Nick Santoro, Chaos on The Church Lawn, 2016, acrylic and oil on board, 30 x 30 cm

What reaches out and grabs us, what speaks to us always seems to be the big event – the extraordinary, the front page splash, top twitter feeds and youtube hits.

And yet what about the everydayness of life? The common, banal and the quotidian?

Locals Lonely, an exhibition at the Egg and Dart gallery, features four emerging artists who question the habitual, the background noise and visual vernacular of suburban life and the local neighbourhood. All recent art-school graduates, Hannah Bradbury, India Mark, Nick Santoro and Christopher Zanko present a diverse assortment of works that draw you in, rather than overwhelm.

India Mark’s mysterious oil paintings reflect on the poetry of the commonplace – the teacups we drink from, the flowers on the bench and the musings that swirl on repeat around our heads. Chris Zanko’s vibrant hand-coloured woodcuts of local buildings brings to mind ‘The Australian Ugliness’, a term coined by architect Robin Boyd on the often strange and savage nature of Australian architecture – its surfeit of colour and abstract beauty. Hannah Bradbury’s tactile, abstract, and earthy clay sculptures are evocative of the south coast’s coal cliffs. Bradbury calls us to pay attention not just to the built structures in our daily lives but the land we live on. Nick Santoro’s paintings are irreverent but earnest. They’re visual short stories of the lives we lead and the people we brush past in the street or wait behind in the ATM queue.

These four artists collectively challenge you to see things in a different way. They observe the everyday with a sharp eye, and reflect on the importance of the trivial and futile. In art, and in life, there is not always this BADA-BING moment but there is always poetry.

Christopher Zanko, Pavillon Drains, 2016,  handcoloured wooden board carving, 50 x 60 cm

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WHAT: Locals Lonely Exhibition
WHERE: Egg and Dart Gallery, Thirroul
WHEN: Until 21st May 2016
HOW MUCH: Free – exhibition info here