Darryl Dempster is a proud Noongar man, born and raised in Kepa Kurl (Esperance), Western Australia and moved to Boorloo (Perth) in his early adulthood. Embarking on his creative exploration in 2019, Darryl uncovered his innate talent and passion for artmaking, using vibrant colours and energetic painting gestures to communicate his rich inner world.

Darryl is an artist living with limited verbal abilities and uses a combination of hand gestures and sounds to communicate. Painting helps Darryl to feel grounded and connected; it’s an activity that he looks forward to in his daily life. 

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Whiskey & Boots is a Perth-based performance company creating Headphone Verbatim Performance works that explore the challenges and contradictions of the human condition.

Through storytelling and music, Georgia King and Mark Storen gather real stories from communities and share them publicly. Their work illuminates familiar moments, common struggles and private fears, reminding audiences that we are all complex, ugly, beautiful, brave, funny, flawed and vulnerable.

While in residence at the Cannery Arts Centre, Georgia and Mark will be developing Mama Stitch.

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Pauline Bonney is an Australian First Nations artist of Wongi, Wudjari, and Mirning heritage. Working across visual art, clothing design, and social and emotional wellbeing, her practice is grounded in culture, connection, and lived experience.

Coming from a strong lineage of artists, Pauline has always been deeply connected to the creative process. For her, art is more than expression; it is a way of understanding, storytelling, and reconnecting to self and spirit.

Carol Thompson is a Wangkatja, Mirning Woman born in the Goldfields-Esperance region. She is a passionate artist who draws inspiration and strength from her family and the beautiful nature that surrounds her.

Carol has worked in education for the majority of her life, including as an Aboriginal and Islander Education Officer and Playgroup Leader. With her love of art, she has shifted focus to teaching resilience and wellbeing workshops through the arts, both with adults and children.

Samantha Thompson is a multidisciplinary artist and regional arts advocate based in Golden Plains Shire, Victoria, Australia.

Her vibrant, playful and feminist works employ traditional craft techniques, as well as printmaking, to encourage adults to play. Thompson's process is quick and fearless, producing a flurry of work.

Her upcycled handmade works of numerous mediums playfully translate to performance and public art offerings.

Loren Kronemyer is an artist living and working in regional Lutruwita / Tasmania. Her works span objects, interactive and live performance, experimental media art, and large-scale worldbuilding projects aimed at exploring ecological futures and survival skills. Loren’s residency at the Cannery Arts Centre is for the Circular Economies program, presented by SPACED in partnership with PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts). Circular Economies is a series of socially-engaged residencies in regional Western Australian communities over 2024-25, culminating in an exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2026.

For Stage 1 of her residency at the Cannery Arts Centre, Loren was interested in learning new practical skills with firearms, including new skills like sport shooting, clay pigeon making, and the logistics of firearm maintenance, ownership, and construction in both work and domestic contexts. Read more about Loren’s time here in Esperance on her blog at SPACED. We look forward to Loren returning for Stage 2 in February and November in 2025.

Ben Howe is a contemporary Australian painter. He holds a Masters of fine art degree with distinction from RMIT University. Howe was the winner of the 2024 Richard Lester Prize for Portraiture in the 2024 The Lester Prize exhibition with his work Cartagena Library (2023), an oil on panel measuring 86 x 96 cm. The Cannery Arts Centre and The Lester Prize are excited to exhibit Ben’s prize winning portraiture at the Cannery Arts Centre on a regional tour this June-July, and Ben will be visiting as artist in residence 16th - 23rd June to conduct workshops with school students and community.

Core to my practice is the question:
What Does the World Need to Hear?
When I consider the world we currently exist,
Of busy-stimulated-disconnected & climate catastrophe…
My answer is: TREES.

Stop. Breathe.
And listen to a tree.
Not only with your ears.
But with your whole being: 
Observing. Feeling. Breathing. Learning. Thinking.

Over this residency I will be developing works responding to Tree Listening and creating an installation, with participatory elements. I will be running workshops at schools, talking to botanists, Wudjari elders, reading books, walking, drawing, being and listening deep to what trees & the tree-keen want to tell me.

Loren Kronemyer is an artist living and working in regional Lutruwita / Tasmania. Her works span objects, interactive and live performance, experimental media art, and large-scale worldbuilding projects aimed at exploring ecological futures and survival skills. Loren’s residency at the Cannery Arts Centre is for the Circular Economies program, presented by SPACED in partnership with PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts). Circular Economies is a series of socially-engaged residencies in regional Western Australian communities over 2024-25, culminating in an exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2026.

For Stage 1 of her residency at the Cannery Arts Centre, Loren was interested in learning new practical skills with firearms, including new skills like sport shooting, clay pigeon making, and the logistics of firearm maintenance, ownership, and construction in both work and domestic contexts. Read more about Loren’s time here in Esperance on her blog at SPACED. We look forward to Loren returning for Stage 2 in February and November in 2025.

Fi Wilkie returns to the Cannery Arts Centre after a residency in 2023, to share her Wander Out Yonder exhibition showing two Esperance inspired artworks. ‘Drinking in the Sunshine-Banksia speciosa’ a painted paper collage of our New Holland Honey Eaters in a frenzy of delight in a forest of Banksia speciosa (Showy Banksia) “When we visited Esperance in the late Summer - we walked and walked through an amazing jungle path lined on both sides with 4 metre high flowering Banksia speciosa-I’ll never forget it!” This is one of a series of artworks created for her Wander Out Yonder series. Her other Esperance inspired work is Rock Hop and Bloom at Lucky Bay, showcasing pig face, rock parrots and beach loving kangaroos, "if you visit Lucky Bay in the Cape Le Grand National Park just East of Esperance you might be lucky to see these lazy macropods lounging on the impossibly white and squeaky sand. Blue water is not a good description - the colour of the water in this part of the world is hard to describe...as is the landscape, the flora and the great people who live there."

