From the Love Seat: Reflections
Two hearts. One Dropbox.
From the Love Seat: Reflections gathers art world couples who live, love, and make art together—sharing studios, secrets, and the occasional email account.
Join them on the proverbial love couch to reflect on how art-making (and art-working) can become a language of care, conflict, and collaboration.
Expect romance, realness and a little bit of tenderness.
Mariam Arcilla and Mason Kimber | Speakers
Amrita Hepi and Abdul Abdullah | Speakers
Benjamin Law | Moderator
Mariam Ella Arcilla is a community servicer, writer, social designer, and arts consultant based in Sydney, Australia. She runs Magenta House, a multi-modal domestic space fostering intimate assemblies through workshops, art pop-ups, communal meals, reading sessions, library, a shop, and test kitchen. Raised in a household of artists and cooks in the Philippines, Mariam maintains a collaborative practice grounded in collective nourishment, cultural incantations, and knowledge-trading. Mariam has managed galleries, artist-run collectives, and grassroots projects since 2006. She is the former Co-Chair and Digital Producer at Runway Journal and guest editor of Debris Magazine, fine print Magazine, and 4A Papers. Her writing appears in MeMo Review, Art Guide, Running Dog, ACCLAIM, and Art Collector. As a creative practitioner, she partners with social enterprises, ARIs, and cultural institutions in Australia and the Philippines to produce programs and resources that uplift emerging artists and experimental practices. Mariam has staged programming, strategic and marketing projects with key bodies, namely 4A Centre of Contemporary Asian Art, Arts House Melbourne, STATION Australia, Institute of Modern Art, Queensland Government, and Museum of Brisbane. She has served as an industry mentor for Parramatta Artists Studios, Outer Space, Griffith University, and Runway Journal. Mariam maintains the Barkada Index, an online inventory for Filipino diaspora in Australia.
Mason Kimber is a Sydney-based artist and educator. Kimber uses painting, sculptural reliefs, and installation to engage with the social dimension of architecture, particularly its relationship to memory. After graduating in 2013 with an MFA in Painting from the National Art School, Sydney Kimber was awarded a three-month studio residency at the British School at Rome, Italy the following year. It was here that he studied ancient fresco painting, which led him to look closely at the various connections between painting and the built fabric of cities. Kimber’s current PhD research at UNSW Art + Design is titled: ‘Assembling at the Surface: Reframing relations to place and architecture through expanded painting’. He is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne.
Amrita Hepi (Bundjulung/Ngapuhi Territories) is a multidisciplinary artist & choreographer based in Naarm/melbourne and Bangkok. Her interest as an artist is in the idea of archive; particularly in relation to the body and how it is organized by ancestry/people/events and environment. By coalescing fact and fiction, memoir and ethnography, the local and the singular into the performance/artwork she makes. Amrita trained at NAISDA & Alvin Ailey NYC. A critically acclaimed artist she has twice been the winner of the people’s choice award from the Keir Choreographic Award, was a Forbes 30 under 30 for artist, and has shown and been commissioned nationally and internationally. Amrita is a Triad member of performance company APHIDS, on the board of directors and artistic associate for RISING festival and part of the Artistic Associate group for STRUT dance. Her commitment to collaboration, experimentation and kinship are key tenets to her practice.
Abdul Abdullah is a multi-disciplinary artist based between Australia and Bangkok. His practice is concerned with the experience of the ‘other’ and is particularly interested in the disjuncture between perception/projection of identity and the reality of lived experience. He is represented by Ames Yavuz Gallery and has been exhibiting across Australia for twenty years. He is included in the collections of all the major Australian state public-institutions and has been presenting through Asia, Europe and the United States since 2014. Abdul is passionate about working with young people, and advocates for arts education, intercultural exchange and human rights.
Benjamin Law is an Australian writer and broadcaster. He’s the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia (2013), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101 (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). Benjamin is also an AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter. His forthcoming play for Melbourne Theatre Company is Dying: A Memoir (Oct–Nov 2025). He’s the co-executive producer, co-creator and co-writer of the Netflix comedy-drama Wellmania (2023), playwright of Melbourne Theatre Company’s sold-out play Torch the Place (2020), and creator and co-writer of three seasons of the award-winning SBS/Hulu/Comedy Central Asia TV series The Family Law (2016–2019). He is a board member of Story Factory and Co-Curious, and an ambassador for Plan International Australia, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, Victorian Pride Centre, Bridge for Asylum Seekers and the Pinnacle Foundation. Benjamin has a PhD in creative writing and cultural studies from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). In 2019, he was voted one of the 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians, winning the Arts & Culture category of the Asian-Australian Leadership Awards.
Curated by Micheal Do
A valid ticket to Sydney Contemporary 2025 is required for entry to this talk. We recommend arriving 10 minutes before the talk’s start time. Buy tickets now.
Image Credit: Mason Kimber and & Mariam Ella Arcilla; Photo: Dave Wheeler.
