Peta Minnici: Tracing Memory – Drawing as Presence and Disappearance

In this exhibition, Peta Minnici presents a body of work that explores the delicate terrain of memory, absence, and longing through a refined and immersive drawing practice. Using an intricate technique of mark-making developed during her postgraduate research at the National Art School, Minnici constructs tonal images that hover between presence and erasure. Each drawing is composed intuitively over time, layering dense, rhythmic strokes to form figures, interiors, and still life compositions that appear as if glimpsed through the veil of memory.

What emerges is a visual language of recollection—fragmented, atmospheric, and temporal. Edges dissolve, forms blur, and time seems to slow. Minnici’s marks act as both record and residue, speaking to the fragile nature of remembering and the impossibility of fully capturing the past. The result is a series of works that evoke emotional depth while resisting narrative closure, inviting viewers into an intimate space of reflection.

Minnici’s research-led approach draws upon her thesis The Temporality of Recollection in Contemporary Drawing and Painting, anchoring her practice in a conceptual framework that merges the personal with the universal. Her images do not merely depict—they echo, suggesting the ghostly persistence of what once was, and the quiet ache of what is no longer.

Together, these drawings offer a deeply human meditation on the persistence of memory and the ephemeral nature of experience. They remind us that to draw is not only to see, but to feel—to witness the slow unfolding of time across the surface of the paper.