MUNDARING Arts Centre Inc invites audiences to explore the artistic process as an act of survival, defiance and self-care in Creating Space, presented by the SICK AF Collective.

Bringing together artists living with illness, disability, chronic pain, and caregiving responsibilities, this exhibition reveals how artmaking can become a way to navigate daily life, reclaim agency, and create moments of care and connection.

Spanning textiles, photography, writing, jewellery, installation, and mixed media, Creating Space shares deeply personal experiences through works shaped by adaptation, persistence and lived experience.

Rather than hiding the process, the exhibition embraces it – with notes, fragments, repetitions, and evolving works sitting alongside finished pieces to reveal the realities behind creative practice.

Following the collective’s previous exhibitions SICK AF and THE STORM, this project focuses on what it means to continue making through uncertainty and limitation.

Here, creativity is not presented as an escape from hardship, but as something essential – a practical and meaningful way of moving through the world.

Each artist’s unique experience of disability, illness, recovery, or caregiving shapes and informs their creative outcomes.

While some works present as powerful forms of visual activism, others redefine creativity as an act of faith, collective care, adaptation or quiet reflection.

Across the exhibition processes of recovery, negotiation, resilience, and stillness emerge through deeply personal approaches to making, united by a shared interrogation into creativity as a means of survival, connection and self-determination.

At the heart of the exhibition is the belief that healing is not separate from creativity but embedded within the act of making itself.

Through intimate and honest works, the artists challenge ideas around productivity, wellness and what creative practice can look like when shaped by changing bodies, energy and circumstances.

Audiences are invited to engage with the exhibition through reflective prompts, workshops and participatory experiences that extend beyond the gallery walls, encouraging visitors to consider the role creativity plays in their own lives.

Participating artists include Amanda Alderson, Nadeen Brown, Claire B Bushby, Brad Coleman, Lucinda Crimson, Catherine Higham, Shayne O’Donnell, and Annamaria Weldon.

Creating Space is on display at Mundaring Arts Centre, 7190 Great Eastern Highway, from June 28 until August 23.

For further information and Public Program details, visit the website.