Victorian artist and winner of the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, Karen Ward cites the need for shelter as universal, claiming that shelter can be a mental space where one protects and conceals the most vulnerable aspects of one’s soul; a constructed place where one harbours from an alien world; an isolated space such as Herring Island which is, by its very nature, a mental and physical haven. Karen will examine the psychological and physical manifestations of ‘shelter’ by creating sculptures in the gallery and apt surrounds of Herring Island.
In Investigations, artists Babette Angell, Kathy Mackey and Jacqueline Mitelman invite the public to reassess the familiar in art and nature. The natural environment and unique site of Herring Island is used as a source of inspiration for the creation of photographs by Mackey and Mitelman, and collograph and lithograph prints by Angell. Recent European photographic essays completed by both photographers will contrast with the site-specific works. Workshops will be held to encourage children to look at the habitual afresh: budding photographers will use disposable cameras through which they can examine nature’s intricacies. Preliminary forays into portraiture will also occur as those with cameras document printmaking experiments. Selecting from a choice of prepared linocuts by Angell which have been inspired by the landscape of Herring Island, children will be able to print images onto thin, quick-drying Chinese Joss Paper. During the last two weeks of the exhibition, workshop participants will have the opportunity for their achievements to be included in the display. 
Consisting of two new works by New Zealander Patrick Pound and Australians Lyndell Brown/Charles Green (who have worked together as one artist since 1989), this exhibition is based on of four words: sanctuary, utopia, microcosm and island. Each of these interwoven concepts is central to environmental issues and to ideas concerning the preservation of the natural and man-made world. Herring Island, itself a potent example of a landscape comprised of natural and man-made elements, is the ideal venue for this exhibition. Four themes are explored in large transparent photographs on film and in a cabinet of curiosities spread throughout the gallery: a labyrinth of book pages, archival photographs and the ghosts of paintings, all of which will cohere, nevertheless, into four separate, iconic images of preservation, sanctuary and deep repose. Sanctuary constitutes the latest installment of a continuing project by the artists, who have worked together on five occasions in museums across Australia and New Zealand.