GAS Presents LOUD!

A decade in, Group Art Shows (GAS) is turning up the volume in its tenth exhibition, LOUD!, with a simple proposition: art you don’t just see, but feel.

Curated by Wade Goring, the Sydney show brings together 29 local, independent artists responding to sound, music and synaesthesia. Some works pulse with rhythm, others lean into texture and abstraction, but all push at the edges of how art is experienced.

For Goring, LOUD! isn’t about literal interpretations. “It’s about being loud… throwing yourself out there,” he says. “How something can look loud, something can feel loud, but it doesn’t create sound.” The brief is intentionally open as artists are given a direction, not a rulebook, allowing instinct and interpretation to lead.

That approach reflects the ethos behind Group Art Shows itself. Launched in late 2022, the initiative began as a practical response to a gap. “I was looking for opportunities to put my work and sometimes there seems to be quite a lot of opportunities and sometimes there seems to be none at all,” Goring says. “I thought well I can’t just sit back and wait… I should create the opportunity.”

What started as a one-off has grown into a steady platform for emerging artists across Sydney. Exhibitions are non-profit and artist-funded, with no commission taken on sales. “When an artist sells an artwork they get the whole… it’s theirs,” Goring says. It is a model that shifts the focus away from transactions and back onto exposure, experimentation and connection.

“I’ve always called it an Artists First initiative,” he adds. “Our priority is the artists and showing their work, giving them the opportunity.” Success is measured less in red dots than in turnout. “A successful show is one where lots of people attended… the artwork being seen, the artists being recognised.”

That emphasis has built a community as much as a program. Returning artists exhibit alongside new names, with each show expanding the network. “The community side of it has really come up to the surface,” Goring says. “People are becoming friends.” Artist Vanessa Wolfe puts it more plainly: “I’ve found my tribe and my voice here… a space for us to create, connect, and be unapologetically ourselves.”

LOUD! leans into that collective energy. The exhibition mixes wall works, sculpture and a large-scale interactive installation that evolves across the run, with visitors invited to leave their mark. For Graeme Quinn, it’s a chance to go bigger than before, calling it “no better way to celebrate their 10th show than with my most ambitious piece yet.”

Other artists take the theme in unexpected directions. Barbara Dias presents a new body of work structured like a three-part musical, drawing on rock, pop and mythology. “My paintings are split into 3 musical acts, almost like a rock opera,” she says, weaving together family history and surreal imagery.

If the works vary, the intent holds with art that invites reaction rather than reverence. It’s a format that pushes back against the idea that galleries should be quiet, closed or intimidating.

Goring is frank about that tension. “Sydney is elitist when it comes to art,” he says, describing a landscape dominated by major institutions and limited entry points.

GAS offers a different model, one built on access and participation rather than gatekeeping.

For a few days, at least, the focus shifts to what’s in front of you: artists testing ideas, audiences leaning in, and a room full of work that refuses to sit quietly, perhaps even literally.

“I want them to feel like they’re seeing something new… something exciting,” Goring says. “That was fun. I saw something interesting.”

In a city that often asks art to behave, GAS’ LOUD! makes a case for letting it speak up.

GAS presents LOUD! is on from 12 May.