FutureNOW

Alison Mooney is an Australian artist exploring colour, movement and curiosity from her studio on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Her studio pieces, murals and public art use bold colour and dynamic movement to bring fresh energy to a space. 

Alison’s public art practice is driven by the unexpected impacts it offers the broader public – both on a daily basis as people physically encounter a work, and also from the broader perspective in terms of the contagious nature of creative risk-taking for any community. Exploring the potential of merging our physical public space, with our increasingly occupied digital, public space, as a public artist looking to engage people unexpectedly.  

Amanda Bennetts is an Australian new media and installation artist, currently participating in Ars Electronica x IDSA's FOUNDING LAB in Linz, Austria. Living with a progressive neurological disease, Bennetts draws on her experience to critically dissect issues relating to care, sickness and disability. Examining what it means to be an ill-body in the world, Bennetts navigates a realm of living that is politically charged and socially determined. She creates large installations that engage materiality, incorporating video, sound and mass-produced objects, often with clinical and disability aesthetics.   

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 is exploring how physical and digital space can be activated for audiences using augmented reality and analog technologies as way to engage with the mundane in a playful manner. Prioritizing and elevating diverse voices while continuing to explore ideas of identity expressed through personal cultural artefacts especially those linked to the Filipino and wider Asian diaspora, remains core to Ben’s practice and work. 

Fin Wegener is an audiovisual artist and creative producer operating in Southeast Queensland, Australia under the moniker ‘Abstract Human Radio’. Currently conducting lecturing at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Fin uses motion tracking, machine learning and modular synthesis to explore the relationship between embodied interaction and audiovisual performance.  

Kellie O’Dempsey creates site-generated installations and performances that integrate projection, video, collage, architectural space, gestural line, performance and digital drawing. Created in both solo and collaborative formats with sound artists and contemporary dance practitioners, O’Dempsey’s diverse practice explores, deconstructs and heightens the concept of public space as shared experience. O’Dempsey manipulates space and alters perception to transform and reinvigorate the familiar whilst establishing a sense of brilliance. Using performance, play, line and colour, O’Dempsey’s public productions enable an inclusive form of cultural interaction. The immersive site installation and performance drawing works invite the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making. Kellie’s past performances include: Art after Dark; Pier 2/3; 18th Biennale of Sydney; MONA FOMA, Hobart; White Night Melbourne; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and Botanica 2021 in the Brisbane Botanical Gardens. 

Kellie O’Dempsey is represented by Jan Manton Galleries. 

Melissa Stannard is a proud Yuwaalaraay Gamilaraay, and Koama artist, researcher and poet, living on Kabi Kabi land on the Sunshine Coast. 

Melissa uses her narrative skills and deep passion to bring hidden stories and experiences to light, often fighting for the underdog, the voiceless, the lost and forgotten, neglected and overlooked. Through the use of reparative aesthetics Melissa works to raise awareness and aims to help the healing processes of Aboriginal /Indigenous community, create pathways of understanding and reconciliation for the community as a whole, while embracing caring for country . 

Nicole is an interdisciplinary artist, melding sculptural expertise with a diverse range of ephemeral practices, of new media, site-specific installations and interventions. Central to her artistic ethos is ‘Interaction’ as a sculptural strategy. 

Imbued with a passion for immersive experiences, Nicole crafts artworks that beckon the audience not just to observe but to partake actively. Her creations serve as portals, inviting viewers to step into a realm where visceral encounters unfold, allowing them the agency to engage and influence the artwork's evolution. A graduate of Seven Hills Art School and the Griffith School of Art with a Masters in Visual Arts (2001), Nicole delves into the natural cycles, corporeal rhythms, and the intricate tapestry of human relationships and communication. Her spatial-temporal creations transcend mere visual engagement, embracing sight, hearing, and touch to foster intimate connections between the audience, the artwork, and fellow participants within the exhibiting space. 

Nicole's art transcends the boundaries of mere observation, transforming into a multisensory voyage, encouraging a profound engagement with the essence of the art and the spaces it inhabits.

Petalia Humphreys is an Australian artist currently living and working on Gubbi Gubbi country on the Sunshine Coast.

Her practice spans from small-scale hand-crafted paintings to digital landscapes and large site-specific public art installations. Her practice is concerned with spatial sentience, exploring transitional moments that exist between the physical and conceptual.

