NEW VOICES INNOVATIVE IDEAS EMERGING TASMANIAN ARTISTS
INNOVATIVE IDEAS
EMERGING ARTISTS
RISE celebrates the creativity and ambition of eleven early career artists at a formative moment in their professional journeys. Brought together across diverse practices, mediums, and ideas, these artists represent a new wave of Tasmanian and Australia-based talent — voices shaping the future of contemporary art.
This is not just an exhibition — It’s an Introduction.
QVMAG invites audiences to encounter fresh perspectives, bold experimentation, and the beginnings of artistic practices that will continue to grow and evolve.
This second iteration of the RISE initiative reaffirms QVMAG’s commitment to supporting emerging artists by providing a key career opportunity for exhibition, professional development, and public engagement. For many of the specially selected RISE artists, this marks their first major institutional presentation — a milestone that recognises both their dedication and potential.
New voices are essential to the cultural landscape.
Emerging artists bring with them the energy of inquiry — a willingness to question, to imagine otherwise, and to disrupt what has come before. They remind us that culture is not static, but a living, breathing conversation shaped by each generation’s hopes, challenges, and visions.
Through material, image, and idea, the eleven artists presented here reflect the world as it is — and as it might yet become. Each unique voice speaks of identity, environment, memory, politics, and play. Together, they prompt us to look again, listen more deeply, and consider new ways of being together.
To support emerging artists is to invest in the future of art, of thought, and of community.
DR KELLIE WELLS Lead Curator, QVMAG
Halima Bhatti is a Hobart-based Arabic calligraphy artist. Her art practice is a deeply spiritual and meditative journey that merges traditional Arabic and Urdu calligraphic styles with contemporary expression. Through carefully crafted strokes and intricate patterns, her work explores universal themes of love, faith, peace, and inner stillness, often drawing inspiration from Quranic verses and Sufi poetry.
Halima began her exploration into calligraphy during the quietude of the pandemic lockdown, where she found in the ancient art form a powerful way to reconnect with heritage and spirituality. Since then, her calligraphy has evolved into a unique visual language, grounded in sacred tradition yet imbued with her own artistic voice.
She held her debut solo exhibition, The Butterfly Effect, in 2021 during her residency at the Youth Arts & Recreation Centre. Since then, her work has featured prominently across Tasmania’s arts landscape, including at Salamanca Arts Centre, Moonah Arts Centre, Good Grief Studios, and the Henry Jones Art Hotel, where she was Artist in Residence in 2023. Her exhibitions such as The Tree of Life, ASRARE-KHUDI, Sacred Reflections, The World of Words, and Whispers of Heritage have been recognised for their emotional depth and cultural resonance. She has also exhibited at major community events like the Royal Hobart Art Show, and Minds Do Matter, with her work appearing regularly in venues such as the Hobart Artists Market.
Halima’s creative reach extends beyond gallery spaces into community and educational settings. She has led numerous Arabic calligraphy workshops at schools, festivals, and cultural events across Tasmania, including extensive cultural awareness sessions during Ramadan through the City of Hobart. Her workshops are designed to foster inclusivity, belonging, and intercultural dialogue, and have become a powerful platform for promoting cultural understanding through the arts.
In parallel with her artistic journey, Halima works as a Healthcare Officer, where her passion for wellbeing and human connection continues to inform her creative philosophy. Her calligraphy is not only an artistic pursuit but also a form of spiritual reflection, an offering of harmony, balance, and healing. She believes that her work carries a message meant to be shared: that beauty, in all its forms, can be a quiet but profound force of unity.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
My work in Arabic calligraphy is a deeply spiritual and meditative practice that seeks to bridge tradition and contemporary expression. Drawing from sacred texts, Sufi poetry, and classical Urdu literature, use the rhythmic flow of letters and patterns to explore themes of peace, faith, and interconnectedness. Each piece is created with intention, inviting reflection and offering a space for stillness in a fast-paced world.
Rooted in the timeless beauty of Islamic art, my calligraphy is not only visual, but also emotional and symbolic. aim to preserve the cultural richness of ancient scripts while infusing them with a modern sensibility, allowing the work to speak across languages and backgrounds. Through this journey, hope to share messages that resonate universally, of unity, healing, and inner harmony.
The Bird of Pride is a calligraphic portrayal of strength, vision, and spiritual elevation, brought to life through the poetic words of Allama Iqbal, one of the most influential thinkers and poets of the 20th century, whose words continue to inspire self-realisation and spiritual awakening across generations and cultures. Shaped entirely from Arabic-scripted verses, the form of an eagle rises from the page, its wings outstretched in disciplined grace.
