For further information on any of the exhibitions and events, please contact the Rockingham Arts Centre on 9527 0734 between 8am-4pm, Monday to Friday (please note these days are subject to change at times). Information on other exhibitions and events can also be found on our What's On Calendar.

2025 Rockingham Arts Centre Exhibition Program 

Applications are now closed for the 2025 Rockingham Arts Centre Exhibition Program. Successful candidates will be notified by 31 August 2024.

Leeuwin Current by Warrick Palmateer 

• Exhibition dates: Wednesday 14 August to Sunday 8 September 2024 
• Opening times: 10am - 4pm, Wednesday to Sunday
• Location: Rockingham Arts Centre, 11 Kent Street, Rockingham  
• Room: Main Gallery
• Cost: Free entry 
• Peel Connections Artist Talk: Saturday 7 September, 11am - 12pm. Register for Peel Connections Artist talk

The South Western coast of Australia has been Warrick Palmateer’s home for most of his life. He’s a keen surfer and beachcomber living in a coastal community north of one of the most isolated cities in the world – Perth, Western Australia. This experience has given him a rich and diverse sense of the fragility and rugged beauty nature has created within the littoral zone between the Indian Ocean and its vast coastline. 

The deep connection he has with the ocean and its surrounds has grounded and informed his journey as an artist/potter. It has inspired his choices of texture, colour and form in the way he works with clay. Palmateer’s work is primarily thrown on a potter’s wheel and then manipulated gesturally and intuitively to communicate a landscape that is very special to him; the Western Australian coastline. The vessels he creates are characterised through texture that is expressively applied, and colour intuitively rendered, to suggest the rugged and fragile beauty of the Western Australian littoral zone.

Palmateer’s vessels invite viewers to experience this beauty and to gain an insight into his deep connection to the Indian Ocean. 

Read the Artist Chronicle article about this exhibition and the artist. 

This exhibition is proud to be a part of the IOTA24 Festival, supported by Lotterywest. 

Warrick Palmateer, Leeuwin Current iii, 2024, kiln fired earth, 600 x 600 mm. Photo courtesy Helen Margaret

Eternal Portal by Megan Shaw  

• Exhibition dates: Wednesday 11 September to Sunday 29 September 2024 
• Opening times: 10am - 4pm, Wednesday to Sunday
• Location: Rockingham Arts Centre, 11 Kent Street, Rockingham  
• Room: Main Gallery
• Cost: Free entry 
• Opening Event and Artist Talk: Friday 13 September, 6pm - 8pm. Register for Eternal Portal Opening Event

Eternal Portal is Megan Shaw's latest exhibition exploring the endless possibilities to discover movement, rhythm and change within the quotidian. Engaging with the satisfying pattern, form and visual nuance of the chain through play with materiality, the transfer of form, light and shadow. 

About the artist

Megan Shaw is a multi-disciplinary artist and Museum Curator, her creative practice utilises alluring quotidian materials to produce aesthetic compositions which resonate with contemporary aesthetics and feelings in late capitalism.

Shaw studied a Bachelor of Fine Art at Curtin University, receiving First Class Honours in 2020. During her studies at Curtin, she received the Western Australian Women in Fine Arts Scholarship, membership to the Vice Chancellor's List and the Endeavor Mobility Grant to study at École Nationale Supérieure d'Art in Dijon, France.
 
Shaw has participated in artist residencies in Bulgaria and Spain and has exhibited her installation Uncut Tables at Structura Gallery in Sofia. Recent exhibitions include the Goolugatup Invitational and the solo exhibitions Reassumed Ends at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, Supernormal Stimuli at Cool Change Contemporary, and GLimpsie at Pig Melon.

Megan Shaw, Party Crasher (detail), 2024, chains and streamers, dimensions variable. Image credit: courtesy of the artist.

Look left then right ... then left again by Vanessa Wallace  

• Exhibition dates: Thursday 3 October to Sunday 20 October 2024 
• Opening times: 10am - 4pm, Wednesday to Sunday
• Location: Rockingham Arts Centre, 11 Kent Street, Rockingham  
• Room: Main Gallery
• Cost: Free entry 
• Opening Event: Saturday 5 October, 4pm - 6pm. Register for Opening Event
• Artist Talk: Saturday 12 October, 3pm - 4pm. Register for Artist Talk
• Workshop: Artist Book, Saturday 12 October, 10am – 2pm. Find out more

'Look left then right … then left again', brings together a series of prints and artists books that have developed out of ongoing walks started in 2021. These were taken in parallel to a daily making practice that employs ground imagery in an attempt to record small unrepeatable moments.

About the artist

Vanessa Wallace is an artist living and working in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia. Wallace’s practice is predominantly print based with book making forming a central component. Since 2000, Vanessa has had an ongoing project of compiling an archive of images relating to the ground underfoot. Images are developed as the result of walks, that are either time-based, one image collected per day, over a number of days or multiple images are collected from one walk. The resulting works examine moments of the everyday and investigate the intersection of public and private space, the use of text often forming an intrinsic layer. 

Completing a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) at Edith Cowan University in 2003 and an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts at North Metropolitan TAFE in 2001, Vanessa has exhibited works in solo and group shows, locally, nationally and internationally since 2001. In 2022, Transmedial – Technology’s Touch in Print, curated by Dr Sarah Robinson and Dr Monika Lukowska, PAPER, Sydney Contemporary and Impact 11 – International Printmaking Conference in 2021 (held online). Wallace’s work is held in various public and private collections including The Shire of Mundaring, Print Council of Australia Archive, Edith Cowan University and the State Library of Victoria.

