Olga Bakhtina, Mysterious Fishing, 2025. Oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm.
Olga Bakhtina returns in 2026 with Mercy, a luminous new exhibition hosted at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane, running from 1 July to 19 August.
One of the most significant elements of the exhibition is Bakhtina’s new series on St Francis of Assisi, created to mark the 800th anniversary of his death. These pieces do not simply commemorate Francis; they reinterpret his witness through colour, gesture, and the artist’s characteristic attention to the human face. They sit alongside fresh engagements with gospel narratives, each rendered with Bakhtina’s unmistakable blend of narrative immediacy and contemplative stillness.
Visitors to St John’s will find an exhibition that is both spiritually resonant and visually arresting. The cathedral setting amplifies the work’s themes – light, mercy, vulnerability, and hope – creating a dialogue between art and architecture that rewards slow looking.
If you’re in Brisbane this winter, Mercy is well worth experiencing. More information here.
Candles yearn and flutter in the sacred gloom stained glass glows like coals and cobalt yesterday’s incense ghosts into your nostrils. Two pews down an elegant woman is summoned by the phone below her steepled fingers its pale oblong awakes to interrupt her prayers or answer them. The dead the lost and those close by are calling wanting and wanted summoned and summoning close as the touch screen or the pale wax of the tapers – some newly lit and long, others slim stubs held in the sand of the bowl. The one I lit for you has half its life to go.
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Chris Ringrose is a poet and fiction writer living in Melbourne, Australia. His latest poetry collection is Palmistry (ICoE Press, 2019). Creative Lives, a collection of interviews with South Asian Writers, was published by Columbia UP in 2021.
standing in Divine assembly each tree with its own connections its own message its own role its own journey through life
so too, we humans stand in Divine assembly each of us with our own connections our own story our own journey through life
no matter where we stand grief will find us
Agamemnon charges us to tell the story of grief and Jewish tradition calls out to us to live the story of our grief it begins with aninut – from death to burial when we bear no responsibility to G?d outside of grieving to shiva – seven days of the community coming to us to shloshim – thirty days of living differently out in the world and then eleven months of saying Kaddish every day and always, always, four times a year together with everyone else remembering out loud our grief until we no longer walk this earth
and every single one of these times standing together standing in Divine assembly
no matter how joyous an occasion a pause to remember the dead allowing grief acknowledging grief with words that say nothing of loss but which praise G?d in ancient Aramaic a reminder with Agamemnon of the everpresence of grief and that our experience is nothing new yet acknowledging that on the level of G!d [Elie Weisel] some experiences of life and grief perhaps not our own everyperson kind of experiences but some forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries [Elie Weisel]
and for the trees what does it mean that we are upending life on planet Earth what does it mean to the Divine assembly where G?d judges what does it mean to us what does it mean to the oak and the willow the bumblebee and the ant the buffalo and the rose the rhinoceros what does it mean to Agamemnon what does it mean to G?d
does this level of grief about the injustice of who is suffering most about families forced to migrate to stay alive about innocent people disappeared or thrown into concentration camps about the loss of so much so very much that is beloved about the fear that is stoked sending otherwise reasonable people into rabidly defending their little corner of this precious planet
can we possibly honor, hold, and experience this level of grief or will it on the level of human, redwood, bear and daisy mountain laurel, spider, wasp and fly clover, mountain brook and pebble be simply too much to bear too vast to comprehend too complicated to express even as it grows more intense and remain forever a most disturbing of mysteries
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Katy Z. Allen is a poet and a devoted lover of the more‑than‑human world. A retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, she has also served as a healthcare chaplain, co‑founded a Jewish climate organisation, and works as an eco‑chaplain. She is a member of the LGBTQ community and has been writing in one form or another throughout her life. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, The Bluebird Word, and Art on the Trails: Number 9, among other venues. Her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text, was published by Strong Voices.
Vincent van Gogh, A Wheatfield with Cypresses, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73 x 93.4 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.
Across the swaying yellow fields, Vincent is startled by the stunted olive trees That stretch outwards, upwards Buffeted by the West wind, Yearning to seize The scudding restless clouds.
How they envy their lone companion: A cypress standing apart, alert, Such strength in its dark purpose, While they are chained to their parched quest.
How short the spooned-out time Vincent has left To trap this pointless struggle, while the wheat-heads Shift and hiss their ripe displeasure At his presence.
They are vipers.
Last night, he dreamt That his thighs, suddenly muscular, Propelled him upwards, effortless, To perch upon the cumulus and cirrus, And then he awoke in sadness, Unkempt, imprisoned, his head tolling Like a cracked church bell.
That seductive memory will not leave.
Vipers are curled beneath his feet.
So now, with Mustard stained fingers, He stabs at the canvas again, again, again, His sword a coarse hog hair paintbrush. He shivers with desire, for another absinthe, For someone to ease his lone journey Of escape, to join him behind the lowering sky.
The olive trees, the cypress, all murmur That Vincent, whimpering, Will never see them flower, That his trembling torment Will never be grasped and set aside by The fleeting, fleeing clouds.
The vipers strike.
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David Allard is a London‑based writer enjoying retirement while continuing a lifelong engagement with the written word. His work includes numerous poems and short stories published over several decades, as well as a crime novel, The Last Resort, released under the pseudonym David Strauss.
David Naseby, Les Murray, 1995. Oil on canvas, 179.5 x 184.5 cm. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
The recent death of David Malouf, aged 92, has left many readers grieving the loss of a writer whose prose was marked by unostentatious care, quiet precision, and a deep humaneness. Malouf had a rare gift for tracing the places where the material meets the immaterial, where the ordinary world thins and something luminous shows through. In an age when algorithms increasingly choose our words for us, his painstaking craftsmanship feels all the more precious.
That same attentiveness to mystery and meaning shaped the work of Les Murray, another of Australia’s most distinctive and resilient poetic voices. Murray never wrote a cliché. His poems –gossamer, surprising, and often startlingly tender – stood in contrast to his rough, laconic exterior. Behind that exterior was a man shaped by a lonely and traumatic childhood, one who spent his career descending into the darker places of human experience and returning with light.
Murray refused easy certitude. He resisted the tyranny of the mob. He wrote with a spiritual clarity that was never sentimental. In his poem on the death of his father, Cecil, he offers a line that still startles with its fierce love and defiance: “Fuck them. I wish you God.”
This is Murray at his most distilled – a poet of hope, not optimism. Hope, for him, was not a mood but a posture: a way of standing in the world that acknowledged suffering without surrendering to it.
If you’d like to experience something of that spirituality– its toughness, its radiance, its refusal to look away – you are warmly invited to Michael McGirr’s talk, ‘Les Less Miserable: The Poetic Journey of Les Murray’, next Wednesday, 13 May, at 6pm at St Peter’s Eastern Hill in Melbourne.
Michael will explore Murray’s life, his craft, and the strange, grace-filled places where his poetry continues to speak. It promises to be an evening of depth, humour, and insight, very much in the spirit of Murray himself.
And if Malouf’s passing has stirred something in you, you may also appreciate Michael’s recent tribute to David Malouf in Eureka Street, a beautiful reflection on a life spent enlarging the imaginative world of this country.
Studiois a book-length journal publishing poetry and short fiction of literary merit, offering a venue for established, new, and aspiring writers.Studio also publishes literary articles, essays, news, and reviews of writing, writers, and events of interest to members.Studio was first published in 1980, and is published three times each year.
