Justine L Walsh
Artwork
About
LOVE
Sarah Irene Robinson and Justine Walsh2024 (Black Spark Gallery), 2026 (Mixed Zoning)
We have been having conversations for many years, reading books, reciting poetry and dreaming about what love is, in its fullness. bell hooks’ “all about love” started us on our journey of wanting to explore these ideas on love through art. For our previous exhibition on LOVE in 2024, we held a symposium, a feast and an artist talk with a focus on heartbreak. The theme of heartbreak wasn’t intentional but presented itself during the process of showing and the conversations it inspired.
The aim for the 2026 show was to focus on the feeling of being a ball of terror held in joy - to enter a place of potential, desire, curiosity, and the complete unknown.
“The air has changed, it has blown in from another planet and I cannot use my usual group of descriptive words to capture it. It is both cool and thick, and from outer space. It has the quality of never being breathed by humans. Pure to the inhalation and exhalation cycle. Unprocessed by history, ancestry, machines, mills, feelings and illness. Yet I sit here and I breathe this air. As if it knew exactly how to be breath-ed.” - Sarah
The way we install is to bring our work into the space and play with position, angles, light, and spiritual elements - to seek the perfect reverberation for this exact time and place. It’s both really serious and really funny and strange.
The works in the exhibition included the bright esoteric dream world watercolours of Sarah Robinson, and the vocal limestone carvings of Justine Walsh’s that echo geometries and remnants of architecture through time. The show also brought in film, sound and sculptural work, referencing folk healing and rituals of renewal and transformation, along with a place to sit in solitary contemplation and listen to the ‘tape of compliments’ recorded by the artists to make the recipient's heart ping. “Think of your favourite person in the world and your favourite thing about them. That’s how I feel about you.”
Our friendship is a special place of belonging for us. We hope to bring some of that feeling into the world, along with the big weird wonder and humour that love generates.
Review by Eve Fairhall of LOVE: a romantics guide to overflowing and possibly drowning in the richness of small encounters, 2026