PEACE OF A PARK
Paige Labuda
Luca Blasonato
Grace Harré
10.09.2026 - 03.10.2026
Curated by Archy Obradović
Paige Labuda, Luca Blasonato and Grace Harré come together through a shared material sensitivity, expressing a sense of movement, force and flow within their practices. Through a lingering feeling of nostalgia, an impactful kind of fleetingness, Labuda, Blasonato and Harré share the memories that live in the marks made and left in a park.
In Peace of a Park, Schmick Contemporary transforms into a small, rundown city park. A park bench. A bird fountain. Rubble and broken-down pavers and concrete, plants and dirt and weeds growing through and all. The gallery recalls the idea of tree roots prevailing through concrete surfaces, moss growing over old fountains, a seed finding its way into the mortar of a brick wall and somehow, growing again. The kind of place that could exist anywhere.
The works find themselves within this transitory place.
Considering peace between man and nature, Peace of a Park helps us understand this balance by questioning change, difference, damage, and the things that cannot be controlled. It is about finding connections between people, objects, and the environments they move through.
A weed pushes through concrete. A bird lands on the fountain. The city keeps moving around it.
Grace Harré is a Sri Lankan Australian artist. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2023 and with a Bachelor of Fine Arts ( Honours ) from Monash University in 2025. Recent exhibitions include Spindel at Cathedral Cabinet and Paradox Plaza at Lionel Wendt Gallery, Sri Lanka. Grace was the recipient of the National Gallery of Victoria Women’s Association Award in 2023.
Luca Blasonato was born 1998, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Sydney. Inspiration for his paintings comes through responding to the everyday experience and the responsive play with materials. He is interested in organically formed images in everyday life. Working in a ‘forensic’ like approach, he archives and takes photos of urban existence. Counter current; Slowing down enough to notice organic marks pulled from his built environment are more like natural history. They represent timestamps, some go, some stay. This methodology of collection fosters a sense of openness, some represent.
Paige Labuda (b. 2000, San Francisco) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently pursuing an MFA in photography at Bard College, and was a resident at COMMONS / OPPES in Chiba, Japan, this spring. Previous exhibitions include Turquoise, New York (2024), where she will have a solo exhibition in the spring of 2027.
Peace to the beautiful soul who smells like an angel
peace to the four leaf clover that is caught in the wind
peace to the tree that’s growing through concrete
peace to the ocean swell shaping the cliffs
peace to the fish that swim in and around rubbish
peace to the heart that processes plastic
peace to the man who sits solely on the park bench
peace to the cigarette smoke that kisses the clouds
peace to the friends and all the people ever
peace to an infinite space, where light forever travels
peace to the thoughts that are dark and light
peace to the moss that grows on the bird bath
peace to the soil that buries the brick and its mortar
Poem by Archy Obradovic