The eagle, a powerful symbol in Iqbal’s work, represents clarity, courage, and the untamed spirit of youth. Woven into the body of the bird is one of Iqbal’s most iconic lines: “Elevate yourself so high, that even God, before writing your fate, asks you: what is it that you desire?” This work is a celebration of inner power and purposeful ascent, an invitation to look within, rise above, and live with intent.
Precious Pearl is a figurative calligraphic artwork that celebrates the spiritual depth, strength, and dignity of women through the flowing elegance of Arabic script. Designed in the shape of a woman’s head and hair, the piece features the words of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him): “Treat women nicely…”, a reminder of kindness and respect.
The composition also reflects the teaching that woman was created from man’s rib, not from his head to rule, nor his feet to be beneath him, but from his side, close to his heart, to be cherished, protected, and treated as an equal. Through its graceful form and meaningful inscription, Precious Pearl becomes a poetic expression of honour and reverence, inviting viewers to recognise the noble place women hold and the deep connection between compassion and strength.
The Tree of Life is a contemplative exploration of shared origins and human unity, expressed through the fluid form of Arabic calligraphy. The tree’s roots are formed by the letter Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, chosen for its symbolic meaning of beginnings, potential, and strength in Islamic philosophy. It grounds the composition, representing the common foundation from which all else grows.
From this central root, the remaining Arabic letters rise and branch out, shaping the trunk and canopy of the tree. Each letter contributes to the whole, emphasising harmony in diversity and the deep connections that exist beneath surface differences. This work invites reflection on the idea that while we may take different shapes and paths in life, we are all part of one interconnected system, rooted together in our shared humanity.
Emma Bingham is a multidisciplinary artist based in nipaluna/Hobart. Expanding from a practice of drawing and printmaking she utilises the inherent physical and metaphorical properties of materials to create abstract objects, images and installation artworks.
Emma is a registered nurse, working in neonatal and palliative careat both ends of the life spectrum. She draws on this and the combined aspects of her life and explores continuities between making and care, embodying thresholds of internal and external feeling.
Completing a BFA with first class honours at University of Tasmania in 2021, Emma was selected for Hatched: National Graduate Show 2022 at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. She was shortlisted for Women’s Art Prize, Tasmania 2022 and as a finalist in the National Works on Paper 2024. She is a resident artist at Salamanca Arts Centre and is represented by Penny Contemporary Gallery in Hobart.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
A body’s surface, the threshold between the internal and external, accumulates tacit traces and residues of encounter with others.
work with materials and processes that have literal and metaphorical resonances with the body: paper/skin, wax/flesh, fold/internal/ external, scale/reach, cloth/wrap, stitch/repair, pigment/stain. Using shifts of form, material and scale as strategies which change how the work is experienced, I seek to evoke a sense of holding or being held.
Working incrementally, between different materials and projects concurrently, I find this process of repetition and reflection becomes generative. Subtle shifts occur in the interstices - the small intervening spaces - which deepen my understanding of my practice and direct the next iteration.
The combined aspects of my life are deeply interwoven in my daily studio practice, in a relationship of body, material and gestures of care.
My arts practice centres primarily on sculpture. It draws heavily upon my pakana cultural connections to Country and the traditional practices that spiritually connect me to my artwork. These connections began early when my great-grandfather took me into the bush and swamps of the east coast of Flinders Island to show me traditional hunting and crafting techniques. This background combines with the stoicism derived from the journey of my ancestors and people who have continued to practice the oldest living culture from pre-colonial to current times, despite the many horrific challenges they faced on that pathway not excluding war, assimilation and cultural theft.
An important aspect of the future pathway within my work is the effects of climate change on traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal resources and recognising how these effects are being felt not only by the pakana and palawa people themselves but Sky, Land and Sea Country.
tunapri milaythina muka, To know Sea Country through making … is the winner of the 2024 Telstra NATSIAA People’s Choice Award, the artwork is a document that represents a view of my cultural heritage through time, drawing on my personal history, family, and community connections. With maritime / sea country connections as the central concern, it is presented as a multi-layered, three-dimensional object which speaks to identity, cultural continuity, and adaptive generational activity prior to and following disruption.
The work includes contexts and experiences, skills, and knowledge, wrapped into and around the practices of traditional canoe making interwoven with ship building. The design is a nod to the traditional while looking forward beyond the contemporary design. My found materials within this work have many physical and spiritual links to my Ancestral past. It’s the driftwood itself — sun-bleached, weathered, and still standing in solitude that always calls me to continue the journey first undertaken by my ancestors.
