Alternating Current Art Space opens its June program with five new shows

Known for her large-scale painting installations, Back in Boundaries by Naomi Nicholls sees a step back into the containment of the rectangle. Despite this, the performative nature of Nicholls' practice remains, layers of abstract gestures waiting to spill out onto the gallery walls. Here fluid strokes of muddy-neutrals and vivid hues are forced to interact on sheets of aluminium panels. While the glossy paint surfaces mimic the shiny vinyl in Nicholls' installations, both colour and stroke abide by the confines of their boundary.

In Storm Boys, Angus Hamra explores the moment of change within a landscape in flux. Painted on an expanse of denim, Hamra looks to relay the transformative nature of the landscape. As Hamra surmises: Like bleach, any sense of the past is destroyed moments after impact, transforming into unknown territory.'

The poetically abstract paintings of Clare Ellison Jakes manifest to form When there's beauty///; we sense decay as all returns to green. Sinuous forms bathed in saturations of colour, continue Jakes' investigation into current representations of sexuality and gender through a female lens. As Jakes states, the explicit and distorted body imaging mirrors the seductive fleshiness and social constructs of our own corporeality.'

Tammy Chatfield and Rebecca Westlund present Story of the Raven in Gallery Four. Through the lens of their own cultural backgrounds, Chatfield and Westlund explore the relationship between human and bird- specifically the raven. A Kamilaroi women, Chatfield's work relays stories of Waa the Ancestral Crow. Drawing upon her Norse, Celtic and Christian backgrounds, Westlund too incorporates stories from her ancestors into her work. In so doing, both artists examine the semiotic relationship that exists between human and bird.

In The Cloud-gatherer slept for nine nights in a row, Jake Treacy draws upon the unique architecture of the Cupboard to create the illusion of a place outside our own. The mirror here acts as a kind of doorway to an infinite otherworld,' inviting audiences to see themselves through an imagined extension of space.' A series of intuitive marks and scribbles etched into the mirror's surface allude to divine mysteries, the nature of poetry and the act of sleeping as a process of working.' In so doing, Treacy toys with our perception of space while delving into the fantastical realm of dreams and other worlds.

All exhibitions will be open until 30 June 2018.