Housed in an iconic heritage building in the heart of Perth, PICA is the place to experience the very best of local, Australian and international contemporary arts in Western Australia.

Vision

Over its 30-year history, PICA has operated as both a producing and presenting organisation, delivering an annual program of changing exhibitions, seasons in contemporary dance, experimental theatre, new music and live art as well as a range of artist-in-residence programs.

PICA works with artists who are trail-blazers, exemplars, innovators and change-makers and acts as a site for challenging and timely conversations.

Its programs are carefully crafted, ensuring connections are forged not only between artists and audiences but across art forms, cultures and geographies. For artists, audiences and other communities it serves, PICA is a meeting place, a provocateur, a resource and most importantly a partner in the realisation of big and new ideas.

History

Housed in a large and striking heritage building in the Perth Cultural Centre, Western Australia, PICA was incorporated in 1989 but its emergence was preceded by the commitment and hard work undertaken over five years by its founders. Securing PICA’s eventual location, in what was originally the Perth Central School, was fundamental to that process.

The new organisation partly ‘follow[ed] on from Praxis (Western Australia’s former Contemporary Art Space now amalgamated with PICA), which had a 15-year history of producing an important program of visual arts exhibitions, publications and special projects. Praxis had been a part of a network of contemporary art spaces across Australia; organisations which had their origins in the alternative spaces of the 1970s, and which at their best were critical, challenging and provocative.

The intention of those people and groups involved in the development of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts was that it would provide a new forum for the analysis and presentation of critical and contemporary art practice. This practice would include the visual arts, music, dance and performance along with their contemporary and interdisciplinary variants but would be wider than any list of art forms… Fundamental to the concept of PICA was that culture was not an isolated province but intimately connected to the social, economic, psychological and political dimensions of contemporary life.’ 1

The late Noel Sheridan was the inaugural Director of PICA from 1989–93. During this time he put his vision into action by delivering a dynamic program and overseeing the initial renovation of the building that PICA still calls home. He was succeeded by Sarah Miller, who from 1993–2006 continued PICA’s development into one of the country’s most innovative, best-known and loved contemporary arts venues in Australia. In 2006, Amy Barrett-Lennard was appointed as Director. She led the evolution of PICA until August 2022, responding to the changing needs and desires of artists and audiences with the ultimate goal of forging an inclusive space that sits at the nexus of art, innovation and community. In October 2022, Hannah Mathews joined PICA as its new CEO.

1. John Barrett-Lennard, ‘A spacious central location…’, catalogue essay for A spacious central location: installations for PICA and the Cultural Centre, (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1990), p.4

Education to Art – PICA History Booklet

Delve deeper into PICA’s archives this 2023 publication that details PICA’s history from 1896 to now.

Team

Hannah Mathews – Director/CEO
Alana Culverhouse – General Manager
Anne Tunnecliffe – Development Manager
Michael Bullock – Operations Manager
Sarah Wall – Curator
Lizzy Doepel – Exhibitions Coordinator
Ariane Katscherian – Producer
William Gammel – Production Manager
Jenn Garland – Learning & Access Manager
Miranda Johnson – Public Programs & Studios Manager
Brent Harrison – Hatched Curatorial Fellow
Maria Sioulas – Marketing and Communications Manager
Kauri Minhinnick – Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Tim Green – Designer
Manda Campbell – Visitor Experience Manager

Board

Mark Clapham – Chair
Mark Clapham is the Joint Managing Director of Cushman & Wakefield, Western Australia. Cushman & Wakefield (NYSE:CWK) is a leading global commercial property company specialising in the sale, leasing and asset management of institutional-grade commercial office assets and new office development precincts. Mark has over 34 years of experience across Australia and in London, providing strategic property advice to institutional property owners and wholesale private clients. Mark joined the board as Director of PICA in 2020 and assumed the role of Chair in 2022.

Sarkis Akopov – Board Member
Sarkis Akopov is a motivated and enthusiastic leader. With his positive attitude and collaborative approach, he has earned the trust of colleagues and clients alike. Sarkis’s strength lies in his logical and analytical mindset, coupled with his exceptional numerical skills. He is constantly seeking new challenges and opportunities to enhance his expertise in areas such as strategic planning, financial analysis, change management, IFRS, and US GAAP. His dedication to his craft is evident in the exceptional results he consistently delivers.

