“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 Angkasa, 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, 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.

Working across painting, video and curating, Sarah Brasier’s practice combines autobiographical elements with text, memes, remnants of the daily news cycle, Western mythology and symbols of the natural world. Using non-human protagonists, her paintings often employ pathos, humour and the absurd to communicate the inner lives of these objects and creatures.

Jack Coventry is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.

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. 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 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 was a West Space Volunteer.

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 Angkasa is a performer, filmmaker, and writer. Ari’s practice is interested in the endlessly repetitive formal mutations of pop culture, and in reconfiguring the Institutional Critique ‘genre’ of art-making and history.

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 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 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 Matthews is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.

Amy Stuart is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.

Chunxiao Qu is a multi-genre artist in Naarm/Melbourne.

Samantha Ventske is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.

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

Heidi Wigg is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.