Neil Gray is a Western Australian greenwood carver, carving unique and hand carved items from a variety of woods. Grevillea, olive, Golden wattle, bottlebrush, peppermint tree, apple and more.

He loves sharing his knowledge with others through carving workshops and is coming to the Cannery Arts Centre this June long weekend. Join Neil in a workshop to carve a spoon or to carve a little fox, or if you want to hone your axe skills, the Axe out your Own Spoon Blank on the Friday. More information coming soon.

Follow Neil’s carving adventures on his Instagram Greenwood Adventure or check out his shop if you want to buy a spoon or bowl.

SJ Eeles present Storytelling Around the Fire, funded by the Mt Burdett Foundation.

Calling writers, storytellers, and those with a passion for daydreaming!

Storytelling Around the Fire is a series of creative workshops to develop original short stories with a local connection perfect for telling around the campfire. Fun, game-based creative development workshops to create new original short stories in a nurturing group space with author, Improv, and stand up comedy performer, SJ Eeles.

Explore your creativity and give your darker and spookier imagination free rein. Through game-play, writing exercises and brainstorming new original works will be created through the workshops to be performed at the Storytelling Around the Fire Event. Writers will be paid for their stories and retain the rights.

Workshops are free, but places are limited and registrations essential. Book here.
Participants are required to be 15+ - exceptions may be made pending parent enquiries

Session One - Monday 6th May OR Thursday 9th May (attendance required only one) 6pm - 8pm
Session Two - Saturday 11th May 10am - 12pm
Session Three - Sunday 12th May 2pm - 4pm

For more information contact SJ Eeles 0402161105 with any enquiries.

Author of two novels, both thrillers, SJ is also an Improv performer, sometime Stand-up comedian, MC, and a co-creator of Historical Ghost Walks in Geraldton and Kalgoorlie, and Escape Room Experience, The Box. She has worked across the state in cross-art projects, usually with an original written component, and facilitated workshops in and outside of schools for youth and adults. Not a visual artist herself, she was a creative producer on Evolution’s Little Finds Street Art Project in Kalgoorlie, a series of 20 x street art installations transforming ordinary spaces with unexpected works of art.

You can follow SJ at: sjeeles.com
Facebook On The Write Path – Sarah-Jayne Eeles
Instagram On The Write Path – SJ Eeles

Rosie returns to Esperance! After a successful residency in 2023, Canada-based textile artist Rosalie Boland has returned to the Cannery to continue inspiring and educating our community of sewers and textile artists.

Rosalie studied Applied Fashion Design and Technology, combined with a Certificate in Screen Printing and Digital Design for Textile at TAFE and completed a specialised Bachelor of Dramatic Art in Costume at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australia (NIDA). Since relocating to Canada in 2016, Rosalie’s career as a textile artist led her to create work with renowned international artists and productions such as Flume, Lady Gaga, the Australian Ballet, Canadian Opera Company, Banff Arts Centre, Ballet BC, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Netflix series “Maid”, “The Haunting of Bly Manor”, and “Snowpiercer”, Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle”, and the Disney Children’s and Family Creative Arts Emmy-award-winning series “The Mysterious Benedict Society”.

For Rosalie, art making and craft has always provided a sense of community, and she values its history and the inclusive space it can generate. She is deeply passionate about sharing knowledge and how intentionally creating together can provide us with the opportunity to share stories. Gatherings and workshops are an integral part of her creative practice.

Rosalie will be sharing her skills with us through workshops in the Art Lab Volume 1 2024 program, to be launched soon. For more information email katie@canneryarts.com.au

Photo of Rosalie Boland in the Shop at the Cannery Arts Centre photographer Sarsby Martin

Michelle Stevens is a 2D illustrator and artist, from Boston, Massachusetts in the United States of America, primarily influenced by connectivity, documentation, and psychology. Her work stays actively exploratory in technique and subject matter and takes inspiration from people in her life. Aside from prioritizing connection and the people she interacts with in her everyday, she is interested in nature, sustainability, and invisible things - such as how our subconscious influences us, our complex human perceptions of both the self and collective experience, and the layers and lengths of the reaches of our senses. Her everyday subjects are often romanticized and she injects mystery into the ordinary by showing the abstract and invisible, figuratively.

