Keely Varmalis
Keely Varmalis is a Naarm-based interdisciplinary artist working across printmaking, sculpture, and performance. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (Honours), her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries such as West Space, Daine Singer, and the Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, and she has performed at Station and Project8 Gallery. In 2023, she began training with r.a.g.e., drawn to the fragility and demanding nature of glass as a material.
Through sculpture and installation, Varmalis moves with the language of fluidity, as resistance to systems that seek to fix, contain, or define. Working with copper, fabric, glass, and steel, she embraces collapse not as failure, but as method. Stitching recurs as both technique and metaphor: a ritual of repair that marks rupture without erasing it. Her work holds space for impermanence, tracing how bodies and materials absorb pressure, hold memory, and insist on becoming, again and again.
Smog (I), 2025. Bullseye murrine glass, sandblasted, 205 H x 140 W x 140mm D. Photographed by Fred Kroh.
My recent series emerge from an encounter with pattern as a new architecture within my practice. Traditionally, my making has moved like a wander line, meandering, intuitive, and resistant to grids. I am drawn to forms that slip and fold, yet in this body of work I engage with the discipline of the template, the rhythm of repetition, and the generative tension they bring.
Smog (II), 2025. Bullseye murrine glass, sandblasted, 235 H x 85 W x 85mm D. Photographed by Fred Kroh.
Veil, 2025. Bullseye murrine glass, carved and sandblasted, 290 H x 140 W x 90mm D. Photographed by Fred Kroh.
The works began with vintage textiles from my own archive. Their woven structures became points of departure, offering patterns that shaped gesture and guided form. In this way, fabric provided a language of order through which I could explore material transformation. The resulting pieces, Smog I&II and Veil, sit within a space between rigorous structure and fluidity.