Maggie graduated with first class honours from the University of Tasmania in 2022. Studying Fine Art and Psychology, her practice involves working with artists living with all abilities through mentoring, collaboration, and community engagement as a member of Second Echo Ensemble. Maggie has been selected for a number of Tasmanian artist residencies on King Island, Queenstown, Glover Country, Clifton Beach as well as international artist fellowships in California, USA and the Rosamond McCulloch studio residency in Paris. In 2024, she was a resident studio artist at Contemporary Arts Tasmania and a finalist in the Women’s Art Prize, Tasmania. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Despard Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart since 2018, with her third solo exhibition scheduled for March 2026.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
Inspired by a sense of childhood wonder, her botanical oil paintings explore the nature of remembering by layering plants, shadows and light. Central to her creative practice is a fascination with the detail found in our natural world. Maggie’s paintings are intended to become documentations of her experience, reminiscent of the ways she would explore as a child. Lately, this creative work has been questioning the ‘rewilding’ of her painting process, unfolding compositions which happen naturally through the collection of plants, and experiences.
The other side of Maggie’s practice involves an ongoing enquiry into creative collaborations. Working with Second Echo Ensemble, she has the opportunity to collaborate with diverse artists, working with mediums distinct from her own. This interdisciplinary approach to making work continues to broaden her understanding of creative process, and in turn, inspiring her painting practice.
am an emerging artist currently living and working in southern Tasmania. I have been building on my career and establishing a substantial practice since the beginning of 2014. I work from my home studio, regularly showing in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. Having achieved Bachelor of Visual Arts with first class honours, I subsequently completed a Masters of Fine Arts with an Australian Postgraduate Award at Sydney College of the Arts in 2013. Since then I have held exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Christchurch, and an online exhibition at Chasm Gallery in New York. I have been curated into exhibitions at Darren Knight Gallery, Roslyn Oxley, Art Space, and the College of Fine Arts (Canterbury, New Zealand).
My work has also been included in the Safari Arts Festival and the Underbelly Arts Festival. I have been a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Prize, the John Fries Emerging Art Award, the Macquarie Bank Emerging Artist Award and the Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize. In 2014, I was awarded a two month Moya Dyring residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. In 2019, I was the recipient of SHOTGUN8, a mentorship program supported by Contemporary Art Tasmania, MONA and Detatched.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
My work explores the unification of sculpture collage and installation, sampling images of geological formations, waves and clouds. Through the use of erasure, fragmentation and assemblage I use a sequence of symbolic arrangements. The work is explicitly elemental, offering an aesthetic response to the juncture between natural beauty and fragility and testing the boundaries between the romantic and the surreal.
Each project create is based on a specific local environment. incorporate images, minerals and forms found in the specific areas of interest. Previous projects have been generated from both natural and human made geological formations including at defunct mining settlement Queenstown, Tasmania and silver mining village Zeehan. Inspiration has also been drawn from Icelandic lava fields, calcium carbonate structures at Lake Mungo (NSW) and the mesas of Utah.
Eloise Lark is a Hobart/nipaluna based artist, Illustrator and designer. Working across drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture, her practice is led by strong graphic elements, expressive linework, and a confident command of colour. With a background in Communication Design from RMIT University, Eloise has developed a distinct visual language that is both playful and emotionally resonant.
Colour is central to her work. She uses it deliberately to set mood, create tension, and build rhythm across surfaces. Whether in soft tonal layers or bold, saturated blocks, her colour choices act as emotional cues, guiding how a viewer feels their way through the work.
Her process is intuitive and responsive, often beginning with a thought, phrase or feeling and evolving through layering, repetition, and experimentation. She explores the outline and edge as expressive forms—translating this visual language across scales, from intimate works on paper to steel sculptures, such as those featured in Earth Down at Salamanca Arts Centre (2024).
Beyond her gallery work, Eloise has collaborated with brands including Target, Cotton On, and NAB. In 2019, Derwent Seasons, a large-scale mural, was adapted and used in collaboration with Jansz Tasmania packaging which led to a feature on The Design Files, highlighting her ability to move fluidly between personal, public, and commercial contexts. In 2024, she was selected to participate in a campaign for Tourism Tasmania, Tas AI, creating a series of digital collaged artworks.
Recent exhibitions include Up and Coming at Handmark Gallery (2024), Earth Down at Salamanca Arts Centre (2024), and A New Language at Penny Contemporary (2022). Across all platforms, Eloise’s work invites a sense of curiosity and play—finding emotional depth in bold form and fluid expression.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
My practice moves between drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture, guided by a strong graphic language and an interest in shape, outline, and composition. I’m drawn to the emotional potential of simplified forms—how a single line or block of colour can hold mood, memory, or movement. Colour plays a central role in my work; I use it instinctively to create energy, contrast, or calm, often layering textures to build visual rhythm.
