Meet the Artists

Kim Munro is a documentary researcher and practitioner who works across installation, film, audio and performance. Her work explores entangled histories of place, people and archives as well as ways of being together. Her work has been screened on the television as well as at local and international galleries and festivals. Recent and current projects include the documentary theatre project, The Art of Work is a Work of Art (2025); Shimmering Worlds (2025), a surreal moving image work which explores place, story and collective identity; and On-site (2026), an ephemeral event which responds to a karaoke room. Kim also runs the Adelaide-based Documentary Film Society which is dedicated to showing local and international nonfiction films to new audiences. Follow Kim here.

1. Kim Munro, 2. The Art of Work is a Work of Art (2025) Photo: Sia Duff 3. Documentary theatre performance, 4. The Futorical Society (2023), Short film 5.City’s New Malls (2023)Short film 6. The Park (2018)Short documentary

Clémence L. (aka Ilha Kostya) is a French filmmaker based in Geneva, focusing on writing and directing animated films. She worked for more than fifteen years in advertising, as a film editor and as a project manager in the luxury industry, before deciding to dedicate herself fully to independent directing. She studied sociology and anthropology and trained as a Gestalt therapist, which gives her work a unique depth, bridging psychological insight with cultural and poetic exploration.  Animation, with its ability to weave together layers of reality, memory, dreams, and myth, has become her chosen medium to explore complex subjects in a sensitive and poetic way.“ As a female filmmaker, I care deeply about telling stories about women — stories that speak to women, but also resonate with men — and that make visible the complexity, strength, and contradictions of female figures around the world.” She is currently developing a biographical film inspired by the life and legacy of one of the great figures of modern Indian history, amongst several other projects. Clémence will be at Boathouse in January 2026.

1. Clémence L 2. Animation film “ Pyjama” concept 3. Animation film “Pyjama” sketch 4, 5. Scenes from “Reclaim”

Mina Patel believes there is integration across the human experience, transcending the boundaries of background, tradition, and circumstance. This has led her on a multi-disciplinary “seeker’s” path driven by a search for interconnectedness and understanding. She writes poetry, short stories, and makes films. “I’ve always been fascinated by how art shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves. Film, in particular, has the unique ability to place us directly into another person’s shoes. By stepping into these narratives, we develop a deeper sense of empathy, breaking down the barriers that separate us. It allows us to see ourselves in others, fostering a shared humanity”. Mina’s next project is to make a documentary that explores the global roots of veganism across cultures and how individuals worldwide, despite diverse cultural upbringings, have independently adopted a vegan lifestyle. You can see her work here.

1. Meena Patel 2. Poster of Film “Between the silence” 3.Behind the scenes shot of “Between the silence” 4. Pumpkin Eulogy, a short animation film a short animation for school children to discuss bullying by looking into the lives of both the bully and the victim 5. A scene from Pumpkin Eulogy

 

Camille de Vulpilliers is  French student in animation movies from La Cambre in Brussels. Her last short film for her master is about the childhood of her mom in Cambodia. It’s a movie about the transmission of a mom to her daughter, between reality and imagination. She often uses 2D digital animation and Painting backgrounds. She works also on some abstract illustration about nature and dreams. For six months she has the opportunity to do her exchange student at the school NTUA in Taipei. Camille will be working on architecture based animation films at the Boathouse from August to September 2025. 

Nicola Bryars is a multidisciplinary artist from Australia working across printmaking, textiles, sound, and installation. During her residency at the Boathouse, she will explore Ahmedabad’s rich ecology, architecture, and devotional spaces, laying the groundwork for a new body of work for a solo exhibition. Immersing herself in a culture so different from her own, Nicola welcomes the unfolding journey and is excited about the ways this month-long experience will shape and deepen her creative process. Drawn to birds, botanical forms, sacred geometry, and found materials, Nicola will gather sensory research through sketching, photography, sound recording, and experimenting with breath work to guide her work more intuitively. She also looks forward to connecting with local artists, learning from traditional printmaking techniques. Nicola will be working at Boathouse in January and February 2026. 

