Please Join us for the Opening Celebration Thursday 10th April 6-8pm

Counter Encounter is an exhibition by five artists, Kate Gabb, Rebecca Jones, Jacinta Maude, Geraldine Richards, Zan Griffith, from The Tin Pot Women Artist Collective, a group committed to feminist principles, collective agency, and the ethics of care.

This exhibition explores the concept of care and how it is diminished in a profit-driven world. Drawing from feminist and anti-capitalist perspectives, the artists examine how neoliberalism prioritises economic gain over the social and environmental conditions that enable care—such as time, labour, and community. In response, they reframe care as an act of resistance, counterbalancing the relentless demands of productivity. They consider care in relation to environments, objects, the self, and collectives.

Through this lens, Counter Encounter highlights the power of even the smallest acts of care—both personal and communal—as a challenge to capitalist structures and a step toward more equitable futures. The works explore care across multiple contexts: woven tapestries reflect on repair and hope, imagined landscapes examine personal relationships to environments, and paper collages playfully imagine a communal care within the arts through selected Melbourne city sites. Charcoal drawings address beauty and self-care, while ceramic installations reveal the often invisible, unpaid labour of caregiving.

The exhibition title signals both resistance to dominant narratives and a space for new encounters between artists, audiences, and ideas. Counter Encounter envisions a care-centred world built on cooperation, solidarity, and sustainability, inviting reflection on how we might rethink care beyond capitalism toward a more just and equitable future.