Charlotte’s 2025 Top Picks
Ernesto Neto
In lieu of a review this week, I’m looking back at some of the art that stuck with me this year. I won’t lie to you and say these are all strictly things covered for Lowbrow or Lowbrow-esque (the AGNSW was my first gallery of the year), but they are my picks, and I am inherently lowbrow. Please enjoy my top 11 picks from 2025 in chronological order (of course I couldn’t whittle it down to just 10).
January 3: Just like drops in time, nothing by Ernesto Neto at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The installation of this 2002 work overtook my senses. For the first time in my life, I smelled an artwork before seeing it. The stockings, filled with spices poured onto the floor, overtaking the space with their smell and colour. Having just been in San Francisco at the SFMoMA days before, I was immediately reminded of Ruth Asawa’s sculptures in the shape and feel of Neto’s installation.
February 17: Plate with a cubist design by Anne Dangar at the National Gallery of Australia. This doubled exhibition featuring both Dangar and Grace Crowley (who were lifelong ‘correspondents’) was my first taste of great crockery this year. Images of Dangar's plates and pottery are ones I have returned to on my camera roll and through my image searches. They gave me a broader point of reference for Australian Modernism, and I promise I would treasure this beautiful 1930s plate every day if the NGA would be so kind as to let me.
March 5: Doily by Rose Agnew at RMIT First Site. I didn’t expect a cane toad doily to be something that has stuck with me but it certainly has. I’ve returned to Agnew’s exhibition Sweet Enough time and again in my personal writing to interrogate the intersection of environmentalism, invasive species, and femininity that were played with in the exhibition. The doily felt like the confluence of all of these themes. Macabre and delicately stitched together – the object and material at odds with each other.
May 30: Stormborne by Jen Valender (2025) at Alpha60 Chapter House. This video installation was my first encounter with Valender’s work (which I have subsequently written about here and here and even here). This makes my list for how immersive the opening night was –- with drummers taking over your conscious thoughts, and the artwork drawing your eyes upwards. It was a moment where the art, sound, and place all came together in a near spiritual experience – entirely apt for the feel of the venue.
5. July 9: backseat of a commodore by Steph Everett at fortyfivedownstairs. “Coming across it for the first time, I felt my heart in my throat and like staying put, taking it in for as long as I could. There are few pieces that have ever elicited such a visceral reaction from me. Everett’s work is one that draws you in, speaking so loudly for a work that was one of the smallest in the exhibition.”
6. July 25: sketchbook by Jemima Cudmore at Unassigned Gallery. Cudmore played with the form a sketchbook can take. Months later the ‘Alphabet Soup’ page of the woolies bag turned sketchbook lives on in my mind and my photos. The way the blue and red paints contrast so brilliantly with the paper bag brown and green text has planted itself firmly in my mind. The lettering is crisp and playful, fully cognizant that there is absurdity at play.
7. August 13: Looks like all we’ve got is each other by Matthew Harris and Tyrone Te Waa from FUTURES at Spring1883. “What is best described as a giant Labubu with a possum skin bikini top, flower print thong, heels, and an enviable set of pseudo acrylics is a wry, timely stitch up of online culture and our consumer obsessed selves.” If I didn’t include this work in a list of works that stuck with me in 2025 I’d be a fool. It was insane, incredibly topical, and so so fun.
8. September 11: Immaculate Boy by Samuel Massey at NoVacancy. “Immaculate Boy is one of those rare works that stops you in your tracks. With a limited palette Massey has created a work that is utterly arresting, staring out at you. Somewhere between panic and pleading, the portrait is naked and unerringly honest.” Though the opening where I saw this won my award for most chaotic of the year, Massey’s work stood head and shoulders above the chaos, staring you down, bringing you in.
9. October 8: TV Dinner Altar by Jenn Tran at BLINDSIDE. “[Tran’s work] speaks to the near universal experience of turning on the TV when conversing with your family, for whatever reason, is too big of a task.” TV Dinner Altar is also unlike any other work I’ve seen this year compositionally. Though there have been many CRT TVs, nothing has quite taken the form of Tran’s sculpture-cum-video work. The red box commands your attention, the clips on loop keep it there.
10. November 18: WHERE HEARTS ONCE SLEPT by Sophie McDarra at RMIT Grad Show. “[McDarra’s] three large scale canvases, taking up the entire wall, engulf you in colour and movement. A gorgeous blend between abstract washes of colour, the figures and backgrounds blend together, fragmented like recalling childhood memories. Having given herself the space to play, and let the compositions breathe, McDarra wields oil paint with a lushness and temerity that feels beyond a BFA- I eagerly await what she does next.” I had to include a grad show pick, and McDarra’s work just felt right. It captured me instantly with so much audacious joy and colour I know it will stay with me beyond this year.
11. November 24: Seeds by Aisha Hara at MADA Now 2025. I loved this work so much I inquired about purchasing it before even leaving the grad show - my sincerest congratulations to whoever beat me to it. Hara’s use of colour and texture was so inviting and fully cognizant of interplay between the oil and linen. It’s a sublime work: the brushstrokes, the use of space, and the pops of blue all in harmony with each other. Hara enthralled me with this work, becoming another artist that reminds me why I love paintings so very much.
There is so much more I could have included in this list - I saw Carol Jerrems’ work at the National Portrait Gallery, which was an exhibition that blew me away. Her work was foundation to Australian photographic identity, and the exhibition positioned it so well. I loved Heide’s Ciao Bello exhibition and the NGV’s Yayoi Kusama retrospective, not least because I had the privilege of seeing them with my Mum, who not only is my biggest supporter (Hi VW) but is one of the main reasons I love art in the first place. It was a great year for my art consumption, thanks in large part to Lowbrow, and Bec, and the community we’ve grown here. Here’s to more good and bad art in 2026.