anderson
Kim Anh Ngo Bui
Lana Ryles
Lige Qiao
Olive Burgess
Xanthe Kibble

Curators

Bomi Park
Judy (Yigu) Pan

*Refer to the catalogue to explore more about the project & to  view the full list of works*

📘 VIEW CATALOGUE




For all enquiries, please contact: 
Bomi Park E. audrey030321@gmail.com | M. +61 494 412 414 
Judy Pan E. panxiaoyi9@gmail.com | M. +61 451 457 016

---

Acknowledgement of Country

We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet today, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

---

Lige Qiao  

Lige (pronounced “leeghe”) is a Gadigal-based emerging artist (and curator, sometimes) who constantly contemplates suburban landscapes. Their practice revolves around the lived experiences in industrial environments in Northern China and the embedded migration and displacement in family histories. Trained in painting, they now primarily work with video and performance, frequently combining these mediums to investigate the relationship between machinery and body and what is in between. They love the internet and hope the internet loves them back. Their current research interest lies in the power structure of languages and Chinese internet vernacular.

Lige completed a one-month residency in Chongqing, China, and had their first solo exhibition titled Metrical Promenade. Lige’s work have been shown at various group exhibitions across so-called Sydney. They participated in a one-night live showing after a two-week performance residency at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists in 2025. They reviewed SCA’s grad show New Contemporaries 2025 for Mass Memo. Their painting received a highly commended award from the Jenny Birt Awards in 2024. Lige graduated with a first-class honours degree in fine arts from UNSW A&D in 2024 and hold a master’s degree in curating and cultural leadership.


This work was made during my residency in Chongqing from December 2025 to January 2026. During my residency in Chongqing, I noticed that many construction sites are covered by green mesh to protect them from the rain. The large green textiles in relation to the landscape reminded me of the use of green screen in digital media. In post-production, the green screen gets replaced by video or image. But Chongqing’s construction sites utilised the typically erased presence of green to cover the industrial materials, which reverses our usual expectations of the colour green. I relate to the resurfacing of green as I think it is a way to recentre the process of making, especially in digital art.

This work was developed as a way to rethink labour in digital manipulation. Stemming from my same interest in the exteriorisation of process, I replicated Photoshop's default transparent layer in painting while having the “subject” of the work printed through the printer. By painting the checkered tiles that represent transparency, I draw on the often-overlooked editing process in digital art to emphasise the value of process in artmaking. As someone who frequently works with both digital forms and painting, this work also serves as an experiment in contemplating the relationship between the machine and the body, as well as questioning the conventional priority given to the final result in digital media.