A selection of 5 paintings from A Letter From Home, a series of 12 collaborative works by Luisa Hansal and Tamara Marrington.

Luisa Hansal and Tamara Marrington’s creative and personal relationship was formed when the two lived together in a sharehouse in Melbourne. Their collaborative paintings are an homage to friendship, to the ties of connection and affection that draw people together and keep them in each other’s orbit across distance and time.

With each painting referring to music, poetry and personal musings or witticisms, each work stands alone as a spark of mutual understanding and shared experiences. The series is also a material and conceptual challenge from one artist to another. Starting from a series of rules - ‘Have the phrase “Ghosts appear mostly in February” in mind as you paint, stick with 10” x 12” size format, only paint with oil paints, and only use these colours: yellow, indigo, Tasman blue, and white’ - each artist would begin a canvas and send it to the other to work on before returning it again. Eventually a new rule was added - ‘Drop one of the colours used in the previous painting and add another’. Presented as a complete series, a gradient emerges as a record of the changing nature of relationships, but also of their endurance despite the fluctuations of time and space - Text by Miranda Johnson

Luisa Hansal is an artist based in Boorloo (Perth) and is represented by AVA. She holds a Master of Fine Art (High Distinction) from RMIT University (2017) and a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts, majoring in Visual Arts, from Edith Cowan University (2012). Luisa has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, undertaken residencies in Berlin and Perth, and her work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Wesfarmers, and Edith Cowan University.

Tamara Marrington is an artist based in Boorloo (Perth). She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts (2018). Tamara was awarded the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship (2017), and was a finalist in Majlis Travelling Scholarship (2018). Since graduating, she has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, and in 2021 undertook a six week residency at Fremantle Arts Centre.