2023 CRAFT ACT Artistic Program

2 0 2 3 - 2 0 2 6
A R T I S T I C P R O G R A M
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre

Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre is a not-for-profit membership
run organisation partially supported by the ACT Government
through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy. An initiative of the
Australian State and Territory Governments, and the Australia
Council for the Arts – the Australian Government’s arts funding
and advisory body.
CRAFT ACT CRAFT + DESIGN CENTRE
Tuesday – Friday 10am–5pm
Saturdays 12–4pm
Level 1, North Building,
180 London Circuit,
Canberra ACT Australia
+61 2 6262 9333
www.craftact.org.au
Front Cover: Eliza-Jane Gilchrist, Uncommon Installation View, 2019. Photo: Lorena Carrington.
Image: Tension[s} 2020 Opening Event, 2022. Photo: 5 Foot Photography.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 1
2 February - 18 March
EMERGING CONTEMPORARIES
Artists to be selected
Emerging Contemporaries is the Craft ACT National Award Exhibition for early career artists.
This exhibition plays a pivotal role in supporting and transitioning artists into professional
practice and placing Australian artists in view of the national cultural collecting institutions,
industry, and audience.
Craft ACT is always looking for new talent to nurture and add to our growing community. For
Emerging Contemporaries, we select emerging designers and makers from a numerous local
institutions including: Sturt School for Wood, Canberra Potters Society, Canberra Institute of
Technology, University of Canberra, the ANU School of Art + Design, University of New South
Wales and the CAPO Craft ACT Emerging Artist award.
Image: Oliver Owens, Lilli Pilli, 5pm, 2021. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 1
2 February - 18 March
DAISY CHAIN
Bolaji Teniola | Carman Skeehan | Courtney Hogan | Calum Donaldson | Holly
Phillipson | Lauren Murphy | Melvin Josy | Tom Summers
Daisy Chain is a group exhibition proposed by the eight new associates of JamFactory’s highly
respected associate program which seeks to accelerate and develop the skills of emerging
artists and designers. The focus of Daisy Chain will be to utilise the JamFactory's environment for
collaborative learning and mutual exchange of techniques and ideas across disciplines. The intent
is to capitalise on the unique opportunity that is at the associate’s fingertips, being the actual
facilities available through the JamFactory program and the dialogue that occurs by bringing
together such diverse and innovative designers from across Australia.
Image: Skeehan Homewares, 2021. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 2
23 March - 13 May
2022 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE EXHIBITION
Julie Ryder | Mel Robson | Bev Hogg
The annual Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre Artist-in-Residence program supports local and
national artists to each undertake a residency at Gudgenby Ready-Cut Cottage in the Namadgi
National Park, and a two week research component within a national cultural institution in
Canberra. The program facilitates access for the artist to national cultural, tertiary and research
institutions and their collections, curators and researchers. A group exhibition of new work by
each artist is held annually, and a catalogue produced about the program is disseminated
internationally.
Presented in partnership with ACT Parks and Conservation Service and National Library of
Australia.
Image: Mel Robson + Bev Hogg at the NLA, 2022. Photo: 5 Foot Photography

