Anne Mestitz - 'Holding Pattern'

Wednesday 16 November - Saturday 3 December 2022

Click here for artwork by Anne Mestitz 

I seek the poetic. I visualise work in my head as if I have some control over it, but it is as fragmented as a dream. The artworks will come about in a trance, intuitively emerging and actualising a particular feeling through manipulating assembled forms and applying colour.

Anne Mestitz is a sixth-generation Tasmanian with a profound spiritual connection to the place. She spent many hours in the bush and at the sea as a child from a young age without parental supervision: the only instruction was to be home by 5 pm for dinner, which involved telling the time by reading the position of the sun in the sky. The act of looking to the sky to return home has created a long-standing obsession with skywatching.


For ten years, Mestitz lived in an inner city location in Hobart and was in the habit of walking kilometres daily to clear the mind and to await inspiration whilst listening to podcasts and music. Keeping a small notebook resulted in frequent stops to write down poems or phrases that popped into her head. Since a move from Tasmania to Eltham in Victoria two years ago to be closer to her family, Mestitz still walks each evening. Only now these walks are on unlit bush trails amongst towering Eucalypts instead of the lighted urban streets of Hobart. The sky in Eltham is a different tone and colour from Hobart skies and is still a
constant source of inspiration. 

(Opening paragraphs from the exhibition catalogue essay written by the artist)