Meet the 2025 Visual Artists in Residence

Bianca Tainsh is a multi-artform artist, based in Meanjin Brisbane and on Lake Weyba, Kabi Kabi Country, Through a hybrid practice of contemporary art and fluid forms of ecological activities Tainsh explores issues such as the cyber-saturated human’s disconnect from the natural world and the search for spirituality in the epoch of digital culture. In Tainsh’s current work, Neo-animism forms the trope for artefacts and rituals that unveil new forms of coexistence and being.

Tainsh’s work takes the form of video, digital and semi-traditional media, assemblages, installation and live art. Organic imagery, materials and processes find new meaning as they meet the aesthetics of digital production. Tainsh considers the more-than-human organisms she works with to be collaborators in her artmaking.

I’m genuinely excited to be working in Metro Arts’ MAVA space and to have the support of their artistic team. This residency will give me the freedom to explore materials that might best express the organic culture of my terra-biomes. I’m already looking forward to sharing this work with the Meanjin community.

Image courtesy of Josef Ruckli

Micah Rustichelli is an interdisciplinary artist working on Jagera and Turrbal land, Brisbane.

With a strong focus on performance, sculpture and painting, Micah’s work operates across modes of fine arts, circus and club kid/nightlife arts. This cross-pollination of forms has led the artist to a practice that uses humour, queer knowledge and intersectional materials to explore
contemporary concerns with a wide range of audiences.

Micah has developed this unique practice through residency opportunities such as the Workroom Program at Studio1, the Queer Development Program with Performance Space, and on various stages from Dark Mofo to Woodford Folk Festival. In 2023 Micah took the inaugural title of Altimate Showdown Champion against 60 Brisbane nightlife performers and Artist of the Year at the 62nd annual Queens Ball.

This residency opportunity will allow me to explore new material processes and workshop skills that were previously inaccessible to me. I’m thrilled to be diving into experimental ideas and new methodologies that I’ve been seeking to push within my practice with the support of Metro Arts.

Image courtesy of Kris Anderson

Anastasia Booth teases arts erotic potential as fragmented or flawed substitute.  By interleaving the languages of Freudian fetishism, kink, dark fantasy, feminism, history and personal anecdote, she ponders, can the artist as an agentive and deviant subject fight off gendered limitations and her own sexual failures. The dialogues she dabbles in can be problematic and contradictory, where no real answer is forthcoming.

As a grateful recipient of the Metro Arts Residency, I am excited to get on site and experiment with the resources at hand, using the time to enrich my studio approaches. In particular, the refining of sculptural techniques and methodologies, aided by the assistance of Metro’s technical staff and workshop facilities. It is my hope that this intensive will build a dynamic and exploratory body of work that will offer insights into divergence via erotic abstraction.

Image courtesy of the artist