DURING March the Midland Junction Arts Centre (MJAC Inc) will be presenting two exhibitions as part of this year’s Perth Festival.

The West Gallery will play host to ‘Happy Meals and Scooter Skids: art from the outer suburbs’ while the East Gallery will feature ‘Don’t Ignore the Periphery’.

‘Happy Meals’ is a dynamic and celebratory exploration of outer-suburban life featuring solo and collaborative works by Andy Quilty and high school students from three outer-suburban high schools, including Midland’s Youth Futures Community School.

‘Don't Ignore the Periphery’ features a selection of monotypes and digital print works from multidisciplinary artist Brad Coleman alongside sculptural objects by artist-jeweller Amanda Alderson.

The ‘Happy Meals’ exhibition is a dynamic and celebratory exploration of outer-suburban life, the exhibition is an extension of Quilty’s ongoing research and intention to amplify under-represented stories, improve arts access for outer-suburban communities and encourage young people to consider the possibility of pursuing arts into the future.

The exhibition is a culmination of the works created during a three-month residency at MJAC in 2024, ‘Outside In Between’.

In this project, part of the Swan Youth Workshop series, Quilty and young Swan residents experimented with print processes to create individual and collaborative works empowering youth from the outer suburbs to share their lived experience through creative acts.

“Initially focusing on fundamental drawing skills, I quickly pivoted to a less prescriptive approach, giving the students access to different drawing and printmaking methods and materials, inviting them to improvise,” Mr Quilty said.

“We used found and low-cost materials and techniques connected with outer-suburban experience, such as drypoint prints made by scratching into a sheet of tin retrieved from a skip bin, or oil graffiti pen monotypes using fast food packaging as a print plate.

“I wanted the students to feel welcome in an arts institution and know that these community spaces belong to them.”

The monochromatic nature of the artworks not only reflects the aesthetic and cultural identity of the outer suburban life Quilty remembers from his own youth – black jeans and metal band tees, black skid marks on bitumen, black graffiti scrawls, black Holden HSV’s and Ford XR8’s, and AC/DC’s Back in Black.

“Projects such as these exemplify the vital role artists bring to connecting organisations, individuals and audiences to creative inquiry,” MJAC executive director arts and culture Jennifer Haynes said.

In the Brad Coleman and Amanda Alderson’s ‘Don’t Ignore the Periphery’ collaboration, the duo explore artmaking as a daily meditative practice, inviting audiences to consider the creative process as a reflective and transformative act.

Alderson’s process is marked by slow, rhythmic forming, an embrace of complexity, and an element of danger, all balanced with a reverence for beauty and scale, with her jewellery, artwork and curatorial projects drawing directly on autobiographical adventures and long running experience working in the arts.

For Alderson, the studio is her place of sanctuary and therapy, where creating beautiful objects is a beacon of light in her recovery process from a disabling injury, as a daily restorative affirming action.

Juxtaposed with Alderson’s intricate contemporary jewellery and sculptural objects, Coleman’s practice involves anticipation, patience, and experimentation, coupled with the exhilaration of rapid results.

His love of storytelling and broad field of interest has led him to generate works in film, photography, animation, sound design, print making, oil painting and installation, but most recently, Coleman’s primary focus has been on his ambitious 1500 monotype prints project, which started in 2024 from a personal challenge to create on a daily basis.

For both artists experimentation with materials and techniques, involving daily reflection and selective curation, is part of their routine practice. Working alongside each other in life and in their creative output, Alderson and Coleman look to reframe the outer boundaries not as distractions, but as essential elements to be woven back into the creative journey.

As part of the exhibition, a series of videos will be available online, designed to make the exhibition accessible to those who cannot attend in person, or would like to engage further with the ideas and artworks.

Each episode will focus on different groups of artworks from the exhibition, highlighting the importance of slow-art, allowing people to contemplate the works in their own place of comfort. A new episode will be added each week in the lead up to Slow Art Day, celebrating this international day of reflection and engagement.

The exhibitions will run at Midland Junction Arts Centre from March 1 to April 27.

MJAC is located at 276 Great Eastern Highway, Midland and is open Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm and Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 3pm.