Crit Session w/ Freja Carmichael

Crit Sessions are a unique opportunity to develop your emerging, early or mid-career visual arts or curatorial practice with constructive feedback and discussions on your works or works-in-progress from some of Australia’s leading artists, curators and industry professionals. This professional development series provides artists with valuable insights which are often hard to find outside of educational institutions.⁠

For this Crit Session of 2026, we will be joined by esteemed curator, Freja Carmichael.

This event is free with a very limited capacity of four participants per session. We intend for the sessions to be accessible, inclusive and supportive environments for creative and professional growth. ⁠

Spots are limited and available until tickets are exhausted. If our upcoming guest facilitator feels aligned with your practice, feel free to claim a seat.

If tickets have been exhausted, we encourage you to still join the waitlist via the form provided. If something comes up and you cannot attend, please release your ticket so someone else has the chance to participate.

Need further clarity on what a crit session is and how it runs?

Crits (short for critique) are casual but considered conversations that give artists the chance to share their work-in-progress and receive constructive, thoughtful feedback from industry peers.

Each artist or curator will receive 20-30 minutes to share their background, artistic practice and request any feedback, or direction, asking specific questions to the guest facilitator. As a collaborative session we request that all participants stay for the entirety of the crit with the opportunity to also provide constructive peer feedback.

Whether you’re refining a new piece, shifting direction, or just needing some fresh eyes - Crits are about support, dialogue and growth, not judgement.

About the guest facilitator:

Freja Carmichael is a Ngugi woman from the Quandamooka people and is Curator at the University of Queensland Art Museum. Over the past 15 years, she has worked alongside First Peoples and communities on exhibitions, programming, collection research and documentation at art centres, regional galleries, cultural gatherings, contemporary art spaces and national and international institutions. Freja’s work is dedicated to centring First Peoples’ knowledges, histories, creative practices and fibre traditions and to creating spaces for collaboration, intercultural exchanges and intergenerational sharing through curatorial approaches. Recent curatorial projects include to come together as water, UQ Art Museum (2025); co-curator of The National 4: Australian Art Now, Carriageworks (2023); the national touring exhibition long water: fibre stories (2020–22), Institute of Modern Art; and Weaving the Way (2019), UQ Art Museum. Freja is a member of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection Advisory Council at the University of Virginia, United States and is a PhD candidate at UQ. In her free time, Freja loves heading home to Country and being with family on Minjerribah.

Accessibility: This session will be hosted in-person at the Judith Wright Arts Centre, 420 Brunswick St Fortitude Valley. If you have any specific access needs or questions, please either email admin@outerspacebrisbane.org or send us a message on Instagram.

Image Credit: Freja Carmichael, to come together as water installation view at UQ Art Museum, 2025, featuring Megan Cope, Whispers (Poles), 2023. Image: Joe Ruckli.