The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty proposed that vision is never passive, that the eye does not receive the world so much as participate in it. It is a useful frame for encountering the work of Seabastion Toast, whose rigorously composed oil paintings treat figure, object, and ground with equal structural weight, directing attention through the deliberate use of light and pattern rather than hierarchy or sentiment. Toast paints to resist the speed at which images are ordinarily consumed. Her compositions are propositions, constructed from sustained observation, in which the act of looking is itself made visible. There is something demanding and generous in equal measure about this project: it asks the viewer to slow down, and rewards that slowing with the uncommon experience ofbecoming conscious of one's own perception as it unfolds.
J Valenzuela Didi brings a different kind of patience to the urban environment he inhabits. His Brisbane-based practice finds in the infrastructure of modern life, the bridge, the overpass, the tram on its hillside track, the qualities traditionally reserved for landscape: stillness, atmosphere, the passage of time. Working in a palette of restrained, near-monochromatic blues and greys, Didi isolates these structures from their function and their noise until they become what he calls shrines to human existence. It is a quietly radical act of attention. The ordinary is not elevated through irony or nostalgia, but through the patient recognition that even the most utilitarian forms carry within them the traces of all the lives that have moved through or past them.
Effie Pryer, working from Hobart on timber panels, undertakes a similarly attentive but considerably more playful project. Her paintings borrow the formal grammar of devotional art, the altarpiece, the arched niche, the icon, and apply it to the minor indignities of contemporary self-regard. Keys are lost. Paper bags betray their owners. The self casts itself, with unearned gravity, as the tragic lead of its own small dramas. Pryer does not satirise this tendency so much as honour it with painterly seriousness, finding in the gap between the grandiose and the banal a territory that is tenderly human. Her experience as a paintings conservator means she handles this inheritance of form with full knowledge of what she is borrowing and why.
Nazila Jahangir arrived at her Perth practice by way of Tehran and the University of Western Australia, carrying with her a tradition in which storytelling and image-making have always been understood as inseparable. Her oil paintings inhabit the border territory between realism and magical realism, constructing what she describes as frozen moments from stories not yet told. Figures reach toward butterflies that are also migrations; a self-portrait becomes a meditation on identity and cultural distance. There is in Jahangir's work a quality that the novelist Marilynne Robinson has identified in the best figurative art: the sense that a painted face or figure is not merely depicted but really seen, that behind the image lies a consciousness the painting acknowledges and respects.
Together, these four artists make the case that representational painting remains one of the most powerful instruments we have for the practice of attention. Entry Point is not a survey of a style but an argument for a way of engaging with the world: carefully, slowly, and with the willingness to be changed by what looking reveals.
Effie Pryer Artist Statement
I have an unfortunate habit of casting myself as the tragic lead in the minor dramas of modern convenience. In pursuit of perspective, my recent work leans into this absurdity - the way comfort and privilege can turn lost keys into an existential narrative - by granting scenes of self-martyrdom the undeserved solemnity of religious icon painting.
Artist profile
Effie Pryer is a Tasmanian artist living in Hobart, working primarily as a portrait and figurative painter in oils. Her experience as a painting’s conservator informs her traditional approach to painting, using Tasmanian timber panels as an integral part of the image. With an interest in the continuity of human narratives in art - reflecting familiar woes and desires across millennia - these paintings often contrast grandiose classical imagery with modern banality, finding humor in humanity’s exaggerated yet inconsequential self-importance. Effie has been a finalist in several national portrait and figurative painting prizes and completed commissions for Parliament of Tasmania and the University of Tasmania (UTAS).
J Valenzuela Didi Artist Statement
My recent paintings explore the modern landscape as a kind of still life. Rather than presenting sweeping vistas, I focus on elements within the urban environment and treat them as subjects in their own right. By isolating them, the familiar can feel both intimate and monumental. In the geometry of these fragmented moments there is a quiet spiritual significance, like shrines to our human existence. The works sit somewhere between observation and recollection, where ordinary structures hold traces of time and distance, revealing the ephemeral weight carried by everyday places.
Artist profile
J Valenzuela Didi is an award-winning Brisbane-based artist whose paintings explore memory, the urban landscape, and the quiet unease that inhabits modern life. His work often focuses on familiar urban elements such as bridges, streetlights, and backyards, isolating them within carefully composed spaces. By treating these structures as still life subjects, he transforms ordinary environments into moments of contemplation.
Geometry and atmosphere play a central role in his practice. Clean edges, simplified forms, and expansive fields of colour create a sense of stillness while suggesting deeper psychological spaces. Recurring motifs appear throughout the work, often functioning as markers of memory or emotional states, inviting viewers to project their own experiences onto the scene.
Didi’s paintings balance clarity and ambiguity. Reflections, distortions, and subtle shifts in perspective introduce a quiet tension between reality and recollection. The works often feel suspended in time, where familiar structures become vessels for memory, introspection, and the passing of time.
Nazila Jahangir Artist statement
My work grows out of a journey across cultures, places, and histories. I started my art education at Alzahra University in Tehran and later expanded my practice during my MFA at The University of Western Australia. I love creating oil paintings that feel like frozen moments from stories that haven’t been told yet. Growing up in Iran, storytelling was everywhere, and that curiosity still drives my work. Since moving to Australia, I’ve been inspired by its wide-open landscapes and vibrant public spaces, blending realism with touches of magical realism and surrealism to explore moments that feel both personal and universal.
Artist profile
Nazila Jahangir is a Perth-based visual artist with a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the University of Western Australia and prior MFA and BFA degrees from Alzahra University, Tehran, where she graduated as an outstanding student. Her practice has been recognised through numerous awards and prizes, including Emerging Artist Winner at the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2022) and 3rd Place in the City of Stirling Art Award (2025), along with multiple national finalist selections. Jahangir has presented solo exhibitions in Australia and Iran, and her work has been shown widely in group exhibitions and state art awards across the country. Her works are held in various private and public collections, including the St John of God Health Care Art Collection and the City of Stirling Art Collection.
Seabastion Toast Artist Statement
I paint to test how perception shifts under light, time and proximity. My work begins with compositional propositions that are developed through observation, resulting in constructed images in which figure, object and ground are held in deliberate spatial tension. I am interested in how contemporary subjects occupy space, how they perform or withdraw, and how painting can resist the speed at which we usually consume images. Through sustained looking, I aim to create conditions in which viewers become conscious of their own perception unfolding.
Artist profile
Based on the mid-North Coast of NSW, Seabastion Toast’s work explores the act of looking and the instability of perception. Working primarily in oil, Toast constructs rigorously composed images drawn from observation, where figure, object and ground are treated with equal structural weight. Classical compositional strategies inform the work, while remaining attentive to contemporary image culture. Light, pattern and degrees of abstraction operate as structural tools rather than mere decorative effects, directing attention and shaping perception.
Toast holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Southern Cross University and has studied at the Pratt Institute, New York. She was recently the recipient of the 2024, $40,000 Percival Portraiture Prize, has been awarded the Darcy Doyle Landscape Award twice, as well as the People’s Choice Award at both the Portia Geach Memorial Award and twice at the Sunshine Coast Art Prize. She is regularly a finalist in many prominent awards including the Mosman, Glover and National Still Life awards. She was recently a finalist on the Australian premier of Portrait Artist of the Year. Her work has been exhibited widely across Australia.
