Explore & Collect with Keri Elmsly

A dynamic creative producer, Keri Elmsly is known for leading and developing creative experience-driven ambitious projects and businesses for global leaders in culture, tech and art. Currently the Executive Director of Programming at ACMI, Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Keri about her top picks of the Fair.

Explore hundreds of artworks on the Fair’s online platform, MAF Virtual, live until 7 March.

STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney)
Paul Yore, Sydney Opera House (You Make Me Feel), 2024

Paul Yore’s work nestles into your mind the way an earworm does with a song. His solo show Word Made Flesh at ACCA in 2022 was the first exhibition I went to when I moved to Melbourne from LA and was the welcome I needed. To me, every element of the visual language, materials and politics is an arresting and immediate refusal of the mundane and mediocre. This piece shouts in the face of rising nationalism and retraction.

Paul Yore, Sydney Opera House (You Make Me Feel), 2024, mixed media assemblage on board comprising glass, crockery, Perspex, beads, glitter, found objects, synthetic fur, trim, ribbon, cotton thread, LED light, wood, adhesive, fixtures, synthetic polymer, enamel, 163.0 x 173.0 x 12.0cm. Courtesy the artist and STATION.

Australian Tapestry Workshop (Naarm/Melbourne)
Julian Martin, UNTITLED 12, 2020

I am drawn to tapestry so often, to see these works as the result of collective intention strike the core of my heart. The tightness of each thread and density of the work hums with intensity and constraint, without compromising the vibrant joy of the dance.

Julian Martin, Untitled 12, 2020, wool, cotton, 21 x 14cm. Courtesy the artist and Australian Tapestry Workshop.

Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne)
Noel McKenna, The snail watcher, 2024

We are currently obsessed with Adam Elliot’s Memoir of A Snail– as is the rest of the world right now! With so much inference, this painting’s immediacy sets me off with more questions than are reasonable to be asking. Mostly though, when is the dog going to be let out? Is there a red brick house in the background and how decorative is that wrought iron fence at the top?