Victoria Hempstead is a conceptual artist, whose work spans the mediums of sculpture, installation and mark-making. Victoria's work explores the energetic exchange between maker and material as a liminal, ever-morphic relationship. Known for creating pieces that remain in process - oxidising, expanding, bursting, dispersing - the artwork often acts as a conduit between site, self and psyche. Victoria integrates found materials such as wood, ash and charcoal alongside metal, glass, paper and most recently soil. Her process-based practice is influenced by intuitive guidance, motherhood, care and labour.  

Victoria’s current research work explores the potential of intuitive insights and guidance in the act of artmaking and creative imagining. Of particular interest is proposing intuitive thinking as an effective and successful alternative to conscious analytic reasoning and solutions-oriented frameworks. Avenues of research include radical embodied cognitive science (RECS), trauma release therapy and somatic healing, child attachment play and physical contact healing with infants (Aletha Solter PhD), and exploring the disabled and neurodivergent community’s heightened connection to the body through intuition. In her role as educator and facilitator, Victoria utilises her artistic practice as a source of insight and inspiration for different modalities of thinking, being and play. 

Victoria is currently preparing for a joint PhD candidature between Munich, Germany and Sydney, Australia.

Victoria recently unveiled her significant public commission Reminiscence at Royal Automobile Club Victoria (RACV) City Club in Naarm/Melbourne’s CBD. Her other public commissions include Eternal Gaze - a large (12m x 8m) collaborative digital projection work at 80 Collins St in Naarm/Melbourne’s CBD. In 2020, she was named a joint winner of the 2020 Macquarie Emerging Artist Prize and in the same year, was also a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Award and awarded the prestigious Art Incubator Grant. Across 2019, Hempstead was named a finalist in the Kennedy Prize, the Clayton Utz Art Award and the Incinerator Art Award. She was the recipient of the University Postgraduate Award (2011) and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney with a 6 month placement at Parsons, The New School of Design (NYC). Her Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) was undertaken at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.

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I acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Custodians of the land I create and live on, the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation, and pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and recognise First Nations peoples continued rights and connection to culture, community, land, sea and sky. Always was, always will be.

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Education

2011 - 2012 Master of Fine Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney

2012 Master of Fine Arts, Parsons Fine Arts, The New School, New York City, USA

2007 - 2010 Bachelor of Visual Arts (1st Class Honours), Sydney College of the Arts

Solo Exhibitions

2022 - 2023 Making Reminiscence, Royal Automobile Club Victoria (RACV) City Club, Melbourne, VIC

2020 Kindling, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney, NSW