West Space Team

Joanna Kitto, Director

Joanna Kitto has been Director since late 2022. Joanna is focused on refining her inclusive and receptive approach to contemporary art presentation. She has held curatorial positions in Naarm/Melbourne and Tarntanya/Adelaide, and co-founded independent publishing platform fine print. Joanna is Deputy Co-Chair of Contemporary Arts Organisations Australia (CAOA).

Joanna works full-time → director@westspace.org.au

Sebastian Henry-Jones, Curator

Sebastian Henry-Jones has been Curator since 2021. Seb has staged exhibitions across the East Cost, and is a co-founder of arts platforms Desire Lines and Emerson, and former editor at Runway Journal. With an interest in DIY thinking, Seb's practice is informed by striving for a personal ethics with sincerity, generosity, honest communication and learning at its core.

Last day 24 Feb → sebastian@westspace.org.au

Ronen Jafari, Administrator

Ronen Jafari has been Administrator since 2023. Ronen is an artist with a focus on sustainability through culinary practices, with training in business and finance. An active member of the arts community, Ronen works across Liquid Architecture and TBC Gallery, with a studio at Yarra Youth Services.

Ronen works Tues, Thurs & Fri → ronen@westspace.org.au

Benjamin Baker, Gallery Assistant

Benjamin Baker began volunteering at West Space in 2016, and became a Gallery Assistant in 2020. Benjamin is a practicing artist, and on the Trocadero Art Space committee. Benjamin works in the gallery on Saturdays.

Gabriela Williams, Gallery Assistant

Gabriela began volunteering at West Space in 2024, and became a Gallery Assistant in 2025. Gabriela an artist and curator whose practice is concerned with complex cultural and personal narratives, reimagining and recontextualising imagery and objects from her family archive to explore her personal disconnect from a hybrid cultural identity.

Zamara Zamara, Installation Technician

Zamara Zamara has been installing exhibitions at West Space since 2023. Zamara works in ceramics, photography, and sculpture to produce reflexive, satirical and queered iconography. Zamara works during exhibition changeover.

Board

Rosemary Willink, Chair

Rosemary Willink is an experienced creative industries executive, with expertise in strategy and program development, governance and digital. She is a non-executive director of Canstar, Australia’s largest comparison website helping consumers make better financial decisions.

Bala Starr, Deputy Chair

Bala Starr is an experienced arts leader. Most recently, she was Director, La Trobe Art Institute, and Director, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, steering programs that promoted inquiry and interrelations between Asian and international art practices, Senior Curator, Ian Potter Museum of Art, and an executive at Melbourne International Biennial. Bala advocates for independent artists and curators, intergenerational exchange and overlooked practices.

Sid Smith, Treasurer

Sid Smith is an experienced chartered accountant and creative industry executive specialising in capital management, strategic planning and financial transformation. His current role is in the live music industry with previous positions across performing arts, publishing and broadcasting.

James Nguyen, Artist Committee Chair

James Nguyen is an artist working across documentary, installation and performance. He often collaborates with family and peers to examine the politics of art, self-representation and decolonising strategies in diasporic practice. James has presented across Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, 2014; The National: Australian Art Now at the MCA, Sydney; Re-Tuning with Victoria Pham, Sydney Opera House, 2022; and Open Glossary, ACCA, 2023.

Kim Phan

Kim Phan is a finance manager and bookkeeper, interested in supporting not-for-profit organisations making a positive impact. Kim had held Business Analyst and Internal Auditor roles and, while living in Thailand, founded her own business Children’s Playcentre, and volunteered at organisations supporting children with disabilities.

Alicia Frankovich

Born in Aotearoa, Alicia Frankovich is an artist known for performances, sculptures, videos that engage living human and non-human entities to reveal the limits of how we understand notions of nature. Alicia has presented widely nationally and internationally, including at Starkwhite, Auckland; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Paris Lettau

Paris Lettau is a practising barrister, arts editor and writer. He is a co-founder and contributing editor of Memo Review, Index Journal, and Index Books.

Eugenia Lim

Eugenia Lim is an artist working across body, lens, social and spatial practice. Eugenia explores the way national identities, migration and capital cut, divide and bond our interdependent world. She has shown across the Tate Modern, London; Recontemporary, Turin; Kassel Dokfest; MCA, Sydney; ACCA, Melbourne; FACT, Liverpool, and EXiS, Seoul. Eugenia is one of 10 international directors selected for the 2024 Berlinale Talents Short Form Station.

Jahkarli Romanis

Jahkarli Romanis is an early career artist, researcher, and curator currently completing a PhD at Monash University's Wominjeka Djeembana Research Lab. Jahkarli's practice is intertwined with her identity as a proud Pitta Pitta woman and explores the complexities of her lived experience and the ongoing impact of colonisation in Australia.

Past Board Members

Melissa Loughnan, Nicholas Modrzewski, Nurin Veis, Kerrie Poliness, Joan Spiller, Tony Nagle, Sofi Basseghi, Sean Dockray, Tamsen Hopkinson, Padraig Donnelly, Jacqueline Doughty, Jan Bryant, Lou Hubbard, Charlie Sofo, Katie Lee, Cheree Tucker, Bill Gillies, Lyndal Walker, Terri Bird, Dominic Redfern, Evan Lowenstein, Brad Haylock, Stuart Geddes, Debra Main, Philip Samartzis, Rachel Young, Katarina Paseta, Ash Keating, Patrick Pound, Penelope Aitken, Cherie McNair, Cass Matthews, Arlo Mountford, Brett Jones, Matthew Self, Suzie Attiwill, Veronica Kent

Artist Committee

Aida Azin

Aida Azin is a painter and community organiser working between the Philippines and Tarntanya/Adelaide. Born to Iranian/Filipina parents, her practice advocates for conversations about shame as a failing political tool, first-generation migrant guilt, racism, Whiteness, dreams, identity, food, and culture. Aida is a member of Saluhan collective, fostering connections between artists within the Philippines and Filipinx diasporas in Australia.

Joshua Pether

Joshua Pether is a performance artist, dancer and choreographer of movement, ritual and imagined realties. His practice is influenced by his two cultural histories - Indigeneity and disability - their hybridisation and the aesthetics of the disabled body and the colonised body. Joshua is Artistic Director of Arts Access Victoria, the peak body for arts and disability.

Sarah Poulgrain

Sarah Poulgrain is a Brisbane based artist working across video installation, ceramics, sewing, animation and audio production. Her practice is motivated by a desire to better understand experiences of shame, she approaches skill sharing as a means for self empowerment.

Kaspar Schmidt Mumm

Kaspar Schmidt Mumm’s motivation to make art stems from his experience of displacement and desire to develop an artistic language that crosses cultural borders. Kaspar is a foundering member of performance art collective The Bait Fridge. He is completing a Masters on the intersection of contemporary art and social work at the Institute for Art in Context, Universität der Künste Berlin.

Past Artist Committee Members

Tristen Harwood, Jahkarli Romanis, Sophie Cassar, Amrita Hepi, Mark Shorter, Kate ten Buuren, Saskia Doherty, Pip Wallis, Samira Farah, James Nguyen, Hannah Donnelly, Ashley Perry, Sophia Cai, Avni Dauti

Volunteers

Afifah Tasya, Asha Barr, Annabel Brown, Wendy Lee, Keiran Molaeb, Florence Phillips, Joy Zhou, Sadaf Zekaria