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2026 Artists and collectives
Meet the 2026 cohort of artists and collectives selected for North Sydney Council's Creative Studios, Spaces and Residencies program.
The 2026 cohort represents a wide range of disciplines and career stages. Highlights include award-winning painter Marie Mansfield, conceptual installation artist Bernadette Facer, fibre artist Catriona Pollard, interdisciplinary artist Yanti Peng, emerging artists Bella Abel, Richard Trang and Anisha Sawaid, drawing-based artist Belinda Yee and the eco-arts collective Tree Veneration Society. A dedicated First Nations residency at Alfred Street brings together Emma Hicks, Nathan mudyi Sentance and Jodie Dowd to run workshops and share cultural knowledge with the community.
Over the coming year, residents will engage audiences in hands-on activities, explore site-specific projects inspired by North Sydney’s landscapes, and showcase work reflecting the diverse creative talent supported by the program.
Photo: Jacquie Manning
Anisha Sawaid
Anisha Sawaid is an emerging designer based on Gadigal land. Weaving forms the core of her practice, examining the slow, meticulous craft and its links to nature, culture and technology. Her recent works reimagine traditional weaving techniques and motifs through a more technological lens by utilising code to translate data sets. This new dialogue between ancestral practices and digital systems offers space for hands-on experimentation and new discoveries.
Her upcoming research and body of works begin to dive into her Bedouin-Palestinian heritage to strengthen the diasporic connection with her cultural identity and family roots. As her practice evolves, Anisha continues to ground her work in design thinking and strengthen technical skills in the weaving practice.
Learn more: www.anishasawaid.squarespace.com
Anisha will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Belinda Yee
Belinda Yee lives and works on Gadigal land where her drawing practice is expanded through poetry and sculpture, sound and performance – ways of holding presence through trace, line and duration. Conceptually led and materially grounded, her work reflects on acts of witnessing, memory and resistance. Yee holds an MFA (Drawing) from the National Art School, a BVA (Painting) from Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney), and a Bachelor of Industrial Design (Honours) from the University of Canberra.
She has exhibited in Australia, Hong Kong, the UK, and France, with works held in the collections of the National Art School, Tamworth Regional Gallery and Capella Sydney. A finalist in the National Works on Paper, Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, and Hadley’s Art Prize amongst others.
Yee is a director at DRAW Space gallery, founder of DRAWSTORE and has a curatorial practice focused on experimental drawing.
Learn more: www.belindayee.com
Belinda will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Bella Abel
Bella Abel is a mixed-media artist working between painting, sculpture, and drawing. Using saturated colour, humour, and heavily textured surfaces, her practice explores identity, belonging, and the emotional contradictions that sit beneath everyday self-presentation. She is drawn to moments where control feels fragile, and where internal feeling and outward appearance fall out of sync.
Working with acrylic paint, clay, recycled plastics, fabric, and found objects, Abel builds raised, dimensional surfaces that blur the boundary between painting and sculpture. Her visual language draws on Papua New Guinean art and carving traditions alongside Australian urban and coastal landscapes, combining flat graphic forms with sculptural relief. Humour and absurdity are central to her work, allowing difficult or darker themes to remain accessible and emotionally legible. Through drawing and observation, Abel exaggerates gesture and posture, often using urban animals as stand-ins for people.
These figures offer playful yet pointed reflections on vulnerability, adaptation, and shared environments.
Learn more: www.instagram.com/bell_a_bel/
Bella will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Bernadette Facer
Bernadette Facer is a conceptual installation and paper artist from Aotearoa, creating abstract landscapes through screenprint, found objects, and native timbers. Her installations offer critical commentary on water management in New Zealand and Australia, addressing the degradation of waterways caused by industrial farming practices.
Drawing influence from the sombre and contemplative black protest paintings of Hone Papita Raukura "Ralph" Hotere, Facer's artistic practice centres on the representation of braided rivers as shadow water or ata wai. Through black-on-black printing methods, her works serve as dual representations of memory and resource depletion, reflecting the environmental challenges of Waitara (Canterbury), the agricultural district from which she originates and the Darling Baarka river (Menindee, Australia).
This distinctive approach creates layered visual narratives that speak to both the physical presence and absence of water, inviting viewers to consider the ongoing impacts on our precious waterways and Ecosystems.
Learn more: www.paper-and-light.com
Bernadette will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Catriona Pollard
Catriona Pollard is a contemporary artist who uses traditional fibre techniques to transform foraged plant fibres and recycled metals into evocative sculptural works which investigate human’s personal connection with the natural world. Her practice has been recognised as a skilful exploration of ideas around nature and human’s relationship, the invisible forces and the movement of energy within it. Central to her work is the investigation of transformation and humanity’s connection, dependence, and the possibility of harmony with the ecological world.
Her sculptures feature intricate and complex weaving techniques that create repetitive patterns which explore the concept of connection and interconnection. Her interplay of shadows extending beyond the physical boundaries of the sculptures opens discussion around light and dark and their role in achieving harmony.
Catriona has been selected for multiple solo exhibitions and exhibits extensively selected, group and touring exhibitions. She has been a winner and finalist in many art awards in Australia and internationally.
Learn more: www.TheArtofWeaving.com.au
Catriona will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Dr Emma Hicks, Nathan mudyi Sentance and Jodie Dowd
Dr Emma Hicks is a Sydney based artist, writer, and educator of Gamilaroi and European heritage, currently living on Cammeraygal Country. She has a multidisciplinary practice working across film, sculpture, installation, drawing, murals and writing.
