Advertise on podcast: Australian Women Artists

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 91 Helen Redmond    Helen Redmond’s journey into art is, like many others, an indirect one. She grew up on a rural property in southern Queensland, trained in journalism and interior design, and then spent 25 years at Vogue Living as a stylist, Interiors Editor and Senior Editor, including many years as Melbourne Editor. And then, mid-career, she made the brave decision to leave publishing and enrol at the National Art School in Sydney.   Her paintings depict architectural spaces and the light that falls within them — quiet corners, beckoning passageways, shafts and slivers of fading light — built up through the slow layering of translucent oil glazes.   She’s Inspired by architects and by the Japanese concept of ‘ma’, (which we spoke about), her work has been described as offering ‘an invitation to stillness’.   “In a painting landscape of violent colour and heaving texture she uses subtle tonalism. And in the face of purist abstraction she uses highly evocative forms that summon buildings/temples/walls.”     Helen is represented by Otomys and is currently in a group exhibition Vantage Point at 152 Jersey Rd Paddington until 25 October   Images supplied by Otomys   1.   HR 2.   Everything That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Oil on Canvas, 190x168cm 3.   Aquarii #13 (2022), oil on canvas, 61x 61cm 4.   Tsuro 6, Oil on Linen, 81.5 x 102cm,

Australian Women Artists  The podcast   Ep 90 Jude Rae   Jude Rae is one of Australia's most respected painters. She’s an artist who has spent over four decades looking very, very hard at the things most of us walk straight past — jars, bottles, gas cylinders, fire extinguishers, empty foyers — and turning them into paintings of extraordinary stillness and presence.  Jude was born in Sydney and was the daughter of realist painter David Rae. In fact, both her father and Grandmother trained at Julian Ashton Art School...and in 1968 Jude herself joined classes there. And, having done the sums, I calculated that she was 12 years old when this occurred! Jude went on to study art and architecture of the Renaissance at the University of Sydney and undertook postgraduate study at COFA and then spent over a decade in New Zealand where she completed a Masters at Canterbury University. NZ is, as a result, a place she calls her second home.  Jude has twice won the Portia Geach Memorial Award, she’s won the Bulgari Art Award in 2016, has been a four-time finalist in the Archibald Prize, three of those times being Highly Commended. Her portraits hang in Parliament House, the High Court and the National Portrait Gallery. And in 2025 she won the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has a very special place in the Australian art canon.     To hear our conversation, head to wherever you find your podcasts and search under Australian Women Artists...or head to the link in my bio.   Jude is represented by Philip Bacon Gallery in Brisbane and Two Rooms, Auckland NZ Images 1.   JR by Maria Stoljar courtesy JR 2.   SL 536, 2026 oil on linen (all paintings in these images are OOL) 71 x 61 3.   SL 464, 2022, 122 x 138 4.   SL 466, 2022, 112 x 138 5.   #540, 2026, 41 x 46 6.   SL 532, 2025, 41 x 46 7.   SL 527, 2026, 46 x 56

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 89 Louise Weaver   Louise Weaver’s superb work asks us to look at the natural world...a little differently.   She has spent much of her career exploring the relationship between nature, culture and our often-complicated attempts to represent the world around us.   Working across sculpture, installation, textiles, painting and mixed media, Louise is perhaps best known for her extraordinary reimagining of animals and the natural environment.   Her works can be playful and beautiful...and slightly disconcerting. They seem to ask questions about extinction, conservation and human intervention.  Her work is held in many significant public and private collections including the British Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, National Gallery of Australia, Monash University Collection, Melbourne, Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand and Artbank, Australia.    We are having this conversation in the Art Gallery of NSW where Louise has works in two significant exhibitions: 1.   the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial; and 2.   Super Nature.   Louise is represented by @darrenknightgallery   Images supplied by LW and AGNSW 1.   LW 2.   Taking a chance on love, 2003 3.   It would seem that eyes can live without hearts (Oracle Fox), 2005 4.   From the House of Fabius Rufus, 2008 5.   Rogue Antler, 2007 6.   Standing wave resonance, 2025 7.   Rocking stone (to become the sea), 2025

