CONSTANCE is an off-site, project based A.R.I (Artist Run Initiative) based in nipaluna / Hobart. CONSTANCE is focused on creating critical dialogues and engagement within, and beyond, the local Tasmanian arts community through supporting experimental and critical praxis.

We create paid opportunities for early career arts practitioners to develop and present innovative and experimental work in varied settings. CONSTANCE provides artists with critical support, resources, and audience engagement to realise quality projects.

CONSTANCE projects are situated in, and responsive to, a wide variety of sites. Our projects have occupied historic buildings, vacant real estate, underground spaces, city streets, arts festivals and partnered with conventional galleries.

CONSTANCE’s site-less model minimises ongoing administrative expenses, allowing us to position artist remuneration and production quality as the priority of all our projects. Furthermore, this model allows CONSTANCE to be flexible and adaptive, pushing the organisation into ambitious, new territory with every show.

Constance ARI works across Country cared for by the Palawa of lutruwita and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout so called Australia, as well as First Nations people from elsewhere, and their deep connection to the lands, skies and waterways over which sovereignty was never ceded.

We pay our respect to all Elders; we are grateful for their continued sharing of knowledge and Culture.


CONTACT US:
constance.director (at) gmail.com 

ABN: 90 032 660 228 



PROPOSALS:
Do you have a project you’d like to propose to Constance ARI? Email us with the below information.

We accept expressions of interest from experimental and contemporary artists and curators year round. Submissions can be from individuals or groups, in any medium, may be developmental in nature, or may involve a future body of work. We are open to ideas that may be presented in the off site, online, or part of a public program. 

Things to keep in mind
  • The exhibition program is developed at least 12 – 18 months in advance, but if there is a specific reason why a project has a particular timeframe you can let us know in your submission
  • Projects will be developed in close contact with our board 
  • Budgets available to support projects are limited and will be negotiated with the board, or the applicant will need to seek funding

Eligibility
  • We welcome EOIs from artists in diverse communities – if you have any questions or require assistance please contact us. We will preference artists and curtors who work within or collaborate with Tasmanian practitioners in some capacity.

Submissions
  • A one page description of the concept, proposed artwork/s and the curatorial framework of the exhibition/project. You may like to consider where and how the work will be installed
  • One page CV (pdf) per participant
  • Visual support material:
    • Up to 12 clearly labelled images as a single pdf OR a URL to sound/video support material of no more than 5 minutes
    • Support material in the form of relevant published writing by the applicant can be included as a single PDF or URL (optional)



THE BOARD OF CONSTANCE 2023



Nadia Refaei
Co-Chair

Nadia Refaei is an artist, curator and arts worker based in nipaluna. Her multidisciplinary practice draws on both personal and broader histories to explore ideas around cultural dislocation and negotiation. Varied histories of familial migration have informed her interest in the relationships between migration, memory and mythology. Nadia uses installation, video and other media, as well as embodied everyday practices like cooking and gardening, to examine these issues through the lenses of her overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, Arab- Muslim- and Greek- “Australian” identities. Alongside her arts practice, Nadia has worked for various arts organisations and festivals, and currently works at Moonah Arts Centre and Contemporary Art Tasmania.


Hannah Foley
Co-Chair

Hannah Foley is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in nipaluna/Hobart. Her process-driven practice considers the phenomenological and relational body; incorporating performance, installation, and sound, each work begins with embodied processes of gestural and lived investigation. Having completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) at the University of Tasmania, she is now undertaking doctorate research, drawing on hydrofeminist theory to generate modes of performing and scoring encounters with more-than-human bodies of water. Alongside her practice and research, Hannah is involved in tertiary arts education, and has previously worked for arts organisations and galleries including Salamanca Arts Centre.


Chris Arneaud-Clarke

Treasurer

Chris Arneaud-Clarke is a writer and critic. He has performed at LanFranchi’s Memorial Discotheque, Melbourne International Arts Festival and Melbourne Now, and his writing has appeared in Art + Australia magazine.



Jade Irvine
Secretary

Jade Irvine is an artist and writer living in nipaluna. Her creative work centres on re-examining her cultural identity and articulating a sense of place through landscape. Jade has written for a number of arts publications including the National Gallery of Australia, ArtsHub, Assemble Papers, and un Magazine. She is currently working across digital mediums to produce audio and video content as part of her professional practice.


Dominique Gartlan
Public Officer

Dominique is a qualified lawyer living in nipaluna/ Hobart. She was admitted to the legal profession in 2020 and then commenced an associateship with the Honourable Justice Estcourt of the Supreme Court of Tasmania while also volunteering at the Tasmanian Refugee Legal Centre. Dominique intends to develop a legal practice centred on the arts, artists and local community.


