Image 1 of 2
Image 2 of 2
Artist Statement
Hannah Nowlan is an Australian artist and curator, and founder of Lander—Se an artist-run gallery established in Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula (2024). In 2025 she became the owner of Nunchi Oils, a sensory wellness brand. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Printmaking from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2015).
Nowlan’s practice is predominantly painting, exploring site specific works that evoke the spirit and atmosphere of landscape. Her abstract terrains draw on notions of sensory ghosts, mythology and the unseen.
In 2025 Nowlan expanded her practice into scent-making through the exhibition SENSE at Lander—Se, bringing together oil paintings and perfume oils within a sensory installation.
Across painting and scent, her work investigates the invisible qualities of landscape; the emotional, sensory and atmospheric traces that linger beyond the physical scene. In dialogue, the two practices echo one another: colours become notes, textures become accords, memory becomes material.
Theme: SHIELD
SHIELD Painting and Scent | Melbourne Design Week 2025
Created for Synthesis, an immersive interior installation curated by Ruby Shields at Abbotsford Convent, featuring over 40 artists, designers and makers exploring how we live with design through colour, material, light and scent.
The painting takes the spiralling pattern of a periwinkle shell as its starting point, a metaphor for protecting our vulnerable interior worlds. The work expands and distorts like shifting terrain and protective markings.
That same idea carries into the scent. Shield is a two-in-one Interior and Perfume Oil, created in collaboration with Ruby Shields (Studio Shields) under Nunchi Oils. Warm, smoky and enveloping, it was designed as a grounding presence within the exhibition space. Woods, resin and sweetness linger on skin, fabric and memory.
— Hannah Nowlan, living in Black Rock, working in Red Hill, Victoria
Photographs by Bri Horne