Caroline Mercier
Textiles and Printmaking
March to April 2025

Dr. Caroline Mercier is an award-winning artist, designer, and educator with over 15 years of experience in fashion, performance, and fine arts. She began her career in fashion design, launching her own boutique before transitioning into costume and performance art. A recipient of the prestigious Les Masques award, she has designed for productions such as Les Misérables in New York, Cirque du Soleil, McGill Opera, and renowned directors like Robert Lepage and Douglas Campbell. Her expertise extends to Hollywood and Las Vegas film sets as a makeup artist, including work at the Kodak Theatre in LA. She has also competed in global body painting competitions in Austria and England.

Originally from Quebec, she got her PhD in Fine Arts in England at Northumbria University and is now a full professor at California State University Stanislaus, ranked no.2 in the US Nation for Social Mobility.
 
Caroline is hoping to create a costume installation on the grounds of Tactile Arts, made of Darwin local and discarded vegetation as well as collected seaweed on the coastline. Fire is the element inspired by the dry season spikes in the Outback. She is interested in seeing, left untouched, how Mother Nature can transform her work through natural decay.

Zoë Slee
Ceramics and Glass
March to June 2025

Zoë Slee completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at ANU in 2014 and has exhibited nationally and internationally.

Since 2019, Zoë has balanced her artistic practice with a Master’s in Curation and Cultural Leadership at UNSW. She has curated and exhibited at major ceramics events, including NEXUS: The ACT Showcase and MANIFEST: The Art, Craft and Design of Contemporary Australian Ceramics, and has been featured in Art Edit magazine.

Now based in Darwin as Assistant Curator at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, she is preparing for a 2024 exhibition at Belconnen Arts.

Zoë’s practice explores transformation, liminal spaces, and duality through ceramics and mixed media. Inspired by mythology, folklore, and natural processes, she creates highly detailed objects that capture moments of change, engaging with contrasts like life and death, softness and hardness, and movement and stasis.

For her Tactile Arts residency, Zoë will build on research from her 2023 residency in Greece, merging these ideas with Darwin’s natural landscape. Her work will explore Greco-Roman and local water systems, focusing on seasonal changes and how they shape the landscape. Through large-scale ceramics, she aims to push her practice in new experimental directions.

 

Learn More About Zoë

Zoë's Website

Zoë's Instagram

Catherine Miles
Painting
April to July 2025

Catherine Miles is a full-time artist privileged to live and paint on Larrakia Land in the Northern Territory. Inspired by the vibrant mix of cultures and landscapes in the Top End, Catherine’s work seeks to reconnect with the authentic self, stripping away trivial idealisms to find wholistic value in real experiences. Using Impressionistic alla prima techniques and quality oils, she creates layered, pixelated colours that offer individual interpretation while maintaining realism. Her art has earned over 20 awards, including the Portrait of a Senior Territorian in 2019 and 2023. In 2024, Catherine was a finalist in the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award. Her work is part of the Araluen Art Collection and is in many private Australian and international collections across the world. Catherine is on a lifelong quest to improve her practice and share that knowledge with others.

Tattooing dates back to the Neolithic era and is practised worldwide. Though uninked herself, Catherine deeply appreciates the art form and the personal stories it represents. During her residency at Tactile Arts, she will create a series of intimate portraits exploring body art as a reflection of identity and self-perception. This series will further refine her distinctive Impressioistic, pixelated layering techniques, with a focus on colour and lost edges. She is also eager to share her knowledge through a series of short workshops for Tactile Arts members.

Learn more about Catherine:

Catherine Website
Catherine Instagram
Catherine Facebook

Angela Soares
Textiles and Printmaking
May to August 2025

Angie Soares is an artist and maker based on Larrakia Country in Darwin. Her slow, contemplative practice blends textile traditions with contemporary, process-led approaches. Working across needlework, printmaking, and assemblage, she explores texture, materiality, and the quiet rituals of daily life.

With a background in Asian Studies and Creative Arts, and experience in community development and peacebuilding, Angie’s work is grounded in care, deep listening, and mindful presence. She has exhibited locally and interstate, and contributed to nationally recognised public artworks through a multi-year residency with the Biota Lane Artist Collective at the Territory Wildlife Park.

Lacemaking is central to her practice, connecting her to heritage, memory, and ideas of mending—both material and relational.

Angie will explore traditional lace techniques—Irish needle lace, bobbin lace, and knitted lace—to create new work for an August exhibition at Untitled Gallery in Darwin. She’ll also experiment with installation, light, and form to bridge craft and contemporary art.

Throughout the residency, Angie hopes to host open studio sessions and gentle mending circles, inviting others into the quiet ritual of making and repair.

 

Learn more about Angela:

Angela's Instagram

Mandy Pryse-Jones
Ceramics
May to August 2025

Over the past decade, my art practice has explored various mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, and ceramics. Drawing, however, remains the cornerstone of my work.

Capturing ancient landscapes, observing vast spaces in Australia to fathom the memories that are held / embodied on country. My practice is a response to place, reflecting an interest in the history, culture, and architecture embedded in specific locations.

I am a graduate of Sydney College of the Arts, with BA hons Drawing and painting. Has a Masters in design and currently lectures with Torrens University.

 I plan to focus on developing drawings, paintings, and ceramics inspired by my research at the botanical gardens. I would like to create hand-built slab and coil ceramic pieces using slips to draw on to the surfaces of these objects. As well as a series of paintings while at the studio.  My goal is to create a body of work that highlights the significance of Darwin's gardens and contributes to an exhibition celebrating their role in the city's landscape.

I am fascinated by the tropical plant species at the Darwin Botanical Gardens. I am eager to delve deeper into this garden’s environment, its history, and architecture

The interplay between history, architecture, and the natural environment continues to captivate me, and this residency represents a valuable continuation of these interests.

 

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON!