Manly Art Gallery & Museum is delighted to host an exhibition of photography and sculpture, In Memory of Water (Friday 6 April – Sunday 20 May), by prize-winning multi-media artist, Shoufay Derz.

Based on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Shoufay is fresh from her Australia Council career development grant travels, during which she has built on her already significant body of work focused on landscape, poetry and the unknown.

Manly Art Gallery & Museum Senior Curator Katherine Roberts said Shoufay’s wider canon of work examines, through various media, how humans express absence and presence.

 “By reflecting upon on the ongoing presence of the past in the now, this new work asks us to contemplate intimacies of the unknown and the ruptures between our experience and knowledge of the world.

“From the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, to the Chalk Cliffs of Rügen in Germany, this emerging young talent has explored monumental eroded landscapes to generate what she calls ‘luminous voids,’ a visual poetry of the unknown.” Ms Roberts said.

Shoufay has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including an Australia Council New Work Grant. At the age of 24, she was winner of the prestigious 52nd Blake Prize for Religious Art, for her mysterious and abstract photographic series Linking back.

She has exhibited her works widely both throughout Australia and abroad, held solo exhibitions at Artereal Gallery, Sherman Galleries, Sydney; Delmar Gallery, Sydney; and Gallery 4a, Asia-Australia Arts Centre, Sydney.

Shoufay’s work has been included in major group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai), OCTA Museum of Contemporary Art (Shenzhen) and The Esplanade (Singapore).

In Memory of Water is a part of the eighth annual Head On Photo Festival.

For details, visit the gallery website or call Manly Art Gallery & Museum on 9976 1421.

Exhibition dates:          Friday 6 April - Sunday 14 Oct
Official opening:          Friday 6 April, 6 - 8pm by Dr Andrew Frost, art critic, lecturer and  broadcaster
Artist in conversation: Sunday 20 May: Join Shoufay Derz for afternoon tea and a walk through her exhibition as she discusses the development of her ideas and work.