Sydney Contemporary 2025.: Carriageworks

Thea Anamara Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist whose practice incorporates portraiture and landscape to question representations of First Nations peoples and Country. With a delicate hand, Thea answers heavy questions about what it means to be First Nations in contemporary Australia, and interrogates portrayal.

Thea’s middle name Anamara is an Arrernte word that describes a river and a Dreaming that runs north of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) – the place that keeps calling her back and has been the wellspring of art and activism for her family, and by extension, the nation. Perkins continues her family’s commitment to what she calls “strong and ready communication” and is part of an extraordinary dynasty of First Nations activists and creatives that includes activist Charles Perkins (her grandfather), Arrernte elder Hetti Perkins (her great-grandmother), curator Hetti Perkins (her mother) and acclaimed film director Rachel Perkins (her aunt).

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Blending childhood nostalgia with long-standing East Asian ceramic traditions, Chen applies his imagery to hand-thrown plates and vases, which are then fused with geometric patterns from traditional sources. The result is a cultural pastiche, and a dynamic conversation between traditional craft and contemporary perspective.

Casey’s recent work draws upon imagery and motifs from the archetypal tales of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber. His resulting works are both a self-exploration and an homage to the rich and enduring history of Chinese porcelain craft and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

Chen graduated from the National Art School in December 2020 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree majoring in ceramics, and was the recipient of the annual Harvey Galleries National Art School Exhibition award. Casey has been a finalist in numerous awards, and won the Muswellbrook Art Prize 2023.

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Louise Zhang is an Australian multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her practice investigates the interplay of aesthetics and cultural identity, often embracing contrasts to evoke a sense of otherness. Drawing inspiration from mythology and botany, Zhang weaves together symbols and motifs into compositions that balance harmony with dissonance.

Materially, her practice is highly considered, paying great attention to her choices in paint, she utilises the historical and instinctive associations of colour to create visual dichotomies from her subjects. In the sweeping visual landscapes of her work, the textural consideration of her paint creates windows into another world, some elements of her works are within our grasp and others remain deeper within. As a deconstruction of the world around her, she weaves together symbols from reality and memory, transforming them into something more lucid and surreal, documenting identity in the process of its own making.

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Joshua Charadia is a Sydney-based artist who explores the nature of consciousness and perception. He translates his photographs of the built environment and its inhabitants into paintings and drawings to reveal their latent visual complexity, capturing moments of the sublime in the everyday. His characteristic use of motion blur serves as an extended metaphor for our contemporary experience of the world, offering fleeting fragments of observation which oscillate between realism and abstraction.

Charadia won the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing in 2023, and has been a finalist in numerous art prizes, including the Jacaranda Drawing Award (2022), Sulman Prize (2020) and Dobell Drawing Prize (2021, 2019). In 2021 he was awarded the Fisher's Ghost Art Award South West Sydney Award, in 2020 he was awarded People’s Choice at the Adelaide Perry Prize, and in 2018 won 2nd place at the Belle ArtStart Prize. His works are held in the National Art School collection and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, & USA.

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Working as a collaborative duo since 2001, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro’s practice reflects a preoccupation with the dynamics of global mobility, fallout of consumer society, and contemporary notion of home.

Combining playful humour with art historical references, the duo transform prefabricated structures and readymade materials, from Lego and IKEA furniture to car parts and architectural fragments, into ambitious sculptures and installations defined by deconstruction and reinvention.

Winners of the Sulman Prize in 2022, Claire & Sean have exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. Their installation Life Span featured in Australia’s presentation at the 53rd Venice Biennale, and they have participated in major exhibitions including the Auckland Triennial, the Australian Biennial of Art, and the Oku-Noto Triennale, Japan. Their work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions across leading institutions in Australia, Europe, and the United States.

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