Shape Glass and Orbit 2024, Phenomenal Matter 2025, curated by David M. Thomas, Mary Cherry Contemporary, Collingwood 2025.

Documentation by Panisa Ongwat

Phenomenal Matter is a group exhibition curated by artist and educator David M.Thomas for Mary Cherry Contemporary. This exhibition features a selection of works by Anne-Marie May, Ebony Maurice-Wilmott, Elizabeth Pulie, and David M. Thomas.

The artists selected demonstrate a direct engagement with matter and process—working with materials such as textiles, plastic, pigment, metal and glass. The actions involved include cutting, arranging, channeling, rubbing, transposing, gathering, meditating, mediating, projecting, tracing, coloring, staining, unravelling, stacking, combining, joining, and scattering—sometimes even painting. Phenomenal Matter is an exhibition that unfolds as an exploration of matter and action. Driven by a deep engagement with the energy of material experience, the exhibition presents an inquiry into how form, substance, and action reveal poetic and resonant meanings beyond the physical.