Retrospect Galleries, North Coast's edgiest contemporary art gallery, is presenting "The Exquisite Beast' Following local artist Laura Skerlj’s sell-out success at last year’s 12 x 12 exhibition, exploring the synchronous kinship and battle between animals, humans and nature.

In a true celebration of midwinter solstice and the feminine subconscious in art, we will be hanging rooms 1 and 2 of the gallery with a group show at the same time as the Exquisite Beast with some of the regions and beyond, most exciting contemporary women artists including: Cornelia Burless, Michelle Dawson, Hillary Herrmann, Mia Taninaka, Miss Link, Donna Gee, Sarah Harvey, Birgit Henstorf, Fiona Kennedy Altoft, Jan Rae, Donna Malone and Rachel Bartram.

“It’s very unusual for a Gallery to give a solo show to an artist in their first year, but Laura is an exception. I think the public is going to be highly impressed.”

In the series of works created for the exhibition, Skerlj considers that animals speak to our subconscious and imagination in a way that reflects human behaviour - perhaps more evocatively than if we looked to our own species for answers and patterns.

The Exquisite Beast is a collection of drawings and paintings that depict subjects in imaginary, beastly, mad and romanticised guises. Excessive, strange and shape-shifting, these works imagine not only the battle but the things you catch and keep along the way.