Past Artists in Residence
2026
Alongside the stitched & bound exhibition, twelve artists open their arts practice to visitors.
Una Bell presents Ode to the Sun, a residency and solo exhibition celebrating the sun as the centre of life on this planet, through paintings, linocuts and poetry.
Through her watercolour paintings, Sheree Dohnt investigates and reflects on the experiences of women undertaking acts of labour, whether it be paid work in a public space, or unpaid and undervalued labours of love and care.
2025
Local resident Clive Ryder presents his first solo exhibition of large scale acrylic landscape paintings created on the road from Marble Bar to Port Hedland, Telfer to Newman.
International Artist in Residence Sakshi Agarwal explores the concept of modern-day reliquaries.
2024
From 30 November, local artist Mollie Edgecombe will be in residence at MJAC exhibiting a range of artworks including portraiture, landscapes and signwriting created over a 60-year period.
DADAA Midland artists Harvey Arnephie-Cook, Emma Vedeniapine and Jasmine Meyer expand their ceramic practice under the guidance of ceramicist Val Barron. They are part of a collaborative clay project that connects into broader workshops being facilitated across the City of Swan through the Re-Connection: A Multigenerational Art Project through Community Voices project.
For the Best promises a new evolution in the highly anticipated and memorable community engagement programs Whiskey & Boots offer. Partnering with The Last Great Hunt and writer Jeffrey Jay Fowler, For the Best fuses community interviews, music and performance, seeking insight into why we sometimes lose contact with the people who were once closest to us.
An exploration of textural painting examining the relationship between immigration and assimilation within the Iranian diaspora. Yasamin Khadembashi’s project focusses on aspects of Persian culture, women's liberties, queerness, art, poetry, landscape and music, utilising the medium of impasto oil paints to mimic the texture of fabric, water, hair and a multitude of other materials.
Drawing on the participatory nature of informal inscription culture, Vahri McKenzie and Gemma Ben-Ary create a series of performance art experiments and woven fibre artworks in conversation with a graffiti site on the Helena River.
Swan Youth Workshop Series in partnership with FORM – Building a State of Creativity Ltd
Johnny and Izy look at the interplay of language and identity for artists of the Asian diaspora in Australia, inviting artists to participate in forums and community arts projects as an exploratory tool to inform curatorial practice and projects.
The Veranda Studio turns into a hub of textile joy when ten of the stitched & bound artists open their arts practice to visitors. Dividing the residency in blocks of time will allow visitors to come back again and again to meet different artists, watch their techniques up close, learn a few tricks and contribute to community projects through stitch.
2023
Mothermorphosis invites ten independent artist-m/others to collaborate through ‘creating a space’ that collectively imagines a feminist maternal future,
Braiding Memories is an intergenerational research project led by artist Annick Akanni, exploring the profound bond between Annick and her Tanzanian mother, Dottie, through the art of braiding,
Our hands, my heart, all at once is a creative residency project led by Colin Smith and Gabby Loo. Exploring queerness, trans identities, and neurodiversity
Utilising bright and alluring materials, Apparent and Immanent from Megan Shaw uses MJAC’s building and considers its role as a heritage site
A multidisciplinary celebration of the mountainous environments of WA’s South West, Alex Boyds’ The Living Mountains uses field sketchbooks, photographs and footage recorded in the ranges themselves
MATERIAL CONFLUENCE
Martien van Zuilen focuses on the nexus between human interaction with the land, heritage, conservation, and the provenance of the materials she selects. Building on her established career in handmade felt and fibre art, van Zuilen investigates the marrying of wool fibres with complementary techniques and materials.
Dream Pool Press
A printing revolution in our sleep, Gok-Lim Finch’s Dream Pool Press provides space for the community to connect through their shared imaginations, the pool of dreams. Finch will host creative storytelling and zine workshops, inviting people to learn how to produce their own publications using a risograph printer and office photocopier.
From My Mother’s Mother
Persie Toindepi is a Zimbabwean-Australian emerging artist. Currently, the primary focus of her work is hair, which she uses as a tool to dissect her struggles with femininity, masculinity, race and her upbringing in a Western culture.
Consume
A collaborative residency project between Elizabeth Knuckey and Nina Raper, CONSUME investigates the consumption of women’s bodies and stories. Looking closely at the cycle of consumption of women's experiences, it will be a material investigation through practice-based processes to create a resolved body of work, using forms of 'women's work' and commercial mediums designed for mass consumption.
Various artists connected to DADAA’s Midland Hub will work in residence across a variety of media. DADAA is a leading arts and health organisation that creates access to cultural activities for people with disability or mental illness.
Falling UP!
