Primrose Park Artists' Studios

North Sydney Council supports artists to develop their professional art practice by providing six low cost shared studio spaces at Primrose Park Arts Centre, Matora Lane (off Young Street), Cremorne for a 12-month period.

Council requests that the selected studio artists share their creative practice with the community, adding to the cultural life of North Sydney, through an active and engaging Public Program of open days, exhibitions, workshops and artist talks. 

Applications for 2024/2025 tenancies will open April 2024.

Current Artists in Residence

Shahroud Ghahani

Shahroud an Iranian-Australian artist who holds a Master of Arts at the University of New South Wales, Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication) and a Graduate Diploma (New Media) from the University of Technology Sydney. With twenty years of work as a designer, Shahroud has won awards for her contributions to illustration, design and digital media in Sydney and abroad. Shahroud’s artworks bridge together rich images from disparate cultures and her experiences of them. Her practice explores representations of the female body and themes of beauty, the grotesque, and identity within Eastern and Western traditions. Her art is also inspired by explorations of metaphysical subjects. She interweaves dreamscapes, liminal and imaginary spaces, displaced objects and allegorical imagery.

Shahroud has had her work exhibited in galleries across Sydney including First Draft exhibition in 2023.  She is a finalist for the 2023 Grace Cossington Smith Biennal Art award, 2023 Gosford Art Prize, 2022 and 2023 Fisher's Ghost Art Prize, 2023Flow , Contemporary Art Prize  Arts in the Valley Art Prize, 2021 Hawkesbury Art Prize, and a finalist for the 2018 and 2019 Kudos Emerging Artist Award.

Toshiko Oiyama

For Toshiko, drawing is a way of asking questions that cannot be answered in words. One question she has been asking is what it means for all things to be in a constant state of transience. She explores the fundamental nature of transience that also contains, paradoxically, the unchanging law that governs everything in the physical universe. Using free-flowing ink, thread as drawing media, and systemic grid made of pinhole punctures, she experiments with the interaction between the 2D surface of paper and the 3D effects of punctures and threads.

Born in Japan, Toshiko subsequently lived and worked as a graphic designer in Holland, the USA, Indonesia, Singapore and New Zealand before settling in Australia. She is a winner of Tim Olsen Drawing Prize, and has been a finalist in Dobell Drawing Prize, Hazelhurst Art on Paper, Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, and Kedumba Drawing Award. She holds a PhD and a Masters degree in fine art from the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts (COFA, now Art and Design UNSW). Toshiko lectures in drawing at National Art School.

Frances O’Rourke

Frances’ primary focus is to capture the splendour of the uncontained  surrounding landscape. The cerebral connections to area, feeling the slightest of changes as they occurred in real time. Experiencing this subtle evolution guided her into a meditative headspace where she allowed the land to lead her in making decisions on structure, marks and colour to express the movement and gravity of the area. holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School and Certificate of Floristry from Pearson School of Floristry. and held a solo exhibition at  (Northern Beaches)

Beth Radford

Beth creates complex hard-edge geometric paintings that refer to the inherent systems that govern the natural world. With a Bachelor of Science (Mathematics) and a Bachelor of Arts (Religious Studies), the University of Sydney, Beth unites her interests to create pieces that are intended to be both intellectual explorations of form and symmetry, as well as objects of contemplative focus

Beth is curious about the relationship between order and beauty. The natural world is intricately ordered, full of pattern and progression, symmetry and sequence, repetition and replication. Yet it is also chaotic and unpredictable due to the incalculable number of influences and interactions that affect existence. Her paintings always begin with a highly structured pattern, most recently she has endeavoured to create patterns that imply movement and fluidity. These patterns are coloured in such a way as to heighten their kinetic effect.

Dr Katie Williams

Artist and academic, Katie Williams completed her PhD at Sydney College of the Arts in 2017. Katie’s practice is focused on socially-engaged works that employ forms of performance, installation, painting and film. Often incorporating audience action as the living material of her work to create a space for thought and questioning around cultural forms, authenticity, and agency. Katie has exhibited in Australia at galleries such as Art Gallery of NSW, Roslyn Oxley Gallery 9, Town Hall Gallery Melbourne and at multiple ARIs including Peloton, MOP and Alaska. She has worked and exhibited internationally at the Banff Centre of the Arts in Alberta Canada, The Prague Quadrennial of Performance, Design and Space, at the London Transart Triennale.

About the studio spaces

This shared spaces consist of two separate artist studios located on the upper level and lower level of Primrose Park Arts Centre. 

• the upper studio accommodates four artists
• lower level accommodates two artists. 
• the upper and lower level studios are not connected and entry is from two distinct areas
• each space has a trestle table and chair and small storage cabinet

Shared facilities include

• small kitchenette
• unisex bathroom
• accessible access
• small lounge area on the upper level
• professional gallery hanging system on the upper level

The studios can be accessed seven days a week between the hours of 7am and 9pm. Overnight stay is not permitted.