Future Movement brings six months of contemporary painting to 18 Marcus Clarke, pairing two of the most followed abstract artists working today with leading voices from Canberra's M16 Artspace community.
About the exhibition
Future Movement is a six-month curated program that places a considered selection of contemporary and culturally significant works into the everyday experience of 18 Marcus Clarke Street. Developed by Future Art in partnership with M16 Artspace, the exhibition balances a national curatorial direction with a genuine commitment to Canberra's artistic community.
The title carries the show's intent. These are works about motion and change: the flow of water across Country, the energy of gesture and colour held in paint, figures moving between real and virtual worlds. Together they form a living gallery within the building, one that shifts and deepens over its run.
Every eligible work in the program is available for acquisition. Scan the placard beside any piece to view details and enquire.
The artists
Madeline Ryan is a Melbourne-based abstract artist whose work explores energy, movement and emotion through colour and form. Working intuitively with texture and mixed media, she creates layered, tactile surfaces that invite both visual and emotional connection. Her works are held in private collections in Australia and internationally. Future Movement presents five major canvases at 121 x 182 cm.
Sophie Tea is a contemporary artist whose practice explores emotion, movement and material through bold abstract compositions. Self-taught, she built an international following from 2014 onward and is known for work that is immediate, energetic and deeply human.
Jazz Matthews (Wilay Designs) is a First Nations artist whose paintings carry stories of Country, waterways and the life they sustain. Her works in Future Movement, including Living Waters of Country and Keeper of Country, were painted on and about Ngunawal Country and speak to care, connection and responsibility for place. Courtesy of M16 Artspace, Canberra.
Kerry Shepherdson is a Canberra painter whose acrylic works build fields of colour, pattern and rhythm. Future Movement presents Drift, Rapture in Blue and Greenscape. Courtesy of M16 Artspace, Canberra.
Helen Goodwin (b. 1984, Eora/Sydney) is a Kamberra/Canberra based artist whose figurative painting evokes a sensory experience of the body through textural surfaces and gestural, rhythmic mark-making. She received a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours, First Class) from the ANU School of Art and Design in 2025 and is a studio tenant at M16 Artspace. Her work Future Momentum considers the multiplicity of the self in virtual spaces.
About M16 Artspace
Founded in 1985, M16 Artspace is an inclusive organisation supporting a thriving community of emerging and established artists, writers and curators. Running three gallery spaces, 31 artist studios and five arts organisations, and partially supported by the ACT Government, M16 is one of the best places to experience art in Canberra.
M16 Artspace studios will be open for visitors for the annual open day on Saturday 7 November, where people can meet the artists, buy art from the studios and talk to them more about their art practice.
Kerry Shepherdson and Helen Helen Goodwin are long-term studio residents at M16 Artspace in Griffith, ACT. In August, Jazz and Kristal will be the inaugural participants of the M16 Artspace First Nations Artist Residency Program.