Minali Gamage – Board Member
Minali Gamage is a governance, risk and audit professional with 18 years’ experience working primarily with critical infrastructure and global mining companies, both as a management consultant and in-house. Minali regularly supports the arts through advocacy, philanthropy, arts advisory roles, and collecting. She is the founder of perth.art.seeker, a social media-based information-sharing service about art exhibitions, events, and industry opportunities in and around Perth.

Tarryn Gill – Board Member
Tarryn Gill is a multidisciplinary artist from Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. She works across sculpture, photography, video, drawing, theatre design and performance. Through her solo & collaborative practices, she has exhibited works and undertaken residency projects across Australia, in Argentina, France, Germany, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Japan. Tarryn is represented in numerous collections nationally, including Artbank, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art.

Theo Kailis – Board Member
Theo Kailis is the Executive Director and shareholder of Austral Fisheries, Australia’s leading integrated, sustainable commercial fishing company, and a board member of The Shipowners’ Club. Theo’s family has produced high quality, sustainably caught seafood products for customers worldwide for 40 years. Proud of his Greek heritage, Theo believes arts and culture are essential. He draws upon his experience studying, working and living in Greece, Spain and Sydney to nurture and develop contemporary art in his hometown.

Carly Lane – Board Member
Carly Lane, a Murri woman from Queensland, works as a Principal Advisor and Curator of Strategic Projects in the Aboriginal History WA unit of the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. In short, she will help to showcase the history and stories of Aboriginal people in Western Australia. Carly has been curating Aboriginal art and stories in various museums and galleries for 20+ years, both here in Perth and in Canberra. For her, curating is not just a vocation; it is a way to (1) care for culture, (2) elevate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices, and (3) support Aboriginal self-determination, equality and social change. She finds inspiration in political art and any art (really) where the artist speaks their political, social and cultural truth.

Hannah Mathews – Board Member
Hannah Mathews is the Director/CEO of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). Over the last twenty years, she has held key curatorial positions at Monash University Museum of Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Next Wave, The South Project and the Biennale of Sydney. Hannah graduated with a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne in 2002 and has completed curatorial residencies in New York, Berlin, Tokyo and Venice. She has taught in curatorial programs at Melbourne University, Monash University and RMIT University, Melbourne and has held various board positions, including National Association for the Visual Arts, City of Melbourne Arts & Culture and International Art Space, Perth. Her publication, To Note: Notation Across Disciplines won the inaugural Cornish Family Book Prize for Art and Design Publishing in 2018. 

Paula Taylor – Board Member
Paula Taylor began her career in London by fundraising for the arts at the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Academy of the Arts before becoming Awards Director at D&AD (Design and Art Direction). With over a decade at D&AD – a global non-profit dedicated to creative excellence – she led strategic initiatives across multiple continents, collaborating with leading advertising creatives, designers, filmmakers, technologists and brands. 
As co-founder of West Tech Fest and First NationsX, Paula is dedicated to fostering innovation, equality, diversity and social impact. She is a graduate of Curtin University and the Victorian College of the Arts.

Jeremy Smith – Board Member
Jeremy Smith has a long career in the arts and is currently the Senior Producer at Performing Lines, WA. A core theme of his career has been working closely with artists, organisations and communities to promote artistic bravery, self-determination, authentic representation and to broker opportunities. Jeremy has spent considerable time supporting initiatives and projects born out of regional and remote Australia, as well as developing and delivering key arts and disability programs. Jeremy is the current Chair of pvi collective and sits on Co3 Contemporary Dance Company’s artistic advisory panel. He was recently Director of Experimental Arts and Community Arts with the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia) and General Manager at PICA.

Melvin Yeo – Board Member
Melvin Yeo is a company director and corporate lawyer with more than 25 years’ experience. He has a global client base, and has also co-founded various international mineral exploration projects. Melvin’s experience includes governance, strategic planning, legal affairs, capital raising, operational oversight and transaction negotiations. Melvin is a supporter of the arts and is a Trustee of the WA State Government’s Arts and Culture Trust. He is also a keen collector of contemporary works by Australian artists and has previously served on the Murdoch University Art Collection board. Melvin was also a co-founder and board member of Heritage Perth Inc.

Aboriginal Advisory Group

Our interim Aboriginal Advisory Group is made up of leading Aboriginal visual and performing artists and arts workers: Sharyn Egan, Stephen Gilchrist, Glenn Iseger-Pilkington, Rohin Kickett and Janine Oxenham. From July 2023, our interim group has been working together to determine the scope and lay the foundations for an ongoing Advisory Group.

By forming an Aboriginal Advisory Group, PICA seeks to embed the voices and cultural protocols of First Nations artists into the words and actions of what we do. PICA recognises the rights of First Nations people to oversee the representation of their diverse cultures. First Nations programming at PICA must therefore be First Nations-led.

Sharyn Egan
Sharyn Egan is a Noongar woman who began creating art at the age of 37, which lead to her enrolling in a Diploma of Fine Arts at the Claremont School of Art in Perth. She completed this course in 1998 and enrolled in the Associate Degree in Contemporary Aboriginal Art at Curtin University, which she completed in 2000. In 2001 she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (Arts) from Curtin University. She has also been awarded a Certificate VI in Training and Education in 2011. The themes in Egan’s work are informed by the experiences of her life as a Noongar woman.

Stephen Gilchrist
Belonging to the Yamatji people of the Inggarda language group of northwest Western Australia, Dr Stephen Gilchrist is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Indigenous Studies at The University of Western Australia. He is a writer and curator who has worked with the Indigenous Australian collections of the National Gallery of Australia, British Museum, National Gallery of Victoria and Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (2011–2013). Gilchrist has curated numerous exhibitions in Australia and the United States and has written extensively on Indigenous Art from Australia. 2012–2016, he was the Australian Studies Visiting Curator at the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University.

Glenn Iseger-Pilkington
Glenn Iseger-Pilkington (Nhanda and Noongar Peoples/Dutch/Scottish) is the Curator of Visual Arts at Fremantle Art Centre in Walyalup (Fremantle), Western Australia. Iseger-Pilkington undertook formal art training at the School of Contemporary Art, Edith Cowan University, majoring in printmaking. Over the last 17 years, he has worked within the visual arts sector as an arts development officer, curator, advisor, and advocate for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander artists. Iseger-Pilkington has also held the roles of Senior Curator (FORM: building a state of creativity), Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and Material Culture (South Australian Museum), Curator Content Development, (New Museum Project | Western Australian Museum) and Associate Curator of Indigenous Objects and Photography (Art Gallery of Western Australia).

Rohin Kickett
Rohin Kickett is a Balardong, Whadjuk Noongar artist born in Northam, Western Australia 1986. He spent his childhood years in Gosnells and now resides in Armadale, where he has been a full-time practising artist since 2017. Before becoming an artist, Kickett had completed an apprenticeship in Metal Fabrication and 1st Class Welding, where he spent 12 years in the metal fabrication industry. At 32, Rohin completed the Indigenous Tertiary Enabling Course at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University. Over the last six years, Kickett has participated in many exhibitions, held solo exhibitions, completed a residency along with international cultural exchange programs, and completed multiple public art projects.

Janine Oxenham
Janine Oxenham is a Malgana Yamatji woman from the Shark Bay area in WA. She has studied dance at both NAISDA College, NSW and WAAPA, WA. She has choreographed and performed as a freelance contemporary Indigenous dancer for numerous festivals in regional WA. In 2015 she mounted the work Willy Willy as part of the Ausdance’s Future Landings project. She has facilitated community dance groups and performed as part of the core crew for the travelling festival Creality (formerly Gascoyne in May) for the past nine years. More recently, Oxenham has worked as Movement Director and choreographer for Yirra Yaakin and Perth Festival productions of Hecate and Panawathi Girl.

Artist Advisory Group

Initiated in 2023, PICA’s Artist Advisory Group includes a panel of artists from across art forms and generations who work together to advise PICA on matters of importance to artists. Chaired by the current artist member of the PICA Board, the group is committed to including diverse experiences and perspectives and advocating for the needs of artists and the community.

Kieron Broadhurst
Kieron Broadhurst is a multidisciplinary artist from Boorloo (Perth) who explores the speculative potential of fiction within contemporary art practice. He has exhibited within WA and interstate, including exhibitions at John Curtin Gallery (WA), Firstdraft (NSW), and FELTspace (SA).

Erin Coates
Erin Coates is a visual artist and creative producer living in Boorloo (Perth). She creates drawings, sculptures and films that examine our relationship with the natural world, physical thresholds and the nature of transformed bodies – both human and non-human. In 2021 The Art Gallery of Western Australia held a solo survey exhibition of Coate’s video and film work and in 2022, she was commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney to create new work. Her artwork is held in major collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Wesfarmers Collection, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art and the Murdoch University Art Collection. Coates holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She is represented by Moore Contemporary.

Jo Darbyshire
Jo Darbyshire is a visual artist living in Walyalup (Fremantle). Primarily a painter, she works across a variety of platforms in the arts. Jo’s abstract paintings often explore a strong relationship with the WA coast, her interest in its underwater landscapes and traces of colonial life. In other projects – including the ‘Gay Museum’ at the WA Museum (2003) and her artist-in-residence collaboration with Nyoongar artist Andrea Williams in Lake Grace as part of SPACED’s Rural Utopias program (2023) – she incorporates ideas about the archive and contemporary social history. Jo holds a Master of Creative Arts in Cultural Heritage from Curtin University (2004) and exhibits with Art Collective WA. 

Jensine Datu
Jensine Datu is an Australian-Filipinx early career artist living and working on Whadjuk Noongar country. Their interdisciplinary practice draws on their personal experiences and everyday observations to highlight and observe underlying structures of hierarchy, power dynamics and hidden trauma. Through repetition and subversion, they process the emergence of intuitive self-healing in their work. In 2019 they graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from Curtin University and have been involved in group exhibitions at Cool Change Contemporary, Pig Melon and The Substation. They have undertaken residencies with Nod Space, Fremantle Arts Centre, Cool Change Contemporary and is currently taking part in Next Wave’s Kickstart Program.

Shanti Gelmi
Incorporating installation, sculpture, print and drawing, Shanti Gelmi delves into the intricate dynamics of human connection, identity and behaviour. Her works blend conceptual and process-driven techniques as she explores form and structure as a metaphor for interconnected existences, memory and experience. A first generation Australian of Indian migrants, Shanti often focuses on the struggle to preserve cultural heritage while assimilating into Australian society. She has a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts from Edith Cowan and is represented in the University’s Art Collection. Shanti was commissioned by Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts to develop her installation ‘Shadowed’ into a Virtual Reality experience in 2022, and her work is published in national and international art publications. 

Cass Lynch
Cass Lynch is a Koreng, Wudjari and Noongar woman and a descended from the families of Ravensthorpe in the Great Southern region. She is a writer and Research Fellow at Curtin University and has a PhD that explores Noongar stories that reference climate change. Cass is a member of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories group who focus on the revitalisation of culture and language connected to south coast Noongar people. She has published short stories, essays and poems, and her multimedia storytelling works have been featured at Perth Festival, Fremantle Biennale and more. Her Noongar language haikus won the 2019 Patricia Hackett Prize and her short story ‘Split’, a creative impression of deep time Perth, can be found in the publication Flock: First Nations Stories Then and Now (University QLD Press, 2021).

kelli mccluskey
with over 25 years of experience in contemporary experimental art, kelli is an award-winning artist who co-founded pvi collective in 1998 and is chief executive artist with the group. based in boorloo, she is a passionate advocate for emergent artforms and social practice, regularly speaking on national and international panels and symposia. kelli facilitates playfully participatory discussions on the critical role of art in society. in 2008 she co-initiated cia studios [centre for interdisciplinary arts] a perth-based incubator space for experimental practice that ran for ten years. in 2016 she co-founded australia’s first one-on-one live art festival, proximity festival. from 2012 – 2018 kelli served on the board of nava, australia’s peak lobby organisation advocating for the rights of artists and in 2016 received the prestigious ‘outstanding achievement in emerging and experimental arts’ award from the australia council for the arts for her work within the sector. 

Ilona McGuire
Ilona McGuire is a Bibbulmun Noongar and Kungarakan interdisciplinary artist. Her interest in all forms of creative expression manifests through culturally informed visual work, writing, music, dance and open artistic practice. Ilona centralizes the Indigenous experience of Australia’s ongoing systemic dysfunction by exploration of its historical, social and political impacts on her families and broader communities. Following her 2021 drone light show, Moombaki with the Fremantle Biennale, Ilona was awarded the Schenberg Art Commendation for Hatched: National Graduate Show 2022 and residency at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). In 2022, her work was exhibited at Fremantle Art Centre, Stala Contemporary, Goolugatup Heathcote Gallery, John Curtin Gallery and now in NSW for the National 4: Australian Art Now (2023).

Renée Newman
Renée Newman is an educator, performer, writer, dramaturg, director, and producer – or simply a performance maker. Her performance interests/credits include traditional narrative; co-authorship writing techniques; site-specific performance and audio (walking) performance; contemporary performance with historical verbatim text; and dramaturgy. Her current project is Catastrophes a new contemporary performance work with Ella Hetherington commissioned by PICA which will premiere in 2023. She is a lecturer at WAAPA at ECU, Course Coordinator of the Bachelor of Performing Arts Honours and current Associate Dean (Research) WAAPA.

Rachel Arianne Ogle
Rachel Arianne Ogle is a Western Australian dance artist with an extensive career as a dancer, performer, choreographer, educator and arts worker. Ogle has created work for Sydney Dance Company, Tasdance, Maya Dance Theatre (Singapore), Proximity Festival, Link Dance Company, WAAPA, Nat Cursio Company, STRUT Dance and STEPS Youth Dance Company. Ogle has been nominated for a Helpmann Award for ‘Best Dance Work’ and shortlisted for an Australian Dance Award for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance’ in 2015; and awarded ‘Best Choreographer’ in the Performing Arts WA Awards in 2020. Her latest work And The Earth Will Swallow Them Whole had its commissioned premiere in Perth Festival 2022. She is a 2022 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow.

Katt Osborne
Katt Osborne is an award-winning director and performance-maker. Her work explores stories and concepts that are messy, imperfect, heightened, surreal, playful and underpinned by a strong sense of musicality. Katt’s work as an independent artist has included works in a range of forms, including devised contemporary performance, new writing, cross-artform and hybrid performance, and directing plays, opera and musical theatre. In addition to her creative practice, Katt is also an established arts leader. Most recently, she led The Blue Room Theatre through the pandemic as Executive Director. In 2023, Katt was awarded a prestigious WA Business News 40under40 Award for entrepreneurship in the arts and cultural sector. 

Joshua Pether
Joshua Pether is of Kalkadoon heritage and lives and works on Noongar country in Western Australia. He is an experimental performance artist, ritual practitioner and choreographer of movement, temporary ritual and imagined realities. Joshua’s practice is influenced by his two cultural histories: indigeneity and disability, and their hybridization, with particular interest in the aesthetics of the disabled body and also that of the colonised body. Joshua’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and has been commissioned for various events and institutions such as the Undercover Artist Festival (AU), Yirramboi Festival (AU), Next Wave Festival (AU), APAM (AU), Short Cuts (AU), MoveMe Festival (AU), SuperCell Festival of Contemporary Dance (AU), In Situ (AU), The First Nations Dialogues in New York (US), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (AU), The Pickle Factory (IND), National Museum of Australia (AU) , RMIT Gallery (AU) and the Keir Choreographic Award (AU). 

Andrew Varano
Andrew Varano is an arts worker from Boorloo (Perth) on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar. Andrew has worked as a curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and delivered numerous touring, group and solo exhibitions, including Remedial Works, a major group exhibition he curated in 2017. Andrew also enjoys collaborating with others in the founding and running of independent gallery spaces and was a co-director of OK Gallery (2011 – 2013), a co-conspiracist with Pet Projects (2016 – 2017) and a board member and eventual treasurer of Cool Change Contemporary (2019 – 2020). He is currently a board member of Art on the Move and Gallery Director of sweet pea.

Annual Reports

2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006