Room to Create Collingwood Yards Studio program

Friday 24 July 2020

Image showing inside of a gallery studio
Installation view, The Conversation, 2018. Josephine Mead, Bus Projects. Image courtesy of Christo Crocker

We are excited to announce 6 artists have been selected for the inaugural Room to Create Collingwood Yards Studio, a partnership between the City of Yarra Room to Create Fund and the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation.

In 2014 Council launched the Room to Create Program to address affordable spaces for artists in Yarra in response to the pressures arising from gentrification and increased property values. After years of fundraising and planning, Council has established the Room to Create Artist Studios at the Collingwood Yards (formerly Collingwood Arts Precinct), which will operate for the next three years.

The six artists were selected through a highly competitive Expression of Interest (EOI) process.

The successful artists who will occupy the studios for the next twelve months are:

Ayman Kaake is and artist who works with mixed media, combining photography, drawing, sculpture and video making to create the final artwork. Ayman draws inspiration from current world events and community with lived experience to explore confronting themes. 

Kong Hung So (Scotty So) is an artist interested in the uncertainties of reality, and its relation to space and perception as expressed through found objects. His works cross mediums, using painting, photography, 3D printing, site-responsive installation, video, and performance to provoke humour and irony on the construct of worldmaking. As a queer, coloured and migrant person from Hong Kong, Scotty’s work also includes gender identity and national politics. 

Hayley Van Ree’s practice is a constant blending of fashion and installation art, existing at an intersection of the two that makes this artist's practice unique. Ree’s uses the language and sensibilities of fashion to draw-out physical creative responses to both personal and political issues. Using found objects and up-cycling materials is part of Ree’s recognition of the impact of the fashion industry on the environment.  

Josephine Mead is a visual artist and writer, who works through photography, sculpture, installation and writing to explore personal notions of support. Her recent work has positioned female family members as support structures, considered the body as a site of discursive practice, explored notions of deep listening, and examined the temporal/sonic nature of images and words. 

Guy Grabowsky is an artist and photographer working with analogue photography. His interest lies in the photographic medium—all aspects of its evolvement, its role in our shifting realities, how it ‘looks’ at us and how we perceive its usefulness. Guy creates photographs with and without the camera, using unconventional and traditional analogue/digital techniques.  

Michelle Mantsio’s research based practice involves the artist undertaking interviews and fieldwork that then become actual instructions guiding her subsequent art-making. Through video, installation and performance, Michelle explores how it might be possible to create episodic as well as temporal experiences within the same context

Read more about Room To Create. 

I WANT TO

Search for News