Circular Economies

ABOUT THE EVENT

Circular Economies is an exhibition of new commissions by five local, national and international artists and collaborators, arising from a series of socially-embedded artist residencies that took place across regional Western Australia throughout 2024 to 2026. Spanning photography, video, textiles and installation, each artists’ work responds to a deep and considered engagement with both the community and the environment in which they undertook their residencies over this two-year period. 

Throughout their regional residencies, artists were invited to engage with the unique social, cultural and ecological fabric of each place. The resulting site-responsive works reflect upon the unique experiences and local knowledge inherent within locations that, while geographically isolated, share a sense of resilience and resourcefulness. The exhibition invites audiences to consider the invisible systems of exchange that sustain regional life, such as reciprocal labour, shared memories, intergenerational knowledge and informal systems of exchange. 

Regional Western Australia is influenced by its relationship to the extraction of resources and the export of agriculture and livestock, much of which flows from these rural areas to city and offshore locations. Circular Economies shifts this focus to less visible, often immaterial systems of exchange, encouraging audiences to consider how both tangible and intangible resources might intersect, diverge or coexist, and how these practices shape the identities of regional communities. 

Circular Economies is presented through a partnership with PICA and SPACED. SPACED has been producing and commissioning context-responsive, socially engaged art projects and exchanges internationally and throughout Western Australia since 1998.