I’m often inspired by children’s imagination, everyday phrases, and the quiet poetry of where language and visual thinking intersect. Nostalgic elements and themes frequently emerge—there’s a sense of play, openness, and childlike freedom in the way I approach materials and imagery. Whether working on an illustration, a large collage, or a steel sculpture, treat each piece as a visual conversation, inviting curiosity, connection, and emotional response through bold, expressive form.
steel
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am a textile artist, designer and gallery professional whose work explores the nuances of violence, femininity and the domestic space. am currently based in the north of Tasmania but was born and grew up on the west coast. have a bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours, and a Master of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies from Deakin University, Victoria.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
The artwork I create is deeply rooted within the textile medium, with a focus on quilting, weaving and embroidery. These disciplines were taught to me as a domestic craft by the women in my family; a history keep alive in the objects I create. My practice tries to underscore the softness, comfort and tactility of the embodied nature of textiles, while juxtaposing against aggressive, violent, and morbid conceptual frameworks.
Each of the styles I undertake to create an artwork brings with it a long and storied history. I try to ensure that my practice honours and encapsulates these disparate qualities while adding my own. They become artefacts, each revealing and playing with the tension between the object and its audience the soft quilt saying something violent to those looking at it.
draw inspiration from the hidden domestic textile industry and the people who ran it, the lives they lived and the experiences they felt. try, within my work, to build a sense of this world so as to allow the audience to not just observe, but to experience it too. Through my work I acknowledge I am the last of a long line of crafters; it is an ancestral practice that embraces tradition and history while building a contemporary voice.
Rosanagh May is an emerging artist currently based in nipaluna/ Hobart, lutruwita/Tasmania.
Utilising primarily white mid-fired clay and black underglaze, Rosanagh May’s practice has a very distinctive visual language, creating lyrical ceramic sculptures that combine elements of gothic fiction and surrealist humour. Forms seemingly shift between decorative, impractical and utilitarian, inviting the viewer to reimagine our expectations around the role of contemporary ceramics.
Adorning every inch of May’s work is a bold combination of illustration and hand painted ornamentation. Reminiscent of tattooed skin, each piece appears animated and brimming with joy, yet still underpinned by a more serious poetic symbolism that comes with the commitment of body ink.
Song lyrics are also a defining feature of May’s work, with extracts of expressive verse wrapped around each piece. This stems from a personal obsession with music, but simultaneously helps to channel the emotional and personal connections that can only be found in song. As well as exhibiting the sheer joy of making and life’s small pleasures, May’s works also carries more serious undertones, reminding us of the importance of human connection. Underpinning May’s practice is a conscious aversion towards the traditions of ceramics, with works that embrace being eccentric and impractical. This is what makes them so fascinating, as well as being a timely reminder of a world that is increasingly unfamiliar.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
Falling in love with a song is simple; a daily occurrence for me. That moment when you find someone to share those songs with, to fall in love with, to fantasize over, is something else entirely. Knowing a piece of music will be listened to with intention, a secret message of sorts, is the stuff of heartbeat-skipping joy. Tiny little heart attacks, if you please.
My obsession with music, as a way of communication, started early. remember making mixtapes for best friends, stopping and starting the tape deck recorder, listening excruciatingly closely to the radio DJ, being careful not to miss those opening notes. Then came the CD compilations from high school sweethearts, dissecting each chosen song through my headphones on the bus. Now, it’s precisely curated playlists, sent to another in an instant. A love song dedication. A nod to unspoken desires.
Joanna Pinkiewicz is a Polish-born artist who migrated to Tasmania in 1993. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1996 and is currently undertaking an Honours project at the University of Tasmania in Launceston. Her practice explores spiritual and metaphysical ideas through abstraction, responding to place as timeless, primordial, and eternal. Engaging in iterative processes and sensitive material exploration, she works primarily in watercolour and oil paint. Her current Honours research investigates how ritual informs abstraction—examining how ritual materials and actions bring an embodied approach to abstraction. Based in her Lulworth studio, Joanna draws inspiration from the Pipers River Estuary and her Hindu spiritual practice.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
The Estuary series presents the estuary as a primordial and eternal site of creation and transformation. Through abstract explorations of form and their interrelationships, I consider water as a generative force—evoking the emergence of life and the fluidity of becoming. By introducing tensions between organic and geometric forms, I cultivate a dynamic interplay of opposites. Each layer of watercolour is gently washed back or partially erased, allowing textures to emerge through absence as much as presence—revealing a slow process of accumulation, dissolution, and re-formation.
