CHAIR

Tim Chatwin

Tim Chatwin is an arts worker and artist who has worked in curatorial and exhibition design, installation, public programming, arts development, production and publishing across arts and cultural organisations on Arrernte and Palawa Country. After completing a degree in contemporary arts, he left lutruwita for the Northern Territory, working for a remote art centre, a number of community arts organisations and with the major arts institution in Mparntwe. In 2022 he decided to return to the immediacy, openness and connectedness of working with community-lead arts practices and processes, to prioritise First Nations voices, including the ongoing curatorial support of the Greenbush Art Group at the Alice Springs Prison, and with Desart Inc.

In his own practice, Tim is interested in the intersection of relationships with land and each other; places where contrasting values meet, clash and co-exist, and also how deep time and terrains influence our lives. He likes the act of walking, and cooking, and has a weakness for processed guitars, manipulated tape and any sound that comes on a wind or across distance. It’s reflective of an interest in deep listening, which his decade living on unceded Arrernte land has reinforced as critical to being here.

Kate Murphy

Acting chair

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.

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

Mia Tinkler

Mia is a musician, arts worker, and creative producer living in Mparntwe on unceded Arrernte country. Mia has for the last few years worked professionally managing the 'Bush Bands Bash’ project for Music NT, as well as producing local radio at ABC. Mia holds a BA with Honours in Cultural Studies. She has been involved, both as artist and arts worker, in a number of socially engaged arts and music projects both nationally and internationally. Mia is passionate about creative forms of organising, making, and assembling that defy repeating known ways of structuring whilst holding integrity.

Roni Judge

Hi I’m Roni, I grew up on Gadigal land and trained at UWS and Design Centre Enmore and have lived and worked in Mparntwe / Alice Springs since 2016. I have been with Central Craft since 2017 working in an administration and support role. I’m an introvert with a passion for the environment, tasty things, and good sounds. I’m an appreciator of grass roots advocacy and community lead initiatives. I have worked with community groups in town, including presenting and producing for 8CCC Community Radio and sitting on its board for 5 years. I have a background in applied arts (printmaking and silversmithing) and a diploma in business governance for not-for-profits—obtained with the aim to help negotiate funding and obtain better outcomes for community organisations. I’m looking forward to being on the WTS board and contributing to this vibrant and unique slice of life in Mparntwe, the centre of this continent.

Victoria Alondra

Born in Anáhuac (Mexico) but currently living in Mparntwe (Alice Springs, Northern Territory), Victoria speaks to her history as a refugee and migrant across two Western countries. Her experiences of forced removal, street violence and settler privileges have shaped her critique of power systems; using the neo-Zapatista framework as her foundation. She is passionate about decolonization through language, memory revitalization, food, healing practices and truth telling. Most importantly, as a settler in so-called Australia, she stands in solidarity with the unique struggles and resistance of First Nations people and considers herself a student with a long way to go

Gabriel Curtin

Gabriel Curtin is an artist, writer and editor living as an uninvited guest on unceded Arrernte Country. His work considers poetry’s ability to locate and enact relations unencumbered by policy. He is interested in the ways administration naturalises particular modes of sociality. As Chair of the WTS board, Gabriel is keen on developing collaborative methods of caretaking that don't replicate or take their cues from corporate governance structures.

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

CO-DIRECTOR

Saar Amptmeijer

Saar Amptmeijer is an artist, arts worker and long term visitor on stolen Arrernte land. In recent years they primarily worked at Bindi Enterprises as a disability arts worker and within their own sonic and visual art practice. Born the Netherlands, Saar has worked and collaborated in different organisational structures, creative collaborations and collectives both in the NT and internationally. They are involved with Utrecht based art collective Kaap Kollektief, and as a supporter of Central desert community organisations such as Shut youth prisons and the Strong Grandmothers group.

As an artist, Saar researches and explores with a range of mediums, in the realms of sonic and visual art. They approach material and form within concepts of daily poetic considerations and social critique, ending in collaborative soundscapes, sculpture and drawings. They have a fascination for fantastic beings and b-grade sci fi where a future without prisons, gender identities, swooping synthesizers and a joy of disobedience can be envisioned.

CO-DIRECTOR

Emma Collard

Emma is an artist and art worker, who has been living & working in the so-called NT since 2016. Emma attributes most of her experience so far to people & time spent living on Luritja Country in Papunya Community where she worked as the previous manager of Papunya Tjupi Art Centre. Emma loves to be involved in other artists' practices and has spent lots of time facilitating, organising, curating, hyping, performing & activating with many artists nationally and internationally. Originally from Naarm/Melbourne, Emma holds a bachelor of fine arts w/ first class honours (vca 2015) and has a historic background in collaboratively exhibiting in many spaces including Bus Projects, The Substation, Kings ARI, Blindside ARI & Seventh Gallery. In 2018, Emma had her first and only solo show which was held at Watch This Space. Recently, her art practice has been quieter and mostly has involved making elaborately-set-up videos on the roof of her (previous) Larrakia-based sharehouse with her dog, Leroy.

GARDENER

Jorgen Doyle

Jorgen is a visual artist, translator and gardener working in Alice Springs and Jakarta. Over the last five years he has developed an intensive collaborative practice with artist Hannah Ekin, expanding this collaboration to other communities and artists.

In Alice Springs, he is involved with the Watch This Space artist-run-initiative as an artist and gardener.

In Jakarta, Hannah and Jorgen work within a broad coalition of social movements, NGOs, artists, researchers, architects, journalists and activists concerned with the radical changes occurring along Jakarta's coastline - speculative real estate projects and large scale infrastructure projects responding to slower environmental degradation caused by heavy exploitation of the natural environment of the coastal basin. They collaborate with two Indonesian artists and a local community planning and advocacy organisation; the Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, on a project called Ziarah Utara, or Pilgrimage to the Coast. This project centres on an annual 2 week walk along the coastline of Jakarta, staying in the different kinds of sites and settlements - traditional fishing villages, gated communities, historical sites, the port, social housing blocks - that make up this highly segregated coastline dense with histories. They use the walk as a way to open up questions and conversations about the future of the coastline, how it is imagined by the capitalists who seek to re-make it as a place to mark Indonesia’s confident stride into a prosperous globalised future, and those who produce it on a daily basis as a space of livelihoods and belonging. This research methodology has to date produced artistic outputs that have included public forums and lectures, an exhibition, and video and installation works.