22 January 2026
At the stunning South Australian School of Art (SASA) Gallery the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition 2026 brings together the work of 21 outstanding graduating artists from Adelaide University* and Flinders University.
The Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition has a long history of being a launch pad for the next generation of artistic talent in our state. Spanning ceramics, glass, moving image, installation, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and textiles, This year’s exhibition works speak to bold ideas, technical mastery and the distinctive voices shaping the future of contemporary practice.
Our VIP Vernissage event, on Wednesday 11 February, offers an early opportunity to experience these new works at this pivotal moment in each emerging artist’s journey. The evening brings together artists, industry leaders, supporters, and art lovers for a vibrant celebration of contemporary visual art practice.
At the exhibitions official Opening Night, on Thursday 12 February, 12 awards valued at $62,000 will be presented, recognising excellence across the exhibition. These awards play a vital role in launching artistic careers and creating meaningful professional opportunities. The exhibition is open to the public from Friday 13 February to Saturday 21 March 2026.
With the support of Associate Curator at Samstag Museum of Art, Anna Zagala, and Graduate Exhibition 2026 Project Curator, Crista Bradshaw, this exhibition connects emerging artists with collectors, curators and the wider community, opening doors to future opportunities and professional growth.
“This exhibition offers an intimate snapshot of emerging practice in South Australia. It reveals artists who are technically accomplished and deeply thoughtful about how and why they make work. As these graduates step beyond study and into their professional practices, the exhibition marks both a culmination and a beginning – defined by care, curiosity, and a commitment to making meaning through material and experience.“
Crista Bradshaw, Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition 2026 Project Curator
A career in visual arts is a dynamic path towards self-expression and the chance to create meaningful work that helps make sense of the time in which we live. The Helpmann Academy’s aim is to develop connections and avenues that support successful and sustainable careers, and to champion emerging creatives as they make the transition from study to professional practice.
“The Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition is a vital platform presenting the remarkable talent and innovative spirits of South Australia’s emerging artists. This exhibition of contemporary art is both a celebration and an opportunity for emerging artists to build meaningful connections within the arts community as they head into professional creative careers.“
Jason Smith, Director, Art Gallery of South Australia
Congratulations to the following artists who have been selected to exhibit their works.
ANN GILLESPIE @claybodies_ | Flinders University
Unseen/Undone, 2025 | Photo: Crista Bradshaw
Ann Gillespie is an emerging Australian contemporary artist whose practice is shaped by lived experiences of care. Using sculptural ceramics, installation, and performance in her work, Unseen/Undone, she invites audience participation to mirror the cyclical, unseen, and feminised labour of unpaid care. Her durational processes of making and remaking are reflective of care’s ongoing, unresolved nature.
CHARLIE MCINTYRE @itsprobablycharlie | University of South Australia
Abscission/In all my deciduous, 2025 | Photo: Supplied by artist
Charlie McIntyre is an emerging contemporary artist and folk musician, whose interdisciplinary practice explores memory, time, and nature through mixed media, monotype printmaking with botanicals, and songwriting. In Abscission / In all my deciduous, she uses leaves, video, and sound as metaphors for the fleeting nature of memory, embedding fragments of her writing within layered works that reflect how memories form, persist, and fade.
EDEN LILLEY @edenlil | Flinders University
The Sum of Me, 2025 | Photo: Crista Bradshaw
Eden Lilley is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice draws on diverse cultural, spiritual, and political influences to explore intersections of myth, religion, feminism, gender, and belief. Her series The Sum of Me examines disability and identity, inviting viewers to engage with the works collectively to recognise the complexity of personhood beyond medical diagnosis.
ELLIS MOSELEY @ellismosley | Flinders University
Axio 1, Axio 2, 2025| Photo: Michael Haines
Ellis Moseley is a sculptor and installation artist whose practice uses thin, overlapping porcelain forms to explore the aesthetic experience of individual consciousness. His works Axio 1 and Axio 2, part of the larger installation Where is my Mind?, invite viewers to introspect on their own consciousness, drawing on philosophical propositions that consciousness itself can be a site of aesthetic experience.
ELSA BAILES @madebyelsab | University of South Australia
Welcome, 2025 | Photo: James Field
Elsa Bailes is an emerging Adelaide-based visual artist whose practice explores comfort, memory, and time through clay and textiles inspired by her home and its history. In Welcome and Chimney from the Home, as I remember it series, she pairs large-scale crochet with terracotta vessels to evoke the textures and emotional resonance of domestic space, inviting viewers to reflect on how memories of home are shaped and sustained.