Fi’s travels took her to Purnululu and Karijini in the north, to the dryland woodlands near Narrogin, and the southern shores of Flinders Bay in Augusta, as well as other places. Come and see the whole exhibition showcasing artworks from her travels throughout Western Australia.

Bjoern Rainer-Adamson is a sculpture artist, producing kinetic art with metal and wood. With a background in cabinetry, fine art, wood sculpting, and woodturning, Bjoern has been working in gallery installation and is currently the Install Team Leader at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth.

Bjoern is providing professional development in art handling and installation, for the Cannery Arts Centre team and other interested organisations and personnel in the Esperance region.

Stuart McMillan is a multidisciplinary artist based amongst the forests, bushland, caves, waterways and coastline of Wadandi Boodja - the Margaret River Region, which he has called home for more than 20 years. He translates his experience of the world using a diverse sensory pallet including and not limited to sculpture, photography, painting, print media, drawing and immersive installation, continuing to explore concepts of the human condition, interested in how the external world influences the internal being, within a myriad of habitats.

Stuart’s residency is for the engagement phase of the Esperance Sculpture Trail, with support of the Mt Burdett Foundation and not-for-profit arts and cultural organisation FORM Building a State of Creativity.

Arif Satar and Audrey Fernandes-Satar are artists working in Walyalup, Fremantle WA. Across sculpture, drawing, text, printmaking, sound, and the moving image, they draw from ancestral stories, rituals, and crafting techniques, to create a rich dialogue between the past and the present. 

Arif Satar was born in the Island of Mozambique Africa. Growing up under the Portuguese fascist and colonial rule his sense of identity was enmeshed with a feeling of otherness. Today an investigation of his Indian-African-Arabic background is intrinsically embedded in his art practice, which draws upon densities of heritage, memory, literature and history. 

Audrey Fernandes-Satar was born in India. She grew up within a microcosm of stories of freedom and activism– collective memories shared or overhead, and then kept safe in an imaginary repository somewhere in her mind. Her artwork traverses’ poetic text, sculpture, drawing and altered photographs – grappling with history, and altering documentation from institutions.

Arif and Audrey are facilitating What The Eyes Cannot See a community collaborative storytelling project in partnership with the Cannery Arts Centre for the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial.

Loren Kronemyer is an artist living and working in regional Lutruwita / Tasmania. Her works span objects, interactive and live performance, experimental media art, and large-scale worldbuilding projects aimed at exploring ecological futures and survival skills. Loren’s residency at the Cannery Arts Centre is for the Circular Economies program, presented by SPACED in partnership with PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts). Circular Economies is a series of socially-engaged residencies in regional Western Australian communities over 2024-25, culminating in an exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2026.

For Stage 1 of her residency at the Cannery Arts Centre, Loren is interested in learning new practical skills with firearms, including new skills like sport shooting, clay pigeon making, and the logistics of firearm maintenance, ownership, and construction in both work and domestic contexts.

Come and make your own wet felt wool hat with Jo Barr from Jamb Hats is a textile artist who creates unique 3D wool felt sculptures in the form of felt hats. She is a passionate fibre addict and felt-fanatic. Jo creates hats that are handcrafted from Australian wool fibres in her on-farm studio in rural NSW. Unlike other hat makers Jo creates her own felt and then sculpts and shapes the felt into unique one-off design hats in a range of styles. Jo enjoys designing and creating hats that are unique, vibrant, comfortable and practical whilst expressing the personality of the wearer and making them feel stylish and confident.

Artist Statement: My Life My Love – My drive of passionate thirst, I hunger in the creations of art.

Hannah has worked very hard to establish the settings in which she now works full time as a painter in both acrylic and oil work selling online very successfully including galleries around Australia. Being an entrepreneur, she also supplies retail stores with product and teaches pottery classes at various venues.

Known under her business name The Moody Rabbit, Hannah is coming to the Cannery to explore our natural environment and run two workshops, Acrylic and Oil Botanical Painting and Ceramic Mug and Spoon.

Arif Satar and Audrey Fernandes-Satar are artists working in Walyalup, Fremantle WA. Across sculpture, drawing, text, printmaking, sound, and the moving image, they draw from ancestral stories, rituals, and crafting techniques, to create a rich dialogue between the past and the present. 

Arif Satar was born in the Island of Mozambique Africa. Growing up under the Portuguese fascist and colonial rule his sense of identity was enmeshed with a feeling of otherness. Today an investigation of his Indian-African-Arabic background is intrinsically embedded in his art practice, which draws upon densities of heritage, memory, literature and history. 

Audrey Fernandes-Satar was born in India. She grew up within a microcosm of stories of freedom and activism– collective memories shared or overhead, and then kept safe in an imaginary repository somewhere in her mind. Her artwork traverses’ poetic text, sculpture, drawing and altered photographs – grappling with history, and altering documentation from institutions.

Arif and Audrey are facilitating What The Eyes Cannot See a community collaborative storytelling project in partnership with the Cannery Arts Centre for the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial.