Vessel Contemporary

Vessel Contemporary An interdisciplinary exhibition for contemporary art. Using art as a catalyst for change.

Thanks to everyone who came down for James Bradbury’s performance last night, the second collaboration between Tone List...
03/09/2026

Thanks to everyone who came down for James Bradbury’s performance last night, the second collaboration between Tone List and Vessel.

From James:
‘I’m keen on the misadventures of machines that can “listen” and which can discover, in their own way, organisations of sound that are surprising and reflexive. I like to make music that is challenging and unrelenting, while also exploring liminal textures and forms. Ideally my computer sounds like a computer.’

Thanks to our 2026 event partners: Willoughby Park Wines, Otherside Brewing Co, Lightning Minds and Front Runner AV for your ongoing support.

Photographer: Nina Juniper

STIPPLING DRAWING WORKSHOP WITH EMMA-LEE MAHERWednesday 09 September6pm-7.30pmA free, hands-on workshop with First Natio...
03/09/2026

STIPPLING DRAWING WORKSHOP WITH EMMA-LEE MAHER

Wednesday 09 September
6pm-7.30pm

A free, hands-on workshop with First Nations Artist in Residence Emma-Lee Maher. Participants are encouraged to bring an object of significance. It doesn’t have to
be shiny or rare or valuable just something that holds a story or feeling.

Led by Emma-lee the group will begin with a few drawing exercises to loosen up before turning our attention to the Frankenstein’s Monster shared still life of our objects.

Together, our objects will create a new story, bringing our complementary and colliding tales into conversation with each other.

Stippling is a slow, meditative process of mark making (hopefully more calming than painstaking), so there’s no expectation of finishing a complete work. This workshop is about trying something new, making something to continue with at home and connecting with others.

Materials provided, bring one small object of personal significance to use as a prompt.

Please register via the Humanitix link in bio.

Photographer: Cole Baxter

UnVanished (2020)92 works (52 available at Vessel Contemporary), acrylic paint on photographic paperA young man stares d...
29/08/2026

UnVanished (2020)
92 works (52 available at Vessel Contemporary), acrylic paint on photographic paper

A young man stares directly into the camera, a portrait capturing his youth and unwavering gaze. This is the last picture Sabsabi and his family have of his cousin Mohamed; in 1977 he was killed at just 15 in South Lebanon. In UnVanished the portrait is reworked with Sabsabi hand-painting the image 92 times.
This act of repeated painting is an act of love and remembrance and an attempt to reach Mohamed through gesture and time. Each iteration is slightly different, reflecting the act of revisiting and re-remembering. For Sabsabi Mohamed’s memory remains UnVanished.

Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

A selection of the UnVanished series are available for purchase:
$750 unframed
$800 framed

Photographer: Aaron Claringbold

Thanks so much to the UWA Contemporary Arts students who came down for a tour of Between Suns this week. We loved your c...
27/08/2026

Thanks so much to the UWA Contemporary Arts students who came down for a tour of Between Suns this week. We loved your curiosity and the sharp questions throughout . We covered everything from the practical realities of installing Aajyna, to where Vessel sits in the local arts ecosystem, to pathways for emerging curators and artists finding their way in.

Sessions like this are genuinely one of our favourite parts of the job. Got a group who’d love to do the same? We run tours with one of our directors. Email us at [email protected] and we’ll sort something out.

We’re thrilled to share ‘The Word Beyond Comprehension’, an essay incredible Bahar Sayed wrote for ‘Between Suns’.Throug...
26/08/2026

We’re thrilled to share ‘The Word Beyond Comprehension’, an essay incredible Bahar Sayed wrote for ‘Between Suns’.

Throughout ‘Between Suns’ exhibition, letters, numbers, and geometric forms are assembled into sensorial propositions that encourage the viewer towards what Sufi traditions describe as khayāl, the imaginal realm where spiritual realities assume perceptible forms. Rooted in the artist’s personal migration story, histories of Islamic philosophy, mysticism, and the political realities of displacement, Sabsabi’s practice translates possible modes of perception into contemporary a visual language, creating works in which image, sound, scent, rhythm, and duration become instruments of contemplation. ‘Between Suns’ ultimately proposes that mystery is not the absence of knowledge. It invites us to sense the world in another way, one that looks not only with the eyes.

Bahar Sayed is a curator and writer interested in theology, visual cultures and theories of place. 

The full text is now available on our website, find it at the link in bio

Knowing Beyond takes centre stage in the exhibition Between Suns by Khaled Sabsabi. With a meditative video and soundsca...
24/08/2026

Knowing Beyond takes centre stage in the exhibition Between Suns by Khaled Sabsabi. With a meditative video and soundscape this is an experience you need to see in-person. Vessel Contemporary is open Wednesday-Sunday until 20th of September.

‘Knowing Beyond’, 2024,20-minute 1 channel UHD video installation with audio, 10 (double sided) x Coffee infused acrylic paint, on canvas.
 
Formally, Knowing Beyond comprises a series of ten double-sided paintings and a single-channel video. Yet the work functions as documentation of Sabsabi’s gestures and processes as he reaches towards the unseen. It is underpinned by the teachings of the Sufi mathematician and philosopher Ahmad ibn Ali al-Buni and his Shams al-Ma’arif (The Sun of Knowledge), a 13th-century document concerned with spiritual attainment and inner transformation. While it remains one of the most influential texts in the Islamic world, it is also controversial for its instructional nature and esoteric formulas. For Sufis such as Sabsabi, it offers divine protection and insight into the Islamic sciences of numbers and letters.

Encircling the suspended rectangular structure of Knowing Beyond, the viewer first encounters a series of large-scale, blurred silhouettes of human figures. Rendered in coffee, their faces are obscured and untethered from any identifiable context, hovering between presence and absence. Stepping inside the installation, however, reveals an entirely different visual language. Here, the space is saturated with the sciences of numbers and letters. Lines, circles, grids and magic squares intersect and overlap across the paintings, exposing Sabsabi’s workings, his invocations, talismans and symbolic inscriptions, as he seeks to establish a dialogue with the unseen. Rather than presenting these esoteric systems as fixed knowledge, the work frames them as active processes of spiritual inquiry, inviting viewers to inhabit a space where faith, ritual and abstraction become intertwined.

Commissioned for Inner Sanctum: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2022 with support from Australia Council for the Arts. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

Photographer: Aaron Claringbold

Following the success of Tone List & Vessel’s collaboration last year, we wanted to do it again!Vessel Contemporary and ...
22/08/2026

Following the success of Tone List & Vessel’s collaboration last year, we wanted to do it again!

Vessel Contemporary and Tone List are proud to present an intimate session with composer, coder & electronic musician James Bradbury on Wednesday 2 September, from 7.30 - 9 pm. The concert takes place within Between Suns, a large scale, multi-media exhibition of nearly three decades of artworks by Khaled Sabsabi, also open from 1 - 7pm the same day.
We hope that the session allows audiences to engage deeper with the exhibition through another medium. People can dance or relax, close their eyes, and feel lost in cycles that may never resolve.

From James:
“I’ll be improvising using my laptop and working with some new pattern generation techniques. It’ll sit somewhere between gastric-sub-amorphous-rubber-banding and ultra-pointilistic-techno. I’ll also be remixing some older work as I go.

I’m keen on the misadventures of machines that can “listen” and which can discover, in their own way, organisations of sound that are surprising and reflexive. I like to make music that is challenging and unrelenting, while also exploring liminal textures and forms. Ideally my computer sounds like a computer.”

Bio:
James Bradbury is a creative-coder and sound artist from Boorloo/Perth, active in Tone List’s program since 2016. In the last few years, he has been interested in building digital tools for devising musical structures and exploring pattern generation. He has worked with the Fluid Corpus Manipulation project, released solo works on Superpang and tokinogake, and developed software with Rian Treanor & Mark Fell. He is currently a Lecturer of Music at the University of Western Australia.

Get your tickets at the link in bio
Thanks for your support Front Runner AV & Event Production

BETWEEN SUNS T-SHIRT “Art is an important ingredient that informs the change we want as a group. Art gives us a chance t...
21/08/2026

BETWEEN SUNS T-SHIRT

“Art is an important ingredient that informs the change we want as a group. Art gives us a chance to imagine, and in many cases to practice, a new kind of world’
- Khaled Sabsabi

Support us by purchasing a fundraising t-shirt at the front desk. Vessel is a non-profit organisation and all proceeds assist us in covering the exhibition costs.
$55
S/M/L

Designed by Will Ek Uvilius and hand screen-printed by PINCH POINT PRESS

Photographer: Nina Juniper

Vessel’s current Artist-in-Residence, Emma-Lee has been busy hands-on making in the studio for the past 3 weeks! She has...
19/08/2026

Vessel’s current Artist-in-Residence, Emma-Lee has been busy hands-on making in the studio for the past 3 weeks! She has been experimenting with printmaking processes and drawing techniques. AIR facilitator, Zali Morgan has been working with Emma-Lee to help build professional connections across the Walyalup/Boorloo community.

OPEN STUDIO DAYS
Saturday 22nd August
Saturday 12th September

Pop-in to the ground floor AIR studio for a chat with Emma-Lee and she will share what she has been working on.

Etching press loan thanks to PINCH POINT PRESS
Photographer: Nina Juniper

During the installation of Between Suns, Mikala Tai held a 2-hr workshop with 12 local emerging curators. Talking throug...
17/08/2026

During the installation of Between Suns, Mikala Tai held a 2-hr workshop with 12 local emerging curators. Talking through Khaled’s practice, the site and her curatorial vision for the exhibition, this was a lovely morning of professional development and connection.

Sign up to the Vessel newsletter to hear more about events, workshops and peer-to-peer learning opportunities.

Photographer: Nina Juniper

Address

141 Queen Victoria Street
Perth, WA
6160

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Vessel Contemporary posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to Vessel Contemporary:

Shortcuts

Share

Category