As a Project Partner for the third Regional Arts Triennial, we’re supporting its visibility by publishing a series of blogs that showcase the incredible artists exploring the theme Radical Futures.

What’s On December & January: Radical Futures Exhibitions

This summer, two regional WA exhibitions are addressing themes of transformation, progress, new possibilities and change.

Unearthed and Gathering Ground are both open over the summer months in Esperance and Margaret River. If you’re travelling to the regions, or you live locally, mark your diaries.

Unearthed | Kepa Kurl / Esperance

20 December 2025 – 22 February 2026

Cannery Arts Centre, Kepa Kurl / Esperance

Eight Esperance artists; Athena Boast, Shannon Bowen, Pam Burgess, Cait Edwards, Rani Fankha, Elaine Fewings, Giorgia Stefania and Naomi Stanitzki, began with a simple but difficult question: what would a future without local challenges look like? The prompt resulted in Unearthed, an exhibition that through diverse mediums and perspectives, imagines new ways of living, connecting, and creating.

The exhibition sits within a lineage – The Alternative Archive (2019) and Open Borders (2022) – each iteration building on the last. This third chapter turns its attention forward with the grounded care of people who know their patch of earth intimately. It’s one of 15 exhibitions across regional WA, featuring more than 120 artists.

Make the trek. The celebration event on January 8th from 6pm promises exactly what good regional arts should: art, conversation, and the kind of connection that only happens when you show up.

Gathering Ground | Wooditchup Bilya / Margaret River

8 January – 3 February 2026

HEART Nala Bardip Mia (opening night January 16th, 6pm – 8pm)

Elisa Markes-Young’s curatorial premise doesn’t muck about: “In a world increasingly defined by displacement, division, and disconnection, the question of belonging has never been more urgent.” Fair enough. But where other exhibitions might wallow in the crisis, Gathering Ground, featuring twelve artists including Ana Brawls, Carmen Griffin, Cassandra Bynder, Jane Tangney and Yu-Hua Lan, pushes past simple diagnosis and turns towards unpacking more questions.

The work here grapples with the refugee crisis, epidemic loneliness, the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty, and youth alienation as symptoms of a collective failure to build genuine belonging. It’s ambitious terrain, and the artists aren’t offering easy answers. Instead, they’re exploring the tension between displacement and rootedness, interrogating what it means to truly welcome ‘the other’ without conditions.

There’s a free artist talk on January 17th (2pm – 5pm) and paid workshops later in the month for those who want to sit with these questions longer. On January 22nd and 29th, the HEART will host a special double-bill: A Cuppa & a Yarn with Carmen Griffin (paper craft using recycled papers and vintage patterns) and Stitch Our Stories with Elisa Markes-Young (an embroidery circle adding food memories to a community Story Cloth). Both activities run simultaneously with tea, coffee and biscuits flowing freely – $5 includes all materials.

These events are part of the broader Radical Futures series that will culminate at John Curtin Gallery in late 2026, so consider this your early entry point into a conversation that’s only getting started.

Both exhibitions are free. Both are worth the drive. And both suggest that regional Australia might just be where the most interesting cultural thinking is happening right now.

The WA Regional Arts Triennial 3: Radical Futures is funded with support from the WA Government. It is coordinated by Southern Forest Arts with support from ART ON THE MOVE through the Regional Exhibition Touring Boost. Project partners include John Curtin Gallery, Regional Arts WA, Galleries West and Kimberley Arts Network.