Priscilla Beck

Priscilla Beck is an artist and writer living in nipaluna/Hobart. Priscilla completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane in 2011, and received Honours (first class) from the University of Tasmania, Tasmanian College of the Arts in 2016. Priscilla was a founding director of Addition ARI, and is currently Chair of the Board of Constance ARI. Priscilla was an Artist In Residence at UTas in 2017 and a studio resident at Contemporary Art Tasmania in 2018/19. Her work has been shown both locally and interstate. Priscilla’s art practice is open-ended and speculative, she often works within set frameworks to create subtle, material-based installations. Each work is deeply connected to process and place, and uses art practice and systems as the ‘site’ within which to respond. Her practice is complemented by a portfolio of critical and creative writing and facilitating projects in the community.


Caitlin Fargher


Caitlin Fargher is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculptural installation and curating. Graduating with First Class Honours in Fine Arts/Media Arts at UNSW Art and Design in 2017 in Sydney, she has returned home to be based in nipaluna/Hobart. She works out of Good Grief Studios. Her work is created through an embodied practice that explores histories, sites, ecologies and memories. Gardening, cooking, environmental systems, historical research and family narratives inform her materials.  Alongside her arts and curatorial practice, Caitlin is on the board of CONSTANCE ARI and Treasurer at Good Grief Studios, and currently undertaking a Masters of Teaching (Secondary, Art). 


Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie

Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie is a multidisciplinary artist, curator & community development worker based in nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Her creative practice is responsive and explores belonging and cultural heritage in contemporary Australia. She draws on personal experience and understanding of diasporic identity and cultural dislocation to engage with broader conversations on the same. Her curatorial practice is primarily concerned with addressing gender and cultural diversity imbalances in the arts sector.


Nani Graddon

Nani Graddon is an emerging artist based in Nipaluna (Hobart) who is currently working out of Good Grief studios. She holds a bachelor of Fine Arts with first class honours from UNSW Art and Design, and has worked collaboratively in Sydney, Nipaluna, and Glasgow, organising, and exhibiting in group shows.


Theia Connell

Theia Connell is a producer, curator and dormant artist based in nipaluna/Hobart. Theia is involved locally and interstate with a range of arts organisations, from major festivals (RISING) to grassroots artist-led orgs (Visual Bulk, Next Wave).


Emma Hamasaki

Emma is an up-and-coming social scientist and science communicator based in (Nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). She completed her degree in a Bachelor of Marine and Antarctic sciences (BmarAntSc) and is now involved in a multidisciplinary projects which explore the way science can be communicated by using creative and alternative mediums. She is passionate about discovering different perspectives and is looking at ways to bridge the gap between science and art.


Cassie Sullivan

Cassie Sullivan is a lutruwita/Tasmanian Indigenous contemporary emerging artist living and working on Melukerdee Country.Cassie has a responsive, intimate and experimental arts practice that crosses disciplines of moving image, photography, writing, sound, installation and printmaking. She graduated from University of Tasmania with a bachelor of Fine Arts with honours (first class) in 2021 and has exhibited both locally and interstate.


Josh Prouse

Josh is a Tasmanian Aboriginal artist, working and living in the mountains of Glenlusk, in the south of lutruwita. They work with their hands, specialising in the use of reclaimed metals, incorporating blacksmithing and jewellery techniques into their work, with an emphasis on the act of making. Josh’s work focuses on the histories of the colonised island known as lutruwita/Tasmania - examining these narratives through the scope of an Indigenous person, reworking found materials, extruding the knowledge they hold. Josh examines injustices of the past in a contemporary setting, appropriating skills and materials typically associated with the industrial industries that helped build this colonised island. Through this process they have formed their own making- and material-language, defining their practice under ‘BLAKsmith’. Outside of their arts practice, Josh works in Cultural Collections at the University of Tasmania, and as a technician at Plimsoll Gallery.


Holly Greaves

Holly Greaves is a multidisciplinary artist born and based in lutruwita/Tasmania. Her practice revolves around vulnerable and intimate circumstances, that she typically feels within abject-mundane objects and spaces. Greaves’ art practice incorporates methods that enable her to engage with her fascination for subtle traces of effect and affect in the world; such as the long-term erosion of clothing, or the slow build-up of fingerprints on light switches. Greaves is drawn to the uncontrived quality of these kinds inadvertent frottages and indices. Predominantly using at-hand industrial materials, Greaves works across, whilst simultaneously tests the boundaries of, disciplines including drawing, performance, sculpture and installation. She is interested in learning the emotional histories of places and things, not by working in response to them, but by working with them.





 

Constance ARI works across Country cared for by the Palawa of lutruwita and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout the so called ‘Australia’, as well as First Nations people from elsewhere, and their deep connection to the lands, skies and waterways over which sovereignty was never ceded.  We pay our respect to all Elders; we are grateful for their continued sharing of knowledge and Culture.


CONSTANCE ARI IS ASSISTED THROUGH ARTS TASMANIA BY THE MINISTER FOR THE ARTS
Mark