GO FIGURE gathers seven artists at the close of the season to explore what it means to interpret — and to be interpreted. The exhibition sits in the space between recognition and distortion, where the body blurs into memory, and emotion becomes something you can almost touch. Figures appear, disappear, re-form, and break apart again; meaning flickers, never quite fixed, never quite still.

There’s a pulse running through the room — the kind that comes from trying to understand ourselves through others, and others through ourselves. Sometimes it feels like clarity, sometimes like contradiction. There is romance in it, and violence in it. “I am trying very hard to find a reason not to lose my hope” — a quiet confession that sits beneath it all, the desire to hold onto meaning even as it slips away.

Through distinct and deeply personal practices, Heath Nock, Nina Radonja, Brontë Naylor, Tahlia Undarlegt, Lexie Worboys, Brett Piva, and Justin Lees wrestle with the figure — literal, imagined, fractured, or symbolic. Instead of answers, they offer emotion; instead of certainty, instinct. Some works whisper “this time imperfect,” others carry the quiet defiance of “dancing through Sunday”; all of them reach beyond the surface, chasing something honest, unguarded, and human.

As the final exhibition of the year, GO FIGURE stands as a last bright flare before the season resets — raw, vulnerable, and unapologetically alive. It asks viewers not to decode, but to feel: to sit inside ambiguity, to lean into sensation, and to recognise themselves — even if just for a moment — in the ghost of a gesture, a shadow of a face, a figure almost gone.

Opening reception: Friday 5 December, 2025 6pm - 8pm
On view: 5 December -20 December, 2025

Location: Wester Gallery 39 Bolton St, Newcastle