Michelle Stevens holds a BFA from MassArt with Honors and a minor in Sustainability. Her work has been exhibited at Fitchburg Art Museum, Clark University, and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, among others. She has worked on projects for Boston Calling Music Festival, The Bowery Presents, House of Blues, and has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators, NYC. Her illustration clients include the Canadian National Railway, Trillium Brewing Company, Biotech company Tango Therapeutics, Boston Art Review Magazine, Far Out Ice Cream, and musician San Holo, with his record label Bitbird.

Between developing personal work in a climate new to her and far from her lifelong home, Michelle will be running workshops and engaging with the community. Arriving in time for Australia Day, Michelle will be offering 15-Minute Portraits at the Australia Day markets, as she often does locally to Boston.

In KickArts, Michelle will lead children through some local plein-air sketching to take back to the Cannery and develop these observations into playful concepts. There will be experimental play with materials, typically seen as cheap and simple, that Michelle uses in her fine artwork, such as with Crayola crayons, scratchboards, and Etch-a-Sketches.

There will also be a lighthearted and all-levels-welcome Portrait trade event. Come be paired with someone as Michelle comes around to give portrait pointers as you draw. Everyone will leave with a portrait of themselves drawn by someone else in the community.

The Cannery Arts Centre are excited to have Michelle visiting us and look forward to her sharing her skills and knowledge in illustration with our community.

michellestevensart.com

Photo: Michelle Stevens at her solo show “I’ll See You in Everything’ May-June 2023. Photo taken by gallerist Kaylee Hennessey

Naarm / Melbourne based Artist Ana Tiquia is returning to Esperance to present her new work Seeder Futures created over Stage 1, October to November 2022, and Stage 2, March to April 2023. Read about Ana’s reflections of her time in Esperance here.

Ana Tiquia is an artist and futurist. Integrating participatory art, design and futures practice, Ana creates public interventions: works that invite audiences into dialogue with ‘the future’. She is interested in how practices and infrastructures make worlds. Ana’s work aims to seed diverse futures of data and technology, work and labour, and energy, material, and multispecies relations by intervening in everyday, workplace, and institutional practices.

Her new work Seeder Futures will be exhibited at the Esperance Museum, 16-19 November 2023, and at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) 25 November-18 February 2024. Seeder Futures is an artwork comprised of a digital collection of images and videos, collectively held by members of the community of Esperance and on a PC at AGWA. The work is inspired by the generosity of Esperance locals, and the practices of giving, sharing and volunteering of time, knowledge, skills and resources Ana witnessed during her stay in the Esperance community.

Ana held a Seeding Afternoon for community members to become a 'seeder' or community curator and custodian of the artwork. The artwork is a shared, synchronised folder, collectively hosted by Esperance community members and a PC at AGWA. This shared folder includes images of the collection alongside interviews with community members. Over tea and cake the files were seeded and distribution of this collection within the community has begun. Over the next months, our curators will co-host this work on their devices and PCs. Thank you so much to amazing community curators: Ally Tas, Brittany Norton, Brooke Elson, Jamie Coyle, Jen Ford, Katie Witt, Katie White, Krystal Obschonka, Marcia Leonard, Tammy Andrews, Sarsby Martin.

Seeder Futures Exhibition, Esperance Museum-Opening Night Wednesday 15 November 2023
Open to the public-Thursday 16 November - Sunday 19 November 1.30pm-4.30pm Museum admittance fee required

Rural Utopias Exhibition, Art Gallery of WA-Opening Night Friday 24 November 2023
Open to the public-Saturday 25 November - 18 February 2024.

Rural Utopias is a multi-year program of residencies and socially engaged art projects in regional and remote Western Australian communities. The program focuses on the idea of “Rural Utopias” and includes 11 artists from across Australia.

This project has been made possible through the generous support of the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, the RISE: Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund - an Australian Government initiative, and the Cannery Art Centre. Spaced (International Art Space International Art Space Pty. Ltd.) is a leading arts organisation specialising in socially engaged art. Spaced was established in 1998 by a team of farmers and art professionals interested in bringing leading national and international artists into rural and remote communities.

Photo: Ana Tiquia outside the flat at the Cannery Arts Centre Photo taken by Sarsby Martin

Bernard Kerr has been a practicing ceramic artist for over 45 years producing both functional and sculptural work in stoneware and porcelain.

