What are you looking at?

Hannah Foley, Reece Nicoloau, Elise Romaszko and Maggie Jeffries question and consider different formats and approaches to exhibiting art — sharing their experiences on ways that white box gallery norms can be challenged, subverted or completely removed.

Hannah Foley is a Nipaluna-based artist and researcher. Her practice spans performance, installation, and participatory frameworks, often creating conditions for encounters rather than discrete objects. Hannah’s work is shaped by long-term, site-responsive engagements that treat place as an active collaborator — materially, socially, and more-than-human. Alongside her independent practice, Hannah works as a curator and arts worker, presenting projects across diverse sites. She worked with offsite artist run initiative Constance ARI for six years, most recently serving as Co-Chair of the board.

Reece Aaron Nicolaou (b.1997) is an artist working across sculpture, digital media, objects and text to engage with and critique the aesthetics, behaviours and emotions of contemporary online culture. Drawn to the beautifully disgusting ways we exist across digital and physical space simultaneously, his work interrogates the platforms and systems of power designed to lock us in — while also holding space for the connectivity, love and humour that exist within them.

Elise Romaszko is a Nipaluna/Hobart-based artist, performer, poet and emerging director whose multidisciplinary practice moves effortlessly between movement, sound, text and visual form. A long-time collaborator with Second Echo Ensemble, Elise’s work is lyrical, bold, and grounded in embodied storytelling. She has appeared in and directed numerous SEE works and is now charting a new creative horizon with What the Stars Remember, a project born of curiosity, invitation and radical listening.

A core artist with Second Echo Ensemble since 2006, Elise has performed in works including; If I Jumped I’d Fly, This Much of Me, The Company I Keep, Rite of Spring, Contested Land, Let Me Dry Your Eyes, and On Display Global. She directed The BEAUTY Project, a community-engaged work commissioned by Ten Days on the Island, an international arts festival. Elise’s practice foregrounds listening as an artistic method and values lived experience as creative authority.

Elise recently took part in the curation of [Let The] Art Speak, an anonymous exhibition by Second Echo Ensemble. This experiment challenged gallery expectations and promoted radical equity in the arts by removing all labels.

Maggie Jeffries is an emerging artist from Lutruwita/Tasmania, based in Nipaluna/Hobart. Inspired by a sense of childhood wonder, her botanical oil paintings explore the nature of remembering by layering plants, shadows and light. Central to her creative practice is a fascination with the detail found in our natural world. Maggie’s paintings are intended to become documentations of her experience, reminiscent of the ways she would explore as a child.

Maggie has exhibited her work in Lutruwita /Tasmania at Despard Gallery, and works closely with Second Echo Ensemble as both an independent artist and collaborator. Artist residencies include California, United States, Paris, France and locally on King Island, Queenstown and Glover Country. Maggie's practice moves between independent painting and working in collaboration with other artists in performance, installation, sculpture and wearable art design. Maggie recently took part in the curation of [Let The] Art Speak, an anonymous exhibition by Second Echo Ensemble. This experiment challenged gallery expectations and promoted radical equity in the arts, by removing all labels.

Bec Stevens and Stephanie Doddridge tell us about their creative practices and how their experiences and understanding of gardening, ecological systems and community have shaped the way that they make art. Together, they deep dive into a conversation which covers how creative practice can intersect with everything from seed collecting to compost heaps.

Stephanie Doddridge is an emerging artist working on Kaurna Country. Stephanie engages with garden-derived materials, plants and seeds to understand human-nature relationships, notions of reciprocal care and quiet activism.

Stephanie completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (First Class Honours) at the University of South Australia in 2022, receiving an Award for Outstanding Achievement. She won the City Rural Emerging Artist Award for SALA Festival 2023, was selected to undertake the Guildhouse Collections Project with FUMA in 2024 and has also exhibited at PICA, Feltspace, and ACE. 

Stephanie was the Project Curator for the Helpmann Academy 2025 Graduate Exhibition in SASA Gallery and is currently undertaking the ACE Studios Residency. 

Bec Stevens is an artist based in Nipaluna. She works with an interdisciplinary practice and is currently on a long-term residency in the Tasmanian health system, working with the stories and connections that arise from a bespoke three-tiered garden on a trolley.

Bec and Steph reference some books in this chat:

The Planetary Garden by Gilles Clement

The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith 

Down the Garden Path: The Artist's Garden After Modernism  Edited by Smith, Liese, Ammirati

Starting at the intersecting point of culinary and creative practice, Haneen Mahmood Martin and Caitlin Fargher discuss how an arts practice can be productive medium to unpack lineage and familial history, talk models of curatorial care and explore what it can look like to hold space for different experiences.

This episode was hosted by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie and produced by Honor Marino. What are you looking at? Is presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Haneen Mahmood Martin is a Kuala Lumpur born, Malay-Saudi multi-arts manager and programmer, writer, and artist who has worked extensively nationally and internationally, especially between Garramilla/Darwin, Narrm/Melbourne, Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide, and Malaysia. She works with a focus on best-practice engagement and ethical governance as it pertains to underrepresented migrant and PoC communities and building sustained relationships. Haneen is currently the General Manager of Corrugated Iron Youth Arts and has worked across the country and across art forms as a producer for the likes of Performing Lines, RISING, Biennale of Sydney, MPavilion, Regional Arts Australia and Next Wave, as a programmer as the inaugural Artistic Associate at Brown’s Mart, Manager of the National Young Writers Festival, and General Manager for Skinnyfish Music. Keeping a close eye on cultural advocacy and change at a national and international level, Haneen co-wrote the Engage! Report and Toolkit published by Contemporary Asian Australian Performance and Arts on Tour and holds an MFA (Cultural Leadership) at NIDA. She also manages a directory for Malay and Malaysian creatives in Australia and hosts the Sayang-Sayang Supper Club from her home.

https://haneenmartin.com/

https://www.instagram.com/haneenmmartin/

Caitlin Fargher is a multi-disciplinary artist and budding arts educator working in sculptural installation, arts production and curation. Caitlin lives near the bush and rivulet in Kingston. Her work is created through an embodied practice that explores histories, sites, ecologies, and memories.  She collects materials responsibly from the environments that her works are informed by, including clay, flora, recycled objects, and minerals. Her methods of making are informed by gardening and cooking techniques, environmental systems, and family traditions. When working with people, she enacts a practice of care, trust, and creativity, allowing the people she works alongside to guide the collaborative, imaginative art making process, learning to together to create experimental and expressive moments in time.  

Caitlin’s current projects include a solo exhibition at Devonport Regional Gallery, being one of the lead artists for The Future of Toys: Youngies and Oldies (Hobart City Council x Good Grief Studios), and resident at Poatina Arts Centre in 2024. She undertook the Art Farm Birch’s Bay’s Perennial Residency program in 2023 culminating in the children’s workshop IMAGINATION IRRIGATION; Watch this Space ARI's Travelling Artist Program in mparntwe/Alice Springs in 2021; as well as being Artist in Residence at Hadley's Orient Hotel in 2020 which culminated in the installation Sweet Water. She was the Contemporary Art Tasmania Curatorial Mentorship recipient in 2020 with her exhibition re-member. She was a Board Member and producer at Constance ARI from 2018-2024, initating projects such as ngayapi niyakara (Born to Dream), and was the treasurer of Good Grief Studios from 2019-2025 working on programming, events and community engagement. Caitlin studied at UNSW Art & Design, finishing with First Class Honours in Visual Arts in 2017, and in 2022 she began her Masters of Teaching (Secondary, Arts) at UTAS to further her interest in Art Education. From 2025 she will work as an art teacher at Elizabeth College.

https://www.caitlinfargher.com/

https://www.instagram.com/caitfar/

This episode of What Are You Looking At? is a series of conversations with artists Noah Johnson, Lila Meleisea and Justene Williams focussing on how the use of certain materials influence and inform their artistic practice.⁠

Produced and hosted by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie for Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Noah Johnson⁠ is a black multidisciplinary artist, born in Lutruwita (Hobart). They first began painting as a way to visually represent their creative mind and their roots to their African American culture which paved the way for their love of fashion and consequently sewing & design. Noah runs a fashion label DERECYCLER, an upcycling slow fashion label which came to fruition when they were 16 years old. Their values lie in sustainability and story telling through their textile art while they use a mixture of simple to intricate design choices to convey that.

⁠Lila Meleisea⁠ has an interdisciplinary and social practice that places equal importance on both process and outcome. She is a conscious collaborator with others (human, plants, animals, cosmos) holding an understanding of balance and the importance of reciprocity. Using cultural research, community engagement, music, art and curiosity, she is a nurturer, teacher and advocate for holistic relationships between humans and the earth and environmental awareness.

⁠Justene Williams⁠ emerged in the 1990s as an exponent of Sydney’s grunge culture. Since 2016, she has led multidisciplinary teams to create spectacular, often large-scale, long-format live works. Now she returns to an earlier form of ‘poor art’, using a ‘make-do’ ethos and revisiting ideas of labour. Collapsing personal narratives, consumer culture and mythology whilst channelling the spirits of art history, she finds inspiration from figures such as her father and his auto recycling yard and Santa Claus, celebrating the avant-garde dream of the total artwork whilst deconstructing and communicating with a 21st century body. Justene attempts to transform the everyday via action, energy, and emotion.Field recordings and music used in this episode is provided courtesy of Lila Meleisea. In order of appearance: (1) FOREST: MANUMEA featuring Dr Ulf Beichle: Field recording of Manumea call and Lila Meleisea - Fagufagu (2) SIAPO MAKING SOUNDS: Scraping (3) Lota Nu’u (Music: Mata’utia Pene Solomona, Words: Rev. James E. Newell (LMS Missionary), Tune Name: Samoana (Initiated by Elder Dr. Elia Ta’ase @ Pouesi DMA Recital 1992). Performed by Suga

This episode of What Are You Looking At? is a table conversation with Zara Sully, Pete Marseveen and Nour Abdullatif about the relationship between art and money, initially focussing on fundraising but then expanding to explore other facets.

Zara Sully (they/them) is an artist, arts worker, curator, and researcher and director of Sawtooth ARI in Launceston, Lutruwita/Tasmania.

Peter Marseveen (he/him) is a photographic artist, arts technician and activist based in Nipaluna/Hobart.

Nour Abdullatif (she/they) is founder and director of Unassigned Gallery in Naarm/Melbourne. 

This episode is hosted and produced by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie. What Are You Looking At? is presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania

This episode of What Are You Looking At? is a table conversation with Jade Lillie, Andy Hutson and Aunty Cheryl Mundy Trimanya, reflecting on collaboration and community engaged practice.

Andy Hutson is a visual artist based in Nipaluna/Hobart and is the lead initiator and artist for the project Apologue Isle, which first exhibited at Contemporary Art Tasmania in 2024 and is, at the time of the episode release, showing at Burnie Regional Gallery.

Aunty Cheryl Mundy Trimanya is a singer/songwriter, cultural educator, sculptor, and poet and is one of 34 collaborators on Apologue Isle as a set designer and maker and narrator for the piece The Sun, the Moon and the Caterpillar. 

Jade Lillie commissioned and curated ‘The Relationship is the Project’ — a resource book which has 40 different lived experience practitioners contributing insights about community engaged practice.

This episode is hosted and produced by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie. What Are You Looking At? is presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania

Links: 

https://www.apologueisle.com/cheryl-mundy 

http://apologueisle.com/

https://www.burniearts.net/Exhibitions/2025-Exhibits/Apologue-Isle

https://andyhutson.com/

https://www.jadelillie.com/

https://unsw.press/books/the-relationship-is-the-project/

This episode of What Are You Looking At? explores zines and zine culture, reflecting on the Contemporary Art Tasmania 2024 end of year exhibition, Paper Trail. 

Lead artists, Miranda Rogers, Jess Bateman and Leigh Rigozzi speak about the community building nature of zine-making and how zine culture is often based in sharing ideas and creating connections.

This episode contains readings and excerpts from zines exhibited in Paper Trail by Beatrix, Fran Reeve, Niamh Marriott, Niccola Mudge, Siobhan Marriott and Timothy Hodge, narrated by producer Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie.

Also included are readings and reflections from Paper Trail exhibition contributors Jade Irvine, Luke Cruddas and Tim Butcher.

This episode also contains an excerpt from the Edge Radio broadcast of Xpress Radio which used their collaborative zine, created under the guidance of lead Paper Trail artist, Julia Drouhin, as a script to design their broadcast. Soundscapes and music are also provided by Xpress Radio, borrowing from an earlier work, Aquanebula, exhibited at Moonah Arts Centre in 2024.

This episode was produced by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie.

Xpress Radio: ⁠https://www.edgeradio.org.au/shows/x-press-radio/⁠

Small Press Zine Fair: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/smallpresszines/⁠

Miranda Rogers: https://www.⁠instagram.com/miranda_h_rogers/⁠

Leigh Rigozzi: https://www.instagram.com/leighrigozzi/

Jess Bateman: https://www.instagram.com/jessbateman_/

Julia Drouhin: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/julia_drouhin/⁠

Reflecting on Embraced in the Loving Arms of An Algorithm – v1.1 — curated by Jon Smeathers for Contemporary Art Tasmania in April 2024 — Sophie Penkethman-Young and Jon speak about intersections of their practices, algorithmic displacement and intervention and how care, cute and trust can be present in algorithm augmented curatorial models.

This episode is hosted and edited by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie and produced by Lisa Campbell-Smith for Contemporary Art Tasmania. 

A conversation with Leyla Stevens and Melanie Lane, reflecting on Balinese and Javanese dance, diasporic bodies working within and from traditional stories in contemporary practice, and the intersections of cultural knowledge and choreography.

This episode was hosted by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie and produced and edited by Lisa Campbell-Smith for Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Sound courtesy of the artist, Leyla Stevens from the artwork 'Patiwangi, death of fragrance', 2021

Leyla Stevens: https://leylastevens.com/

Melanie Lane: https://melanielane.info/

For her final episode of What are you looking at? podcast Pip Stafford talks to Nadia Refaei, Alex Kelly, and Amy Spiers, asking them: What *can* art do?This episode explores how art can contribute to social change in the world. Nadia talks about the importance of exploring political identity through her work, Alex discusses how artists can collaborate with or contribute to social movements, while Amy shares how her work aims to highlight some of Australia's history of colonial violence. They emphasise that art can help unravel complex topics, tell stories, imagine futures, inspire conversations and act as a resistance tool, challenging ingrained structures and systems of thought.

This episode was produced, edited and hosted by Pip Stafford for Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Alex Kelly: https://echotango.org/ | https://unquiet.com.au

Nadia Refaei: https://www.nadiarefaei.com | https://www.instagram.com/tpanlutruwita/

Amy Spiers: https://amyspiers.com.au/Zoe Samudzi: https://www.zoesamudzi.com/