We are incredibly proud to welcome acclaimed contemporary Aboriginal artist Curtis Taylor to our gallery. Working across mixed media, Taylor shares deeply personal stories, cultural knowledge and lived experiences using art as a powerful form of expression, reflection and truth-telling.

His striking sculptures of dogs pay homage to camp dogs from remote communities, while his broader practice explores identity, perception and experiences of racism, offering a powerful insight into contemporary Aboriginal life.

Beyond the gallery, Taylor is also an award-winning filmmaker whose work has been presented at international film festivals.

Having an artist of this calibre exhibiting in our space is truly special and we are honoured to share this experience with you.

Notice to Visitors: Some artwork in this exhibition includes loose materials on the floor. Please watch your step as you move through the space.

Content Warning** Please note that artwork may contain sensitive themes some parents/caregivers may consider unsuitable for young audiences.

Wayne is a skilled billagurda (craftsman) whose practice is deeply grounded in culture, knowledge, and lived experience. Raised among strong cultural leaders and makers—including his father—he learned by observing, listening, and participating from a young age across the Guruma, Yindjibarndi and Yinhawangka nations.

His journey as a carver began following his initiation through cultural Law, marking a significant point in both his life and artistic practice. Since then, his work has become a continuation of inherited knowledge, guided by responsibility, respect, and cultural protocol.

Wayne’s artefacts are more than crafted objects—they are expressions of connection to ngurra (Country), carrying stories, memory, and identity. Through carving, he maintains a living relationship with his old people, honouring both past and present while fulfilling his responsibilities to culture.

Committed to cultural continuity, Wayne is passionate about ensuring these practices are sustained and passed on to future generations. His work stands as both a personal and collective expression of belonging, knowledge, and responsibility.

Welcome

We are delighted to present Swan Open Studios 2026.

 Ellenbrook Arts is in its sixth year of hosting a Swan Open Studios event in partnership with the City of Swan, reflecting its commitment to cultural engagement.

From humble beginnings just a few years ago, the event has grown in scale and spirit to become one of the region’s signature cultural highlights, proudly supported by the City of Swan.

​Spanning a vast and diverse landscape, Swan Open Studios stretches across multiple suburbs and encompasses art spaces, libraries, private studios and galleries. Each venue showcases artists who live and work within the City of Swan — a region defined by its political borders but extending far beyond them in reach and influence, drawing visitors and ideas from across the metropolitan area, from the coastal plains to the hills.

​Over nine inspiring days, artists will open their studios to the public, inviting visitors into a conversation about their creative processes and conceptual ideas. It’s a rare opportunity to experience art in its most personal context — to see where and how it’s made, and to engage directly with the people who make it. This intimate exchange fosters a deeper understanding and appreciation of the diverse forms of artistic expression, offering something far richer than a traditional exhibition.

​Open Studios not only allows artists to showcase their work but also provides a platform for meaningful engagement with the local community. Visitors can ask questions, gain insights into techniques and materials, and purchase unique works directly from the creators. These authentic interactions often lead to enduring connections between artists and audiences.

​Ellenbrook Arts is passionate about strengthening our artistic community and hopes this event encourages collaboration and connection among artists. Visual artists often work in isolation, and this event creates valuable opportunities for sharing ideas, techniques, and inspiration — reminding us of our shared curiosity about the world we inhabit.

​An artist-led initiative presented in collaboration with Ellenbrook Arts and the City of Swan, Swan Open Studios celebrates local artists in an authentic and unfiltered way — an open invitation to share in their passion, stories, and creative journeys.

Twelve artists from the suburbs use their unique imaginings to express the feelings that arise from their situation and existence.

Through diverse visual concepts and both traditional and experimental mediums, this body of work invites audiences to engage with suburbia in layered and unexpected ways.

From early settlements built around survival to today’s complex lifestyle choices, suburbia carries its own language of parks, coastlines, bushland, isolation and community. As reflected in David Lynch: The Art Life, houses hold unseen stories behind lit or darkened windows. We may choose where we live, but do these sub urban undercurrents ultimately shape who we become?

A Quiet Place is a curated solo exhibition by Harry Lea, a collection of paintings that celebrate vibrant colour, natural beauty, and the living character of land and sea in Western Australia.

Each work invites the viewer into a moment of calm, where landscapes and seascapes come alive through Harry’s expressive brushstrokes, offering a gentle pause from the noise of the everyday.

