Perth sculptor Olga Cironis and Adelaide photographer Darren Siwes have one thing in common: their art is inspired by their children. Both artists have solo exhibitions running concurrently at Turner Galleries, and their separate works are connected by this common thread of childhood.

Handle Me Gently, the latest body of work by Olga Cironis, resembles a room of overgrown, forgotten toys. The sixteen handmade creatures are recognizably animals, but none can be pinned down to any existent species: one vaguely looks like a sheep, another has the long neck of an alpaca, a third seems somewhat canine in stance. In fact, they are three-dimensional interpretations of drawings by the artist’s young daughter. Each wire-and-foam armature is covered with an old blanket, and Cironis highlights their irregular features by deliberately stitching clumsily, leaving trailing cotton and seams like wonky scars. She also includes a handle on each animal. Tactile and inviting, the animals draw visitors towards them, breaking the usual gallery taboo of “untouchable” artworks.

This aspect of performance is central to the work. Cironis draws on children’s ability to interact with inanimate objects and make them come alive. In the eyes of a child, toys are not just stuffing and fabric, but companions and confidantes; so too do these larger, grown-up-sized toys take on new meaning when we touch and move them. Unfortunately, traditional gallery etiquette is difficult to overcome. A lone visitor is likely to feel nervous at the prospect of “interfering” with the artwork, thus missing out on a crucial part of it.

In moving one of the creatures, holding it by the handle, visitors are seemingly taking control of the work and shaping it to their own whim. Apart from bringing to mind childhood games, this is not unlike the way humans interact with their pets and train them to behave. The control is not all one-sided here, however: we are intentionally drawn to the creatures and 'seduced' into taking hold, creating an unconscious power-struggle between viewer and art-object.

In her artist statement Cironis says that 'the toys/animals become laughable in their colourful attire, stupendous in shape and size' . However there is also something forlorn about the mismatched herd, standing in the empty room as if caught in movement – just as young children try to catch their toys moving. The unfinished appearance of the creatures – dangling cotton ends, childlike stitching and lack of eyes and mouth – are a slightly unsettling contrast to the sense of nostalgia, warmth and comfort implied by their blanket-coats and tactile appearance. Cironis’ animals are blind and mute, and we can only communicate with them by touch. There is a wonderful sensitivity in this exhibition, and a sense of the beauty in physical irregularity and childlike imaginings.

Darren Siwes’ exhibition, entitled Mum, I Want to be Brown, is an exploration into race from the perspective of a child. The artist explains how his son discovered there [were] a variety of skin colour variations between many of the people he had developed relationships with. … [This] led him to say to his mother, 'Mum, I want to be brown'.  An indigenous Australian, Siwes looks at social and cultural perceptions of race and colour, using children to highlight the illogical nature of many of these views. His photographs portray tableaux of nineteenth-century white middle-class families in period dress, positioned in outdoor settings among their furniture and household goods. In each photograph a child is wearing a variation of 'blackface': brown face paint, clumsily applied as if by the children themselves in a dress-up game.

The photographs appear to be night-time shots, and their deliberately staged appearance is enhanced by the comparative brightness (or lightness) of the figures against a dark sky, and by the long shadows cast by people and objects in the foreground. The transposition of genteel interiors to an outdoor setting adds to this sense of the unreal, and provides a context for commentary on social class through material possessions.

By setting these tableaux in the nineteenth century, a time when Aboriginal people were oppressed and persecuted (and were not even officially recognized as people), Siwes accentuates the somewhat counter-cultural nature of the children’s aesthetic perceptions. Children who are unaware of racial bigotry and unhindered by historical bias base their opinions on visual evidence alone, and are affected only by their immediate surroundings and relationships. Additionally, the works touch on the common desire of fair-skinned people to be tanned or 'brown' in summer.

Siwes takes a serious subject and explores it with a sense of humour. Both engaging and technically skilled, his work offers a fresh perspective on this topic via the eyes of a child.