Gillian Kayrooz
Gillian Kayrooz's art practice was nurtured on unceded Dharug land in Guildford, Western Sydney. She now lives and works between Gadigal and Dharug land. In 2018, she received the Create NSW Young Creative Leaders Fellowship, leading to international exhibitions in the Asia-Pacific and residencies in China and Japan. She was a studio artist at Parramatta Artist Studios (2020–2021) and Co-Director of Firstdraft (2021–2023). In 2024 she was announced as the recipient of the Create NSW x Artspace Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship. In 2025, Kayrooz will embark on her Fellowship program, attending the 16th Sharjah Biennale in the UAE, where she will expand her connections to the South-East Asia and North Africa regions. As part of the program, she will engage in mentorships with Khaled Sabsabi and Joanne Saad. She will also develop an image-led project in collaboration with Campbelltown Arts Centre and the Arab Image Centre in Beirut. Additionally, she will participate in mentorship residencies through the UTP Counterflows project in Bankstown with Tania El-Khoury and with Leyla Stevens as part of the Hyphenated Starter Pack residency project in Melbourne.
Marikit Santiago
Marikit Santiago’s practice signally focuses on overlaying her lived Filipina-Australian experience onto the canon of Western art history. Her work is unquestionably personal (compositions depict her family and are made with her children) and undeniably courageous (self-portraits are neither idealized nor stylized).
Santiago’s paintings are simultaneously humble in materials (oil paint on recycled cardboard) and abundant in content (biblical narratives often reframe Marikit as Eve, her husband Shawn as Adam and her children as grappling with temptation and sin in the Garden of Eden).
By combining the narrative power of Catholicism with her first-person account of bare life, Santiago’s emotionally-charged works call into question the preconceived dualities of utopia and dystopia, control and transgression, duty and autonomy, sex and sexual difference, paradise and exile.
Santiago’s practice is dedicated to her children — a love letter to both her family, her culture, Australia, and figuration. While the experience of motherhood is individual and unique, Santiago’s work presents motherhood as a universal and inclusive platform, simultaneously unifying the experiences of many and revealing her personal bond with her children.
Marikit Santiago (b. Melbourne, 1985) lives and works in Parramatta, Sydney, Australia. She won the prestigious Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery New South Wales in 2020 and was a three-time finalist for the institution’s Archibald Prize (2016, 2021, 2023). In 2024, she was announced as the recipient of the La Prairie Art Award, in which her work A Seat at the Table (Magulang) and A Seat at the Table (Kapatid) (2023) was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Her work has been the subject of numerous solo institutional exhibitions including The kingdom, the power, Bendigo Art Gallery (2023), We Eat This Bread, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, Fairfield (2022 - 2023), and For Us Sinners, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Haymarket (2022).
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
Ramesh is a contemporary artist interested in global histories and languages of figurative representation. He explores politics relating to idolatry, the monument, gender, race and religion with specific references to South Asian forms and imagery. While he is best known for his inventive approach to ceramic media, his material vernacular is broad. He has presented diverse works in museums, festivals, multi-art centres and the public domain. This has included significant presentations at the National Gallery of Australia, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Dhaka Art Summit, Art Basel Hong Kong and Dark Mofo festival.