The timed auction ends Thursday July 30th at 8:00pm. Whoever holds the highest bid at the auction closing time wins.
Caroline Borghetto
A Mere Bystander, 2026
Acrylic, pencil, conté and oil pastel on canvas
Height 90 cm x Width 90 cm
Artwork is stretched and ready to hang & comes with a certificate of authenticity
Starting Bid: $1,400
A Mere Bystander considers the experience of observing from the edges—present within a relationship or system, yet never fully occupying its centre. Through restrained forms and shifting layers, the work explores how proximity does not always equate to belonging, and how distance can exist even within moments of connection. Built through translucent layers of acrylic on clear-primed canvas, the exposed surface remains visible, allowing materiality and restraint to become part of the work's emotional language. The painting invites reflection on the subtle exchanges that shape identity, participation and our place within larger social and cultural systems.
Artist Bio: Caroline Borghetto is a contemporary abstract artist based in Torquay, Victoria, working primarily in painting. Much of her work emerges from an ongoing interest in proximity and belonging—the experience of being connected to people, places and cultures while never fully occupying their centre.
Through a restrained visual language of layered forms, gesture and spatial relationships, Caroline explores the tensions that exist between connection and separation, familiarity and distance. Working between considered structure and responsive mark-making, her paintings consider how meaning is formed through exchange, negotiation and the spaces that exist between individuals, communities and cultures.
Materiality plays an important role in her practice. Working across clear-primed cotton canvas and Belgian linen, she allows the surface to remain visible beneath translucent layers of paint, graphite and pencil, creating works that balance restraint with emotional weight.
Caroline has been exhibiting since 2022 and has undertaken artist
residencies including the Neighbourhood Lab Residency at Platform Arts in Geelong. Her work has been shortlisted for the Omnia Art Prize and the Hue & Cry Art Prize, and was awarded First Prize in Art Inside the Box, Torquay.
She currently works full-time from her studio within the Ashmore Arts artist community on Wadawurrung Country.