Chrissie Cotter Gallery

Inner West Council's art deco Chrissie Cotter Gallery is located in Pidcock Street, Camperdown (next to Camperdown Commons) and is available for exhibitions and cultural events by individuals and organisations.

When in use, gallery opening hours are Thursday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm – unless stated – please check below.

Entry is free. Accessibility information: The gallery has an accessible bathroom. There is a set of stairs inside the building and a lift for wheelchair access.

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Tell Me A Story by Jen Hsieh

Opening event: Friday 13 June, 6-9pm. Tickets available via Eventbrite (free entry).
Exhibition dates: Open everyday 10 to 22 June, 11am-4pm

Jen Hsieh I Walk
Image credit: I Walk, Jen Hsieh (2025)

Artist

Jen Hsieh is an artist whose work tells tale of vast wilderness and inherent beauty. Her paintings possess a bewitching elegance, suggest and engage viewers to seek more and join in on the journey.

Her love of the land led her to explore the outback and remote Australia. Humbled by the rugged and desolate beauty of the land, Hsieh yearned to re-tell the tales of the Country and share the allure of the wild. In addition to traditional canvas, Hsieh extends her artistry by painting on unconventional mediums such as translucent silk chiffon and elastics,where there is no room for error or possible correction. The conscious choice of these mediums adds another layer to the tale being told.

Jen has exhibited across Australia and Canada and was the 2024 GreenWay Art Prize winner. Her works are held in private collections and well-cherished.

Exhibition Statement

Stories connect past and present, carrying memory, wisdom, and meaning through time. They shape how we see the world, how we remember, and how we make sense of what came before. Tell Me a Story weaves Australian landscapes into a collection of unfolding narratives. Each painting holds its own story—of resilience and renewal, paradise found and lost, hope, hardship, and bittersweet remembrance.

Materials shape these stories as much as the imagery itself. Layers of see-through chiffon shift with the viewer’s gaze, mirroring the fluid nature of memory. Firehose, once used to fight flames, carries the weight of destruction and renewal. Industrial elastic, stretched and woven into the compositions, embodies endurance, adaptation, and the tension between holding on and letting go.

Like a story passed from one voice to another, these paintings invite you to listen, interpret, and reimagine the Australian landscape. Some stories may feel familiar, others just beyond reach. Each asks you to pause, to listen, and to look a little deeper. What story will you take away?

Website: https://www.jenhsieh.art/
Instagram: @jenhsieh.art

For more information on the exhibition, media and interview requests, please contact Jen Hsieh on jenniferyhsieh@gmail.com or 0439 400 282.

A layered artwork in moody greens showing bushland and a faded wooden timber staircase, around which is draped a bright red ribbon blowing in the wind

Coming Up Next

Re-Wilding by Annelies Jahn & Jane Burton-Taylor

Opening Event: Saturday 28 June, 1:30-3:30pm to be opened by Karen Smith, Aboriginal Heritage Officer
Exhibition dates: Thurs 26 June - Sunday 13 July (open Wed-Sun 11am-4pm)

A black and white image of an adolescent tree growing in a forest, against a backdrop of a white sheet
Image credit: Adolescent Tree by Annelies Jahn & Jane Burton Taylor (2025)

Rewilding is a nature conservation strategy focused on restoring and protecting nature by allowing it to self-regulate. This exhibition explores rewilding, as a way of relating to the natural world and as an ecological concept. The artists have researched the original plant community of the immediate Camperdown area, now considered critically endangered. The resulting artworks incorporate scent, sound and scale, as well as the visual, to give visitors unique experiences relating to the original habitat. By revisiting the pre-colonial era, they reveal a glimpse of the intrinsic character of the local Wangal and Gadigal Lands. They have also grown local plants from seed and are gifting them to visitors to support local wildlife and biodiversity. Their belief is that rewilding is in part, the growing of an individual appreciation – and by implication a care - of nature, specifically the indigenous natural world of flora and fauna.

Talks and Workshops:

Sapling (Torrangora) wall drawing (performance by artist): Sunday 29 June 12pm
Drawing workshop: Friday 4 July, 11am-12:30pm
Artist talk: Sunday 6 July, 12pm
Workshop on native plants: Wednesday 9 July, 11a-12:30pm with Inner West Council's Adam Ward (Team Leader, Ecology Projects) and Raychel White (Supervisor, Community Nurseries)
Closing event: Sunday 13 July, 2-4pm with talk by Michael Hill (Head of Art History and Theory, National Art School)