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Aaron Billings
Aaron Billings a multidisciplinary artist working out of Pink Ember Studio in Coburg. His work encompases comics, quiltmaking, drawing and painting. He is currently undertaking a Phd with RMIT university exploring queer graphic narratives and pervesity. He is allergic to professionalism and seeks out opportunities to be silly, sacred and enraptured. This quote sums it up nicely: “Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant. The desire to be taken seriously is precisely what compels people to follow the tried and true paths of knowledge production around which I would like to map a few detours.”
― J. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure
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Anna Ewen
Anna (they/she) is an artist and art therapist creating on unceded lands in Melbourne/Naarm. Their approach to creativity is slow, messy and responsive to the sensory world around them, using whatever materials are available at the time of creating. The past year has been an adventure in painting on recycled printing paper and poetry using found words. They explore themes of softness, grief, time and temporality.
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Aoife Billings
Aoife Billings (she/her) is an Irish-Australian interdisciplinary artist who works in installation, sculpture, painting, ceramics, and social practice. She lives and works on Wurundjeri land (Melbourne, Australia).
Aoife’s multi-sensorial fine art practice delves into themes of time, attention, emotional processing, and Irish mythology, exemplified in her 2023 solo exhibition 'Blow Up' at Off The Kerb Gallery, which featured ceramic sculpture, glass, and oil painting. She holds a particular fascination with ceramics, where the kiln, rather than the artist, determines the final form—making it a process steeped in unpredictability. Through an intuitive approach to art-making, she explores the genesis and contemporary barriers of creative thought, drawing inspiration from Irish mythology and neuroscience.
Her work has been prominently featured within numerous group exhibitions at Off the Kerb Gallery, Tinning Street Gallery, Backwoods Gallery, Platform Arts, School House Studio and Pink Ember.
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Ariana Rodriguez
Ariana Rodriguez (she/her) is a Peruvian visual artist living and working in Wurundjeri land in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). Her art spans various disciplines, including filmmaking, photography, painting and ceramics.
After working as a film producer in Peru for five years, she relocated to the United Arab Emirates, where she shifted her focus to directing fashion films. It was there that she began exploring other mediums such as painting and ceramics. In 2020, she established Clay Spell, her brand and personal project.
Through her work at Clay Spell she challenges societal norms and taboos surrounding the female body. Drawing upon personal experiences and her cultural upbringing, she explores themes of shame and guilt, inviting others to question established gender power structures.
In 2023, she moved to Australia. Since then, she has continued her practice, serving as a platform for reclaiming body autonomy and celebrating femininity. -
Ele Jenkins
Ele Jenkins (they/she) is a comics and fibre artist who loves working with pencil and paper, watercolour, knitting, embroidery and mixed media. Their work ranges from the playful to the personal.
Ele's comics have been published online by The Nib and Going Down Swinging. They have performed live comics readings at the State Library of Victoria and the Hellenic Museum, and attended the Comic Art Workshop in 2022. -
Frances Cannon
Frances Cannon (they/them) is a lesbian, multidisciplinary artist based in Melbourne/Narrm. They have solid practices in many mediums including illustration, oil painting, jewellery smithing, ceramics and sculpture. Frances' work examines the human form, religion, fairytales, queerness, and memory. Much of their work is political, as it often deals with marginalised identities and bodies, as well as current events. Frances has had many successful solo shows locally and internationally. They have worked with Teen-Vogue, Gucci, Refinery 29, Third Drawer Down, Lucy and Yak, Bonds, and have been published in Vogue, Frankie, Yen, Teen-Vogue, Bustle, HuffPost, Dazed and Confused, SBS Australia, i-D Mag, Rookie and many more. Frances is the co-owner and director of Pink Ember Studio in Coburg.
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Lauren Cameron
Lauren Cameron (She/They) is a ceramic-based artist working on the land of Naarm (Melbourne). Her work is centered around the themes of trauma, assault, and petty emotions. Using clay and glaze, she embarks on an artistic adventure to showcase these feelings and experiences.
Lauren's art is a deeply personal and evocative exploration of her inner world, reflecting the complexities of her emotional landscape. Through her ceramics, she seeks to express the raw and often unspoken aspects of human experience, translating them into tangible forms that invite viewers to engage with their own emotions.
Her pieces often feature intricate designs and textures, which serve to highlight the delicate balance between fragility and resilience. By manipulating the clay, Lauren captures the essence of vulnerability and strength, creating works that resonate on both a personal and universal level.
In addition to her thematic focus, Lauren is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of traditional ceramics. She experiments with various techniques and materials, continually evolving her practice to incorporate new elements and ideas. This innovative approach not only enhances the visual impact of her work but also deepens its emotional resonance.
Through her art, Lauren Cameron aims to foster a greater understanding and empathy for those who have experienced trauma and assault, offering a space for reflection and healing.
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Leili Tehrani Walker
Leili (b. 1995, Sydney) is a Melbourne-based artist working across a variety of media: painting, digital and tapestry. Their works explore themes of identity and self-hood, drawing on their personal history and cultural background. An assemblage of memory, talismans and symbols, each painting employs personal history as a foundation for inquiry into the relationship between Self and Other.
Leili’s work has been exhibited at Backwoods Gallery, Blindside ARI Tinning St Presents and Platform Arts Geelong. They are currently a resident at Pink Ember Studios, Coburg.
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Nadia Cao-Alahanthan
Nadia (she/her) is interested in the role objects play in representing the how and why of people, their communities, stories and how they can bring strangers together.
She enjoys the process of sharing through storytelling and the dialogues that unfold.
In her pratice, objects aid as lenses to the in-between spaces that are hard to reach.
Her works articulate these themes by collecting new contexts, relationships, and spaces. -
Vanessa Ellis
Vanessa Ellis is currently the head of Puppetry at AIME mentoring. She designs, makes, and creates with the team, devising puppetry through various forms of storytelling. Vanessa has worked in theatre, film, and television as a Puppeteer, Choreographer, Designer, and fabricator specialising in Puppet design. With a passion for visual theatre storytelling, Vanessa segued from dance to puppetry in 1998 and has been devising, constructing, and performing puppetry for the last 25 years. Her independent work draws inspiration from mythology and folklore and combines dance, puppetry, and visual-based storytelling.
Designing and building in soft sculptural forms, tactile materials, and handbuilt elements inform and influence her design style. Over the years, she has shifted into creating with earth-friendlier materials and, where possible, upcycling, hand-dying, and felting fibers. Vanessa has been fortunate to work with many companies and directors who incorporate puppetry. This relationship has taken her to many festivals and events worldwide, where she has performed with puppets from the miniature to the large and very large. Puppetry styles include Rod, Tabletop, Shadow, Glove, Marionette, Animatronic film and arena, festival roving, and body puppets.
Credits include 7 years with Aime, designing and fabricating over 50 puppets for internal staff and performers worldwide, a two-year stint as a Voodoo animatronics puppeteer on The Arena Spectacular of Walking with Dinosaurs, Puppeteer, and maker for A Blank Canvas, Puppet designer and fabricator for award-winning series “No Stings attached” Green Bean Pictures, Puppeteer and maker Victorian Opera and Opera Australia, Full-time position within the skins department with The Creature Technology Company, Various touring productions as a puppeteer and maker for both Windmill Performing Arts and Patch Theatre Company in Adelaide, Puppeteer for Terrapin, Maker, performer, and workshop assisting for Polyglot, Puppeteer for Black Hole theatre, construction of costumes and floats for The Moomba Parade over many years, Puppeteer for Puppet Vision’s performance of Tadepole. In 2006, she assisted the puppetry director, Peter Wilson, in the Commonwealth Games
Opening Ceremony. In 2006. Vanessa participated in a 9-week Master class with French directors Philippe Genty and Mary Underwood; this culminated in a public season.