Collaborators: Sze Tsang and Georgi Ivers
Falling UP! is a work-in-progress project that aims to bomb the ubiquitous action-man-hero narrative by presenting an alternative story of “Mom Rage”. Writer/Director/Performer Michelle Hall will work with creative collaborators Sze Tsang and Georgi Ivers, diving into the deeply gendered, undervalued labour of care work.
2022
Muriel’s residency focuses on the development of a dance syllabus for Maloya dance, which will involve identifying common movements and developing a well-organised teaching method.
Alongside the West Australian Quilters’ Association’s stitched and bound exhibition, local contemporary quilt artists will work in residence, challenging the concept of the ‘quilt’ medium.
André Lipscombe will be trialing experimental methods of painting over the course of his residency. André is a visual artist based in Perth, represented by Art Collective WA, whose practice focuses on a formalist approach to painting and drawing.
With a belief that everyone should be able to access the conversations that happen around art, Bowman will write for and in response to the arts using forms (zines and audio) that have low barriers to access for the community.
Is time a sensory experience? In this print-based project, van Leeuwen will explore transparency, layering and repetition to mark the passage of felt time in a personal chronography. Using natural forms, a recurring motif, these unique state monoprints will utilise handmade stencils, found textures and drawing techniques as markers of unfolding events and traces of memory.
Morgan, an artist and arts educator, continues developing a body of work encompassing painting, ceramic sculpture and printmaking that explores themes of social control, wellbeing, mindfulness and mental health.
Various artists connected to DADAA’s Midland Hub will work in residence across a variety of mediums. DADAA is a leading arts and health organisation that creates access to cultural activities for people with disability or mental illness.
Muia will develop a body of experimental etchings inspired by the unique and diverse flora and fauna found in Perth’s eastern suburbs and hills. Using several different printing techniques on a single artwork, the outcomes will be exhibited in his solo exhibition Upper Reach at Midland Junction Arts Centre, opening 6 May 2022.
Whiskey & Boots will listen to and record the ideas of young people in the community of Midland for their upcoming verbatim performance The Quadrangle.
2021
Whiskey & Boots will listen to and record the ideas of young people in the community of Midland for their upcoming verbatim performance The Quadrangle.
An ensemble development process led by playwright and director Suzanne Ingelbrecht to create a masquerade of storytelling, music and gothic romance, perfect for our post-COVID, post-truth times.
During her time in residence, Fiona Gavino will be creating an installation through random weaving outside Midland Junction Arts Centre in collaboration with members of the public and workshop participants as part of HOLD.
Fiona Gavino is a nationally recognised fibre artist and educator who applies basket making materials and techniques to create sculpture and installation. From 2012-2020 she was the Professional Development and Training Officer for ART ON THE MOVE.
During her time in residence, Tania Spencer will be creating an installation outside Midland Junction Arts Centre in collaboration with members of the public and workshop participants as part of HOLD.
Tania Spencer is a multi media artist and often works with recycled and found materials. Living and working rurally from Lake Grace, Tania has exhibited since 2000 across Western Australia as well as in Adelaide, Sydney and Japan.
During her time in residence, Liliana Stafford will be creating a woven structure in the Midland Junction Arts Centre foyer in collaboration with members of the public and workshop participants.
Winner of the 2020 Castaways Sculpture Alcoa Major Award, Stafford describes herself as a storyteller through art, finding inspiration and materials on regular walks in the natural wetland near her home.
Exploring how painting place brings the past and present together, Annette endeavours to research the landscape of Parkerville through a series of plein air paintings of the site and through documentation of her father’s recollections of his time spent there as a child.
Various artists connected to DADAA’s Midland Hub will work in residence across a variety of mediums. DADAA is a leading arts and health organisation that creates access to cultural activities for people with disability or mental illness.
Veta will be weaving, drawing into and printing with weathered housing estate banner material to create installations and ghost prints that engage with the subjects of landscape and urban development, drawing inspiration from interstitial spaces and times in transition.
Katie West belongs to the Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara tablelands and as an artist creates objects, installations and happenings that invite attention to the multiple ways we weave our stories, places, histories and futures. During her time in residence Katie will be working on upcoming projects for Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial, Fremantle Biennale and Perth Festival.
SAM HUXTABLE
Exploring physical and non-physical self in relation to change, Sam Huxtable draws on their personal experience with HRT in conjunction with a rapidly intensifying and evolving world. Queerness and transness are constant flux, movement, change and growth. Body of Flux aims to build and present these fluxes in tangibility, viscerally, with care.
Redeveloping a script for a moving, high-energy theatre show that discusses and destigmatises the origins of mental health issues in our community, 'Onset Theatre Company’s Haylee Whisson will explore how a single moment, can influence one’s beliefs.
