Opening Event: Stephanie Choo and Samantha Mathews

Name: Opening Event: Stephanie Choo and Samantha Mathews
Start: 2026-04-23T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-04-23T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Monash Civic Gallery

About

Please join us 6pm, Thursday 23rd April 2026, in the Monash Civic Gallery to celebrate two side by side exhibitions presenting works by the of the 2025 For Art Sake (FAS) awarded artists.

'Gentle Glimpses' by Stephanie Choo, Monash Creative Winner of the 2025 For Art Sake (FAS) Award

and

'People, Places, Time; Remembered, Imagined, Kept' by Sona Francis Samantha Mathews, Highly Commended 2025 For Art Sake (FAS) Award

Stephanie Choo is a self-described hobby artist with a keen focus on a self-portrait, using them to express herself where she would otherwise feel too shy to do so. Through the process of painting, she releases any overwhelming emotions into retrospect, allowing them to exist on the canvas instead of evolving her head. Working primarily with acrylic paint, Choo hopes to continue down this path of self-portraiture documenting the delight and delicate moments in my life.

Sona Francis Samantha Mathews work explores intersectionality, in particular how place, time and community shape identity, and what it means to come from multiple cultural lineages that do not collapse into a single story. Painting allows her to elevate memory by making it visible, literal and held. Ceramics offers a counterbalance, more abstract and functional, closer to the body. Together these mediums give her space to explore ideas that resist easy resolution.

What: Opening Event for solo exhibitions by Stephanie Choo and Sona Francis Samantha Mathews
When: 6 - 8pm, Thursday 23rd April
Where: Monash Civic Gallery, 293 Springvale Rd, Glen Waverley VIC 3150

he exhibitions will run from 17th of April to 27th of May, 2026