Image: courtesy of the artist
January 27 - March 20, 2026
Opening event: Friday, February 6, 5:30-7:30pm
Gallery II, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Free entry, all welcome
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You can find Nadera’s exhibition in The Mill’s Gallery II, located at 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide).
Gallery II is open Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm.
Accessibility
The Mill’s entrance has a small step into the building. We have a ramp available, please ring the doorbell and our friendly team will assist you.
During gallery hours, our entrance will be unlocked. If the door is closed, please ring the doorbell to alert our team.
The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.
For Fringe 2026 we are excited to present Kosh-Chenar a new exhibition by Nadera Rasulova developed through our Visual Arts Studio Residency program, presented with support from Drs Geoff Martin and Sorayya Mahmood Martin.
Nadera’s title, Kosh-Chenar, reference the Uzbek plane tree, a symbol of roots and endurance in Uzbekistan where her parents were born and grew up. Having grown up in Australa, Nadera’s connection to her Uzbek heritage is shaped by her parent’s influence, and is connected to the traditional woven ikat fabric which her mother worked with. In this exhibition Nadera references the colours and textures of Ikat fabric, as well as the tones and atmosphere of Australian and Central Asian landscapes. Through large, abstract oil paintings, she traces the threads between her Uzbek heritage and her life as a first-generation Australian.
‘It’s a conversation between inherited culture and the land I live on, a meditation on memory, belonging, and identity. ‘ says Nadera. ‘Kosh-Chenar is an exploration of the spaces we inherit and the ones we create. It is about the quiet work of piecing together where you come from and where you are, and finding new ground in between.’
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Nadera Rasulova is an emerging abstract artist whose work explores the intersection of her Central Asian heritage and Australian upbringing. Drawing inspiration from Uzbek cultural traditions and Western societal norms, Nadera’s art fosters a dialogue between these two worlds. Her compositions often take the form of patchwork topographies, evoking the diverse natural environments she has encountered throughout her life. Her use of upward and downward strokes in oil paint is reminiscent of the intricate techniques of traditional Uzbek silk weaving, reflecting her cultural roots. These gestures, combined with modern abstraction, create works that resonate with themes of memory, identity, and place. Sustainability plays a significant role in Nadera’s practice. She consciously works with canvas and linen offcuts, transforming what would typically be discarded into meaningful, purposeful art. This commitment to repurposing materials reflects both her respect for the environment and her dedication to creative innovation. In 2022, Nadera’s work Greenwashing was selected as a finalist for the National Emerging Artist Prize, marking a significant milestone in her career. As her practice evolves, Nadera continues to bridge tradition and contemporary issues, producing art that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
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Kosh-Chenar brings together the two worlds that have shaped me: the visual traditions of my Uzbek heritage and the landscapes and rhythms of my Australian upbringing. While my practice is rooted in oil painting, the influence of Uzbek ikat runs quietly through the work, not as a technique I reproduce, but as an underlying way of seeing. The ikat pattern’s soft edges, shifting repetitions and pulsing colour transitions help guide how each painting takes shape.
I build the surfaces through vertical, layered brushstrokes. This up-and-down movement forms a kind of painted terrain, where colour settles like sediment and then rises again through new layers. The result is a topographic sense of place, but one that feels internal as much as geographic, a map of memory, emotion and cultural inheritance. I think of these works as slow accumulations, where each layer holds part of a story, even if it is later covered or transformed.
Growing up in Australia, I absorbed the openness of the landscape: the long stretches of sky, the glare of afternoon heat, colours that sit somewhere between dust and light. These tones enter the work alongside the deeper, more saturated hues I associate with Central Asia. When the two meet on the canvas, they create moments of tension and harmony, soft transitions reminiscent of ikat dyeing but filtered through the sensibility of painting and the Australian environment.
The title Kosh-Chenar refers to the traditional pairing of two plane trees in Uzbek culture. They symbolise duality, resilience and the idea of belonging to more than one place at once. That idea sits at the heart of the exhibition. Each painting is a way of holding both lineages at the same time, not choosing between them but allowing them to coexist, overlap and influence one another.
In this body of work, I am interested in how identity forms gradually, through layers that are not always visible but still shape the whole. The paintings do not offer literal landscapes or clear narratives. Instead, they invite a slower kind of looking, a chance to sit with colour, texture and rhythm and to sense what emerges between them.
Kosh-Chenar is an exploration of the spaces we inherit and the ones we create. It is about the quiet work of piecing together where you come from and where you are, and finding new ground in between.
As an extension of these themes, I will be leading a workshop during the exhibition that invites participants to bring a textile or object of cultural, familial or personal significance. These items will act as starting points for creating abstract paintings through colour, pattern, texture or a more intuitive emotional response. The workshop reflects the intentions of Kosh-Chenar: to explore how the things we inherit carry stories, and how those stories can be reinterpreted and made new through the act of painting.
This exhibition has support from
Drs Geoff Martin and Sorayya Mahmood Martin, Adelaide Fringe Fund
Shane received support from Guildhouse’s Catapult + Tarnanthi Mentorship
