CHAIR

Victoria Alondra

Victoria Alondra is a poet, photographer, painter, and postgraduate student of mixed Nahua, Yaqui, and European ancestry. Born in Mexico, Victoria spent her early years between El Ahusco and Valloverde before her family was granted refugee status, settling in so-called Canada and spending her formative years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside; Tsleil-Watuth, Squamish and Musqueam Territories. 

In her artistic practice, Victoria delves into the complex interplay of grief and joy, employing them as acts of resistance against capitalism and colonialism. Victoria has built a unique personal praxis that draws from both grassroots and institutional learning to imagine and remember justice-doing.

Victoria is a key member of Fundación José Hernàndez Delgadillo, an archival record of political muralism in Mexico and Mutua Crianza, a cultural revitalisation organisation, and has assisted with curations, poetry festivals and editing creative works. Beyond the realm of art, Victoria has dedicated the last 15 years to working for specialist therapeutic programs, family violence organisations, healing centres and incarcerated children. A long-term resident of Mparntwe, Victoria seeks to continue learning and working toward building a future where, as the Zapatistas say, another world is possible.

TREASURER

Ellanor Webb 

Ellanor is a photographer and arts worker with a passion for too many things to list. She has produced and participated in arts projects and exhibitions here and abroad, moving to Mparntwe from Meanjin/Magandjin in 2022 to work with Tangentyere Artists. Other working and volunteer positions have seen Ellanor support the delivery of diverse arts programming across organisations with varying missions and functions: DIY spaces, not-for-profits, contemporary studios and state institutions (QAGOMA, Art From the Margins, Gertrude Contemporary, among others). In 2024, Ellanor will move to Ngunnawal & Ngambri Country to work with artsACT and see out her term as Treasurer from afar.

SECRETARY

Lucy Stewart

Lucy is an artist, arts administrator, and educator who first arrived in the NT in 1992 and spent most of her time there living and working on Arrernte Country in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Her passion is working within culturally rich settings to progress engaged and creative regional communities. She has experience across a wide range of arts organisations including the Araluen Arts Centre, Desart, and Arts NT. A former Director of both Tasmanian Regional Arts and Red Hot Arts Central Australia, Lucy has also served on arts boards at both national (Regional Arts Australia), and local levels (Alice Springs ARI Watch This Space and Red Hot Arts). Until recently she was the Director of the artists cooperative Central Craft.

Her art practice spans media art, ceramics, and community cultural development, focusing on collaborative artmaking and response to place. This includes developing creative initiatives like arts festivals, public artworks, exhibitions, and artist tours. In 2007 she was one of two Australians selected to participate in the Salzburg Global Fellowship on International Art and Community Practice.

For 20-plus years her practice has facilitated arts projects that support increased awareness of Mparntwe sacred sites. Most significantly the Yeperenye Sculpture at the Araluen Cultural Precinct and the Alice to Mparntwe Sacred Sites Tours for Artists that have been running since 2007.  

For twelve years Lucy taught art, media, and engagement programs at the town’s only public senior college. Lucy holds a Masters in Heritage Management (Deakin, 2006), a Graduate Diploma in Teaching & Learning (Charles Darwin University, 2009), a Graduate Diploma in Cultural Heritage Management (University of Canberra, 1994), and a Batchelor of Arts, Fine Arts in Ceramics/Printmaking/Digital Arts (Southern Cross University, 1991).

Kate Murphy

Kate M Murphy (aka Ellis Hutch) is an artist, writer and arts worker with experience working for a range of arts organisations from Craft ACT to the National Gallery of Australia, and for many years as a sessional lecturer at the ANU School of Art and Design. She moved to Mparntwe/Alice Springs in 2022 to work as a Visual Arts lecturer at Charles Darwin University and has fallen in love with the intense creative energy and powerful places on Arrernte country.

In her art practice Kate makes drawings, videos, installations, performances and soundscapes; both independently and in collaboration. She takes a curious and playful approach to investigating how people establish social relationships and transform their environments to create inhabitable spaces. She is fascinated with how we make ourselves ‘at home’ as individuals and communities while navigating the complexities of our contemporary worlds and colonial histories.

Shirley Jayasekara

Born in Sri Lanka, and raised in East Malaysia, Shirley finds freedom in contemporary movement, after journeying through ballet, Bharatanatyam, Kandyan dance, Cuban salsa and bachata. Her experiences across Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Wales and unceded lands in so-called Australia have shaped her understanding of power and identity - moving between positions of dominance and minoritization, witnessing how violence operates across different colonial contexts, and experiencing both institutional mobility and its limits when speaking against systems. Shirley currently works as a general practice doctor in Naarm, developing a praxis of medicine that resists institutional harm and prioritises justice-based liberatory healing. At Watch This Space, she brings her experience in community engagement and critical understanding of institutions to support strategic direction that platforms critical conversations.

Chair

Kumalie Riley

Kumalie (Rosalie) Riley is an Arrernte woman from Alice Springs with spiritual affiliations and connections to the land, hereditary from her grandmother. Kumalie is a well known Arrernte Elder and artist with many years of experience teaching Arrernte language in local Alice Springs primary schools and in adult education.

Kumalie has been a WTS studio artist since 2020 and is the Chairperson of the WTS First Nations advisory group established in 2021.

Members
Sylvia Perrurle Neale
Ellaine Peckham
Sabella Turner
William (Nookie) Lowah
John Hodgson

DIRECTOR

JET NIKITINA-LI

Jet (aka Jess) is a researcher, artist and creative producer born on Boonwurrung lands and based in Mparntwe on Arrernte country. Jet’s work brings together research, video, writing and craft to critique and/or connect with marginality, place, power and bizarreness. Jet is a co-founder of Way Over There (WOT) Collective, an ARI based in the South-East suburbs of Naarm (areas represent) creating opportunities by and for BIPOC artists and their communities. Jet’s excited to keep finding or remembering ways to collaborate, experiment, collect, sustain, and imagine the otherwise together.

PROJECT & ADMIN SUPPORT OFFICER

JES COSTELLO

Jes is an artist and arts worker born, and raised in Mparntwe, Alice Springs. Jes uses whatever media they can get their hands on- always looking to try something new- to connect with their friends and family, by either making art for them, or doing art with them. They are still navigating the huge artscape that saturates their hometown, trying to figure out what stories they want to tell.
In recent years, she has been working at Jacksons Drawing Supplies, engaging with artists from all walks of life. And as of December 2023, they have completed a Certificate IV in Visual Arts, which sparked a huge interest in the behind the scenes of gallery work, and the world of arts administration.