Agathe is a French artist and art teacher based in Paris. Agathe has been drawing since the age of 12 and graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratif in Paris. She has exhibited in many places around the world. She often uses photography, collage and drawing for her art. Although she was a photographer and director for a long time (She made a documentary in India on Varanasi), currently she mainly makes drawings.
Agathe tries to direct her images towards meaningful social issues, her goal is to express an idea that can resonate in people’s minds, to make people think about their lifestyles and identities. She is now a drawing teacher, and also helps art students to pass the entrance exams for art schools in France.

Her artworks:
“copie” : Buffalo, Musée d’histoire naturelle, Paris. 
“Backstage” : Behind the scenes
“Picacrap” : Pablo Picasso at work
“Sadhusmanu” : Sadhus of Varanasi, India

Ali Vaughan is an artist with a dual BA in Art Practice (Honors) and Art History from Stanford University, graduating with University Distinction. Her artistic achievements extend beyond her academic background, as evidenced by her numerous awards in Art History. She also participated in Overseas Study program in Florence for about 5 months.
Since 2016, Vaughan has showcased her work in various exhibitions and shows across California, USA. Her commitment to the arts is further reflected in her current role as a teaching artist at the Kala Art Institute. Additionally, she has previously contributed to the art world as an associate editor for Mitsui Fine Arts.

Ali’s first solo museum exhibition titled “The Afterlife of Rivers and Fields” will open at the Bakersfield Museum of Art in January 2026. The show will consist of an entirely new body of work developed mostly in 2025, much of it during the critique program with John Yau. Watch this space for more details.

 

Riel Noir is a multidisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Riel graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in fine art. She employs painting, photography, textiles and weaving as her mediums. Often her work reflects upon the way by which the Self is bound to society, and how these societies relate with one another, focusing upon the controls that are in place to maintain power. Riel’s more intuitive work responds to her immediate environment and the quest to express herself in that moment. At other times she simply wants to play, allowing colour and design to cleanse her soul, just as saffron will cleanse the palette. For her, all facets are relevant.

Devika Billimoria, artist + performer. A practicing visual artist and performer based in London from Naarm, Melbourne. She engages with liveness, dance, video, photography, and installation as mediums to explore notions of queering, materiality, and body-ing. These artistic practices involve methods of chance, collaborative participation, and somatic listening to unveil the socio-cultural constructs of division, hierarchies, and gestures, with an interest in diasporic South-Asian dance and ritual and Western art lineages. Devika endeavours to reorient established norms, fostering unexpected encounters and temporalities that provoke alternate perspectives that agitate demarcations of the body. She has extensive performance and dance experience, beginning with Bharatanatyam training at the Bharatalya Dance Academy in Melbourne at the age of five.

Marie Julia Bollansee, a Belgian Artist. Her work is about people, about their lives and deaths and about the quest in the no man’s land in between. The physical is a constant factor in Ms. Bollansée’s videos and performances, as she was trained as a classic sculptor. Ms. Bollansée’s dramatic power of observation is reflected in her work. She frequently plays the role of observer, translating age-old human themes into images that we can all relate to. Her installations create fields of tension between primary materiality, poetry, and aesthetic images. Her work was selected by the Jackson Pollock Foundation in 2000. Ms. Bollansée will be researching on origin, social and ecological impact of Tarpaulin throughout Ahmedabad and nearby cities in Gujarat. By visiting the sources, she will discover how they are manufactured, by whom and in what conditions. Her research will also cover the human and environmental impact of the fabrication of blue tarpaulins. Ms Bollansée will collaborate with Prof Dr Sarah Melsens at CEPT University and with Ms Dr Veerangana Solanki for her research on blue tarpaulins.

