Meet the 2026 cohort of the Minderoo Artist Fund.

When you’re starting out as an emerging artist, there can be many development opportunities to grasp. But when mid-career hits, those opportunities can dry up.

People often assume that mid-career artists are doing fine. But this is exactly when many of them need support the most – when life pulls them in every direction, yet their dedication to creating remains as strong as ever.

This is why Minderoo established the Artist Fund in 2020 to support mid-career artists. We want to make sure they keep going, creating bold and exciting work that brings people together and helps create the connected communities we need to thrive.

We’ve built a cohort of around 60 mid-career artists so far, including eight artists who will join us in 2026 to tackle bold new projects that will extend their artistic practice.

Come and meet them and see the exciting work they are going to pursue.

Muriel Hillion Toulcanon

Multi-disciplinary artist

“Being in the mid career point, I would say that the challenge is sometimes you feel like you're still an emerging artist.”

Muriel Hillion-Toulcanon with her work Maloya, a research and performance project weaving together Maloya – the traditional music and dance of Réunion Island – pirate histories and manga.

Martine Perret

Photographer

“You really have to believe in yourself. You have to keep showing up. And it takes real inner strength.”

Martine Perret will undertake the project Saltwater Women of the Midwest, a multi-media project celebrating the strength, resilience and spirit of women from Western Australia’s Midwest region.

Andrea Gibbs

Writer, performer and storyteller

“I’m now a mid‑career artist, and I can feel myself stepping back from the spotlight a bit, helping younger artists come through — and I’m really enjoying that.”

Andrea Gibbs will be developing a script for a new play, The Way We Go About It, exploring how one family navigates the complexities of voluntary assisted dying in Australia.

Rachel Claudio

Composer and producer

“I feel like the main difference between starting out and having completed so much work, is that now I’m far more attached to the process than the outcome.”

Rachel Claudio will conduct creative development for her project Porous, a large-scale installation, using nervous-system sensors to transform each participant’s physiological signals into an immersive audio-visual experience.

Dianne Jones

Visual artist

“If we’re not telling stories and we’re not making art, I think life would be pretty boring.”

Dianne Jones, with her project Truth-telling in the Frame: Reclaiming Stories at Woodbridge, a site-responsive photo-media project developed during a yearlong residency exploring the layered histories of Woodbridge House.

Tim Meakins

Visual artist

“I think art brings people together in more ways than one. It’s like a connective tissue that anyone can relate to.”

Tim Meakins with his project Laying Down and Looking Up. Tim will investigate how technology influences creative expression by exploring the tension between digital and physical making, expanding his practice through hands‑on methods such as painting, airbrushing, sculpting, moulding and drawing.

Sherry Quiambao

Multi-disciplinary artist

“There’s almost a kind of mid‑career invisibility that people worry about at this stage. The challenge has always been trying to maintain that visibility.”

Sherry Quiambao with Adrift, a major project exploring water as a vessel for connection and resilience. The work is inspired by the floating dwellings of South Sulawesi, which Sherry encountered during an international residency last year. She will reinterpret these structures through a Western Australian perspective, opening up an important conversation about rising sea levels, migration and resilience.

Adriano Cappelletta

Writer, actor and producer

“I think it takes time as an artist. It’s really only by mid‑career that you know what you want to say and how you want to say it.”

Adriano Cappelletta will write a new feature film script, titled Rainbow Rewind. The script will follow the story’s protagonist as he returns to Perth and restages his high-school formal to reconnect with the queer classmates he never got to celebrate with.