EMBER SATYN @embersatyn | University of South Australia
In Parallel I, In Parallel II (Reverse), 2025 | Photo: supplied by artist
Ember Satyn is an emerging contemporary glass artist whose practice uses mould-blown glass cast from their own body to explore texture, form, and the transformation of the body from personal subject to sculptural object. In In Parallel, subtly varied glass elbow forms use transparency, colour, and surface finish to create uncanny familiarity and invite viewers to reconsider how material qualities shape perception of the human form.
FRANKIE ACACIA @frankie.acacia | Flinders University
nettle memory, 2025 | Photo: Crista Bradshaw
Frankie Acacia is a non-binary artist and emerging creative producer and curator whose practice uses printmaking, bookbinding, and installation to explore alternative, embodied archives that centre feeling, ephemerality, and lived experience within queer and marginalised communities. In nettle memory, community-sourced videos are projected onto a flesh-like paper screed made from stinging nettles, creating a fragile yet hopeful archive of collective queer experience beyond institutional record.
JASMINE STRACHAN @capturedbyjaz_ | Flinders University
Track 10, 2025 | Photo: supplied by artist
Jasmine Strachan is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography and painting drawing inspiration from music and live performance. In Track 10, a triptych of digital photographs, she captures the fleeting energy of live shows through vibrant colour and motion, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the atmosphere and project their own memories onto the scenes.
JESSE THOMPSON @inventory_no.5_jesse | University of South Australia
Unbinding, 2025 | Photo: James Field
Jesse Thomson is a painter whose intuitive, layered oil paintings blend subtle surrealist influences with figurative imagery to create atmospheric scenes that balance the familiar and the imaginative. In Unbinding, a woman’s departure from a tightly ordered landscape symbolises a quiet shift toward uncertainty and authenticity, with the painting’s visible layers mirroring themes of transition, imperfection, and self-directed change.
KARLA HITCHCOCK @karla_hitchcock_art_ | University of South Australia
When She Loved Me, 2025 | Photo: James Field
Karla Hitchcock is an emerging artist whose ceramics and textiles explore sustainability, gender, and shared life experiences, combining texture and form to evoke care, identity, and nostalgia. In the installation, When She Loved Me, she transforms traditional face jugs into ceramic oil lamps inspired by childhood comfort objects, using playful textures and exaggerated features to reflect life transitions, self-comfort, and the awkwardness of growth.
KATEY WATHERSTON @artistryof.k | University of South Australia
You’ll Always Have a Place to Call Home, 2025 | Photo: James Field
Katey Watherston is an emerging artist working with painting and textiles to explore memory, nostalgia, and identity, blending intimate scenes with surreal and playful imagery. In You’ll Always Have a Place to Call Home, she uses an acrylic mirror and a child’s cubby house to reflect on the passage of time, inviting viewers to engage with both the artwork and their own reflections on childhood and growing up.
LISA CROWDER @li_sacrowder_art | University of South Australia
Hanging Garden, 2025 | Photo: James Field
Lisa is an emerging contemporary artist whose practice has evolved from painting to sculptural textile installations that explore human relationships with the planet in the Anthropocene. In Hanging Garden, she applies her “tending” methodology—slow, responsive, and experimental engagement with materials—to repurposed hessian, using repeated immersion, weaving, and botanical pigments to highlight resilience, ecological repair, and the power of reciprocal connection.
LOREN ORSILLO @lorenorsillo| University of South Australia
Shield Assemblage, 2025 | Photo: Sam Roberts
Loren Orsillo is a contemporary artist whose cross-disciplinary practice combines painting, assemblage, sculpture, and site-specific work, driven by material exploration and close-looking. In Shield Assemblage (2025), she transforms a conventional hanging system into a suspended, elaborated composition of metal and concrete, defamiliarising function and exploring new possibilities through playful material experimentation.
MELODIE DING @draft_no_1 | Flinders University
Nocturne of Gold – A/W 26 of Xuan, 2025 | Photo: supplied by artist
Melodie is a fashion designer whose work blends bold colour, cultural storytelling, and sustainable practices, transforming natural and recycled materials into expressive, wearable art. Her outfit Nocturne of Gold from the collection 玄 (Xuan)
merges Eastern and Western influences—from Chinese Kung Fu films to European art history—while exploring hidden beauty and sustainability through layered silk and chenille garments crafted from recycled materials.
