Jackson Taylor

Jackson Taylor, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.

Meet the Artist

Through faux-naive figurative paintings, Jackson Taylor describes the connections within our shared human experiences. Using symbols, objects and narratives as a painter, Taylor delves into the subtle nuances that both communicate and evoke shared or conflicting perspectives and ideas. His current artistic focus lies in capturing both interpersonal and shared moments we all experience. Depicting narratives as simple as – taking out bins, morning routines and tying shoes – or scenes holding more complexity such as - social situations, a first date and a crowded room. Taylor aims to evoke relatability through all avenues of life.

Transforming these moments into platforms for connection and dialogue. His artwork features a playful style combining unusual proportions with vivid colour selections, inviting viewers to rediscover personal experiences within his creations. Characteristic elements in Taylor's paintings include stacked spatial arrangements, emphasised eyes, and simplified POV depictions that impart distinctive character while preserving recognisability throughout his body of work.

Litia Roko

Litia Roko at Civic Art Bureau, 2024. Image: Maddie Hepner

Meet the Artist

Litia Roko is an artist interested in the politics of technology and the politics of art. Working across photo media, installation and text, her work addresses notions of cultural value, authority, and labour with a particular interest in their intersections with the algorithmic production and circulation of images. In 2024 Litia graduated from the ANU School of Art and Design with First Class Honours and was the recipient of the Peter and Lena Karmel Anniversary Prize in Art to the school’s most outstanding graduating student. Litia lives and works on unceded Ngunawal and Ngambri land and in 2025 she is an artist in residence at Canberra Contemporary and M16 Artspace.

Asil Habara

Asil Habara, 2023. Image courtesy of Jack McEvoy

Meet the Artist

Asil Habara is a multidisciplinary artist, with printmaking as their primary medium, complemented by installations. Immersing audiences in the exploration of Australian Arab diaspora culture, employing low-brow approaches to unravel intricate narratives. A synthesis of maximalism and tongue-in-cheek humour she attempts to create a vibrant tapestry that weaves internet aesthetics with political contemporary dialogue. Her work acts as a living commentary, a discourse transcending visual boundaries. 

At the core of Asil's multidisciplinary practice is the transformative use of collage, employing familiar imagery to construct narratives that grapple with the experimental and contradictory nature of the contemporary climate. With a deliberate focus on the unsettling aspects of our surroundings, she utilises collage to establish a new relationship between the familiar and the unfamiliar. This prompts viewers to contemplate the peculiarities of our rapidly evolving world. She positions collage as a dynamic space of undecidability and indeterminacy, encouraging thoughtful reflection on the perplexing intricacies of our contemporary existence.

Asil invites audiences to reflect on the profound intersections of culture and technology, creating visually arresting and immersive experiences. Seeking to engage, to question and to be part of a larger dialogue shaping the cultural landscape. 

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Sophie Dumaresq

Sophie Dumaresq, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

Meet the Artist

Sophie Dumaresq, is an interdisciplinary artist who brings perspectives of absurdity, queerness and humour to creative and critical robotics. Working across photography, video installation, sculpture and performance, her work explores what it is to try and share joy, love, laughter and communicate in a universe filled with beings whose brains, existence and or bodies are built inherently differently to that of your own. Her artistic practice seeks to bring voices of difference to the emerging cultures of robotics and computation.

Her work explores the politics of care and mischief making through symbiotic cycles of consumption, destruction, and creation, which demonstrate how as a species we relate, show empathy, learn, and evolve with and within our surrounding environment.

Sophie graduated from ANU honours first in her year in 2023, winning the Peter and Lena Karmel Anniversary award for the most outstanding body graduating body of work from the Australian Nation University’s School of Art and Design. She was also awarded a Peter and Lena Karmel Visual Arts Honours Scholarship during her honours candidacy, as well as three 2023 Emerging Artist Support Scheme Awards. In 2023 she also undertook a Digital Leadership Fellowship through the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative New Zealand. During this fellowship she began a mentorship with the world renowned performance artist Stelarc. 2023 is also the year in which she was selected and participated in the Queer Development Program through Performance Space. Her work is in the Macquarie Group Collection as well as several distinguished private collections.

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Clementine Belle McIntosh

Clementine Belle McIntosh, 2023. Image courtesy of M16 Artspace.

Meet the Artist

Clementine Belle McIntosh is an emerging rural artist from Gilgandra NSW, the waterhole meeting place of the Wiradjuri, Wailwan and Kamilaroi peoples. Through collaborative methods in circular systems, McIntosh produces predominantly textile-based, site-responsive installations representing her learnt sense of place.

Her process-based practice focuses on the act of mark-making to record local dialogues, exchanges and relationships connecting herself with others (strangers and/or the nonhuman). After art display, McIntosh's works are returned to local nonlinear systems as they are composted in the garden, gifted to a neighbour or repurposed into usable objects.  Underpinning this methodology is a departure from the mainstream art market and its problematic hierarchies of care ie. the tendency to preserve cultural artefacts produced from a place but not preserving the place itself. 

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Local Gifts, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

Blanket in Place, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

Photo of artist studio at the KEPK art space in Yeerongpilly QLD, 2022. Image credit: Clementine Belle McIntosh

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Jonathon Zalakos

Portrait of Jonathon Zalakos in studio. Image courtesy of Tracey Nearmy.

Meet the Artist

Jonathon Zalakos is an emerging artist and contemporary jeweller based in Canberra, Australia, on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land. He seeks to integrate traditional goldsmithing materials and techniques with contemporary practices and philosophical thought. His work takes the form of jewellery, interactive objects, digital media and installation. Jonathon is particularly interested in how meaning is co-produced through the processes of expression and perception. 

This drives exploration into the visual language of cultural phenomena including contemporary pop jewellery culture, online viral media and the two-way relationship between the human and manufactured worlds. These concepts are deconstructed and reassembled so as to consider the different worlds we occupy with our bodies and minds. 

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Jonathon Zalakos ,Ruby bug, 2021. Sterling silver, synthetic ruby. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jonathon Zalakos ,Ticks, 2021. Sterling silver, cubic zirconia. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jonathon Zalakos, Nest, 2022. Sterling silver. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jonathon Zalakos, Emerald bug, 2021. Sterling silver, synthetic emerald. Image courtesy of the artist

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