This series of small works continues to explore Toni’s interest in abstraction as a physical, material process that emerges through embodied experience. Painting is seen as a dialogue between body and material, where gesture and matter shape meaning. Toni views painting as an entanglement, letting colour, texture, and movement develop their own rhythms rather than seeking to control them.

Edges and thresholds are key—moments when surfaces fray, pigments spill, and boundaries blur. The unpredictable nature of Toni’s materials, which stain, resist, and overflow, reflects the complexities of female lived experience and care. These gestures make colour a visceral force embodying memory, sensation, and emotion. Through this exploration, painting serves as a site of resistance and renewal—a space where excess, chance, and affect are amplified, enabling new embodied understandings.

Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, and currently based in Naarm Melbourne, Toni Vallance is an emerging visual artist specialising in layered, abstract mixed-media painting. Her practice explores colour, texture, and gesture as forces that exceed representation, engaging with feminist theories of embodiment, materiality, and intra-action.

In 2023, she was selected by the co-founder and curator of the National Emerging Art Prize (Australia) to participate in a group exhibition. This opportunity led to her first solo exhibition with Michael Reid Northern Beaches in early 2024, followed by a second solo show at Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne later that year. Toni has also participated in several group exhibitions, including a return to Michael Reid Northern Beaches in 2025 and a showing with New & Abstract in Berlin, Germany. She recently earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) with High Distinction from RMIT University and received the Chapman and Bailey Award for Excellence in Contemporary Painting. In 2026, Toni will commence the esteemed Honours programme at VCA.