About Me

Hello! I am a visual artist and disability activist based in Naarm/Melbourne, on the lands of the Kulin nation. My arts practice encompasses printmaking, street art and a community art practice. I identify as a proud queer disabled artist (she/they) and use my experience of a 22-year-old brain injury to investigate Disabled culture, community, identity and pride. My work is also informed by the fast-changing urban industrial landscapes of Melbourne’s West, to investigate ideas of belonging, place, healing and change.

 

My visual arts practice began in my mid 30s after a brain injury at 29 rearranged my talents. I completed a Diploma in Visual Arts (CAE) in 2010, with some further printmaking studies at RMIT. Since 2006, I have been exhibiting in galleries and streets across Victoria and nationally/internationally through many Print Exchanges. My street art, that investigates my daily ritual of performing handstands, a key part of my disability self-management, has been exhibited at the Arts Centre Melbourne and the Warrnambool Art Gallery.

 

For almost two decades, I have been involved in the Self-Advocacy and Disability Justice movements, leading and collaborating on many community and arts projects, with organisations such as Arts Access Victoria and Footscray Community Arts Centre.  In 2018/19, I led Brain Injury Matters, Australia’s leading ABI self-advocacy group, to create ABI Wise, the world’s first app made by and for people with brain injury. Between 2014-2017, I was a key member of Dangerous Deeds, a traveling multimedia exhibition, presenting a snapshot of the Victorian Disability Rights movement alongside self-advocacy workshops.

In 2017, I was the creative producer of Australia’s first Disability Pride murals, leading 50 disabled artists to collaborate on a large scale paste up mural. One of these was dramatically thrown into the media spotlight after it was destroyed a week later on International Day of Disabled People. This Disability Pride mural was reinstalled as part of the 2018 Melbourne Fringe Festival. I have since produced several more public disability pride themed murals as well as a short film that documents that first infamous mural, that was screened at several film festivals in 2019. 

I currently sit on the board of Arts Access Australia, as well as on several arts/disability advisory committees. I occasionally deliver arts workshops and self-advocacy training, as well as speak on public panels.

 

 

I live, work and make art on the unceded sovereign lands of the BoonWurrung and the WoiWurrung people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging, as well as Elders from First Nations across this country and beyond. I recognise the impacts of colonisation, genocide and dispossession, and stand in solidarity with the unfinished struggle for justice in so called Australia.