Speakers
Jo Darbyshire
Jo Darbyshire (b.1961) is a fifth generation West Australian living and working in Walyalup/Fremantle. Darbyshire’s abstract paintings often reference the social and environmental history of place and aim to suggest a poetic, sensory connection. She also has an interest in creating exhibitions that incorporate strategies from the visual arts and social history museums. In 2002 she worked with Nyoongar artist Andrea Williams on the Proclamation Day Arch at the WA Museum. In 2003 she created the ground-breaking exhibition The Gay Museum, at the WA Museum. In 2019 she was invited to join the TILT programme at Heathcote Gallery and created the exhibition Tales of the Surreal, Stories from the Oral History Collection, Heathcote Hospital. Darbyshire exhibits regularly with Art Collective WA and her artwork is held in all major public institutions in WA, and in private collections, nationally and internationally.
Lindsay Harris
Lindsay Harris was born in 1947 in Subiaco, but spent most of his school life in a small town called Kwolyin, situated in the Wheatbelt approximately 200 kilometres east of Perth. Harris studied fine arts at Curtin University, achieving a B.A. (Hons) (Fine Art) in 2006 and a M.A. (Fine Art) in 2008. He has had 11 solo exhibitions (2006-2015) and participated in 24 group exhibitions (2006 – 2023). He has won art awards from the City of Rockingham in 2013 and the Town of Vincent in 2008. In 2012, his work was selected for ‘unDisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial’ at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. He was also a finalist in the 25th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin. Harris' work is in several collections throughout Australia, including the National Gallery of Victoria, AGWA, Berndt Museum of Anthropology UWA, Edith Cowan University Collection and Holmes à Court Collection. His work is also held in private collections, both national and international.
John Teschendorff
John Teschendorff was born in Melbourne and moved to Perth in 1985, serving for 10 years as the inaugural Head of the Curtin University School of Art and retiring in 2014. He was then Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts in the School of Design at the University of Western Australia until 2018, and recently External Examiner in Fine Arts at Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore. Teschendorff studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Royal College of Art London. In 1997, he received an Australia Council Visual Arts Major Development Grant; in 2008, the Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools Distinguished Teaching Award for his lifetime contribution to visual arts education and administration in Australia and South East Asia; and in 2016 and 2022, WA Department of Culture and the Arts Creative Development Grants. Teschendorff continues engaging with the History of Ideas Project (1997-2023). He uses drawing as a beginning for works on paper and canvas. Since 1998, he has worked with the place of the nomad and with emotional responses to landscape, border/crossing, terror, political conflict and trauma in the Middle East, Indonesia, the USA and Australia. Recent international projects with artist and writer Annette Seeman include Can Serrat Centro de Actividades Artisticas El Bruc Barcelona Spain (Artist in Residence 2013) and NES Arts Residency Skargastrond Iceland (Artist in Residence 2016).