Exhibitions 2023
Block 2
23 March - 13 May
2022 INDIGENOUS RESIDENCY
Krystal Hurst | Jessika Spencer
The annual Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre Indigenous Artist-in-Residence program supports local
and national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to each undertake a residency at Gudgenby
Ready-Cut Cottage in the Namadgi National Park, and a two week research component within a
national cultural institution in Canberra. The program facilitates access for the artist to national cultural,
tertiary and research institutions and their collections, curators and researchers. A group exhibition of
new work by each artist is held annually, and a catalogue produced about the program is
disseminated internationally
Presented in partnership with ACT Parks and Conservation Service and local Cultural Institutions.
Image: Ready Cut Cottage, 2022. Photo: 5 Foot Photography.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 2
23 March - 13 May
TWO-TONE
Louis Grant | Madisyn Zabel
Two-Tone is a collaborative exhibition featuring two contemporary artists, Louis Grant and
Madisyn Zabel, who primarily work within a glass discipline. Extending on both Grant and Zabels
own practices, Two-Tone opens up a discourse around dualities, contrasts and material.
Image: Madisyn Zabel, same but different (aqua), 2022. Photo: Louis Grant.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 3
18 May - 1 July
CO:LAB
Lisa Cahill | Peter Bollington
CO: LAB is a culmination of a year-long Craft ACT professional development and exchange
program that forges new directions in the creative industries.
Artists' Lisa Cahill and Peter Bollington were selected and have worked with an architect and
their clients to develop a new range of lighting pieces for a residential project in Canberra.
Embracing the spirit of collaboration, these makers have worked across disciplines and have
gained exposure to commercial environments with other designers and clients.
During the project, Cahill and Bollington received professional support including sustainability
advice, mentoring, and sales, marketing and technical support. As well as participating in
professional workshop visits to studios working in the field of industrial design.
Image: Peter Bollington, Sku Bar Stool, 2017. Photo: Michael Gordon Hill .