Tebogo Boikanyo Matshana is a visual artist and writer based in Johannesburg South Africa. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art from Rhodes University in 2017 and is currently completing an MA in Information Design through the University of Pretoria. She has founded the Birdhouse Interactive platform which combines visual art, narrative poetry, and technology towards digital storytelling. In addition, she works as an Archivist at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg South Africa. She has previously self-published an anthology of illustrated poems titled a blackbird makes as sound (2020) and her poem For the Broken Boy appears in the Sol Plaatjie European Union Poetry Anthology Vol IX. Her work can be seen on @blackbirdmakesasound and interactivebirdhouse.com

Miriam Shenitzer lives and works in Boston. Her work is about drawing and connecting. Miriam draws the world around her as a way of seeing that world more clearly. She connects with others as she draws them and draws with them. Most recently, Miriam has become involved in the creation of urban gardens as a way to support insects, people and plants. Miriam has shown at the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, at the McMullen Museum of Art in Boston, and at the National Library in Ottawa. Her work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the New York Public Library, and Yale University, among others. Her work can be  seen on @miriam_shenitzer and miriamshenitzer.com

Michael Zank holds a PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and is Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Medieval Studies at Boston. His areas of expertise are Jewish thought and philosophy, Continental philosophy, Jerusalem in history and religion, and the literary aspects of biblical reception in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Currently, he works on literary aspects of philosophical writing; political philosophies of “eros” and “agape;” and blasphemy in law and religion. Currently traveling in Europe and India, he is working on a book-length study on Maimonides and his modern readers (Spinoza, Cohen, Strauss). His work can be seen on blogs.bu.edu/mzank/

Vanessa Valero is a textile artist based in Bogota, Colombia. In 2013, she studied an MA in textile art and design at Aalto University in Finland. During her time in Scandinavia, she explored different aspects of surface design and the winter landscape. She had the opportunity to create a carpet for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, with a large design she made from her observations of changing light during winter. Over the summer of 2015, she did an internship in Iceland where she learned how to make hand-tuft tapestries that she now uses into her practice. In 2016 she founded Studio Vanessa Valero that focus on creating tapestries based on her own interpretation of what means living in the Andes. Her work can be seen on @studio_vanessavalero and vanessavalero.com

Hans De Pelsmacker is a sculptor based in Czechia. Until the mid-1990s, he designed autonomous monumental sculptures made of steel, then gradually developed spatial work, where the relationship between the environment and the functionality prevailed. His works are considered in a hybrid zone between a sculptural and a functional object, often within an architectural context. More recently, Hans has redefined his artistic scope and has returned to creating objects in form of new furniture designs, ceramics and glass objects, sculptures, bronze, tapestry and graphic in collaboration with various glass factories, a ceramics studio, textile companies and graphic studios. His work can be seen on @hansdepelsmackerand hansdepelsmacker.com

Thérèse is an Irish born multi-disciplinary artist, who lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She studied Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University. After graduation, Thérèse built a successful career as an editor, cutting programmes for television, while bringing up her family. Returning to an artistic practice in 2016, Thérèse has exhibited her work in a number of solo exhibitions, including Unfixed (2022) and Salvage (2023) as well as contributing to group exhibitions. She attended residencies in Scotland, Finland and Morocco and was Filmmaker in Residence for Glasgow University’s Moving Image Project. Her work can be seen on thereselynch.com

Susanne Hangaard is a ceramist who lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hangaard has a hybrid practice. She gets energy from making crossovers between her own field as a ceramist and other art disciples such as art, film, performance and literature. In her latest work Hangaard used digital 3D modeling and printing. Hangaard is educated from KADK, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Design, Copenhagen, Denmark and Rhode Island, School of Design, Providence, US. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received grants and awards from The Danish Art Foundation amongst many others. Her work can be seen on @susanne_hangaard and susannehangaard.dk

