LIVING in Coffs Harbour, Australian/French artist Janet Besançon invites audiences into a world of colour, fragility, and reflection with her new exhibition Je bulle librement (‘I bubble freely’), presented at Coffs Central Gallery from 10 – 23 December 2025.
Ms Besançon will host an opening celebration on Thursday 11 December, from 6pm-8pm.
This is the latest exhibition in the Make Space initiative by Arts Mid North Coast, in partnership with Gowings Bros Ltd.
Under the program, empty retail spaces are transformed into an art space, “a sanctuary of poetic resistance – where art becomes both protection and connection”, Ms Besançon told News Of The Area.
The ‘bulle’ or bubble in the title of her exhibition is a metaphor for the escape an artist must make to keep her sensitivity intact.
“It allows creative freshness to survive amid the horrors humanity seems doomed to repeat from one generation to the next,” she said.
Her large-scale abstract works, alongside a selection of medium- and small-sized paintings, are filled with organic pigments and clay gathered from Gumbaynggirr Country and France.
Together, they explore universal themes: peace, environmental preservation, respect for women, children, and minorities.
Her series of Coffs Harbour landscapes, inspired by de Staël’s expressive language of light and matter, will also travel to La Conciergerie d’Arts in Rennes, France, in January 2026, marking a bridge between her two homelands.
Je bulle librement offers a poetic response to global chaos – a reminder that art can still float above violence, reflecting the light of empathy and renewal.
By Andrea FERRARI
You can help your local paper.
Make a small once-off, or (if you can) a regular donation.
We are an independent family owned business and our newspapers are free to collect and our news stories are free online.
Help support us into the future.