Exhibitions 2023
Block 3
18 May - 1 July
SPECULATION NATION: MAKING UTOPIA
Curator | Penny Craswell
Jenna Lee | Krystal Hurst | Rachael Hanrick | Kim Johnston | Shaun Hayes | Dennis
Golding | Kyoko Hashimoto | Julia Drouhin | Soraya Abidin | James Lemon
The year is 2050 and Australia is a diverse, inclusive nation with a First Nations treaty, sustained
action on climate change and a thriving green economy. Speculation Nation: Making Utopia
presents the work of crafts practitioners across Australia to ruminate on this utopia and create a
material response. Artists might explore how we can reach this utopia or reflect on these ideas
more generally.
Image: Dennis Golding, Back Home From Home, 2021. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 4
6 July - 26 August
UNCOMMON
Eliza-Jane Gilchrist
With a mixture of older and new work, Craft ACT presents Eliza-Jane Gilchrist's ongoing
practice of making abstract sculptures based on plant/seed forms using cardboard. Gilchrist
combines craft techniques such as paper-cutting, folding, paper-engineering, papier Mache,
and pattern-making, with non-traditional materials, creating works are unusual, accessible and
thought-provoking.
Image: Eliza-Jane Gilchrist, ncomon Installation View 2019. Photo: Lorena
Carrington.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 4
6 July - 26 August
EXUBERANCE
Curators | Sharon Peoples + Carol Cooke
Artists | Leonie Andrews | Nichole O’Loughlan | Robby Wright | Nicole Kemp | Dijanna
Cevaal | Philomena Hali | Suzie Vickery | Belinda Jessup | Carol Cooke | Liz Payne |
Cathy Jack Coupland | Carolyn Sullivan | Wilma Simmons | Sharon Peoples | Makeda
Duong | Naomi Zouwer | Liam Benson | Amy Jones | Di Ellis
Sixteen contemporary Australian craft practitioners, designers and artists examine
the concept of exuberance through colour, materiality and politics through hand
stitch. Objects and wall pieces will reflect the current urge of re-engagement with
nature and the politics. We are using stitch as a metaphor of repair, care and
protection that is required for the environment, often reflecting the ability of plant life
to proliferate in weird and wonderful ways when given the opportunities. In
psychology, exuberance denotes child-like displays of lack of inhibition, and this
comes through many of the artists working on this project.
Image: Liam Benson, You Already Know - Echo, 2021-22. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 5
7 September - 21 October
ISLAND WELCOME
Curator | Belinda Newick
Artists | Jane Bowden | Melissa Cameron | Maree Clarke + Blanche Tilden | Laura
Deakin | Bin Dixon-Ward | Sarah Elson | Kath Inglis | Pennie Jagiello | Inari Kiuru | Kelly
McDonald | Alice Whish.
Island Welcome a nationally touring group exhibition exploring contemporary jewellery as a
gesture of welcome, curated by Belinda Newick, seeks to bring attention to asylum seeker
issues and to extend the dialogue beyond art and craft audiences via expressions of Australian
values through craft practice.
With reference to welcome garlands gifted in many traditional islander cultures, each artist has
made a neckpiece, lei, or garland interpreting the theme of welcome whilst considering current
Australian immigration policies. The artists use the narrative and material potential of each
distinct garland to encapsulate a complex visual language and to express the emotions felt by
the maker during the process.
Image: Kelly MacDonald, Motherlode, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 5
7 September - 21 October
DRAWN BY STONE
Curators | Bridie Moran | Jody Rallah | Annette An-Jen Liu
Dean Cross | Ray Chan See Kwong | Jody Rallah | Wen-Hsi Harman | Ruth Ju-shih LI
Drawn by stones is a touring exhibition that brings together artists who utilise the ceramic medium
to interrogate contested histories, stolen land, Indigenous sovereignty, and national identity.
Exhibiting artists from Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan investigate ‘nationhood’ and ownership
through ceramics and demonstrate how the ceramic form can both memorialise and tell
alternative histories.
Taking its title from Marvin Bell’s 1984 poem Drawn by Stones, by Earth, by Things That Have Been
in the Fire, this exhibition recognises that the foundations of ceramic practice lie in the earth – and
through the work of exhibiting artists, aims to expand the relevance of ceramic histories, dialogues
and interrogations of land, place, sovereignty and ownership across Asia and Australia.
Drawn by stones is a 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art touring project. The exhibition and
associated programming are supported by the Australia Council for the Arts,.
Image: Ray Chan See Kwong, NEW RE NEW, 2018. Photo: Christian Capurro.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 6
26 October – 9 December
2023 CRAFT ACT MEMBERS EXHIBITION
Artist to be selected mid 2023
The Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre annual members exhibition will showcase contemporary
expressions of craft and design uniting time-honoured techniques with modern interpretations.
This is a showcase exhibition demonstrating the trends in contemporary craft and design in
Australia by practitioners from the ACT and surrounding region.
Image: Transformation: Craft ACT Members Exhibition Installation View, 2021. Photo: 5 Foot Photography.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 6
26 October – 9 December
DESIGN CANBERRA EXHIBITION
Exhibitions to be selected Early 2023
DESIGN Canberra celebrates and promotes Canberra as a global city of design.
Throughout November 2023 a curated program of events, exhibitions, talks, tours, activations,
markets, collaborations, artist studios and open homes will be showcased as DESIGN Canberra,
transforming the nation’s capital into a new platform for the best in design. The festival is for all
interests and ages and most events are free.
DESIGN Canberra values innovation, experimentation and collaboration and is generously
supported by like-minded organisations and brands.
Image: DESIGN Canberra Festival Civic Square Activation, 2019. Photo: 5 Foot Photography.

Exhibitions 2023
Block 6
26 October – 9 December
SPOON THEORY
Elizabeth Curry
‘Spoon Theory’ is an exhibition of spoons crafted to abstractly represent some of the
emotions experienced by a person living with an invisible illness, in this case autism.
Based on the concept of Spoon Theory created by Christine Miserandino, each
spoon will be crafted from scratch and represent an emotion felt by a specific
individual, the artist herself.
The aim of the exhibition is to bring awareness to invisible illnesses. It is hoped that it
may help some people either through recognition or understanding and assist in the
breakdown of associated stigmas.
Image: Elizabeth Curry, Untitled Shoulder Brooch, 2018. Photo: Simon Cottrell.

For further information, please contact:
Gallery and Retail Manager, Craft ACT: Craft + Design
craftact@craftact.org.au or 02 6262 9333
Image: Emerging Contemporaries Installation View, 2021. Photo: 5 Foot
Photography.