MITCH HEARN @mitchographer | University of South Australia
Another State, 2025 | Photo: supplied by artist
Mitch Hearn is a mixed media animator and illustrator whose character-driven work explores connection and the surreal through a variety of integrated animation techniques. Another State demonstrates how hybrid, experimental animation—using paper-based media like oil pastel, pen, and coloured pencil—can authentically convey emotions such as sadness, intimacy, and joy.
NATALYA BOUJENKO @natalyaboujenko| Flinders University
Roots in two lands, 2025 | Photo: supplied by artist
Natalya Boujenko is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work across painting, photography, jewellery, and installation explores memory, displacement, and human connection to nature, informed by her experiences of migration from Ukraine. Roots in Two Lands uses photography and painted oyster shells with cultural motifs to reflect on how migrant identity evolves, layering inherited traditions with new experiences to explore belonging, resilience, and the fusion of heritage in unfamiliar lands.
NIKOLAI SHEREMETEV @sher3metev | Flinders University
Catherine de Medici, 2025 | Photo: Crista Bradshaw
Nikolai James de Sierra-Sheremetev is an emerging artist working in linocut, watercolour, and fine line ink, whose practice explores history, culture, and the intersections of power, gender, and queer identity by highlighting marginalized perspectives. His series Hated Queens, including Catherine de Medici, reinterprets historical portrayals of controversial female rulers through linocut prints, challenging patriarchal narratives and offering a more nuanced visual account of their lives and legacies.
RU PEEK_BURNS @ruubenstein.art| University of South Australia
Iusus naturae, 2025 | Photo: supplied by artist
Ru Peek-Burns is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the uncanny and the macabre. Iusus naturae (Freak of Nature) challenges viewers to confront discomfort and reflect on mortality by presenting a grotesque, unnatural amalgamation of human features that evokes Freudian notions of the uncanny through the tension between the familiar and the deformed.
SHARON CAPRIOTTI @sharoncapriottiartist | Flinders University
Eat Me, 2025| Photo: Sam Roberts
Sharon Capriotti is an emerging artist whose work, inspired by her frontline healthcare experiences and feminist themes, explores the complexities of human emotion and womanhood through printmaking, cast paper pulp, and textile art. Her series Eat Me uses repurposed fabrics to create symbolic representations of the female vulva that challenge patriarchal norms, celebrate feminine power, and reclaim the female body from objectification.
STEVE SOEFFKY @soeffky | University of South Australia
Together, 2025| Photo: supplied by artist
Steve Soeffky is a designer and furniture maker focused on sustainable practice, creating work that combines bold aesthetics, timber, and clean design while minimizing environmental impact. Working Together repurposes a discarded boardroom table into two contrasting desks—Working, unfinished to reveal its past, and Together, refined to appear new. The work reflects the contemporary shift from shared physical meetings to isolated online workspaces.
TALI KOTO @tali_koto_| Flinders University
Sentinels, 2025 | Photo: Sam Roberts
Tali Koto is an Anglo-Australian/Fijian artist whose ceramics, drawing, and mixed media explore connection, belonging, and the complexities of dual cultural identities, weaving together ancient and contemporary traditions. Sentinels is a clay form imbued with personal and cultural gestures, incorporating materials and techniques from both Fijian and Australian heritage to reflect complex lineages and the ongoing act of remembering.
ABOUT HELPMANN ACADEMY
The only organisation of its kind in Australia, Helpmann Academy empowers South Australia’s most promising emerging creatives to achieve their visions and build sustainable practices. Helpmann provides professional development opportunities including grants, awards, fellowships, mentorships, masterclasses, workshops, and artist residencies, tailored to South Australia’s tertiary education graduates and emerging artists. Helpmann Academy is a unique collaborative partnership, unifying the skills and resources of the state’s universities.
We warmly acknowledge Adelaide University, SASA Gallery and Flinders University for their ongoing partnership, and extend our gratitude to the selection and awards panels for their considered and courageous choices. Most importantly, we thank you for being part of this exhibition and supporting emerging artists at a pivotal moment in their creative careers.
The Helpmann Academy also gratefully acknowledges the support of the following partners:
MAJOR EVENT PARTNER
Lang Family Foundation
PRESENTING PARTNER
Adelaide University
EVENT PARTNER
Grigori Wines
FEATURING GRADUATES FROM
The Project Curator Mentorship 2026 is made possible by the City of Adelaide.
*Throughout this news release there is reference to both the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia (UniSA). These are two of the universities that some of the artists will graduate from, which have now combined strengths to form the new Adelaide University – which opened in January 2026.