Behind the Art

Michelle Taranto is a Queensland-based artist, based on Darumbal Country, who's vibrant, joy-filled practice celebrates colour, comfort, and the wonder of everyday life. Since establishing her Yeppoon home studio in 2021 under the name Arco Iris Interiors, she has developed a distinct visual language that embraces bold palettes, playful compositions, and a maximalist approach to both art and living.

Taranto’s paintings draw inspiration from her beloved dogs, her collection of tropical plants and cacti, and the coastal landscapes of Central Queensland. These influences often merge in unexpected ways—abstract botanicals intertwining with animal portraits, or whimsical roomscapes infused with humour and warmth. 

On the afternoon of the opening of Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi , Dr Melinda Mann has a yarn with Judy Watson one of the exhibiting artist's in the exhibition and Nathan Mudyi Sentance, RMOA First Nations Reference Group Chair.

Meanjin/Brisbane based artist, writer, and educator Sally Molloy's practice explores colonial pasts and presents as they relate to her everyday life through an open-ended engagement with Australian landscape painting history, the backyard, and popular culture. This framework provides a sweaty context for critique, loaded with the potential for meaning making, affect, and contemplation.Molloy works with painting, collage, sculpture, sound, and poetry often challenging the implied hierarchy of media with her strategically naïve aesthetic, humour, and enthusiasm for play. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she has contributed to large-scale public artworks in South-East and Regional Queensland.

Three generations of Darumbal women, Nhaya Nikki, Kristina Hatfield & LeLarnie Hatfield having a yarn to celebrate NAIDOC week, 50 years of Deadly.

Best known for her evocative self-portraiture and collaborative storytelling through Modor & Dohter, a creative partnership with her daughter, Hoare’s practice explores identity, transformation and the unseen labour of caregiving. Her body itself has become an archive, marked by lived experiences of motherhood, breast cancer survival, and self-expression including tattooing her own skin in sovereignty. Naomi has also delved into breastmilk archival, memorial jewellery and mural painting, layering both intimate and public forms of storytelling into her work. She frequently experiments with new materials and processes to deepen her ongoing commitment to witnessing, reclaiming and reimagining the stories of women and families.

Locust Jones is a contemporary, Australian artist. For over 20 years, Locust's practice has woven layers of stories and images that replicate the frenetic pace at which society consumes everyday news and current affairs, in a variety of mediums. Jones' exhibition, To Bear Witness  featured large scale vertical drawings cascading through RMOA’s Atrium Gallery. 18 October 2025 - 26 April 2026.

Michelle Hamer & Talitha Kennedy are two contemporary Australian artists. Hamer and Kennedy are part of a group exhibition titled Intimacy, on display at RMOA from 28 March - 5 July 2026.

In 2025 Sally Smart transformed RMOA’s Long Gallery, responding to the monumental yet intimate scale of this space through exploration of the legacies of theatre and visual art.

Shari O'Dwyer is an exhibiting Artist in the Cane exhibition. O'Dwyer's work is: It hangs over my head, it lurks in the shadows 2023, hand knotted sisal twine, private collection.

Cane is exhibiting at RMOA from 28 February - 21 June 2026

Right of Reply: a response to 'Cane' exhibition at RMOA 28 February 2026 - 21 June 2026.

Joella Warkill, Imelda Miller and Jacob McGuire in conversation with Dr Melinda Mann.