This event will be held both on-campus and online via Zoom (a link to the online stream will be sent to registered attendees).

Anna May Kirk will discuss her practice with glass, exploring how environments transform over deep geological and human historical time, and how this change is experienced. Kirk’s works utilise the optical nature of glass to make tangible the many processes of environmental transformation that act upon temporal and geographic scales beyond the human sensorium. Often exploring historical and current climatic events, industries of extraction and instruments of measurement, Kirk critically interrogates cultural traditions of perceiving, measuring, representing and engaging with the natural world. In doing so, Kirk’s artworks act as conduits through which the intangible can become visible.

Anna May Kirk is an multi-disciplinary artist, curator and creative producer based on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia. In 2024, Kirk was awarded the Christine and Stephen Procter Fellowship and Clitheroe Emerging Sculptor Mentorship. In the same year she exhibited work with Cement Fondu, North Sydney Art Prize, Ames Yavuz, QUT Art Museum for the International Symposium for Electronic Art, and co-curated Garden at the End of Time at Tin Sheds Gallery. Kirk has held solo exhibitions at Firstdraft, Verge Gallery and Mosman Art Gallery, and exhibited work with galleries and museums across Australia including Powerhouse Museum, PICA Perth and Casula Powerhouse. She was awarded Highly Commended in the Valerie Taylor Art Prize and has undertaken residencies with City of Sydney, Blindside, and Parramatta Artist Studios, as well as an upcoming residency with the Satellite Institute in Norway, where she will develop a major new body of work. Kirk is currently a Program Curator at Powerhouse Museum and has curated projects taking the form of exhibitions, festivals and digital projects. In 2021, Kirk founded Supper Sessions, a grassroots arts funding initiative raising independent grants for artists through community dinners. Kirk holds First Class Honours from Sydney College for the Arts and a Bachelor of Visual Arts from UNSW Art & Design.

Image: Anna May Kirk, Year Without a Sun, 2023. Exhibition documentation courtesy of Jessica Maurer.

The School of Art & Design Seminar series will continue weekly on Tuesdays from 1-2pm, between 17 February and 21 October 2025, co-convened by Dr Alex Burchmore and Alia Parker.