Del Kathryn Barton
One of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists, Del Kathryn Barton lives and works in Sydney on Gadigal Land. Through painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, textiles and moving image, Barton creates richly imagined worlds characterised by intricate pattern and saturated colour. Many of Barton’s paintings are focused on the female body, often surrounded by an abundance of flowers, fruit and other symbols of femininity, fertility and motherhood. Portraiture forms an important part of her broader practice, with subjects transformed through the elaborate visual worlds she creates.
Barton graduated from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1993, and is a two-time winner of the Archibald Prize. Her major survey exhibition, The Highway is a Disco, opened at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017. Her work has increasingly expanded into moving image, including The Nightingale and the Rose (2015), RED (2016) and her first feature length Blaze (2022).
Emily Hunt
Based in Berlin since 2017, Sydney-born Emily Hunt works across ceramics, drawing, painting, etching and sculpture. Drawing on histories of ornament, magic, folklore and the grotesque, she creates intricate worlds populated by fantastical figures and objects that seem to move between historical and imagined realities. Hunt approaches ornament both as a visual language and a symbolic system, capable of carrying ideas and alternate modes of knowledge. Her research into rare books and print culture informs her engagement with Renaissance imagery, occult philosophy and traditions of magical and esoteric thought.
Hunt studied at Sydney College of the Arts and Sint-Lucas Beeldende Kunst Gent in Belgium. Her work was included in Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2014, and Second sight: Witchcraft, Ritual and Power at the University of Queensland Art Museum in 2019. In 2024 she presented her first solo exhibition, The Grotto, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Jess Johnson
Born in Tauranga, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and now living in Roswell, New Mexico, Jess Johnson’s artistic practice centres on worldbuilding. Beginning with drawing and extending into installation, animation, virtual reality, fashion and textiles, Johnson has developed a complex fictional universe of humanoid figures, alien symbology and elaborate architectural spaces. Influenced by science fiction, technology and ideas of consciousness, her imagery appears at once ancient and futuristic. Drawing remains the generative foundation of her work, providing the visual language from which her immersive physical and virtual environments emerge.
Johnson completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch in 2001. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. In 2018, Johnson and collaborator Simon Ward premiered TERMINUS, a major five-part virtual reality commission at the National Gallery of Australia.