A hotbed of issues currently playing out in contemporary society are reflected in text-based works made using printmaking and weaving.
A hotbed of issues currently playing out in contemporary society are reflected in text-based works made using printmaking and weaving.
2020
TWO JOURNEYS
Parker and MacDonald reconnect familial stories via a range of textile techniques sharing intricate works that reveal personal artistic traditions and stories, passed on and disrupted over the generations.Two Journeys explores the themes of culture, land, repair, healing and reconciliation, stitching together elements that are broken, the layers of time and the journeys of family.
ODE TO TRANSPERTH
An Ode to Transperth is an ongoing process driven project that pays homage to public transport. Adopting the role of a voyeur whilst commuting to and from Midland, Pip Lewi uses quick documentation to inform responsive paintings and illustrative works investigating the idiosyncrasies of passenger culture.
Themes of isolation and resilience will be explored through sharp dialogue and strong characters to create a theatrical world rich in texture and nuance.
RUNNING ON THE SMELL OF AN OILY RAG
Borrowing from the common Australian idiom which suggests a frugality of resources, artist Grace Connors questions what it means to operate with exceptional fuel efficiency in a contemporary era typified by exhaustion and exploitation of the individual with a return to slow and playful making processes.
RE-CONNECT
Combining her family’s multi-cultural history and aspects of both ancient ceramic craft and contemporary art, Madeline Tholen builds a connection between the past and her present to explore heritage and identity.
MIDLAND WORKSHOPS FILM ARCHIVE
Drawing on the personal film archive of her father who worked at the Midland Railway Workshops for 25 years before their closure in 1994, and was among those present on its final day; Amy Perejuan-Capone will investigate the closure of this industry through the stabilization of this archival material.
Testing relationships between clay and crochet, Holly O’Meehan will be working on new ways to fuse these seemingly unrelated elements during her time in residence. Come and see what Holly is up to in the studio as she continues her ongoing material research into ceramic and fibre art forms.
Gli Italiani
Working to create a new theatre work Gli Italiani explores the Italian-Australian culture, a celebration of the people, places, and stories. A diverse anthology of short pieces delving into the identity of this unique subculture.
2019
In collaboration with her father, Amy Perejuan-Capone is building a 1:1 scale facsimile of his ultralight aircraft whilst relearning how to fly. The grand gesture is an examination of complicated personal histories, the aircraft symbolising critical points of disruption and connection in our lives as well as an overarching drive for adventure that forms an essential basis for hope.
Through textile workshops and the collection of oral, written and visual histories Stitch and Stories forms an Aboriginal community arts project, which celebrates the importance of Aboriginal women in maintaining the fabric of culture, family and community and their role in support of developing leadership strengths in Aboriginal girls.
Over the past 57 years, Tami has been known as or called; Tamela, Mum, Mother, Sister, Cousin, Girlfriend, Friend, My Yankee Neighbour, Mate, Artist, Creative, Community Minded, Volunteer, Pet Owner, Greenie, Bottle Washer, Chief Dish Bitch, Blue-Eyed Devil, Student, Teacher, Tutor, Arts Worker, Art Student, Social Trainer, Disability support Worker, Carer, CWA Member, Garden Member, Artonomy Member, ECU Arts Graduate, and now, Resident Artist at MJAC.
During this residecy, she will analyse and respond creatively to ideas of identity through the use of portraiture, ceramics and the re-use of materials. She will be exploring a linear family narrative stretching from the 1760’s through to the present day, drawing on influences from the bust works of Giacometti.
Sophie G Nixon is a early career artist, emerging curator and recent Honours (Fine Art) graduate living and working on Boorloo Boodja (Perth, Western Australia). Sophie works primarily with textiles and occasionally plants to create gentle sculptures and installations. Currently, she is interested in worn and damaged textiles, searching for unconventional modes of mending and repair.
In the first of two residencies between 2019 and 2020, artists Melanie Dare and Claire Bushby work collaboratively to explore the commonalities between their working processes, focusing on cultural connections to place, and relationships between self-identity and community.
During their time in Studio 1, they will host fortnightly sewing circles with local artists and craftspeople, networking with Midland community.
It’s 2019 and the rules have changed. Shakespeare’s female characters have voices and it’s time to hear their stories. Unbound is a theatrical exploration of the mystery, mythology and misogyny in the works of William Shakespeare. An interdisciplinary team of artists collaborate to create an innovative public performance at MJAC that celebrates the legacy and influence of Shakespeare while remembering who it was written for. The people. Unbound is culminating in creative development showings, from the 2nd to the 10th of August 2019.
