Art As A Catalyst

Sarah Roots, Lead Curator

Sarah Roots is a regional curator and artist. Her curatorial philosophy centres decentring, generative listening and reciprocity, creating conditions where regional voices, lived experience and place-based knowledge can shape more grounded, imaginative and collective futures.

Steve Cutts, Photographer

Steven Cutts is an Australian-based photographer living in the Kimberley region of WA. His work is centred across documentary landscape, environmental portraiture and still life. His long-form, research-led practice considers questions of place and belonging, exploring the sometimes complex relationships between people and land, amidst historical and environmental legacies.

Elisa Markes-Young, Artist/Curator

Elisa Markes-Young’s life spans Poland, Germany, and Australia. Her migratory journey has left her in a perpetual state of in-betweenness, neither here nor there, never arrived. It informs a practice inspired by the prosaic nature of old techniques and traditional folk craft, where slow, repetitive, textile techniques become acts of place-making. 

Her work results from a deep-seated feeling of tęsknota – a Polish concept of profound cultural sorrow rooted in melancholy longing, the pain of absence and unresolved grief. She asks what does it mean to belong and whether home is a place, a memory, or an impossible ideal. 

Markes-Young has received funding from Regional Art Australia, Regional Arts WA, Australia Council and DLGSC. She was the winner of the inaugural MidWest Art Prize. Her work was published in Mary Schoeser’s Textiles: The Art of Mankind (Thames & Hudson, 2012) and Charlotte Vannier’s Le fil dans l’art contemporain (Pyramyd Editions, 2025). It is represented in Royal Perth Hospital Art Collection, Tamworth Regional Gallery Art Collection, Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection, various Western Australian council collections as well as private collections in Germany, UK and Australia.

Markes-Young lives and works in Margaret River, WA.

Ruth Halbert, Artist

Ruth Halbert is a WA-born textile artist, living and working in Denmark, WA. She uses slow hand-crafting processes to explore place and belonging, including investigating her colonial history and Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. The challenge of reconciling opposites underpins her practice: within political and societal tensions and between form and materials. 

Halbert extends her practice through an ongoing collaboration with Elisa Markes-Young and as part of the Butter Factory Collective, Denmark, WA. She develops and shares weaving skills with Albany Weavers. Halbert has undertaken residencies in WA and Sweden, exhibited throughout WA, and has received several awards and grants.

Keely Robertson, Place and Cultural Development Coordinator, Shire of Carnarvon

Keely Robertson is a community, cultural and arts development practitioner and event director working on Yinggarda Country in Carnarvon, Western Australia.

 Starting her local government career at 17, Keely has spent 20 years working with communities across six metropolitan and regional local governments, as well as in the not-for-profit sector and private consultancy. Grounded in asset-based community development, her approach honours people, history and place. She has a knack for connecting the dots between people, place and possibility, creating opportunities for purpose, connection and meaningful participation.

Keely holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication, majoring in Journalism and Public Relations, and also moonlights as a civil celebrant.

 For the past two years, Keely has been the Shire of Carnarvon’s Place and Cultural Development Coordinator, working across arts, culture, community development and events. She is passionate about championing Carnarvon’s growing identity as an arts town, creating opportunities for artists and communities, and has relished developing her own emerging curatorial practice.