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 88 Emily Ferretti    Emily Ferretti is a Melbourne-based painter whose still-life and landscape images move between representation and abstraction. The importance of feeling and emotion becomes obvious looking at her work.   She grew up on a property in country Victoria, trained at the Victorian College of the Arts, and has since built a career via residencies at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and Greene Street Studio in New York.   Her monotype series Shifting Landscapes saw her selected as a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and this year she begins a new chapter with representation at Chalk Horse in Sydney, alongside her long-standing gallery, Sophie Gannon, in Melbourne.  We spoke about a number of things. I was particularly interested in the evolution of her subject matter and the importance of her experience at TAFE before she got to VCA, how she ensured her momentum was maintained even just after leaving art college, the collegiate atmosphere amongst other artists and how that propelled her forward. Also the surprising affect a residency in Paris had on her art. It was surprising to me anyway. We also discussed how she broke into representation by a gallery (Sophie Gannon).     To hear our conversation head to wherever you get your podcasts and search Australian Women Artists.    Emily is represented by Sophie Gannon in Melbourne and Chalk Horse in Sydney     Images  1.   EF via Chalk Horse website 2.   Afternoon Light, 2025 ink and watercolour on paper 107 x 77.5 (Finalist R & M McGivern Prize, 2026)

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 87 Sally Ross   Sally Ross is an intellectually captivating painter who works between hypnotic landscapes and psychological portraiture.   Sally has spent over three decades developing a distinctive visual language defined by flattened, patterned surfaces, cool palettes, and a deep dialogue with art history.   After eight formative years living in France, (amongst other things, running an artists’ squat in an abandoned seventeenth-century hospice) and exhibiting across Europe and America, she returned to Melbourne to establish a studio practice.   A six-time Archibald Prize finalist whose portrait The Huxleys was selected for the historic Archie 100 tour.   Sally has work held in major public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Portrait Gallery.  But it’s the experiences and lessons she’s learnt along the way that were absorbing to me...and no doubt would be valuable to those artists starting their journey. An enjoyable conversation. She’s fabulous.     Head to wherever you get your podcasts and search Australian Women Artists.    Sally is represented by Smith & Singer, Melbourne & Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney   Images 1.   SR by Mel Savage 2.   Autoportrait, 2021 (Archibald finalist) oil on board 130 x 110 3&4 The Huxleys, 2018 (Archibald finalist) oil on wood panel 130x110 5. SR with the Huxleys 6. Riverbed grevillea, 2025, oil on board, 130 x 110

Australian Women Artists  The podcast   Ep 86 Elizabeth Barnett     Elizabeth Barnett is a painter and printmaker who also utilises textiles and pottery. Her still life and interior paintings have become instantly recognisable — plant-filled nooks, stacked books, jugs and vases, all rendered in a distinct palette that reflects the season.   She has a deep reverence for the everyday. From her early training in the rigorous world of printmaking to lush, translucent paintings on stretched linen, and eventually to thickly layered oil works in her bushland studio.   She is also an incredible community builder, having co-founded Melbourne's iconic Schoolhouse Studios, a massive, not-for-profit creative hub.   Today, working from her home studio in the Macedon Ranges, Elizabeth continues to celebrate the gentle, wondrous beauty of daily life while acting as a passionate advocate for female representation in the arts.  “Her subjects do not sit flat upon the canvas, but instead reach up from it, enlivened by the wild and natural world. This liveliness belies the ‘stillness’ of still life painting and along with Barnett’s painterly gestures of shadow, line and colour creates a visual dynamism reaches beyond tradition.”     To have a listen to our conversation, head to the link in my bio or search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.    Elizabeth is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne.      Images supplied by artists   1.   EB 2.   Nocturne Arrangement 2026 oil on linen 215 x 153 3.   Floribunda and Gwen 2026 oil on linen 81 x 91 4.   Nocturne 2024 oil on linen 153 x 122 5 & 6 installation shots

