About the artist
Shaun Weston is a visual artist based on Gubbi Gubbi Country / Redcliffe Peninsula, whose practice centres on memory, material and the idea of home. Working across painting and drawing, he creates tactile surfaces using vintage fabrics and found materials that explore the interplay between comfort, vulnerability and transformation.
Shaun holds a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) from Queensland University of Technology, along with qualifications in graphic design. His background in both disciplines informs a visually considered practice that balances intuitive process with refined composition.
His work has been recognised through selection in several national art prizes, including the Marie Ellis OAM Drawing Prize and The Gold Coast Art Prize. His pieces are held in public collections such as the Gold Coast University Hospital and Toowoomba Regional Gallery, as well as in private collections across Australia.
Shaun’s practice is shaped by a sensitivity to texture and collective memory. Through the reuse of domestic materials, including upholstery fabrics, chenille bedspreads and vintage wallpaper, he builds works that invite close inspection, holding space for the sensory traces of lived experience.
Ink drawings form an integral part of his process, often created through a ritual of surrender and repetition, with select pieces becoming resolved works or forming parts of larger compositions.
For a deeper dive, read the below artist statement.
Home is something we move away from, long for, inhabit and remake. I constantly return to the idea of home - not just as a physical place, but as a shifting psychological space. Shaped by personal and collective memory, materiality and sensual experience are central to my practice.
Artist Statement
Following only a strong desire to bring to life what was in my head, I used to make with little considerations as to why. Early works, including large scale paintings of dogs and cats on bedding, years later revealed themselves as coded narratives of childhood trauma. Now conscious of this, my work doesn’t attempt to explain it. Instead, it makes space for what cannot be fully spoken, held within the familiar language of the body, flowers and domestic objects.
My hands sweeping across the tufts of chenille bedspreads, my fingers tracing the outlines of floral wallpaper - these comforting memories are woven into the materials I work with. Vintage bedspreads and wallpapers, decades-old upholstery fabrics purchased on clearance, cardboard and newspaper are my canvas. I’m drawn to materials that exist in a liminal space between the precious and the disposable. Working with these materials lets me speak to survival in a way that’s quiet but deliberate.
The surfaces I build are about contradiction. I take soft, familiar fabrics like chenille and heavily encrust them with paint, turning them into something hard and prickly. This transformation becomes both an act of self-protection and a gesture of control, allowing me to reframe vulnerability through tactile processes. What appears lush and inviting might instead reveal itself to be sharp and resistant.
Touch is an important undercurrent in my work, with a negotiation of permission built into many of my painted surfaces. People often want to touch, which is followed by a moment of hesitation - they either ask or simply touch. In that pause, a subtle boundary becomes visible, one that is either respected or crossed.
Ink drawing is a different kind of ritual, one of surrender. I work upright, letting gravity take hold as I draw with a dropper directly from the bottle. Ink runs down the wall onto my feet and the floor. It’s a physical process of letting go and then control. Life is messy, and so is this process. I repeat drawings, many are discarded, others are filed away. Some become resolved works on paper, others provide the composition for larger paintings, their components hidden and transformed. My drawing practice is layered and selectively revealed.
Through transformation, I find possibility. My work doesn’t offer simple narratives of healing or disclosure. It holds space for the messy, layered process of making meaning from experience. It embraces contradiction, it doesn’t reveal everything at once. Like memory, like home, it shifts.
