Artists in Conversation Breakfast

Start your morning with creativity and insight at the Artists in Conversation Breakfast. Enjoy a hot breakfast and barista-made coffee as you hear from four esteemed artists, each sharing their inspiration, creative process, and personal journey in the art world.

Set amidst the stunning FACETS exhibition, this intimate event offers a rare opportunity to engage with artists, gain behind-the-scenes perspectives, and deepen your appreciation for their work—all while surrounded by over 200 incredible pieces of art.

Guest Panellists include:

Aurora Elwell 

Aurora Elwell is an emerging ceramic artist working on Yuggera Ugarapul lands, creating sculptural vessels that explore her own identity. Elwell meditates on her emotions during the making process and translates unspoken thoughts into tangible objects. Her ongoing body of work, The Body Vessel, is an investigation of deep emotions such as desire, depression, self-consciousness and ego. 

Aurora graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Second Class Honours degree in 2023 (University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba).

Aurora teaches workshops and throwing courses at the Darling Downs Pottery Club, Toowoomba, as well as engaging with the clay community as cohost of Birds of Clay, an Australian ceramics focused podcast. Aurora is listed as a finalist in the North Queensland Ceramic Awards 2024 and received an honourable mention and exhibited in the Emerging World Stage exhibition at Clay Gulgong (2024), and most recently was selected as an exhibiting artist in Artisan's yearly exhibition, Unleashed (2024), which celebrates Queensland's promising early-career artist practitioners.

Ben Tupas

Ben Tupas is an artist, digital producer and educator based on Giabal, Jarowair and Western Wakka Wakka land (Toowoomba, Queensland). He is passionate about telling human stories with a strong sense of place.

Ben’s solo exhibitions Greetings From Eurasia (Crows Nest Gallery, 2022) and Mindanao Story Cycle (Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, 2018) explored personal ideas about Filipino identity and family history through video and audio installation.

In June 2024, over five years of collaboration with artist Lisa Clarke was exhibited in Observational Correspondence (Rosalie Gallery) featuring postcards that captured everyday vignettes from regional Australia.

Ben was the Artistic Director of LIT Festival: Stories in Light (2018-2020), a biennial night festival that shares local stories through site-specific light projection and light sculptures.

His work has been seen and heard in The Guardian, Australian Audio Guide and at the international lecture series Creative Mornings.

In 2016, Ben co-founded Story Artist Run Collective (storyARC) an artist-run initiative for regionally-based digital storytellers with theatre artist Dr Sarah Peters.

Previously, Ben worked as a digital producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's innovative regional storytelling project ABC Open.

Through the ABC Open role, he produced work for TV, radio and online. In addition, Ben travelled to regional communities across southern Queensland to deliver digital media workshops.

Tina Wilson

Tweed Regional Gallery Curator – Exhibitions. In relation to a recently curated exhibition, Tina Wilson states that, “There are many things in life that require us to traverse delicately. Whether it be social interactions, personal interactions or interactions with land and environment, we need to be constantly mindful of our actions now because of the lasting effects they can have in the future.”

Using this idea as a springboard for an exhibition of works drawn from the Tweed Regional Gallery collection, Wilson looks at our relationship with the environment through the lens of contemporary art. Bringing together work by Michael Cook, Rew Hanks, Penny Evans, Michael Kempson, Vernon Ah Kee and Victoria Reichelt, Wilson has positioned a large linocut panel by the Dhuwa artists of the Northern Territory at the exhibition entry, setting up a strong and immediate connection to the environment.

“This work illustrates how Aboriginal people lived in harmony with the land’s delicate ecosystems and responded to the natural flow of seasons,” Wilson explains. “As the exhibition continues, the works explore the devastating impact colonisation had on Aboriginal people and the environment – through introduced flora and fauna – and in particular, how this trauma continues for both Aboriginal people and the environment today.”

Kate Marek

Brisbane-based artist Kate Marek is known primarily for her stunning landscape paintings. Kate’s interest lies in colour: both its painterly application and its evocative power. A practicing artist for the past 20 years, Kate has a background education in visual arts, teaching and animation.

She has been the recipient of multiple awards, most recently winning the Facets Fairholme Art Prize (2023) and the open prize at the St Sebastian’s Art Exhibition (2022).

She was selected for the National Emerging Art Prize ACB Selects exhibition (2023) and was a finalist in the Revival Art & Design Gallery's Emerging Artist Prize. Kate was short listed in last year’s Lethbridge 20000 and Lethbridge Landscape prizes as well as the Harden Art Prize. Her work is held in private collections throughout Australia.