He also has an extensive background in education locally and internationally in both the tertiary and secondary fields.

His work is featured in a number of international publications and he has authored international journal articles concerning Australian ceramics. His work is held in a number of government, private and corporate collections.

Some aspects of Bernard’s work are linked to the Western Australian landscape such as those based on the ancient eroded rocks and landforms and the wildflowers that have evolved in them that are unique to WA.

Another line of inquiry investigates the relationships between image and object by referencing the history of painting and sculpture in the medium of ceramics.

He is interested in the genres of landscape and still-life painting and how their meaning is altered when constructed in three dimensions in the ceramic medium. In terms of sculpture, other works focus on the human figure and Issues related to realism and abstraction, the body canon, aesthetics and proportion, and how the human body has been represented throughout the ages.

Bernard is the President of the Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia Inc. He is coming to Esperance to teach a Ceramic Figure Sculpture Course, a three-day course being held at the Cannery Arts Centre from 23-25 September. BOOK NOW

View Bernard’s work on his website

IMAGE BY JENNY KERR

Thank you to our sponsors, our Artist in Residence program is funded by the Esperance Ag Fund disbursed by the Fremantle Foundation.

Leanne White is a Southwest Visual Artist and Children’s Book Author/ Illustrator. As a fine artist her focus has been on recording the natural heritage of our environment: landscape alone or with flora, fauna or figures. Her vibrant, spontaneous, and colourful use of paint captures the movement of the landscape and its inhabitants in an illustrative narrative style. She has participated in many exhibitions, both solo and group. She currently has her own Studio Gallery on the main street of Nannup.

Leanne has had much involvement in public art as her role as an arts educator, teaching art for many years in both primary and secondary schools and as an adult arts educator. She has herself completed or worked alongside other artists on large murals and public artworks. As a regional artist her involvement has encompassed the Kimberley, Pilbara, Lower Great Southern and the Southwest.

In her capacity as an illustrator, Leanne has published many Children’s Picture Books, including the popular William the Wild series. In 2018 Emerald the Green Turtle’s Tale, illustrated by Leanne and authored by Aleesah Darlison, was nominated for the Speech Pathology Book of the Year award. In February 2020 Leanne was awarded a scholarship to study with the US Children’s Book Academy in illustration, graduating in November.

Leanne will be working with the primary students from the Mallee schools, Munglinup, Scaddan, Cascade, Salmon Gums and Condingup, creating paintings inspired by wings of wildlife.

www.leannewhite.com

IMAGE BY MARK WHITE

Thank you to our sponsors, our Artist in Residence program is funded by the Esperance Ag Fund disbursed by the Fremantle Foundation.

Yabini Kickett is an artist with ties to Ballardong, Nyaki-Nyaki, Wadjuk people of the Bibulmun Nation.

Her work focuses on portraiture, endemic plant and fungal species, and stories from her kin. 

Yabini was a 2017 participant in the Wesfarmers National Indigenous Arts Leadership program in Canberra. 

Since then her work has been acquired by the West Australian Art Gallery, and Yabini has gone on to explore curating with her last project Dejnnung! Yeyi Yorga Koorliny at the Campbelltown Arts Centre in NSW.

Yabini’s residency at the Cannery Arts Centre will largely be based around community engagement with school aged children and in workshops to children and adults. Yabini will assist young people with the development of artworks of Elders for the Cannery’s NAIDOC theme ‘For the Elders’ exhibition. Yabini would also provide skill development opportunities for the wider community, a gouache still life painting workshop for adults and a felt native animals workshop for children and their parents in the KickArts program.

This residency is funded by the Esperance Ag Fund and Regional Arts WA.

Photo by Emma Daisy

Em Anders is an artist residing in the golden town of Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields. Inspired by nature, adventure and the beauty that surrounds us her artwork reflects this through layers of paint, drips and visual texture.

Currently a full time artist, mother and foster parent to 4 and wife to a Zimbabwean man who is obsessed with reptiles.

Em runs a huge program of workshops at her space Makers Tribe Studio in Kalgoorlie with other artists. We are lucky to have her visiting the Cannery Arts Centre to run two workshops - Resin Ocean Art and Bubbles and Brushes Botanical Bouquet.

Photo: Em Anders teaching in the Print Room at the Cannery Arts Centre 3 December 2022 Photo taken by Sarsby Martin.

Naarm / Melbourne based Artist Ana Tiquia spent six weeks in Esperance between 12 October to 24 November 2022, and is returning for another six weeks from 9 March to 19 April 2023. Read about Ana’s reflections of her time in Esperance here.

Ana Tiquia is an artist and futurist. Integrating participatory art, design and futures practice, Ana creates public interventions: works that invite audiences into dialogue with ‘the future’. She is interested in how practices and infrastructures make worlds. Ana’s work aims to seed diverse futures of data and technology, work and labour, and energy, material, and multispecies relations by intervening in everyday, workplace, and institutional practices.

Ana will be spending six weeks at Cannery Arts Centre to research and develop a new work with communities in Esperance. This project explores the role that gift economies play in community, how communities and individuals practice the sharing of time, power, wealth, knowledge, and culture; and how models of shared ownership might contribute to different conversations about a community’s shared future.

Rural Utopias is a multi-year program of residencies and socially engaged art projects in regional and remote Western Australian communities. The program focuses on the idea of “Rural Utopias” and includes 11 artists from across Australia.

This project has been made possible through the generous support of the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, the RISE: Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund - an Australian Government initiative, and the Cannery Art Centre. Spaced (International Art Space International Art Space Pty. Ltd.) is a leading arts organisation specialising in socially engaged art. Spaced was established in 1998 by a team of farmers and art professionals interested in bringing leading national and international artists into rural and remote communities.

Photo: Ana Tiquia outside the flat at the Cannery Arts Centre Photo taken by Sarsby Martin

Canada-based textile artist Rosalie Boland has returned home to reconnect with the landscape of her childhood. Travelling through remote Australia, Rosalie has been absorbing the abundance of unique natural forms found in her day to day scenery, taking time to explore how these moments of inspiration relate to her own story and desire for connection. Combining her passion for textile crafts and her fine-arts training, Rosalie is engaged in exploring new methods of combining these mediums and how they may manifest in her story of self expression.

Rosalie studied Applied Fashion Design and Technology, combined with a Certificate in Screen Printing and Digital Design for Textile at TAFE and completed a specialised Bachelor of Dramatic Art in Costume at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australia (NIDA). Since relocating to Canada in 2016, Rosalie’s career as a textile artist led her to create work with renowned international artists and productions such as Flume, Lady Gaga, the Australian Ballet, Canadian Opera Company, Banff Arts Centre, Ballet BC, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Netflix series “Maid”, “The Haunting of Bly Manor”, and “Snowpiercer”, Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle”, and the Disney Children’s and Family Creative Arts Emmy-award-winning series “The Mysterious Benedict Society”.

For Rosalie, art making and craft has always provided a sense of community, and she values its history and the inclusive space it can generate. She is deeply passionate about sharing knowledge and how intentionally creating together can provide us with the opportunity to share stories. Gatherings and workshops are an integral part of her creative practice.

Rosalie will be sharing her skills with us through a workshops and one-on-one classes. Want to learn how to use your sewing machine? or to mend? or to make your own garment? Workshops will launch soon. She will also Artist in Residence for the upcoming KickArts. Rosalie will be working out of the shop at the Cannery Arts Centre. For more information email katie@canneryarts.com.au

Photo of Rosalie Boland in the Shop at the Cannery Arts Centre photographer Sarsby Martin

Fi Wilkie is a West Australian Artist who lives and works in Margaret River. 

Her love of the landscape, country living and the natural world inspire her work. Surrounded by the native flora and fauna in Margaret River, Western Australia, Artist Fi Wilkie is drawn to observe the delicate change of seasons, the contrast of chaos and order in the bush landscape and the stories of connection that exists within it.

Fi works as a full-time artist and creates and teaches workshops in drawing, painting and collage.

 She opens Toot Studio, her home studio, for 2 weeks each year during the  Margaret River Open Studios.

Working as a full time exhibiting Artist she designs and teaches workshops to children and adults in both Perth and Margaret River, proudly guiding those keen to build their own creative muscles.

Fi is visiting Esperance in February and running a Beginner Botanical Collage workshop. Book in now!

Photo of Fi by Jasmine Ann Gardiner