Curriculum Vitae – Shaun Weston
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Hello, Goodbye, Field Trip Gallery, Paddington, Qld
2024 Material Poetics, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Woolloongabba, Qld
2015 Flowers & Peeps, Percolator Gallery, Paddington, Qld
2010 Jesus and the Marlboro Man, H Block Gallery, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Qld
2009 Waiting for Fluffman, Circle Gallery, West End, Qld
2004 Pillow Talk, The Window, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, Qld
2003 Fluff Monger, The Farm, Brisbane, Qld
2001 Deadpole, Palace Gallery, Brisbane, Qld
1999 Smashed Little Disco Balls, Palace Gallery, Brisbane, Qld
Dual Exhibitions
2013 Coconut & Lotus (with Makelita Sheehan), Warehouse Space, Brisbane, Qld
2004 The Practical Guide to Mental Hygiene (with Suzanne Boccalatte), Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney, NSW
Education
2009–2010 Master of Visual Arts (incomplete), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
2007 Certificate IV in Graphic Design and Advertising, Commercial Arts Training College, Brisbane
1996–1999 Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 Finalist Exhibition, Moreton Bay Art Prize, Pine Rivers Gallery, Strathpine, Qld
2025 Linden Postcard Show, Linden New Art, St Kilda, Vic
2025 Fifty Squared, Brunswick Street Gallery, Vic
2025 Feather and Fur, The Churn Room, Dayboro, Qld
2024 Paradise Gloss – Next Edition, Side Gallery, Red Hill, Qld
2024 Finalist Exhibition, Rival Art & Design Emerging Artist Prize 2024, Albion, Qld
2024 Finalist Exhibition, Moreton Bay Art Prize, Pine Rivers Gallery, Strathpine, Qld
2023 Finalist Exhibition, Rival Art & Design Emerging Artist Prize 2023, Albion, Qld
2022 Fifty Squared, Brunswick Street Gallery, Vic
2021 Time Travellers, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld
2021 Gallery Finalist Exhibition, Lethbridge 20,000 Small Scale Award, Paddington, Qld
2019 Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing Finalists Exhibition, Project Gallery, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, Qld
2019 Feminine and Masculine, Aspire Gallery, Paddington, Qld
2010 Stan and Maureen Duke Art Prize, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Qld
2010 Virion, Kelvin Grove Urban Screen Network, Brisbane, Qld
2009 ILIKEIT, Flipbook Gallery, West End, Brisbane, Qld
2009 Grand Opening, Love Love Studios, Newstead, Brisbane, Qld
2005 Crates on Wheels (Touring exhibition), Toowoomba Regional Gallery, Qld
2004 Space Invaders, Toowoomba Regional Gallery, Toowoomba, Qld
2004 Conceptual Crochet, The Cross Projects, Kings Cross, Sydney, NSW
2004 Get Smart: Class of 99, Main Gallery, Metro Arts, Brisbane, Qld
2003 The Beach, Five to Midnight Festival, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, South Bank, Brisbane, Qld
2003 The Farm Comes to Town, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney, NSW
2003 Smear, Peripheral Art Space, Barossa Valley, SA
2003 Churchie Emerging Art Exhibition, Churchie Anglican Grammar School, East Brisbane, Qld
2002 Conrad Jupiters Art Prize, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Qld
2000 EndzonE, Institute of Modern Art, Fortitude Valley, Qld
2000 Queer Transgressions, Brisbane Powerhouse, Qld
2000 Fresh Cut, Institute of Modern Art, Fortitude Valley, Qld
1999 Conrad Jupiters Art Prize, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Qld
Awards
1999 Winner, Eyeline Publishing Prize, Queensland University of Technology Graduate Exhibition, Brisbane
Collections
Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
Gold Coast University Hospital
Bibliography
Benzie, Tim, 2004, Hearth and Homo, Sydney Star Observer, 26 February, p. 12
Broker, David, 2002, Review – Deadpole, Eyeline, No. 48 Autumn/Winter, pp. 44–45
Butt, Zoe, 2004, Fluff Monger, The Farm (catalogue essay)
Butler, Rex, 2000, Feel the Frisson, The Courier Mail, 4 March, Weekend, p. 16
Dean, Christine, 2004, Conceptual Crochet, The Cross Projects (catalogue essay)
Gomez, Mark, 2000, EndzonE, Institute of Modern Art (catalogue essay)
Handran, Chris and Haynes, Rachel, Space Invaders, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery (catalogue essay)
Stonely, Renee, 2000, Fresh Cut, Institute of Modern Art (catalogue essay)
Veale, Hilary, 2004, Style Profile, Style Magazine, June, p. 6
Watson, Pat, 2004, All Puns Intended Obsessively, The Courier Mail, 5 May, p. 22
Yallamas, Lisa, 2004, Four To Watch, The Courier Mail, 24 July, BAM, p. 4