Palangi Gallery is delighted to present ‘Pristine Moments’, a group exhibition bringing together contemporary artists who explore the quiet beauty and authenticity of life’s most genuine experiences.
Through painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media and printmaking, the exhibition invites us to pause and reconnect with moments of stillness, memory, nature, emotion, and human connection.
Exhibition Details
Opening Night: 17 September, 6 – 8 PM
Location: 59 Flinders St. Surry Hills
Guest of Honour: Susan Prior
Curator: Farideh Zariv
About the Artist
Cheryl Wetsi was born in Sydney, Australia and lived in other parts of country NSW, during her childhood and early adulthood. This influenced her love of the wide-open expanses of the Australian landscape, seascapes, and later the love of Australian native plants.
Cheryl became besotted with art when she attended an art exhibition during a primary school excursion, while living in Moree. Her senses were ignited; she went home and declared to her mother she would become an artist one day.
Her first career was in Fashion Design, and she worked in the clothing industry and then became a Fashion Teacher in NSW TAFE. She met her Ghanaian husband in 1986 while teaching Fashion Technology at TAFE at the university town of Armidale in NSW.
She got the calling and became a focused artist around 2005 when she thought she had better start painting before she got any older! Cheryl is self-taught, although she had a solid understanding of design and painting during her time as a fashion designer and years researching and practising in her small studio at home, while making countless mistakes! Cheryl sells her art to small local art galleries, local art exhibitions and private commissions.
Cheryl practised as often as she could to improve her art practice and focused on developing her own art style, at the same time teaching for the Department of Education as a Textiles High School teacher.
Cheryl is an experimental artist; her art is always evolving, and she enjoys playing with a variety of techniques, tools and mixed - media effects. Her constant experimenting drove her interest from representational art into semi - abstract art. She originally painted with watercolours and oil paints but decided to use acrylic paints as she was able to achieve authenticity, spontaneity, and interesting colour combinations and layering to capture her love of nature and the outdoors.
Cheryl’s focus is to create curiosity, expressive forms, and variety within her compositions, while capturing her audience with vibrancy, energy, and light in her paintings.
Originally from the UK, I’ve been taking photos since receiving a small point and shoot camera as a leaving present.
I found that photography was the perfect companion for travelling around Australia and discovering the beauty of the Australian landscape.
Since settling in Sydney, I’ve grown to love macro and abstract photography and am drawn to flowers, trees and our natural bushland.
Ten years ago, I converted my camera to infrared and now love sharing my impression of the unseen world around us.
Artistically, I started as a fashion illustrator, loving movement in the female form. I taught fashion in schools for 20 years before changing to Special and Inclusive education. I have continued to work on portraits in pastel, exploring the different ages of women, with a particular focus on close-up expressions, as I am fascinated by detail.
On retiring from education, I stepped back to take in the entire form. This is evident in Feeling Good. No longer close up I explore the entire form, capturing the details of the muscles and folds of flesh and fabric.
I have also tried to step back from pastel and am playing around with other mediums, water colour for movement and graphite for depth and detail. I am diarising my easy existence in art, so through Morning Light over Lake, Ally, and Venice, where you can follow my journey from the South to North Coast and more recently, Japan.
Vida Irani is a Sydney-based visual artist. Born in Tehran, Iran, she initially earned a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering before immigrating to Australia in 2010.
Following her true passion, Vida transitioned into the arts, completing a Diploma of Screen and Media at Sydney Film School in 2016 and writing and directing several short films.
Over the past few years, Vida has refined her distinctive voice as a collage artist under the mentorship of the renowned Iranian-Australian artist Dr Nasser Palangi.
She works primarily with recycled magazines and found objects, and transforms them into richly layered, visual narratives. Vida previously exhibited her work in the 2025 group exhibition 'Hands of Creation' at the Palangi Gallery.
Artworks