Membership of Studio puts you in touch with:
quality writing from Australia and around the world
avenues for publishing and writing in Australia and internationally
news of conferences and festivals of interest to writers
details of competitions for prose and poetry
other arts organisations, significant books, and valuable publications
informed comment and responses to literary ideas
a wide variety of writers and artists in Australia and around the world
Inside Studio A studio is a special place for the artist. It is a space where creative work is crafted, shared, and presented for others to enjoy. In the studio, we experiment and display our best work for others to appreciate. Studio is a non-profit book-length journal produced by an Australian editorial team, with consultant editors around Australia. Studio seeks to serve its members by publishing quality poetry, short fiction, essays, and reviews, sponsoring competitions, and announcing events of interest to members. Studio also publishes a range of special edition books and coffee-table publications. Back catalogue editions of Studio and special Studio books are available on request. Studio grows as members share their work and generously support a quality literary journal serving writers and readers of poetry, short fiction, and the literary arts from around Australia and across the world.
Pro Hart, The Good Samaritan, c. 1980. Oil on board, 30 x 44 cm. Private collection.
I I was escaping a traumatic day on the road with my dearest friends when he fell in step beside us on the way and the world began to glow again
II I was a bastard, a tool of the State until face down in the dirt I heard voices uttered promises and groans was made and unmade among stones
III Of course, I was tempted to walk on the complications the expense he was a naked, bleeding Other ashamed to ignore him I made him my brother
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Chris Ringrose is a poet and fiction writer living in Melbourne, Australia. His latest poetry collection is Palmistry (ICoE Press, 2019). Creative Lives, a collection of interviews with South Asian Writers, was published by Columbia UP in 2021.
The survey exhibition of the work of painter Leonard Brown is currently on exhibition at the Ipswich Art Gallery in Queensland until 14 June 2026. Curated by the distinguished art historian Sasha Grishin, this survey explores his distinctive abstract works that exemplify his interest in formal geometry and handmade mark-making. Alongside this body of work are his religious icons drawn from the Orthodox tradition. Together, they explore the work of an artist centrally concerned with Christian spirituality and transcendence.
The art of Leonard Brown is a unique phenomenon in Australian art. He is highly regarded as a painter of sublime, minimal abstract canvases, and his paintings are held in major public art collections throughout Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
At the same time, Leonard Brown is an accomplished icon painter following the ancient conventions and methods of Byzantine and Medieval Russian icon painting. Many of his icons are consecrated and in liturgical use in churches throughout the world, find homes in domestic environments, and are held in private and public art collections. He is also a figurative artist of repute, the winner of the Brisbane Portrait Prize (2019), and has been awarded numerous other art prizes, including The Blake Prize for Religious Art (2010).
Painting the Celestial is the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Leonard Brown’s work to be presented in Australia and traces the artist’s development over more than five decades. The Ipswich Art Gallery is being transformed for this exhibition to include a gold-radiating sanctuary where Leonard Brown’s icons can be sympathetically displayed. His abstract paintings are being shown in greater numbers and in more depth than ever before. To enter the world of Leonard Brown’s art is to embark on a transformative experience. Both his painted icons and abstract works can transport the viewer to a different, more spiritual plane of existence.
Leonard Brown, To annihilate all that’s made to a green thought in a green shade, 2015.
Here I sit in nothingness, asleep while I close my eyes to darkness as it falls around me.
There is a line darkness does not cross. And still there are shadows:
flesh doesn’t wander over spirit or death. (The flesh is quickest to disagree with eternity; the bones are slowest to turn over in graves of dust and water.) Spirit can never die.
Spirit never dies while we are awake but sleeps at night like a universe of endless stars expanding into nothingness, to never reach over the edge of an infinite void, a dark hole of remembering everything and giving it more weight, more gravity to nothing escaping, as every thought is compressed into words
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P. M. Flynn holds a BS in English from East Carolina University. A devoted roaster of organic coffee and enthusiastic baker of cookies, he pairs his creative pursuits with a long record of publication in respected online and print magazines. His debut poetry collection, Shadows on Moss, was released by Resource Publications. For more than fifty years, he has explored the deep interplay between art and theology, a commitment that continues to shape his writing and imagination.
Art/s and Theology Australia 