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 85 Nell   Nell is one of Australia's most distinctive contemporary artists, working across painting, sculpture, performance, video and installation.  She has spent three decades building a visual language shaped by rock 'n' roll, Buddhist philosophy and religious iconography. Smiley faces, lightning bolts, ghosts, tears and eggs recur throughout her art and help create works that have been described as playful, insightful and poetic.  Her work explores the binaries of human existence – birth and death, sorrow and happiness, light and dark.  It’s a fascinating story and, with 300+ exhibitions to consider, I’ve had the unenviable task of choosing just a few to discuss without minimising the others otherwise we’d be still chatting well into 2027! ‘Nell has developed a unique visual language that traverses scale, medium and materiality. Regardless of the outcome, her work explores oppositional thresholds and the fertile space that exist beyond the binary: from intimate to immersive, found to fabricated, high to low culture, two-dimensions to three-dimensions, individual to collaborative, ancient to contemporary, sacred to profane.... At the heart of Nell’s practice is an offering of connection and companionship; a reminder that we are not alone.’ Station Gallery (representing Nell).   To have a listen to our conversation, head to my bio or search ‘Australian Women Artists’ wherever you normally find your podcasts.       Images    1.    Holding Both, 2026, Museum of Contemporary Art, Photo Anna Kucera 2.    Let There Be Robe, 2011, Museum of Old and New Art, Photo Rémi Chauvin 3.    ROCK GATE, 2019, Carriageworks, Photo Zan Wimberley 4.    Nell x Colin McCahon: Through the Wall of Birth and Death, 2024, Dowse Art           Museum, Photo Sam Hartnett 5.    Face Everything, 2025-26, Heide Modern, Photo Christo Crocker 6+7. NELL ANNE QUILT, 2020-24, Photo Jenni Carter

Australian Women Artists  The podcast  Ep 84 Chelsea Gustafsson    Chelsea Gustafsson is an artist whose work invites us to look closer at the quiet, often overlooked items of our daily lives—transforming mass-produced objects, ornaments, and domestic clutter into highly detailed, deeply metaphorical still lifes.   Her paintings are incredibly beautiful, but they also carry a sharp undercurrent of modern anxiety, apathy, and ecological grief.   From her early beginnings influenced by 3D sculptors to painting on her dining table, Chelsea has built a formidable practice that has seen her work acquired by the City of Melbourne, celebrated as a finalist in the prestigious Kennedy Prize, and exhibited internationally in Berlin. And very recently, she was selected for the celebrated Salon des Refusés at the S.H. Ervin Gallery.  “I like to play with objects and textures that don’t necessarily sit well together naturally. Through the process of constructing items into a sculptural form and twisting or balancing them to find their sweet spot for a composition and watching how the light falls and reflects across them, they begin to gel as a single form and a beauty emerges.”     Head to my bio and follow the link to our podcast conversation...or search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.   Chelsea is represented by: Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne Penny Contemporary, Hobart Michael Reid Berlin   Images 1.   CG supplied by artist 2.   Self Portrait, 2026, Oil on board (all works on these images are OOB) 30 x 40 3.   Lobster, 2025, 15 x 20 4.   Surfcoast Highway, 2019, 15 x 20 5.   Mint, 2020, 40 x 50 6.   Tasmanian Tigers, 2024 22 x 30 7.   Trophy 01, 2022, 15 x 20

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 83 Nicole Kelly   Nicole Kelly is one of contemporary Australia’s most sensitive and intellectually rigorous painters, working beautifully across landscape, portraiture, and still life.  She creates deeply evocative, expressive oil works that challenge the very mechanics of how we represent, and perhaps try to own, the Australian landscape. In fact, it would probably be fair to say that she is an artist who's spent nearly two decades quietly ‘unsettling’ one of Australia's oldest genres. Since graduating from the National Art School and winning the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Nicole has built a formidable practice defined by evolving technical processes and academic rigour.   She’s been a finalist in a number of awards and has also won significant prizes including her recently winning the prestigious Evelyn Chapman Art Award. She will utilise that to study Nordic painting traditions. And we need to discuss that of course.  Her paintings pull you in with glowing colour and soft, pliable brushwork, then quietly remind you that no landscape is ever just scenery. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections.   A really enjoyable conversation and to hear it, head to the link in my bio or search ‘Australian Women Artists’ wherever you find your podcasts.      You can find more information about Nicole at her website: www.nicolerenaekelly.com Nicole is represented by Nicholas Thomson Gallery, Melbourne (@nicholasthompsongallery) Art House Gallery, Sydney (@arthousegallery)     Images 1.   NK via Nicholas Thompson Gallery 2.   Jumaadi + Clouds + Rain, 2017 oil on polyester (all paintings on this list are OOP), 150 x 130 3.   Rain Inscribed Lines, 2024, 169 x 198 4.   Bird Hour, 2026, 117 x 107 5.   Dance of March Flies, 2024, 138 x 167 6.   Waiting for the Sun, 2026, 122 x 153

