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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Tender - acts of resistance and care

Opening Event: Saturday 20 September, 2-4pm
Exhibition dates: 19 September – 5 October 2025
Opening Hours: Thursday - Sunday, 11am-5pm

Public Programs:

Guided tour with the curator: Friday 26 September, 1pm and Friday 3 October, 1pm
Artist talks: Saturday 27 September, 2-4pm
Reading circle and closing cuppa: Saturday 4 October, 2-4pm

The word Tender is written in green leafy like text

Tender explores acts of resistance and care. Emerging artist and curator Shelley Watters brings together Stephanie Beaupark, Eden Crain, Amani Haydar, Laurence Kimmel, Rochelle Morris, Kath O’Donnell, Emily Simek, Juundaal Strang-Yettica, Shelley Watters, Estelle Yoon and Wendy Qi Zhang - women artists of multiple ages, working across artistic disciplines, ideas, cultures and topographies. Together, these artists explore tenderness at the intersection of earth and people care.

Estelle Yoon, Amani Haydar and Eden Crain work across photo/video, painting and installation respectively, to explore familial tenderness, loss, and dislocation within their art. Rochelle Morris and Shelley Watters, grounded in ecofeminism, examine entanglement, land-trauma and grief through assemblages and installations - often with found or fallen living materials. Juundaal Strang-Yettica, uses her alter-ego Sister Gillternullius to pose new ways of working that are decolonised, relational, and social, to highlight the Anthropogenic environmental crisis. Stephanie Beaupark specialises in facilitating Indigenous-led knowledge exchange through the art and science of eco-dyeing. Emily Simek is interested in collective practices spanning digital art, textiles, installation, writing and gardening. Wendy Qi Zhang and Kath O’Donnell primarily use digital realms, to explore empathy, interconnectedness of creatures, cultures and technologies to create speculative futures. Laurence Kimmel’s oil painting practice expresses architectural visions of threshold and liminal spaces, with her painting installation for Tender depicting speculative habitats for the bilby in response to and in collaboration with O’Donnell’s work.

In The Land in Our Bones: Plancestral Herbalism and Healing Cultures from Syria to the Sinai, Lebanese American author Layla K. Feghali says:
“our feminism of soil and soul, is grounded in ﺃَﻣَﻞ amal “hope” as the abiding force, the core that continuously calls on us to return to it, to invigorate our search for, and action towards liberation…”.

Tender includes an opening event, artist talks, a reading circle, and participatory performances. Events will be held each Saturday during the exhibition between 2-4pm.

Green leaves, shoots twine are entwined to spell the word 'tender' dotted with tiny colourful flowers.

Image Credit: Tender group exhibition at Chrissie Cotter Gallery, 2025. Title treatment by Shelley Watters.

Coming Up Next

A Handmade Life Collective - Extending the Field

Opening Event: Thursday 9 October 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Exhibition Dates: 9 - 26 October 2025
Opening Hours: Thursday - Sunday, 10:30am-4:30pm

Hero Handmade Life Collective 2025_Meryl Blundell

Image credit: Meryl Blundell, 2025

A Handmade Life Collective is made up of 6 local Artisans whose work ranges from stitching, printing, and felting to jewellery-making and assemblage. For the past 8 years the Collective have enjoyed the mutual support of exhibiting together and holding community workshops. At the Chrissie Cotter Gallery this year, they will not only be extending their individual practices but have invited 5 more artisans to join them, in a showcase exhibition and series of events and public workshops. While the exhibition will coincide with Sydney Craft Week it is anticipated that the works will explore the liminal space between art and craft.

A Handmade Life Collective Artists-

Ro Cook
Lorri Evans
Romana Toson
Meryl Blundell
Gill Brooks
Kim Davies

With special guests-

Carl Grey
Avril Makula
Judith Macrae
Melissa Lewin
Lucy Godoroja

Look out for program dates on Instagram @a_handmadelife