“Collectively: An Exhibition by West Space Volunteers”
Benjamin Baker, Sarah Brasier, Jack Coventry, Isabella Darcy, Mi-Mi Fitzsimmons, Jemi Gale, Bill Hawkins, Alan Jones, Thea Jones, Holly MacDonald, Jess Merlo, Jasmine Pickup, Teagan Ramsay, Georgia Robenstone, Ari Tampubolon, Isabella Thornton, Grace Wood, Hannah Wu, Yusi Zang, Helen Pape, Kashi Ruffili O'Sullivan, Clare Ellison Jakes, Travis John Ficarra, Kathryne Honey, Clare Longley, Odelia Matthews, Tineika Page, Amy Stuart, Chungxiao Qu, Samantha Ventske, Rose Wei and Heidi Wigg
7 June → 22 June 2019

Benjamin Baker is a multi-disciplinary artist working in Narrm/Melbourne. Their work encompasses painting and performance. Benjamin began volunteering at West Space in 2016, and took up a paid position as Gallery Assistant in 2020. Benjamin is an active member of the arts community, and is on the management committee at Trocadero Art Space in Footscray.

Sarah Brasier graduated from the VCA with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, where she spent a year in Japan studying at Joshibi University of Art and Design, Tokyo and interning with a rural community health organisation on a New Colombo Plan scholarship.

Isabella Darcy is an emerging cross-media artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her practice follows an interest in the systems and flux of value within consumable objects and design, reconsidering and exploring value and the alignment with ways of contemporary culture, material culture, and human consumption.

Mi-Mi Fitzsimmons' practice utilises drawing and textile-based techniques, particularly weaving—often incorporating found or collected animal-derived objects. With a particular interest in slow process and an ongoing practice of gathering and reflection, she investigates fundamental ideas of time, connection, memory, ephemerality and ethereality.

Jemi Gale is an artist, pop girl and poetess working with emotions. She is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts.

William Hawkins is a Melbourne based artist and curator whose practice explores philosophical ideas in painting using a multidisciplinary approach that spans performance, installation and film. Common themes in his work include agency, identity and humour.

Alan Jones’ work explores ideas that surround notions of identity. Jones works across a broad spectrum of mediums and takes a personal approach to the subject matter. Through this process, Jones aims to communicate the intricacies of human connections and how his roots subsequently influence his work.

Thea Jones is an artist and former West Space General Manager of Welsh/English settler heritage based in Naarm (Melbourne), and raised on Wiradjuri country in rural NSW. Encompassing writing, textiles, and craft, her work is guided by language, feminist and queer theory, folklore and amateur histories.

Holly Macdonald initially studied architecture and engineering before discovering a passion for ceramics. Currently based in Newcastle on Awabakal and Worimi Country, her creative practice spans drawing, installation and hand building in clay to interrogate the dynamic relationship between object, memory and place.

Jess Merlo is a Melbourne based painter and sculptor whose distinctive works feature organic shapes, natural textures and earthy tones. Her current work is an exploration of artistic boundaries, ignoring the distinctive line that separates painting from sculpture.

Jasmine Pickup

Teagan Ramsay has a demonstrated history working with Artist Run Initiatives and Not For Profit Arts organisations in various roles of digital content coordination, exhibition documentation, arts administration, production and curatorial assistance.

Georgia Robenstone is an artist and writer currently based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. She has recently returned from studying at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She lives and works on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pays her respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Ari Tampubolon is a performer, filmmaker, and writer. Ari’s practice is interested in the endlessly repetitive formal mutations of pop culture. Ari has shown recent works at Seventh Gallery, BLINDSIDE, and KINGS Artist-Run, and is one of the recipients of the 2021 Multicultural Arts Victoria Diasporas Commissions. As an independent producer, Ari has worked for RISING Festival, Hyphenated Projects and Jenn Ma Collaborators.

Isabella Thornton’s practice grows from Griselda Pollock’s notes on feminist trauma aesthetics. Trauma is considered within post-modernist conceptualisation of art documentation, as archival contingency. The artist pursues introspective yet publicly performed explorations of her concerns through the use of traditional casting methods and photocopying techniques.

Grace Wood is an artist living and working in Melbourne. In 2014, she graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Art: Honours. Grace is a current Board member at Seventh Gallery.

Hannah Wu is a writer and musician from Aotearoa, studying on unceded Wurundjeri land.

Yusi Zang is a Beijing born multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Melbourne. Connecting the poetics of her inner thoughts with the realism of banal objects, Zang’s work overthrows our sense of the familiar. She reconciles the concepts of boredom and the sublime, and revolts against the commonplaces of existence.

Helen Pape is a multi-disciplined Experience Designer with a background in art, creative and communication design.

Kashi Ruffili O'Sullivan works intuitively through various media, exploring loneliness, uncertainty, fervour, ecstasy, confusion, resent, love.

Clare Ellison Jakes is a recent VCA graduate, working in a cross-disciplinary creative practice. Her work explores the culture-nature divide in the Global North, through honouring the natural world in a time of escalating socioecological crises. These paintings are one artist’s offering of a reconnection to their eco-surroundings

Travis John is an artist and composer based in Melbourne, Australia working in
painting, sound and sculpture. He holds a BFA Honours from RMIT and a
Master of Contemporary Art from the Victorian College of Art.

Kathryne Genevieve Honey is an artist and curator living as a guest on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people. Her artworks combine disparate imagery and materials to create eclectic photographic based works. Honey plays with the history of photography through visual distortion and modes of image reproduction.

Clare Longley is a Melbourne-based artist interested in how clichéd and sentimental images and symbols can be manipulated (re-invigorated) through an experimental painting practice. Through playing with different modes of mark making and forming compositions, she aims re-insert affect and new meaning into emotionally exhausted motifs such as flowers, love hearts, and cherubim.

Odelia Matthew

Tineika Page

Amy Stuart

Amy Stuart

Chunxiao Qu is a multi-genre artist who does not have the artist statement.

Samantha Ventske

Rose Wei is an artist-curator. She seeks to construct performative experiences that reflect social, cultural and political flux in relation to one’s state of being.

Heidi Wigg