_{Cover Image: Mikaela Castledine, the 2026 Parliament of Western Australia Artist in Residence Image by Jacinta Spry,}

Mikaela Castledine will be the 2026 Parliament of Western Australia Artist in Residence, and the resulting work promises to turn parliamentary life into something tactile, local and deeply human.

The Parliament of Western Australia has announced acclaimed Perth Hills artist and writer Mikaela Castledine as its 2026 Artist in Residence, marking the tenth year of a partnership with Edith Cowan University that continues to frame art as a way of thinking about place, democracy and public life. Her new commission, Ground Truthing, will run from August to November and take shape as a textile-based response to Parliament itself, and to the people who move through it.

Castledine is a fitting choice for a residency built around connection and civic imagination. Known for inventive sculptures, collages and crocheted works, she brings a practice grounded in storytelling, material sensitivity and a long engagement with Western Australian identity. Over nearly three decades, she has earned recognition including the 2013 Sculpture by the Sea Cottesloe Scholarship, the Mandorla Art Award and a People’s Choice Award in 2018.

What makes Ground Truthing especially intriguing is its method. Castledine will use hand-dyed silk and commercial cotton thread, crocheted and embroidered onto canvas, to create a map-like representation of Western Australia shaped by the personal experiences and stories gathered during the residency. The title suggests both inquiry and correction: a testing of what we think we know about the state, and a reminder that maps are never neutral.

That idea sits neatly within the residency’s broader premise. Since its establishment a decade ago, the program has invited artists to respond to Parliament’s democratic and political functions, its history and the significance of place in Western Australia. Artists are given access to archives and research materials, along with the chance to observe the parliamentary process firsthand, making the commission as much an encounter with institutional memory as an art project.

Castledine herself put the emphasis squarely on place and perspective. As she observed, Parliament gathers people from different specific places and brings their knowledge into a shared picture, a description that captures both the promise and the tension of representation. It is a compelling lens through which to view a textile work: stitching as a way of joining fragments, and of holding together many local truths.

The residency’s custodians are clearly conscious of that symbolic weight. Clothilde Bullen OAM, manager of ECU Art, Culture and Collections, said Castledine’s practice is grounded in connection, storytelling and place, and described her as an outstanding choice for the commission. ECU has also expanded the partnership this year with a new Parliamentary Lecture, which will bring the Artist in Residence and a Member of Parliament together at ECU to explore the intersections of art, democracy and public life.

Back on campus, Edith Cowan University Gallery is hosting a major new exhibition by artist Jenna Lee, whose immersive practice explores language, materiality and inherited narratives. Written in Stone & Seed & Star is open now and runs until 27 November, marking Lee’s first solo exhibition in Western Australia.

Lee, a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Irish and Scottish ancestry, draws deeply on family history, immigration and the experience of being Aboriginal within colonial systems. In this new exhibition, she asks how language carries history, memory and cultural knowledge, while also exposing the limitations and legacies of colonial frameworks.

Working across installation, works on paper, sculpture and multimedia, Lee turns books, dictionaries and language publications into sites of transformation. Rather than treating these texts as fixed authorities, she deconstructs and reconstructs them through Larrakia linguistics, creating intricate forms that reflect the fragility and resilience of First Peoples’ languages.

The exhibition’s visual language is shaped by repetition, rhythm and ritual, with paper sculptures and installations that echo cycles of destruction and renewal. Ideas of cool burning, thriving nature and cultural replenishment run through the work, linking environmental regeneration with the survival of knowledge and spirit.

Clothilde Bullen, ECU’s Manager Art, Culture and Collections, said the exhibition offered “a significant opportunity” for the university and broader community, describing Lee’s practice as both “deeply personal and intellectually rigorous.” She said ECU was proud to provide a space for what is Lee’s first solo show in WA.

For audiences interested in contemporary First Nations art, language and ecological thinking, Written in Stone & Seed & Star looks set to be a quietly ambitious and timely exhibition.