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Ash Tower

Hyper Local Residency 

Hyper Local Residency 

Ash Tower has recently returned to Boorloo (Perth) following a year-long residency at the British School at Rome. He will use his Hyper Local residency at PICA to continue his enquiry into church architecture, divination and historic accounts of stellar events. 

Tower will utilise the studio as both a workspace and the site of an installation, constructing and documenting a work over the course of the residency period. Assembled from scavenged and recycled materials, the installation will take the form of a shrine or temple, reflecting the architecture of spiritual fervour whilst undermining the typically excessive and ornate materiality of church architecture. In doing so, Tower critiques the enduring influence of imperial and enlightenment ideals in Australia, exposing the colonial foundations that still shape its cultural and institutional structures. 

About the artist

Ash Tower (he/him) is an artist and researcher now working on Whadjuk Country in Western Australia. He is a Samstag Scholar (2024–25), a Churchie Emerging Art Prize Finalist (2023) and an ACE Studio Resident (2022). He recently returned from a fellowship at the British School at Rome, and he has exhibited internationally, notably in Italy and Japan. In 2019, Tower received a Ph.D. by Research from the School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia, after graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours), from the Adelaide Central School of Art in 2014. 

Supporters

PICA’s Studio Program is supported by PICA’s Art Ambassadors.