Recent Works Nov 2024 - Jan 2026 by Tron Tonnessen.

Tron is an artist whose practice is shaped by a rich background in fine art and years of creative exploration.

Drawing on his training and experience across a range of media, Tonnessen’s work reflects a deep engagement with material, process and place. His results in works that balance intuition with discipline, and abstraction with lived experience.

This exhibition invites the viewer into a reflective space, where surface, gesture and structure reveal layers of meaning.

We invite you to join us to celebrate this exhibition and the continuing evolution of Tron Tonnessen’s artistic practice.

Exhibition dates: 20 Feb - 22 Mar 2026

Step into a world where the tiniest creatures take centre stage.

Small Wonders brings together a diverse group of artists exploring the beauty, complexity and quiet power of insects through painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media.

From delicate details to bold interpretations, this collective exhibition invites you to slow down, look closer and rediscover the extraordinary life buzzing all around us.

A celebration of nature, curiosity and creative perspective—proof that even the smallest subjects can leave a lasting impression.

Small Wonders, 20 Feb - 19 Apr @ Ellenbrook Arts

'Reframed Horizons’ is a retrospective of Panizza Allmark's thirty-year photographic practice.

This exhibition engages with photographie féminine her methodology, which unites feminist theory and postmodern documentary methods and uses irony and dialectical framing to challenge and critically reframe. It is a dynamic, ethical visual photographic response to the environment that attempts to subvert dominant representations and draws attention to binaries. Familiar landscapes are transformed into sites of tension and ambiguity, through strategies of doubling, where the familiar appear strange and the strange unsettling familiar, oscillating between the natural and constructed, presence and absence, reality and artifice. Panizza’s photography presents a series of works that convey the politics of the uncanny as an aesthetic practice, by challenging dominant visual narratives of people and place, exposing hidden vistas, and reclaiming vision as a space of resistance to the mundane..

The series of works includes street documentary such as ‘Petals and Pavements’, ‘Double Visions: Double Entendre, to a variety of photojournalistic practice on humanitarian issues that spans from Maesot, Thailand, to Venezia, Italy. 

About Panizza Allmark

Panizza Allmark is a visualista, born in Perth/Boorloo, Western Australia. Her PhD was the first in Australia to explore feminist photographic practices as a street photographer, developing the concept of photographie féminine. Panizza has spent time working across Asia, Europe, North and South America utilizing the techniques of photographie féminine that she has developed. Drawing on écriture féminine, which traces an embodied writing practice, Panizza has refocused this as photographie féminine which engages in a self-reflexive ethical photographic practice that subverts dominant representations through drawing attention to unacknowledged binaries. The uniting of disparate elements is a motif in Panizza’s work, expressive of the mixed ethnic hybridity that she embodies.

For over thirty years Panizza’s photography has been exhibited in group and ten solo exhibitions across London, New York, Frankfurt, Shanghai, Italy and Australia. Panizza has published extensively on photography, gender, representation, and visual storytelling, as well as given several international keynotes on photography.

Panizza Allmark is Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies at Edith Cowan University, Perth Australia.

Further information: https://panizzaallmark.com/upcoming-exhibition-reframed-horizons

The annual members exhibition is a showcase of the diverse practices of our members, celebrating the vibrant spirit of Ellenbrook’s arts community. Exhibiting work from over 40 members of the local community in a range of mediums across printmaking, painting, textiles and more.

Participating Artists:

Amanda Kirk, Amy French, Ann Evans, Anne-Marie Bloor, Ash Jeeloll, Belinda Eldridge, Carleen Wynhorst, Carmen Tyrer, Christine Pearsall, Christl Wulff, Colin Pumphrey, David Karr, Derek Fowler, Faranak Satarzadeh, Fiona Fulker, Frank Penfold, Gina Kitchen, Harry Lea, Helen Mitchell, Jacinta Morris, Jane Carr, Jenny Ellis-Newman, Ken Harvey, Kristy Margam-Elkins, Laura Martin, Lewis Wellington, Lilly Rawlins, Marie Hammat, Martin Burke, Mary White, Mayumi Miyoshi, Nadya Khanikova, Noreen Clapp, Pamela Hume, Philippa Gillett, Rebecca Hepworth, Richard Purbrick, Sally Stone, Sarah Eve, Sebastian Steed, Susan Brennan, and Tami Esancy