The collection of paintings presented in ‘Of the Known Kind’ explore potential expansions made possible through changed frameworks of reference. They consider ‘what else’ is present in meeting, reading and knowing another without the foundations of category or ocular designation. Conventional traditions of observation, perception and cognition of a human subject pose limitations in classification and description. Approaching this subject abstractly, by seeking to ignore the confines of tradition and questioning how the cognition of a human subject might be known if it is not framed in familiar classifications. Tonee Messiah builds her painted surfaces with various hard and soft forms that overlap and intersect in an archaeological drift. The effect is one of movement and agitation, closure and expansion, that draws the viewer towards the inner sub-structure of the painting. Eschewing fixed references, Messiah explores complex psychological experiences the cannot be easily defined. She considers painting like another form of thinking, and as her surfaces build, so does her response to the world around her.