Watch This Space
Visual Arts & Crafts Strategy
2025—28

CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENTS
2020—22

EXHIBITIONS

The exhibition program is a hallmark of the WTS annual creative program, showcasing interstate, international and NT-based artists, curators and collectives in our gallery spaces. Selected highlights are below, for the full exhibition program see our website archive.

HIGHLIGHTS

A Thousand Rivers Collided and Changed Direction Within My Chest (2022)
Exhibition + curated screening + book launch w/ Giramondo Publishing & NT Writers Centre

A Thousand Rivers Collided and Changed Direction Within My Chest is a cumulative act of resistance through the personal lens of prominent Yugambeh poet and activist, Lionel Fogarty. The exhibition was the first time Fogarty's raw painted works on paper were shown to the public, exhibited beside a film work collaged from Fogarty's rich archival footage and poetry readings. His painted works on paper hold part-poems, newspaper clippings or archival photographs, and abstract imagery. A desire for a radical shift against structures of colonisation, and a deep sense of Blak-pride, come through Fogarty's subversive and playful use of language.

Alongside the exhibition, Lional Fogerty hosted a screening of Basically Black with a poetry reading at the WTS Walk-In Cinema. This event was produced in collaboration with the NT Writer’s Centre with a facilitated Q&A with Jacyn de Santis.

Drawn by stones (2022)
Exhibition + public program w/ 4A Centre Contemporary Asian Art and Australian Ceramics Triennale

Drawn by stones was a touring exhibition that brought together artists who utilise the ceramic medium to interrogate contested histories, stolen land, Indigenous sovereignty, and national identity. Exhibiting artists from Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan investigated ‘nationhood’ and ownership through ceramics and demonstrated how the ceramic form can both memorialise and tell alternative histories.

In 2022, Drawn by stones was curated by Bridie Moran with Assistant Curators Jody Rallah and Annette An-Jen Liu.

APMERE WERNE APETYE-ARLPAYE: Amwengkwerne making softball (2020)
APMERE WERNE APETYE-ARLPAYE: Amwengkwerne making softball featured quirky and evocative papier mâché figures that conjured the skill, humour and pathos of the legendary game of softball as it has been played and celebrated by the women and girls of Amwengkwerne (Amoonguna) since the 1960s. The exhibition thereafter toured at Araluen Art Centre, one of NT’s major art institutions.

*More information available via the links in text overlay for each exhibition.

WALK-IN CINEMA

The Walk-In Cinema was established in 2020 as a free monthly outdoor cinema screening and food event in the WTS carpark on Gap Rd, supported by Screen Territory and Australia Council for the Arts. Each month a different member of our local communities selects a film program to share with the audience, following a free meal provided by local food partners.

*More information available via the links in text overlay for each exhibition.

ARRERNTE LANGUAGE CLASSES

Arrernte is the local Indigenous language of Tyuretye/Mparntwe (Alice Springs). This six week course follows a sprawling curriculum of language and cultural orientation and education between an on-site gallery classroom and off-site excursions, led by Arrernte elder and educator, and current WTS studio resident, Kumalie Riley.
“If you’re a local you need to know all this.”

COOBER PEDY ARTIST CAMP

The Coober Pedy Artist Camp is a collaboration between two Artist-Run Initiatives: Watch This Space (Mparntwe-Alice Springs) and FELTspace (Tarntanya-Adelaide). The program sees artists shape a participatory curriculum in the lead-up to the camp, culminating in a week-long intensive collective residency in Coober Pedy and the critically acclaimed Coober Pedy Car Horn Orchestra, a participatory social sound experiment led by the artists. The latter will have the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with folks from Dusty Radio, the Coober Pedy Library, Umoona community, and other local hives of knowledge.⁠

Our aim is to continue a tradition of artist camps in partnership with other ARI’s and organisations, in addition to the established Coober Pedy Artist Camp.

ZINE FAIR

The annual WTS Zine Fair is a thematically sprawling, temporally-finite autonomous zone, where anyone can publish anything they like as a little paper thing you can hold in your hand. A zine is an inherently political tool of self-expression. It can be a self-published story, comic, poster, single-page drawing, open letter, photo journal, flip book, brochure, postcard, sticker, manifesto, etc. The model for making is DIY and you don’t need any experience as a writer, artist or human being.

Alongside the Zine Fair WTS has held workshops, where anyone can make their first, next, or ultimate zine alongside others.