Embers Exhibition: A Turning Point

Friday night was the opening of my exhibition Embers at Romulus Folio Gallery. It was a beautiful evening surrounded by art collectors, fellow artists, Gladstone residents, friends, family, and the Romulus community. I felt deeply supported by Councillor Alex Makin from the City of Port Phillip and Kate Spenser from FBIdeas, whose presence meant a lot to me as I shared this body of work.

This exhibition is one of the most personal I have ever created. While I was painting Embers, my 95-year-old grandmother, Maria Fonti, was in hospital, and there was a period when we didn’t know if she would survive. True to her nature, she pulled through, and not only did she recover, she attended the opening, where she saw the work dedicated to her, including the piece titled My Grandmother. That moment is one I will carry with me always. The entire exhibition is dedicated to her.

Maria is my last living grandparent. Like the others before her, she migrated from the islands of Sicily to Melbourne. Her story has always been close to me: she lost her father at the age of three, worked in the cotton fields as a child, and attended only a handful of days in primary school. She never learned to write in her native language or English.

Maria Fonti, inspires me. With so little and so much loss, she went on to build a life through resilience, faith, and sheer determination. Pieces in the exhibition, like Child and Mother, are my way of imagining her at different stages of life, wondering what her childhood might have felt like, or how she carried herself as a young woman and mother. How hard it must have been.

I see those embers of former stages of life in her, in my own mother, and in myself. They are quiet flames that endure through generations. Maria has lived through WWII, migration, and the challenges of leaving everything behind without money, language, or certainty. Some stories remain unspoken, too painful to tell, but they live on in memory. Through art I find a way to give voice to these silences, and to honour the strength, love, and survival that also live within them.

Romulus Folio Gallery, which I founded, has been my home for the past five months of exhibitions. It is named after my father and the myth of Romulus and Remus, a connection back to the homeland while also celebrating multicultural life in Melbourne. Embers is my fifth solo exhibition here, with my sixth and final one to follow next month. After that, Romulus will step into a new chapter, presenting group exhibitions, supporting artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, and continuing workshops like Kathryn Farrell’s ‘Returning to Roots’.

For me personally, this moment feels like a turning point. My career is shifting, and I need to dedicate more of my time and focus to the studio. I will be stepping back from the role of director so that Romulus can grow with the guidance of a new director, while I grow into the next stage of my practice. Embers is both an ending and a beginning. It holds memory, migration, and the glowing sparks of transformation. I’m grateful to everyone who came to the opening, and especially to my grandmother, whose life continues to inspire not only this exhibition, but everything I create.