Panel Talk: FEMMES: TAKING UP SPACE!
Description
What do you do when there's no space for you? You make your own.
Tobi Stanley, Matisse Laida and Aretha Brown come together to talk about building creative spaces, communities and practices on their own terms.
From skateboarding and apparel to food, culture, public art and community programs, each has created platforms that make room for people, ideas and identities that aren't always represented in mainstream creative spaces.
The conversation will explore independence, collaboration, community, self-determination, the realities of building something from the ground up, and the joys of creating space for yourself and others.
Speakers
Tobi Stanley, Pearls Skateboards
Tobi Stanley is a Melbourne-based designer and founder of Pearls Skateboards, an independent skateboarding and apparel brand. With a background in Fashion & Textiles, Graphic Design and Screen Printing, she has spent over a decade working across apparel and manufacturing. At Pearls, she works across creative direction, artwork, garment design, production, e-commerce and logistics. Through Pearls, she has built a femme-focused skate brand within a traditionally male-dominated industry and sport.
Matisse Laida, We Eatin' Good
Matisse Laida is a queer, Mauritian/Venezuelan artist and community arts worker working across film, food, performance, and public and community programs. Their work explores care, culture and collaboration through a queer and diasporic lens. They are the founder of We Eatin' Good, a QPOC community project that uses food as a way to gather, share stories and connect with identity. Through pop-ups, workshops, film and exhibitions, the project explores cultural food practices as acts of resistance, memory and joy.
Aretha Brown, KISS MY ART
Aretha Brown is a Gumbaynggirr artist, muralist and screenwriter whose multidisciplinary practice centres Blak truth-telling, cultural resilience and intergenerational knowledge transfer. Through painting, public art, installation and storytelling, Brown creates works that challenge colonial narratives while celebrating First Nations survival, joy and futurity. As founder of KISS MY ART Collective, Brown has led the creation of more than 70 public murals across seven countries, transforming walls into sites of education and cultural exchange. In 2025, Brown became one of the youngest artists selected for the National Indigenous Art Triennial, opening After the Rain at the National Gallery of Australia with her monumental 40-metre timeline mural, The Birth of a Nation: The True History of Australia.
BORN ROMANTIC
'The only thing harder than being born Aboriginal, gay, and a woman… is being born a romantic.’
- Aretha Brown
In the age of the internet, I have chosen a post-cringe perspective on the meaning of love, dating and romance; leaning into the vulnerable, awkward and the uncomfortable.
Rejecting the assumption that Aboriginal art must be purely educational and political, this show delivers a dissection of my heart, a deeply personal insight into the experience of being a young, queer, Blak girl. It’s sexy, stupid, tender, awkward, and a little bit perverted.
This show is my love letter to being embarrassingly human.
Born Romantic is supported by Abbotsford Convent.
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity