HIDDEN Footscray

Meet the Artists

• David Hourigan

  

  David Hourigan produces miniature art inspired by the suburbs of Melbourne. He aims to capture the overlooked, the inconsequential, the quirky and the derelict urban scenes of Melbourne and surrounds. Hourigan spent twenty years as a graphic designer and art director, before walking away from the corporate world to work as an artist full time in late 2018. His love of typography and advertising influences his choice of subject matter, with many of his miniatures featuring abandoned shop fronts and decades old signs.

• Deb Bain-King

  

  Deb Bain-King has worked as a collaborative and solo artist for the last 13 years exhibiting with galleries at Monash, RMIT, ACCA and a range of private and artist-run spaces in Melbourne. Deb has wide experience with projects in public space. Her practice as an artist engaged with social issues has lead to time in Israel, the US, the UK, Vietnam, Scotland, India, and China. She has worked with projection and street based performance, often in combination. The use of performance has led onto an interest in public ceremony, ritual, women’s psychological space, and their displacement and connection to place. Deb was on the committee of Trocadero Art Space in Footscray for a number of years and ran The Front Art Space, part of a Renew Australia project in the Docklands precinct for two years. She is now Public Liaison Officer for Little.No BIG gallery in Footscray. Deb has a Masters in Fine Art from Monash University and a Graduate Diploma in Art in Public Space from RMIT.

• Jody Haines

  

  Jody Haines is a photo-media artist based in Melbourne, Victoria. By approaching photography as a social practice, Jody collaboratively focuses on identity, representation, and the female gaze, from a de-colonial feminist perspective. Applying her social practice approach to photography, Jody has been commissioned to collaborate with local communities across Australia, producing work for festivals and programs, including Women Dreaming Project (Gold Coast Commonwealth Games), Our people Our place (Horizons Festival), and #IAMWOMAN an ongoing relational photographic series. Jody is a PhD candidate at RMIT School of Art and lives and works on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples, she is a descendant of the Tommeginner people (Northwest Tasmania).

• Kerrie Poliness

  

  Kerrie Poliness is a Melbourne-based artist and a resident of Footscray (1995). Since 1985 she has exhibited extensively in Australia and elsewhere, her works are present in public and private collections around Australia. She co-founded and managed the artist initiatives Store 5 gallery (1989-91) with Gary Wilson and Melinda Harper and Circular magazine (1993 – 2000) with Marco Fusinato. Poliness has carried out various architectural, cultural, heritage and environmental projects in collaboration with a wide range of groups and individuals, a number in association with Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West (1993 -2007; 2010-2021) where she coordinates the arts programs and residencies with Matthew Davis. Kerrie is on the board of West Space (2014 -2021) and completed a PhD with the Centre for Ideas at the VCA, University of Melbourne (2019).

  Represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

• Jason Waterhouse

  

  Over the last twenty years, Jason Waterhouse has been applying his malleable skills to public commissions, installation and drawing, articulating his poetic relationship to the world by warping and manipulating utilitarian objects. Advocating a non-elitist form of art making, Waterhouse thrives on altering spaces and objects through a strong craft sensibility combined with the Western idea of the ready-made. Jason Waterhouse’s practice plays with autobiographic notions of contemporary Australian identity and he is widely known for playfully manipulating tools, cars, sheds and other cultural signifiers.

• Felicity Watson

  

  Felicity Watson is a writer, urbanist, and keen photographer. As a heritage advocate with more than 15 years of experience in the cultural heritage sector, Felicity’s professional work encompasses the observation, documentation, and interpretation of the histories and cultural values that are embedded in the places that we navigate in our day to day lives.

• Dr John Weldon (Catalogue Essayist)

  Associate Professor Dr John Weldon

  Head of Curriculum

  First Year College

  Victoria University