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 82 Kirsten Coelho     Kirsten Coelho’s importance lies partly in how she actually expands the language of Australian ceramics. Kirsten is one of Australia’s leading contemporary ceramic artists, known for almost ethereal porcelain vessels that sit between the functional and the sculptural. Her works in porcelain are “creating functional forms and vessels of other-worldly perfection that fuse the formal with the abstract.”  Her work is shaped by the history of ceramics, architectural surfaces, and a deep interest in how ordinary objects carry memory and cultural meaning and it’s grounded in international ceramic history. But it also speaks to distinctly Australian conditions: light, landscape, domestic life, and the material traces of settler history. And we discuss that in our lovely languid conversation.  Kirsten’s work is exhibited extensively internationally, and she has won significant awards, including the prestigious Sidney Myer Ceramic Award, the City of Hobart Art Prize and the Josephine Ulrick Ceramic Award. Her work is represented in numerous institutional collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.   Kirsten is represented by Sullivan Strumpf NSW + Singapore, Philip Bacon Galleries Qld, Adrian Sassoon UK London, The Scottish Gallery UK Edinburgh.    @kirsten_coelho_  @sullivanstrumpf @philipbacongalleries @adrian_sassoon_gallery @scottishgallery           Images supplied by artist   1.   KC by Daniel Noone 2.   Horizon, image by Grant Hancock 3.   Pillar, image by Grant Hancock 4.   Ithaca, image by Grant Hancock

Australian Women Artists The podcast    Ep 81 Jenna Lee   Jenna Lee is an artist whose work invites us to slow down and reconsider the stories hidden within the words and objects we often take for granted.  A Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Irish and Scottish heritage, Jenna has developed a remarkable practice that works across sculpture, installation, paper, photography and moving image.  She transforms books, archives and printed texts into beautiful and thought-provoking artworks that ask important questions...including who gets to tell history.  Jenna's work has been recognised through numerous awards, including the 2024 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the 2023 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (Emerging Artist), the 2020 Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), the 2019 Dreaming Award presented by Creative Australia. She was even one of 5 shortlisted artists for the Venice Biennale for 2026.  Jenna Lee has developed a unique and valuable artistic voice. Jenna is represented by Mars Gallery, and some of her available works can be found at https://marsgallery.com.au/jenna-lee/ More works and info can be also be found at https://jennalee.art/about Images 1 JL image by Anna Katsanevas 2 Instalation view of JL & Kojima Shouten's Balarr (To become light) 2023 3 White Grass Trees 1-3, 2021, pages of 'Aboriginal words and place names' bookbind thread, organic cotton thread, florist wire, glue, bookcover board 119, base 20 x 23 to 39 x 38 4 from HIStory Vessels exhibition, 2020, deconstructed pages of the Ladybird history book, 'The Story of Captain Cook' 5 To make light together 03, 2023, digital photograph 51 x 66 Just wanted to also drop a quick note here that I will be taking a few weeks off after this is published and wanted to say a heartfelt thanks for everyone’s support and encouragement thus far. I've enjoyed this immensely. I’ll be back in a few weeks with some very exciting guests and projects.

Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 80 Tonee Messiah   I think it would be fair to say that Tonee Messiah’s work asks questions of you.    It asks that you stand in front and notice how you feel. Her paintings have been described by her as living in the landscape of the mind.    Tonee Messiah was born in Israel and spent her childhood moving between a kibbutz and coastal Australia, finally settling in Sydney at eleven.    That experience of perpetual transition — of never quite arriving — became the foundation of one of the most quietly original painting practices in the country.    She has a bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours from Sydney College of the Arts and a Masters of Fine Art from UNSW. Her work has entered the collections of Artbank and the Monash University Museum of Art, she collaborated with fashion label Gorman in 2022, and that same year won the Waverley Art Prize. She teaches painting at UNSW Art and Design and the National Art School.   Tonee is represented by @nicholasthompsongallery Images 1. TM 2. A Fabricated Reflection, 2025 oil on poly cotton 122 x102 3. Essential Sensitivities, 2025, oil on poly cotton 102 x 76 4. Constructive Beliefs, 2025 oil on poly cotton 102 x 76 5. Slight Reposition on a Soft Decision, 2025 oil on poly cotton 122 x 107

Australian Women Artists The podcast Ep 79 Leah Thiessen    Leah Thiessen is a painter whose work is deeply shaped by place, memory, and the living energy of the landscape around her.  Leah has spent close to two decades turning a very special place in Northern NSW into one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary Australian painting.  But she didn't start there. She began her creative life in fashion design, before retraining through a fine arts diploma, and, much later, a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Southern Cross University.  In 2008 Leah left Sydney's Northern Beaches for the Northern Rivers region, and it was there that her real subject found her.  Her practice is both intuitive and deeply observant. Working through mark-making, scraping back, and layers of paint, Leah builds surfaces that feel alive with movement and feeling. Her paintings seem to capture the spirit of a place. She's now represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Despard Gallery in Hobart, and Lethbridge Gallery in Brisbane, with solo shows including Broadwater, Biome, and her most recent exhibition, Rustling Canopy. She's been twice named in the Top 100 Collectable Artists. ‘The course of painting is a primal impulse to mark. It is a physical and emotional experience. I paint in an expressive and gestural way capturing the force and energy of a place. I create a visceral experience through the use of mark making and the application of paint. My paintings are process driven and it is only through the act of painting over, scraping back and drawing into, that my work is resolved.’   Head to the link in my bio to hear the episode or search Australian Women Artists wherever you get your podcasts.  Leah is represented by @flinderslanegallery, @despardgallery, @lethbridgegallery   Images of Leah's work to follow in the next post...

Australian Women Artists  The podcast   Ep. 78 Evie Adasal Evie Adasal is an artist whose practice has evolved — from photography and film through to painting, from direct landscape observation toward a more conceptually layered engagement with the environment.   She brings an unusually layered visual intelligence to her painting practice. Her work is rooted in abstraction, drawn from the cultivated landscapes of public gardens and urban green spaces, and built through a process of slow, meditative looking and careful, beautiful layering of colour.  She continues to push the boundaries of how landscapes can be interpreted through abstraction.   Evie’s work ‘navigates the delicate balance between order and spontaneity, restraint and vibrancy. Her palette reflects this tension, as she moves between subtlety and intensity, bringing together elements that are both harmonious and disruptive’.  For the past three years, she has also been awarded a number of shortlistings, including in prestigious national prizes such as the National Emerging Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Award, Hawkesbury Art Prize and the Georges River Art Prize, while winning the Anthea Polson Gallery Award at the Paddington Art Prize in 2023 and she’s very recently had a successful exhibition at Olsen Gallery in Sydney.     Evie is represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney (@olsen_gallery) and can be seen from Sept 26 at @sydneycontemporary     For some available works copy and paste link below into your browser:  https://www.olsengallery.com/exhibition/evie-adasal/     Images 1.   EA by Brett East 2.   I never promised you a Rose Garden, 2024, 180 x 150 (all paintings on carousel are synthetic polymer on poly cotton) 3.   D-XI, 2026, 120 x 130 4.   D-I, 2026, 120 x 130 5.   D-X, 2026, 130 x 140 6.   D-XV, 2026, 60 x 60

Australian Women Artists  The podcast   Ep 77 Dani McKenzie    Dani McKenzie’s story begins, unusually, not in an art school studio but in a bedroom — where, after a formative trip through Europe and a chance encounter with the work of Belgian painter Michaël Borremans, she spent six months teaching herself to paint.  That instinct and passion carried her into the National Art School in Sydney, where she completed both her undergraduate and Master of Fine Art degrees, and where her enduring fascination with photography — memory, privacy, and the lives of strangers — first took shape. Early in her career, Dani worked from found photographs, creating imaginative worlds conjured from those images. But it was the ubiquitous disruptions of 2020 that changed everything. Forced to slow down, she began walking her own neighbourhood in inner-Melbourne, photographing it at night, and turning her lens — quite literally — on her own life and surroundings.  The results are a stunning body of work. Paintings of glowing windows, quiet streets, and private moments caught in public space, executed with a photographic precision that somehow still feels deeply human. Dani is represented by PIERMARQ Gallery, Sydney, MARS Gallery, Melbourne and Long Story Short Gallery (Los Angeles, Paris, New York) and has held solo exhibitions in Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney and Melbourne. Dani mentions being influenced by Clarice Beckett. You could copy and paste this link into your browser to hear a conversation I had with Jennifer Higgie on Clarice: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/australian-women-artists/id1794012822?i=1000695950466 Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to our conversation. Alternatively, search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.    Images 1.   DM image supplied by artist 2.   Waiting For You, 2022, oil & acrylic on linen  3.   Waiting for Gelato, 2021, oil on masonite  4.   That Little Italian Place on the Corner, 2022, oil & acrylic on linen  5.   Room With a View, 2023 oil & acrylic on linen  6.   Closing Time I, 2023, oil & acrylic on board  7.   Date Night, 2024, oil & acrylic on linen  8.   The Final Hour, 2025, oil & acrylic on linen