Vanessa Wallace, Bunny Tree: 04: 05: 2023: 806am, 2004, digital pigment print, drypoint, chine-collé, chalk transfer and coloured pencil on archival rag paper, 47 x 40 cm. Image credit: John Wallace 

30 Years of Watercolour by the Rockingham Watercolour Society  

• Exhibition dates: Saturday 2 November to Sunday 10 November 2024 
• Opening times: 10am - 3pm, Wednesday to Sunday
• Location 1: Rockingham Arts Centre, 11 Kent Street, Rockingham
• Room: Multipurpose Room
• Location 2: Gary Holland Community Centre, 19 Kent Street, Rockingham 
• Cost: Free entry 

The Rockingham Watercolour Society is a not-for-profit community group that will be celebrating its 30th anniversary. A collection of its member artworks will be on display at the Rockingham Arts Centre and also the Gary Holland Community Centre.

About the group

The Rockingham Watercolour Society meets each Friday from 9am - 4pm at the Gary Holland Community Centre in Studio Four. They are a very welcoming group of like- minded people who enjoy watercolours and hold annual exhibitions. They enjoy excursions to see and learn from other artists to upskill members and have a very wealthy library with lots of useful information, plus members can offer tips and advice. They are fortunate to have some members who have been a part of the group from the start and also have members from around the world with varying skills. New members are encouraged to attend. Find out more about the Rockingham Watercolour Society.

NEXUS by Christophe Canato  

• Exhibition dates: Thursday 7 November to Sunday 24 November 2024 
• Opening times: 10am - 4pm, Wednesday to Sunday
• Rockingham Arts Centre, 11 Kent Street, Rockingham
• Room: Main gallery
• Cost: Free entry 
• Opening Event: Saturday 9 November, 2pm - 4pm. Register for NEXUS Opening Event

Nexus is a solo exhibition by Christophe Canato, a short retrospective over the last decade of research and sharing about male gender identity. Nexus is a unique opportunity to contemplate or to see again five selected series by Canato from 2014 to 2024 seen for the very first time in a single space.

About the artist

Christophe Canato (b. France) is a Perth-based artist since 2005. His photographic works have been exhibited in more than 55 art exhibitions, received 11 awards and have been shortlisted 27 times in various art awards. His prints are also included in numerous public collections including Artbank (Australian Federal Government collection). 

Christophe Canato, self-portrait, 2024. Image courtesy the artist.

Wise Young Things by Asha Cluer  

• Exhibition dates: Wednesday 27 November to Sunday 8 December 2024 
• Opening times: 10am - 4pm, Wednesday to Sunday
• Rockingham Arts Centre, 11 Kent Street, Rockingham
• Room: Multipurpose Room
• Cost: Free entry 
• Opening Event and Artist Talk: Sunday 1 December 2024,  1pm - 3pm. Register for Wise Young Things event

Wise Young Things is the work of mixed-medium artist Asha Cornelia Cluer and is the culmination of a 2024 Artist-in-Residence placement at Rockingham Arts Centre. It is an intergenerational storytelling film project designed to spread joy and celebrate the local community. 

The work engages local young people aged 13 - 18 who are interested in the arts and filmmaking, along with senior citizens from the City of Rockingham's Autumn Centre. Through a series of storytelling workshops, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) senior citizens have been facilitated to share memories from their childhoods with our young participants. The focus for storytelling is on immigration journeys, language, culture, friendship, family, place, and changing technology. Audio of these stories is recorded. This is followed by performance workshops in which the young participants use the audio recordings as the soundtrack to create nuanced lip-sync performances which pay attention to characterisation and physicality. These performances are filmed, resulting in a moving image in which you see a young person embody and inhabit the voice of an older member of the community.

This anthology of short films is available in the gallery for audiences to walk through and engage with as they please. You can choose to spend all day with our stories, or just a few minutes. Either way, you will come to understand the vibrancy and diversity of people and their experiences who make up the fabric of the Rockingham community. This is Wise Young Things. 

About the artist

Asha Cornelia Cluer is a multilingual mixed-medium artist and youth arts facilitator who creates culturally diverse and linguistically-focussed work. She grew up in Walyalup Fremantle and her practice spans live and recorded arts.

As a writer, her play Flamenco Vampires and Outlaw Space Cowboys, written in English and Spanish, was produced by We Are Quiet Roar (Naarm) in 2021. Her next multilingual play, A Magical Guide to Fighting Fascism, is currently in development supported by the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries. In 2023, she co-facilitated Ngalaka Daa 2023 for Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company and WA Youth Theatre Company (dir. Bobbi Henry), performed entirely in Noongar language (Whadjuk dialect) by a company of young performers.

She regularly facilitates theatre and screen projects in primary and secondary schools across Western Australia for Australian Theatre for Young People, Black Swan State Theatre Company, WA Youth Theatre Company, Barking Gecko Theatre Company and Emergent Academy (Cert. IV and Diploma courses). She was awarded the UWA Graduates Association Prize in Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistics and Psychology (Level 1) for her work in linguistics during her undergraduate degree (BA Political Science). She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK (MA Acting) and her acting career includes numerous West End and UK number one touring credits. 

Past exhibitions