Circular Economies is an exhibition of new commissions by five local, national and international artists and collaborators, arising from a series of socially-embedded artist residencies that took place across regional Western Australia throughout 2024 to 2026. Spanning photography, video, textiles and installation, each artists’ work responds to a deep and considered engagement with both the community and the environment in which they undertook their residencies over this two-year period.
Throughout their regional residencies, artists were invited to engage with the unique social, cultural and ecological fabric of each place. The resulting site-responsive works reflect upon the unique experiences and local knowledge inherent within locations that, while geographically isolated, share a sense of resilience and resourcefulness. The exhibition invites audiences to consider the invisible systems of exchange that sustain regional life, such as reciprocal labour, shared memories, intergenerational knowledge and informal systems of exchange.
Regional Western Australia is influenced by its relationship to the extraction of resources and the export of agriculture and livestock, much of which flows from these rural areas to city and offshore locations. Circular Economies shifts this focus to less visible, often immaterial systems of exchange, encouraging audiences to consider how both tangible and intangible resources might intersect, diverge or coexist, and how these practices shape the identities of regional communities.
Circular Economies is presented through a partnership with PICA and SPACED. SPACED has been producing and commissioning context-responsive, socially engaged art projects and exchanges internationally and throughout Western Australia since 1998.
Circular Economies Artists and Communities
Susan Hauri-Downing & Tarsh Bates (Western Australia) and Beverley Station Arts, Beverley
Susan Hauri-Downing and Tarsh Bates collaborate on Scents of Solastalgia, a project which considers smell not only as a sensory experience but as a form of ecological memory. They explore how the smells around us change and how creating new smellscapes can foster a sense of agency and connection.
Scents are produced by and cycle through land, bodies, water, atmosphere and time. Hauri-Downing and Bates ask how smells connect us to place and how changes in smellscapes change connections to place. In consultation with community members and groups, they forage and scavenge stories and materials and through steam distillation collect scents of Beverley.
Susan Hauri-Downing works at the intersections of social work and artistic methodologies and practices. Her art practice focuses on biocultural diversity, ecological grief and loss and interspecies relationships. Hauri-Downing also facilitates connections with individuals and groups to explore ecological and social justice issues, providing safe spaces for art as therapy and creative eco-literacy.
Tarsh Bates is interested in the human as a queer ecology, the aesthetics of care and smell as interspecies communication. Bates has a PhD in Biological Art (2019) and was an Honorary Research Fellow at SymbioticA, UWA (2020- 2022).
Ilona McGuire and Zali Morgan (Western Australia) and North Midlands Project, Carnamah
First Nations artists Ilona McGuire and Zali Morgan come together to collaboratively consider the untold stories of Aboriginal communities in Carnamah and the surrounding areas.
Ilona McGuire, a Bibbulmun Noongar and Kungarakan artist, creates work that celebrates cultural identity and survival. Her practice focuses on healing, community building, and strengthening identity. Following the success of her work Moombaki at the Fremantle Biennale in 2021, McGuire was awarded the Schenberg Art Fellowship for Hatched at PICA in 2022. She has since exhibited in galleries including Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre; John Curtin Gallery, Perth; and Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney.
Zali Morgan is a Noongar woman with ancestral connections to Whadjuk, Balladong and Wilman Boodjar, based near Boorloo (Perth). Morgan’s multidisciplinary practice spans printmaking, textiles, sculpture, curating and writing. Often questioning notions of place, Morgan’s practice engages with decolonial art and discourse within Australia through both figurative and abstract representations of her surroundings and history. As both an artist and curator, Morgan has worked with significant institutions around Australia, including Bunbury Regional Art Gallery; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre; National Art School Galleries, Sydney and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.
Linda Tegg (Victoria) and Shire of Carnarvon, Carnarvon
For her project Situational Awareness, Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist Linda Tegg responds to the reactivation of the OTC Satellite Earth Station in Carnarvon.
Bringing awareness to intangible cultural resources, and challenging dominant narratives in space exploration, the project considers how this satellite system can connect communities to the world, yet also threaten vital Yingarrda cultural stories of astronomy with light pollution. Situational Awareness proposes a grounded alternative, imagining new narratives rooted in place, culture and interconnection.
Tegg is known for her immersive installations that explore the relationship between spectatorship, nature and the built environment. She has been widely exhibited in Australia, the US and Europe and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Melbourne. In 2024, she collaborated with Noongar elder Vivienne Hansen to create Wetland, a mass assembly of water and plants in a decommissioned food court, presented as part of Perth Festival. In 2018, Tegg was the Co-Creative Director, with Baracco+Wright Architects, of Repair at the 16th International Architecture Biennale in Venice.
Loren Kronemyer (Tasmania) and Cannery Arts, Esperance
Loren Kronemyer’s project Materiel World explores the paradox of weaponry as an expression of a circular economy, considering the nuanced ethics and logistics that apply to dangerous matter that circulates through the built environment. Through collaboration with sport-shooting specialists and the Esperance Pottery Club, she learned to recreate bullets, clay pigeons and parts of a working gun out of e-waste metals collected from the local community.
Kronemyer (born 1988, Los Angeles) is an artist living and working in regional lutruwita/Tasmania. Her interdisciplinary practice spans ecological futures, survival skills and experimental media, with a focus on collaboration and immersive research. Kronemyer received the first Masters of Biological Arts Degree from SymbioticA Lab at the University of Western Australia and has a PhD from the University of Tasmania. In addition to her solo practice, Kronemyer also works collaboratively with Ian Sinclair as Pony Express.
House of Natural Fiber (Indonesia) and Arts Narrogin, Narrogin
Pigment of the Earth, developed by House of Natural Fiber (HONF) members M. Haryo Hutomo and Irene Agrivina, explores the intersections between technology and nature through material explorations with natural pigment found in and around Narrogin.
HONF is a multi-disciplinary creative collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, known for its collaborative approach to technological development and its practical application in daily life. Focusing on community-driven, non-profit initiatives, HONF critiques and innovates in response to environmental and societal issues.
Living between Indonesia and Switzerland, M. Haryo Hutomo has an interdisciplinary practice with a focus on how art engages with the praxis of life; exploring the interaction between art, science, politics and human relation in both practical and aesthetic ways.
Irene Agrivina is a technologist and activist working closely with arts, science and technology, focusing on the practical application of collaborative, cross-disciplinary and technological actions in repsonse to social, cultural and environmental challenges.
About SPACED
The longest-running residency program in Australia, SPACED (formerly International Art Space) was established in 1998 by a team of farmers and art professionals to create a new context and audience for contemporary art, inviting artists to live and work in regional communities for extended periods. Its projects have engaged many of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists as well as international artists from across the world. SPACED is recognised for its unique work in creating new audiences for contemporary art and challenging artists to embed themselves in the social fabric of a regional area, creating meaningful and lasting relationships between communities and visiting artists who participate in community-led activities, creative collaborations and produce new works which contextualise local issues for global audiences. From 1998-2009 SPACED was based in the regional Wheatbelt town of Kellerberrin where it ran a gallery and residency space, with operations expanding in 2009 to embed residencies, commissions, mentorships, and workshops across the state alongside nationally touring exhibitions.