Delighting the viewer with playful candy-coloured hues, her works invite the viewer to participate in an illusory game of shifting dimensionality. Aiming to engage inquisitiveness and challenge perception through mapping of spaces her works spark curiosity and invite the viewer to renegotiate their experience of the known.

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Gina Choy is an academically trained artist and researcher whose work is shaped by sustained engagement with Eastern—particularly Chinese—philosophy and practice. Drawing from a life intertwined with cross-cultural experience, including her Chinese-Australian family, her work embodies a lived dialogue between traditions where history, spirituality, and nature converge. Her research interests sit at the intersection of technology and tradition, neuroscience and art, framing her practice within a contemporary yet deeply grounded lineage.

While Choy is a traditionally trained fine artist, her practice has evolved to incorporate new and emerging technologies, most notably blockchain. Since 2021, she has been exploring the idea of art as digital artefact through the inscription of her work on the Ethereum blockchain, expanding her inquiry into how material and digital forms co-exist and extend one another.

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Lisa Kingsbury is a Sunshine Coast based designer and creative innovator working at the intersection of fashion, fine art, and emerging technology. A member of the 2025 Future NOW cohort, Lisa is recognised for her cross disciplinary approach to wearable art and her commitment to elevating local creativity onto the global stage.

Grounded in traditional craftsmanship yet driven by forward-looking digital practices, Lisa’s work explores how physical objects can be transformed through interactive technology to deepen audience connection. Beyond her creative practice, she collaborates with photographers, designers, stylists, projection specialists, and AR technologists, championing local talent and advocating for Queensland artists to be represented on international stages.

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Camila Mozzini-Alister, is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and media educator based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. With dual PhDs - in Communication (UERJ, Brazil) and Arts: Production & Investigation (UPV, Spain) - along with a Master’s in Social & Institutional Psychology and a Bachelor in Journalism, their academic grounding informs a robust practice at the intersection of body, technology and society. 

Their creative work examines how digital connectivity shapes embodiment and identity; they explore this through writing, performing, installations and pedagogical projects that invite reflection on our desire for omnipresence. Mozzini-Alister has published critically engaged books and papers on social media, media philosophy, futures and embodiment, as well as have worked as an art educator and social media educator in Brazil and Australia. Committed to nurturing critical awareness as much as artistic expression, they aim to create spaces where community, creativity and technology meet and create presence, dialogue and transformation.

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Sophie Delaney is an Australian-Irish Curator and Visual Artist whose work critically explores the politics of digital mediation, embodiment, and feminist resistance. Drawing from intersectional feminist theory, her artistic practice investigates how digital screens and virtual environments can disrupt the gendered dynamics of spectatorship and representation. Through performance-based video, 3D rendering, and immersive installations, Delaney renders her body as avatar, constructing hyper-curated digital spaces that reclaim agency and subvert the exploitative structures of the male gaze.

Alongside her artistic practice, Delaney is an experienced Curator and Arts Manager with a focus on digital media, interdisciplinary collaboration, and community engagement. She has delivered over 300 public art programmes and exhibitions across Australia, often working with remote, regional, and underrepresented communities. Her curatorial work spans institutional, artist-run, and independent contexts.

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The visual alter-ego of Brian Keayes, Australian multimedia artist & designer, is best known for provocative projection art on sculpture and landscapes. He also experiments with crowds as a canvas, encouraging human interaction with light. He has fired lumens in art, music and environmental festivals across Australia, America and Japan. Artworks are based on reoccurring themes of sustainability, environmental science, ancient wisdom and the existential crisis we face collectively as a species.

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Founder of Saturate, a distributed design team of highly skilled creatives working globally with international brands. Australian-born Andrew Maccoll has made a name for himself as a sought-after Creative Director and Photographer, having worked with some of the world's biggest brands and celebrities. Career highlights include working with iconic names such as Apple, IBM, Dior, and NBC. 

 An expert in brand strategy and culture changing creativity, his impressive skill set includes directing photography and film. Andrew earned a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts & Photography, majoring in Multimedia, before going on to study directing at the AFTRS. 

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Jessie Hughes is an internationally-recognised Australian new media artist, technologist and screenwriter, her works having exhibited most notably at Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Cannes and the Tate Modern. Hughes has been named one of Australia’s Future Changers for her commitment to using digital innovation for positive social impact, and was awarded Australia's prestigious 2020 Sir John Monash Scholarship to support her Masters in Screenwriting. 

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