THE ARTISTS

Katayoun Javan

Katayoun Javan is an Iranian Australian photographer and video artist. Through documentary photography, portraiture, and use of found photos and videos, she draws on personal and public stories in order to explore notions of family, home, memory, displacement, and the Iranian Diaspora. Most of her works are somehow related to Iran from a migrant point of view.  She completed a Master of Fine Art in research in 2013 and has taken residencies in Australia and exhibited in solo and group shows in Australia, Iran and internationally.

THE ARTISTS

THE ARTISTS

Jeron Braxton 

Jeron Braxton is a self-taught 3-D animator using surreal late-’90s video-game aesthetics to explore the Black experience in America. 

Stanton Cornish-Ward

Stanton Cornish-Ward is a self taught director and editor based in Melbourne. Traditionally trained in Fashion Design (Bachelor of Design (Fashion) (Honours) at RMIT University), her film work crosses the genres of fashion film, music video, video art and short film. Her work looks at the fallacy of memory, intergenerational trauma, and emerging technologies. She has been part of the official selections of film festivals in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Spain, Mexico, U.K, and U.S.A. She also works as one half of the creative duo ‘Hiball’ with Alexandra Kirwood, a production company that focuses on moving images for the digital world.

Trent Crawford

Trent Crawford is a Melbourne based artist working with photography, video, and installation. His work considers the effects images and image-based technology have on human perception and agency. In 2019 he exhibited works at Hobiennale (Hobart), Myojuji Sarue (Tokyo), Kuiper Projects (Brisbane) and held a solo exhibition at c3 (Melbourne). He completed a BFA (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts In 2017, where he currently teaches Extended Practice in the Visual Art Studio program

Susan Hawkins

A battle demonstrating struggle for agency, Susan Hawkins uses sculpture, installation and sound to unravel the complex dynamic between [wo]man and material. Drawing upon the philosophies of New Materialism, she tests both the physical and metaphysical limits of the reclaimed industrial and domestic objects she works with. Using process and materials that highlight broader social and environmental implications, Hawkins questions her position as both producer and consumer. Relying on the materials to speak their own truth, Hawkins’ work explores how dualities such as the old and the new, the human and the inhuman play out in action. Hawkins completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture, Jewellery and Small Objects) in 2014 at the Queensland College of Art, and has since exhibited at Blindside (Melbourne), Outer Space (Brisbane), The Museum of Brisbane, and Metro Arts (Brisbane), among others.

Danny Jarratt

Danny Jarratt is an emerging queer digital artist exploring installation art. His work reflects a keen interest in the intersection of pop culture, queer theory and resistance. His installations function as micro utopias and queer counterpublics which allow people to escape the imposing day to day ideologies and expectations, with fun and convenient methods, such as videogame design. He graduated at the University of South Australia with Bachelor of Art & Design (Honours) and currently is undertaking a residency at George Street Studios. His work has been exhibited at MOD., FELTspace, Collective Haunt, Seventh Gallery and Praxis Artspace.

Daniel McKewen

Daniel McKewen is a Brisbane-based artist whose practice investigates the intersections of contemporary art, popular culture, economics, politics, and screen-based mass media. Working appropriatively across a range of media including video installation, his work creatively and speculatively examines how the formal and symbolic conventions of these institutionalised structures operate culturally and politically. The resulting artworks explore and express how our subjective and inter-subjective interactions with these structures can allow us to make sense of our own social experiences. In 2013 McKewen was awarded his Doctorate of Philosophy from Queensland University of Technology. His artwork is held in private collections and has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in NEW14 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and You Imagine What You Desire at the 19th Biennale of Sydney. McKewen is currently a Lecturer in Media Arts at QUT. Daniel McKewen is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

Penelope Umbrico

Penelope Umbrico works across photography, appropriation and installation to examine contemporary networks of image distribution as both a conceptual springboard and a material form. Based in New York City, she has exhibited widely internationally, and her work is represented in numerous major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Perez Art Museum, Miami. Penelope Umbrico is represented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York and David B Smith Gallery, Denver.

THE ARTIST

Elisa Jane Carmichael

Quandamooka woman Elisa Jane Carmichael is a multidisciplinary artist who honours her salt-water heritage by incorporating materials collected from Country, embracing traditional techniques, and expressing contemporary adaptations through painting, waving, and textiles. She comes from a family of artists and curators, and works closely with her female kin to revive, nurture and preserve cultural knowledge and practice. Elisa is a descendant of the Ngugi people, one of three clans who are the traditional custodians of Quandamooka, also known as Yoolooburrabee – people of the sand and sea. Quandamooka Country comprises the waters and lands of and around Moreton Bay, south-east Queensland, Australia. 

THE ARTISTS

Ursula Larin
Ursula Larin is a Brisbane-based artist who uses sculpture, video, photography and installation to reinterpret small, poignant moments from her everyday experience. Her sculptures either draw inspiration from, or closely replicate the peculiar details from these  moments through an assemblage of accessible scrap, craft and building materials and an amateur, do-it-yourself skillset. These sculptures function as allegories that use humour, parody, and a childlike playfulness to explore existential quandaries around the absurd, awkward, confusing and disappointing aspects of the human experience. Ursula completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at Queensland University of Technology in 2016, and has exhibited locally at Artist Run Initiatives including Cut Thumb and Kunstbunker.

THE ARTISTS

David Attwood
David Attwood’s work draws on a global lexicon of well-known brands and products to explore the influence of consumer culture on human behaviour and relations. He holds a PhD in Art from Curtin University, and in 2019 completed the SOMA Summer program, SOMA, Mexico City. With theorist Francis Russell, Attwood is the co-editor of the book The Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Post-work Politics (Art + Australia, 2020) and runs the project space Disneyland Paris.

VISITING US

We take the safety of our patrons, staff and artists seriously. Metro Arts is operating in line with current Queensland Government guidelines and the Stage QLD COVIDSafe Industry Plan. If you are unwell, please refrain from attending events at Metro Arts. Maintaining physical distancing requirements is expected and is the individuals responsibility. Click here for more information. 

THE ARTISTS

Marisa Artist 
Marisa is an inter-disciplinary artist who weaves together diverse strategies for living, or coping, well in their current situation (urban, neoliberal, anthropocentric, colonial…) They work across disciplines such as embodied movement, social practice and installation both inside and outside institutional contexts, and often collaboratively. They aim to forefront knowledge systems that are often backgrounded such as embodied, sensory or intuitive knowledge. Embracing the complexity of current crises, they promote experiences that are intimate, gentle, self-aware and care-full, without sacrificing strategy and criticality. 

Stable Artspace 
STABLE is a contemporary art space located underneath a Queenslander in Meanjin/Brisbane. It aims to share a wide variety of work, from a wide variety of artists, both emerging and established. STABLE hopes to make a positive contribution to the Brisbane art community and the rich history of artist run initiatives in this city.

VISITING US

We take the safety of our patrons, staff and artists seriously. Metro Arts is operating in line with current Queensland Government guidelines and the Stage QLD COVIDSafe Industry Plan. If you are unwell, please refrain from attending events at Metro Arts. Maintaining physical distancing requirements is expected and is the individuals responsibility. Click here for more information. 

THE ARTISTS

Outer Space is a not-for-profit Contemporary Arts organisation. We collaborate with artists and arts workers to develop, make, and present critically engaged creative practice in a supportive professional environment. Our exhibitions, events, and programs welcome those involved in, and curious about the arts. Outer Space is committed to fostering a sustainable creative community in Brisbane that engages local, regional, national and global contexts.

Hailey Atkins is a Brisbane based sculptural artist. She graduated at Queensland College of Art in 2016 (Bachelor of Fine Art, Hons – Class I) and has since exhibited frequently in Queensland, as well as interstate (Sydney, Hobart) and internationally (Utrecht, Rotterdam, NL) and is currently represented by har.art in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Hailey was selected as a finalist of Churchie Emerging Art Prize in 2018 and was co-founded Wreckers Artspace in Brisbane.

Joseph Breikers’ practice is centred around humour and language, and their ability to engage with areas of slippage and overlap. He across various media, including sculpture, drawing, painting, video and installation, and experiments with collaboration, sound, performance, writing and music-based events. His work often develops from his engagement with text and language theory and his concern with the tropes of the underclass. He is interested in using humour and language to find new ways of understanding how the complex field of intellectual and socio-political contexts impact on the role and expectations of contemporary art. He is also drawn to humour as a possible strategy for deflecting traditional systems of exegesis. Joseph holds a Master of Arts (Research) from the Queensland University of Technology and has shown both nationally and internationally.

Kate Land is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist whose multidisciplinary practice celebrates the absurdity of the everyday. Her practice engages primarily with themes around success, and seeks to upend conventional perceptions of legitimacy and accomplishment, especially within the framework of making art. As she untangles her own anxiety, Kate uses humour as a device to reframe conversations about mental health. Her work leans on the pathos inherent to the collective experience of failure, and the absurd futility of fear. Wordplay is the cornerstone of Kate’s approach, pairing witticisms with imagery to create visual puns that are at once personal and universal.  Her sculptural and installation works feature a cache of found, manufactured and assembled materials – zeroing in on the absurdity of the mundane object. She is particularly fascinated by the potential of metaphor, blurring the line between literal and figurative. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Queensland University of Technology. 

Erika Scott is a Brisbane-based artist who predominantly works in sculpture and installation. Scott’s visual language unfolds through a variety of media, often reassembling and modifying discarded household objects, furniture, and popular culture debris—resulting in a maximalist and often overwhelming DIY bricolage. The environments and constructions that Scott creates encourage an unsettling ambivalence, part attraction and repulsion, anxiety and relaxation. Her recent solo exhibitions include On Fire, 2021 (IMA, Brisbane); The Dutch Aquarium, 2020 (Outer Space, Brisbane); The Barnacle Lovers, 2017 (Wreckers ARI, Brisbane); and Pestorius Sweeney House Exhibition, 2016 (Pestorius Projects, Brisbane). Scott completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (2010). Scott is also the founding director of local ARI The Soylent Spot and the workshop and residency coordinator for Sculptors Queensland. 

Sarah Werkmeister is a freelance writer, editor, researcher, broadcaster and curator based between Melbourne and Brisbane. She has written extensively and worked with L’Internationale Online to develop publications around the environment (Ecologising Museums, 2016) and feminism (Feminisms, 2018), and has co-edited a chapter on the 13th Istanbul Biennial in I Can’t Work Like This: A reader on recent boycotts and contemporary art (2017). She’s worked with QUT Art Museum, Shepparton Art Museum, Public Art Melbourne, Next Wave, YIRRAMBOI Festival, the Emerging Writers Festival, Blak & Bright, BIRRARANGGA Film Festival, The Thousands, 4ZZZ and many more. She’s currently on the Darebin Art & Heritage Advisory Committee, the Outer Space board, and the Bus Projects Artistic Advisory Committee. Her research interests encompass representations of nationhood in public art collections, conceptions of public space, and the climate. She holds a Masters of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

THE ARTISTS

THE ARTIST

Helle Cook

Helle Cook’s art practice explores the embodied and sensory experience of light, place and belonging in expanded painting. Helle’s practice expands beyond the studio as she regularly embarks on field trips into nature. Here she creates, installs and documents her diaphanous textile paintings in the landscape as to enact enquiry, environmental awareness and sensory experience. The exploration informs her practice when she brings the ephemeral memories back into the studio.

The enquiry into the sensory experience of light, place and belonging is intercultural and Helle has undertaken artist residencies in Australia, Italy and Denmark. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours from Queensland College of Art (QCA) and has had solo- and group exhibitions in Queensland, Victoria and Denmark.

THE ARTIST

Torin Francis is a Brisbane based artist originally from London. His practice considers the devices we use to quantify, navigate, and comprehend the way in which the passing of time is perceived and experienced. This engagement with these mechanisms is explored through poetic relationships between objects and space in site-responsive installations, kinetic sculpture, assemblage, and moving image works. Francis re-evaluates and re-contextualises objects in both outdoor and indoor spaces. Natural phenomena, such as wind, weather and the environment, are used to harness outcomes, and material remnants from previous work are used in assemblages within the gallery space.

Torin graduated from the Queensland University of Technology in 2017 with First Class Honours. Recent solo exhibitions include BLINDSIDE Gallery, Melbourne (2019), Milani Gallery, Carpark, Brisbane (2019) and Gyre, Metro Arts, Brisbane (2019).

THE ARTIST

Parallel Park is the collaborative art practice between artists Holly Bates and Tay Haggarty. The focus of the collaboration is concentrated on playfully exploring the external influences that impact queerness and the intricacies of the artist’s relationship. The collaboration heavily employs play as process, which takes form through performance, video and installation. The engagement with play and spontaneity allows for both practices to weave into the making process, resulting in erotically and humorously charged works that contain a strong sense of duality.

The duo have worked collaboratively for six years, exhibiting works at various spaces nationally such as UNSW (Sydney), Metro Arts (Brisbane), FELT Space (Adelaide), BUS Projects (Melbourne) and Hobiennalle (Hobart).

THE ARTIST

Lillian Whitaker is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based visual artist and musician who’s practice adopts an environmental perspective. Whitaker analyses aspects of ecology with a specific focus on themes of symbiosis, mutualism and parasitism within European honeybee colonies. Through affective art experiences, Whitaker aims to highlight the importance of ecological balance in the context of a human-induced Anthropocene. Whitaker uses practical field-work methods whereby she carefully observes ecological phenomena and links these to conducted scientific research. This involves collaborating with bee colonies to create physical sculpture and soundscapes. 

In 2017 as a recipient of a Creative Generation Excellence Award, Whitaker exhibited bee-related artwork The Hive (2017) in both the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery, and GoMA. As a recipient of the Flying Arts Alliance Queensland Regional Art Award: Betty Crombie Young Artist Development (2018) and Digital Art Award (2019) Whitaker went on to exhibit environmental artworks in Meanjin-based galleries including the Judith Wright Centre, and QCA’s Pop Gallery, as well as galleries in Hervey Bay, Moranbah, Roma, Charters Towers, Charleville, Gatton, Ingham, Toowoomba, Chinchilla, Winton, Toogoolawah and Goondiwindi. In her 2020 artist residency at Queensland’s State-Library – the Edge, Whitaker merged art, technology, communication and scientific methods to create artworks which responded to scientific provocations concerning honeybee behaviour.

THE ARTIST

Helle Cook

Helle Cook’s art practice explores the embodied and sensory experience of light, place and belonging in expanded painting. Helle’s practice expands beyond the studio as she regularly embarks on field trips into nature. Here she creates, installs and documents her diaphanous textile paintings in the landscape as to enact enquiry, environmental awareness and sensory experience. The exploration informs her practice when she brings the ephemeral memories back into the studio.

The enquiry into the sensory experience of light, place and belonging is intercultural and Helle has undertaken artist residencies in Australia, Italy and Denmark. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours from Queensland College of Art (QCA) and has had solo- and group exhibitions in Queensland, Victoria and Denmark.

THE ARTISTS

Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer
Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer is an artist whose practice is concerned with the digital conditions of contemporary life. His practice engages with the cultural functions of imaging technologies and examines how networked cultures make use of the history of representation. He has exhibited in a number of galleries including UNSW Galleries and Milani Gallery, and artist-run spaces including First Draft (Sydney) and Bus Projects (Melbourne). Nicholas graduated with Honours from a Bachelor of Design in Photography and Situated Media at UTS in 2014 and in 2019 completed a Masters of Fine Art (Research) at UNSW Art and Design.

THE ARTIST

Helle Cook

Helle Cook’s art practice explores the embodied and sensory experience of light, place and belonging in expanded painting. Helle’s practice expands beyond the studio as she regularly embarks on field trips into nature. Here she creates, installs and documents her diaphanous textile paintings in the landscape as to enact enquiry, environmental awareness and sensory experience. The exploration informs her practice when she brings the ephemeral memories back into the studio.

The enquiry into the sensory experience of light, place and belonging is intercultural and Helle has undertaken artist residencies in Australia, Italy and Denmark. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours from Queensland College of Art (QCA) and has had solo- and group exhibitions in Queensland, Victoria and Denmark.

THE ARTIST

Aaron Chapman

Aaron Chapman is an artist and writer based on the Gold Coast, Australia working across a range of mediums including photography, sculpture and public art. Chapman’s work is motivated by themes of home and memory, and in particular, childhood. Chapman’s photography blends fine art and documentary languages and has appeared at Head On Photo Festival, Centre for Contemporary Photography and Bleach* Festival. In 2019, Chapman was a Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize semi-finalist and a finalist in the Australian Life Photography Competition at Art & About Sydney. In 2020, he was a finalist in Perth Centre for Photography’s CLIP Award and received the judge’s commendation award. As well as presenting both small and large sculptures at SWELL Sculpture Festival 2020, the majority of the year was spent in research and development for a large public art outcome to be evidenced in 2021. Chapman was also the recipient of a major commission to create new work for exhibition at the new $60M HOTA Gallery (under construction), the largest gallery outside a capital city. Chapman attended Griffith University where he received the School of Humanities Writing Prize in 2015. His poetry and prose has appeared in international publications and Australian literary journals. He is a current Executive Committee member of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT) and maintains a high level of engagement in, and commitment to the local visual arts and writing communities by delivering educational programs and workshops.

THE ARTIST

Torin Francis is a Brisbane based artist originally from London. His practice considers the devices we use to quantify, navigate, and comprehend the way in which the passing of time is perceived and experienced. This engagement with these mechanisms is explored through poetic relationships between objects and space in site-responsive installations, kinetic sculpture, assemblage, and moving image works. Francis re-evaluates and re-contextualises objects in both outdoor and indoor spaces. Natural phenomena, such as wind, weather and the environment, are used to harness outcomes, and material remnants from previous work are used in assemblages within the gallery space. Torin graduated from the Queensland University of Technology in 2017 with First Class Honours. Recent solo exhibitions include BLINDSIDE Gallery, Melbourne (2019), Milani Gallery, Carpark, Brisbane (2019) and Gyre, Metro Arts, Brisbane (2019).

Lillian Whitaker is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based visual artist and musician who’s practice adopts an environmental perspective. Whitaker analyses aspects of ecology with a specific focus on themes of symbiosis, mutualism and parasitism within European honeybee colonies. Through affective art experiences, Whitaker aims to highlight the importance of ecological balance in the context of a human-induced Anthropocene. Whitaker uses practical field-work methods whereby she carefully observes ecological phenomena and links these to conducted scientific research. This involves collaborating with bee colonies to create physical sculpture and soundscapes.