Cheryl Rose is a Pataway (Burnie) based artist from lutruwita’s north west.
As a multi-media artist, Cheryl’s work is inspired by, and responds to the coastal lands, sky and sea that surround her. Her work endeavors to reflect her relationship with the north west coastal region capturing all that is contained within, through intimate and intricate studies of her ‘place’. Cheryl’s work is deeply informed by her community, culture and Country.
Committed to sharing and passing on her creative skills and passion, Cheryl conducts regular workshops in painting, drawing, and printmaking for her community.
Projects include a recent Artist-in-Residence at the Devonport Art Gallery; The Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions for the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition — My Country; and commissioned display panels for the Burnie Civic Centre.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
Tidal Signs coastline
living sites of heritage culture, where the katina shore/beach, Revealed by the mercy of the muka ocean hidden sites, food sources, shell middens, fish traps. am muka salt water palawa, Thousands of years our woman/Aunties have looked after saltwater country, we continue traditional practices
Observe closely to the signs of country, hear, see what I see. Layers revealed
In motion
Constant
Jeewan Suwal received his Master in Applied Design and Arts (2019) from Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia and his Master in Fine Arts (2012) and Bachelor in Fine Arts (2010) with Honours from Banaras Hindu University, India. He is also the recipient of I.C.C.R Scholarship (2006-10) from the Government of India. He has participated in numerous art exhibitions and workshops internationally.
He moved to Tasmania in the beginning of 2020 just before COVID-19 hit the state. He has been working as a freelance visual artist, notably, as an invited artist to exhibit an installation in MONA FOMA 2022. The installation was the third edition of this work title Listen to the Earth, which was his reaction to the Nepal earthquakes in 2015. This work has also been selected for exhibition in Moesgaard Museum, Denmark from 2016-17. Since 2023, he has been exhibiting his works in Handmark Gallery, Hobart.
Suwal has exhibited his paintings titled Psychogeography in Kent Street Art Gallery, Victoria Park, WA, Australia in 2019; Curtin University Grade Show in 2018; Perth, Reflection25.04.16 at Patan Museum, Nepal; paralleled exhibition in Briston, UK. He also had marked exhibition of water-color painting in Israel in 2015. Suwal has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including The Solace of Art (Siddhartha Art Gallery, Nepal 2016), Co-Creative (Portugal, 2015); 12 Baishakh Camp Hub (community – Art project 2015), Amalgamation of Color (Delhi, India 2015); Artists from B.H.U. (Siddhartha Art Gallery, 2015); Kolkata International Performance Art Festival, International Art Exhibition - FACT India (India 2014);
Residency Art Expo, Gallery Jolrong (Bangladesh 2014). In 2013, he was part of the Crack International Art Camp, Bangladesh. The same year, he had NIV studio residency in New Delhi. He has participated in each edition of the Annual B.H.U. shows while attending the institution. His works are in collection internationally. He is also a recipient of the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Center’s (KCAC) Residency Awards.
STATEMENT OF PRACTICE
My painting holds my affinity to the place. My foremost inspiration is my own intuition. My paintings explore geographical, psychological, emotional, and aesthetical aspects of the place. Through my painting, I try to express my personal perspective, emotion, and my sense of place. I practice the concept of psychogeography to trace my memories of places that helps to combine my different memories from different places that is not tied to just one location but makes overall sense of place. Through visual representation, intersect mental, emotional, and geographical factors that shape our experience and understanding of place. Exploration through being lost in place, curiosity from wandering and appreciating the awareness that comes from drifting through a place or situation is reflected in my abstracted paintings. And I usually use acrylic paint as a medium on canvas to express my thoughts.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition
14 February – 17 May 2026
PUBLISHER
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery PO Box 403 Launceston TAS 7250 +61 6323 3777 www.qvmag.tas.gov.au
© 2026 Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
PROJECT LEAD
Dr Kellie Wells
EXHBITION CURATOR
Belinda Cotton
PUBLICATION DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
Louise French, Fiona Parsons, Renee Singline
PROJECT TEAM
Elizabeth Adkins, Alisanne Butler, Jules Clements, Megan Dick, Paul Eggins, Bridget Freeman, Louise French, Tobias Jahke, Maddie Lawrence, Tash McCulloch, Carmencita Palermo, Adam Van Peelen, Anna Wilkins, Eve Williams
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Despard Gallery, Hobart | Handmark Gallery, Hobart Madeline Gordon Gallery, Launceston | Penny Contemporary Gallery, Hobart | Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart