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