Emma works in a responsive way to site or concept with connection to place and personal storytelling as recurring themes in her practice. Most recently collaborating with Merindah Funnell for the exhibition Echoes of light: Our connection through waterways at Artspace on the Concourse in Chatswood.
Nathan mudyi Sentance is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and librarian from the Mowgee clan, raised on Darkinjung Country. His creative practice is shaped by his work in libraries, archives and museums, where he advocates for community control over cultural heritage and the right of reply within colonial collections. Writing is both
resistance and care, responding to the misrepresentation, exclusion and erasure of First Nations people within institutional narratives.
Nathan’s poetry engages with memory, history and place, exploring the emotional and spiritual weight of archives and the persistence of Aboriginal presence in urban and institutional spaces.
His work has appeared in Meanjin, Cordite Poetry Review, The Guardian and the Sydney Review of Books. He received the 2024 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the 2025 Gosford Art Prize. He has exhibited with Jodie Dowd and Emma Hicks at the Coal Loader for Keep the Fire Burning and at Curl Curl Creative Space for For Our Elders.
Learn more: www.archivaldecolonialist.org
Jodie Dowd (she/her) is a Noongar (Menang, Gitja, Wangai, Ballardong) curator, basket weaver and writer who grew up on Gunai/Kurnai Country, Victoria, Australia. Jodie has called Gaimaragal Country on Sydney’s northern beaches home for the past five years.
Jodie spent over 15 years in the GLAM sector, working with First Nations community members to care for cultural belongings and support truth-telling through exhibitions and recording their right of reply.
Jodie currently works at the Australian Film Television and Radio School as the First Nations Community Engagement Manager and is excited to be working with and supporting the next generation of First Nations truth and story tellers.
The artists will be in residence at Alfred Street Artists Studios.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Learn more about Council's First Nations Artist Residency here.
Marie Mansfield
Marie Mansfield is an observational painter who focuses on contemporary realism. Working as a tonalist, she draws from everyday situations, objects and environments. Employing a limited colour palette, her work evokes quiet emotional resonance. Her paintings often suggest human presence through absence. By leaving traces of energy, Mansfield invites viewers to form their own narratives and interpretations.
Mansfield was awarded the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 2021 and has been a multiple finalist in prestigious Australian art prizes, including the Archibald Prize, Doug Moran Portrait Prize, Kilgour Prize, Mosman Art Prize and the Lester Prize. Further prizes include the Percival and the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize. She completed a Graduate Diploma of Painting at the National Art School, Sydney, in 2017. Residencies include Bundanon (2020) and the Wollemi Project (2021).
Mansfield’s work is held in public and private collections across Australia and in private collections internationally.
Learn more: www.mariemansfieldart.com/
Marie will be in residence at Primrose Park.
Photo: Marie Mansfield, Prelude, 2023.
Richard Trang
Richard Trang is an emerging Western Sydney artist practicing on Dharug Land. Trang’s work spans photography and installation, blurring the lines between both mediums. Diasporic identity, the climate emergency and childhood inform Trang's practice.
Richard Trang obtained his BFA Honours from UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture in 2024. In 2025, he was selected to participate in Penrith Regional Gallery’s Emerging Artist Program and was a finalist in both the Fremantle Print Award and Inner West Council Young Creatives Awards.
He is a board member of Puzzle Gallery.
Learn more: www.richardtrang.com
Richard will be in residence at Alfred Street Artists Studios.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Tree Veneration Society
The Tree Veneration Society Inc is a registered charity and transdisciplinary, contemporary eco-arts collective based in Sydney, dedicated to trees, their ecosystems, and human interactions with them. They aim to inspire their audience to respect the natural world and commit to protecting it. They do this by offering sensorial experiences with nature through intergenerational workshops, combining environmental education with art, and multidisciplinary exhibitions and events.
Their collective commitment ensures they are a catalyst for change. They draw on the power of nature and art to transcend culture and language barriers, to pull diverse communities together and facilitate inclusivity. They create space for reflection, conversation and action.
Artists participating in the Coal Loader residency:
Diane Mah, Elizabeth Gervay, Louise Fowler-Smith, Miho Watanabe, Paula Broom, Penny Simons, Vanessa Wright
Learn more: www.treevenerationsociety.com
The collective will be in residence at the Coal Loader.
Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Yanti Peng
Yanti Peng, 彭妍缇 is a Hainan-born interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, film, photography, and 3D computer tools. At its core, she seeks to decode functions of power within the labyrinth of truth and consciousness, often through humour, absurdism and magical realism. She likens her practice to the body's fascial system.
Her exhibition history includes Firstdraft (Eora), Blindside Gallery (Naarm), Cement Fondu (Eora/Online) and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Eora). She completed residencies at Organhaus, Peacock Gallery, and Woollahra Gallery. Peng has received commissions from institutions including UNSW, Parramatta Artist Studios, Inner West Council and PHIVE.
She has contributed to film projects presented at the Sydney Film Festival and broadcast on ABC. She is currently a board member and Digital Producer at Runway Journal.
Learn more: https://yantipeng.com/
Yanti will be in residence at Alfred Street Creative Studios.
Photo courtesy the artist.