Debby Akam is a visual artist based in the Lake District, England. New woodcut prints and paintings on canvas are investigations of layered space created through colour relationships and gestural brush marks that result in representations of stilled- action or vitality.  She is interested in the influence of place, and vernacular art forms on visual culture. Central to her work is potential of colour as a source of positive emotional response linking personal experience with wider themes of celebration, mutability and renewal. Debby holds an art-practice based PhD from the University of Sunderland, has worked extensively on public art projects and regularly exhibits her work, recently at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London 2023. Her work can be seen on @akamdeb and debbyakam.com

Gary is a visual artist focusing on Sculpture.  Gary has an MPhil. in ‘Art in Architecture;’ completed many Commissions; and carried out research into Public Art when he was a Harkness Fellow based at University of Washington. Until recently he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sunderland where he was the MA Fine Art Programme Leader. Gary’s current work Tintotem Parade reference architectural motifs and images typically found in the traditional Public Monuments. They revise and examine this convention in a playful critique of hubris and grandiosity. This alternative collection of Counter-Monuments while still utilising plinths, the pedestal, and different kinds of columns and towers are made from discarded tins and additional found objects transformed by colour to celebrate the value of upcycling. Recently he has shown his work at the Trinity Bouy Drawing Prize 2018; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2021; and the Royal Scottish Academy  2022 & 2023. His work can be seen on @garypower8 and garypower-art.com

Virginia Hines is a photographer and photography writer based in San Francisco, California. She is a frequent contributor to Street Photography Magazine, which featured her inits Year of Women Photographers and two podcast interviews. Her photographs have appeared in many other publications, including Portrait of Humanity 2021, The Lancet Global Health (March 2020 cover), L’Oeil de la Photographie, All About Photo, The Independent Photographer, and F-Stop Magazine, andhave been exhibited in group shows in the U.S., Europe, and South America. She also wrote the introductory essay for Harvey Stein’s book of street photography, Coney Island People: 50 Years (2022).

Bob Aldous is an artist based in London Uk, with his studio in West London. He trained at Ravensbournecollege, Goldsmiths College and the University of East Anglia. 

Bob has exhibited widely and represented by galleries in the Uk. His present solo exhibition is at the Mcallister Thomas Gallery titled- “Bob Aldous in India”. In this exhibition Bob is showing work that he painted at the boathouse that includes his experiments with natural dyes and work with Indian Cotton Rag Paper.

Lindsay Kirker (b. 24 March 1984) is an artist whose primary practice is painting. By utilizing the tools of perspective and the visual language of the built environment, Kirker reflects on our relationship with Nature. Drawing on reoccurring themes of love, loss, demolition and rebuilding, the construction in Kirker’s large-scale landscapes stands as a metaphor to explore the spectrum of human experience, confronting the ideas and structures we put in place in order to protect ourselves from uncertainty. As an emerging artist, Kirker has exhibited throughout British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.

Tanvi Kant is a multi-disciplinary artist based in a seaside town in South East England. Repurposing reclaimed textiles, Tanvi has been practising elemental hand techniques for over 15 years creating jewellery. She studied sustainable design and practice at the University of Derby establishing her award-winning jewellery in 2005 and later extended the participatory side of her practice at the Royal College of Art in 2013. Tanvi’s award-winning jewellery has been internationally exhibited and is part of the public collection at Touchstones Rochdale Museum. Tanvi was also included in ‘Alchemy’, a British Council exhibition presented in 6 countries across the Middle East and has created a bespoke collection for British luxury brand Bamford.

Jennifer Marquardt’s fiction views China from within a mid-sized city, charting the country’s emergence as a global actor through the lens of locality. She has lived and worked in China since 2012 as an Assistant Professor of English. Her collection of short stories Hard Surfaces are Good for the Body (2016) won the Threwline Press award and her short fiction has been featured in The Masters Review, The Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Her forthcoming novel is You Do Not Have to Be Good.