Opening Thursday 5 February, 5-7pm, 'Purity and Danger' is an exhibition by Leena O’Luu. O’Luu’s looks at how healing and harm can exist side by side in our bodies and experiences. Her sculptures speak in the language of ritual and craft, drawing from practices like woodworking.
Leena O’Luu
5 - 27 February 2026
Opening celebration: Thursday 5 February, 5-7pm
Purity and Danger an exhibition by Leena O’Luu. Upon entering, there is a light blue structural timber wall. The stain created from Chromate copper arsenate (CCA). CCA acts as a shield against climatic threats like fungus and mould. Where it protects the woods structural intergrity, it harms the ecosystem and human body.
To make the wall, wood was sawed-sanded- positioned- joined with complex Japanese dowel joinery. Two towel swans can be seen through the exposed wall, facing each other - kissing. An overly complicated shape -a swan is made by melting bleached bees wax with white lead stack pigment into a two part plaster mould.
The installation is still, it stands there quietly in its own self-destructive alchemy.
The wall meant to protector and the skeleton. A home that was never built. It’s translucscene allows us to see two swans - Are they really protected if the walls they live within are also killing them?
Leena O’Luu is a Vietnamese/Australian artist based in inner city Naarm. O’Luu’s looks at how healing and harm can exist side by side in our bodies and experiences. Her sculptures speak in the language of ritual and craft, drawing from practices like woodworking. Each form bears the weight of process, a quiet worship, where material becomes memory and carries embedded cultural meaning. Where historical and contemporary uses of dangerous materials and methods in surface protection. These practices trace shifting societal values and expose how perceptions of what, and who, is deemed valuable continue to change.