Artist Rose Nolan's latest career survey exhibition, "Breathing Helps," is currently on display at TarraWarra Museum of Art through November 9, 2025. The comprehensive exhibition showcases decades of work by the Melbourne-based artist, known for her innovative use of everyday materials, particularly cardboard boxes, which she transforms through cutting, assembling, and reassembling into thought-provoking art pieces.
Located atop a steep hill, TarraWarra Museum's rammed earth structure houses this ambitious survey that spans Nolan's career from the 1990s to present day. The exhibition opens with a striking contrast between two box-based works: "Low-down White Trash Work" (1995), a cardboard construction from her Store 5 era that leans casually against the wall, and a smaller 2023 "Working Model" composed of sliced and stacked homeware boxes with a Marimekko logo visible through white paint. The difference in the works' coloration – the warm tones of the 1995 piece against the stark white of recent works – suggests either the natural aging of materials or the rose-tinted lens of artistic nostalgia.
The exhibition's central piece, "To Keep Going Breathing Helps (circle work)" (2016-17), dominates the museum's main gallery space. This massive installation consists of hessian panels suspended between ceiling and floor, creating a spiral configuration that appears to glitch like digital pixels when viewed while walking. Each disc in the work shows paint bleeding through the hessian weave, then stitched onto white grid strips resembling medical bandages. Velcro clasps hold the gridded panels together on a custom-designed suspension system, creating an effect reminiscent of hospital curtains.
Curator Victoria Lynn has shared curatorial responsibilities with Nolan herself, allowing the artist to essentially curate her own exhibition. This approach reflects Nolan's longstanding practice of treating exhibition spaces as extensions of her studio. For this survey, she created a scale model of TarraWarra's galleries to inform the placement of her works, demonstrating her meticulous attention to spatial relationships and viewer experience.
A significant portion of the exhibition features Nolan's "Big Words (not mine)" series, which incorporates borrowed text from various sources, notably art critic Ian Burn. One prominent carpet installation displays the all-caps message "TRANSCEND THE POVERTY OF PARTIAL VISION," only readable through perpendicular mirrored panels on the gallery wall. Visitors are required to remove their shoes to walk on the 100 percent New Zealand wool carpet, blurring the boundaries between public and private space.
The exhibition also includes Nolan's ongoing "Flat Flower Work" (2004-25), where painted and fragmented boxes continually multiply with each installation, creating what reviewer Ella Howells describes as "a visual kaleidoscope of symbolic concealment." Screen-printed photographs throughout the exhibition document Nolan's labor-intensive creative process, juxtaposed with images of Jackson Pollock working in his studio – a deliberate commentary on gendered creative labor in the art world.
Nolan's career has been closely associated with Melbourne's artist-run space scene, particularly the influential Store 5 gallery from the 1990s. Her work has appeared in both DIY venues and established institutions, maintaining what critics call its "dirty integrity" regardless of the exhibition context. This agility has drawn new audiences to her practice and reflects her commitment to the artistic ecosystem at every level.
The exhibition coincides with significant changes in Melbourne's art scene, including the transformation of Anna Schwartz Gallery (which represents Nolan) into Anna Schwartz Projects after one final show by Nolan's late mentor John Nixon. This shift reflects a broader move toward event-based, ephemeral artistic interventions in the contemporary art world.
Running concurrently with the TarraWarra survey, Nolan's "Word Work" exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery featured text-based pieces with phrases like "ALMOST OVER BUT NOT QUITE" and "ENOUGH, NOW WHAT/WHAT NOW," borrowed from Ian Burn's writings. These works, displayed on the gallery's red walls, seemed to acknowledge the end of an era in Melbourne's commercial art scene.
"Breathing Helps" represents more than a traditional career survey – it functions as a new project in itself, incorporating collaborative elements with choreographer and performance artist Shelley Lasica. The exhibition challenges conventional survey formats by prioritizing Nolan's intimate knowledge of her own work over chronological presentation, resulting in unconventional configurations that keep viewers engaged and guessing at the artist's intentions while maintaining what critic Susan Sontag called "sublime neutrality" in great art.
