A Wounded Surface is a translation of Lauren Palte's personal experiences into painting. The experiences engage memories and stories mined from her family photographs, while also located in an experience of illness in her body.

The body of work traces the progress of the figures that are disrupted in the process of painting. Becoming less and less specific, they dissolve until only vestiges of recognisable forms remain. The surfaces of the paintings are disrupted, transgressed, broken and discoloured.

This wounding is as much to the painting's surface as to the human body, a breached skin that grants access to the fragile inner body. The paintings show the residue of what once appeared whole - the family photograph, the familial unit and the body.

Paul Birchall's third solo exhibition at the AVA is a series of portraits, which will be on show in the Long Gallery. Inspired by traditional portraiture, Birchall has produced a series of painted portraits of people he knows, exploring his interest in really looking at someone who sits before him, thus developing a visual intimacy and level of detail that goes deeper than what is visible on the surface.

In a world where creating a self-image is a daily routine, a world where we present ourselves (or our avatar-egos) for everyone to see, we are more than ever aware of how we want to present ourselves to the world. We seem to live behind a vale of our own concepts of who we are and how we appear in the public gaze. However, by agreeing to be painted, the sitters have given up the right to control how they will appear in a public domain and leave themselves open to vulnerability in the artist's eye.