Adrienne Kenafake is a visual artist from the Gold Coast, Queensland. Her arts practice pushes the boundaries of sculpture, collage, textiles and drawing to showcase the Australian landscape. Exploring borders, boundaries and nominal notions associated with these themes, Adrienne drives her interpretation of environments beyond her home at Southport on the Gold Coast.
Den L Scheer and Eric C are emerging artists based in Perth, both holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Curtin University. In residence, Den and Eric will explore historical textile techniques that have been interrogated and repositioned within a contemporary context to discuss ways of retaining these skills through production. Their collaborative project will also represent their unique familial narratives. The final outcome will include large scale soft sculptural works that combine their different skills in the form of a quilted set of reclaimed wool bags or hides.
Rohin Kickett is a Noongar artist from the Ballardong region. Rohin’s artworks are inspired by his family stories of strength and survival, along with his own personal experiences growing up in Perth. Born within 50km of where his family first made contact with settlers, his connection to the Ballardong region runs deep within his family.
Living locally in Parkerville, Ryan Ahern is a contemporary painter and photographer practicing in Perth. Ahern’s figurative paintings are marked by nostalgia and a subdued realism reminiscent of French impressionists and post-impressionist work.
2018
Lindsay Malay is a Gija man. Born in Wyndham and growing up on Bedford Downs Cattle Station and in Halls Creek, Lindsay now lives and paints in Warmun. Lindsay explores the themes of Bulgundi (Homeland), Bedford Downs Station country, Rockybar, Jarrinybal (Reincarnation), Budabuwring (his grandmother’s father), survival stories and his grandfather, Sally Malay. He especially connects with his grandmother and grandfather’s country through his own painting and works assisting elder artists.
Phoebe Clarke’s practice is an investigation that sits on the border of the alienating and the benign, with a focus on materiality and viewer dynamics. During her residency, Clarke will be manipulating three installations, to draw out these two states and nudge them into the viewer’s consciousness.
Jarrad Martyn’s practice explores how different moments in Australian history have been framed and how we engage with spaces after they have become abandoned. Through painting and installation Martyn employs the principles of bricolage ‘something constructed from a diverse range of things’ to bring together imagery and research to create a more conversational meaning of the history being explored.
Gabby Loo explores ideas and observations that arise on her travels to Midland during the residency. For each day that she visits, the artist will delve into new-found inspirations through the sequential art of pictographs and comics. These will take shape through drawing, textiles, printmaking and collage photography processes.
Bina Butcher and Tessa Beale will work in residence, creating conditions for quiet consideration of ephemeral moments through sound, video projection, found objects and works on paper. Exploring the movement of bodies of water, textures, shadows and sound, the artists aim to re-contextualise their own sensory experiences and interactions in a new environment: the gallery.
Dion Hamill is a commercial illustrator who has worked in advertising and marketing for the past 20 years. He is the author and illustrator of three children’s books and has illustrated picture books and book covers for various authors. Influenced by natural surroundings and science fiction themes, Dion’s works emphasize emotion over photo-realism.
Louise Hamill is a contemporary artist working across painting, drawing and sculpture. Inspired by dreams, the supernatural and nature, Louise creates highly detailed nightscapes of imagined and real scenes in nature.
2017
Feltwest is a not-for-profit organisation with a large number of passionate and innovative felt-makers. The group will be running a pop-up shop featuring a range of unique hand-made gifts ahead of Christmas, including fine silk scarves, bags, lamps, pin-cushions and wearable art.
Felt-making demonstrations will be held each open day at 11am and 2.30pm.
Sarah Thornton-Smith is an artist-designer with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Curtin University. Following her graduation in 1993, she pursued her interests working in interiors and graphics in various design companies, always maintaining a fascination with colour.
Her work stems from observing nature directly, with field study drawings and illustrations influenced by the rhythmic beats of music, while being inspired by narrative words and ideas that allow her to play with colour intuitively.
Louise Hamill is an artist from New Zealand currently based in Guildford, Perth. Working with paint and sculpture she creates artworks inspired by nature, consciousness and dreams. Hamill paints hyper-landscapes that viewers can explore and become lost in, recreating that sense of wonder for nature experienced during childhood.
Harriet Perryer designs and creates a range of unique products inspired by Australian native flora. Using a variety of techniques from illustration to laser cutting and screen printing, Perryer has developed an artistic practice that allows her to bring her view of what Australian native flora is and can be to life. She uses a muted colour palette to bring focus to the floral patterns, and balances intricacy with minimalism. The sca.har. brand is about creating meaningful, useful, beautiful pieces that promote sustainability through both production and practicality.