Summer Salon : Force of the Invisible

CASSANDRA BIRD, Sydney is pleased to present Force of the Invisible, the 2025 edition of our annual Summer Salon. This year’s Summer Salon exhibition brings together painting, sculpture, photography and installation that explore the unseen forces that shape how we move, perceive and engage with the world around us.

MARCUS CAMPHOO

TV MOORE 

MEL O’CALLAGHAN

GEORGIA SPAIN 

ALEXANDRA STANDEN

DR CHRISTIAN THOMPSON

MIKA UTZON POPOV

There are forces around us we cannot see yet we feel them in every gesture, every breath, every step. Some are physical: gravity, weight, tension. Others are subtle, such as the pull between bodies, the charge of attention and the way space holds us. Invisible but undeniable. Force of the Invisible brings together paintings, sculpture and installations that trace these energies. Each work holds weight and presence while extending beyond itself, creating atmospheres that move through the room and the body. Paintings become fields of tension and resonance. Colour, gesture, texture and mark pull the eye and the body into orbit. Sculptures and installations reveal invisible energy in space through balance, suspension, gravity and relational tension. Materials carry memory and sensation. Steel resists, fabric holds breath, glass and clay anticipate fracture and paint vibrates with gesture. The invisible becomes something lived and felt.

Force of the Invisible draws on ideas from Pina Bausch who revealed unseen forces between bodies; Spinoza who described the vital energy present in all forms of life; Qi and Prana which speak to the flowing energies of breath and movement; Walter Benjamin who traced the currents of history and memory; and Gaston Bachelard who explored the poetic force carried by materials. Together these influences shape subtle and relational energies that move through bodies, objects and space. Paintings here are not only visual. They are haptic and temporal, inviting the viewer to feel the pull of brushwork, the weight of pigment and the invisible energy of the artist’s hand. Sculptures and installations extend these fields into space and create atmospheres the body Inhabits and navigates. The works form a network of invisible forces charged by gravity, emotion, relation and poetry. Tenderness, care, gentleness and attentiveness become forms of knowledge. Intimacy emerges not as identity or possession but as awareness and responsiveness. Softness becomes a receptive and relational mode shaping how we attend, touch and move. Desire, memory, attention and care circulate invisibly and guide perception and body in shifting constellations.The invisible is not absence. It is the pulse and the field in which paintings, sculptures and installations live and the place in which we meet one another.