Vessel Contemporary

12/10/2026

Vessel is proud to announce our first open call:

Groundswell is a new platform for emergent Western Australian artistic practice. Five to seven artists will be selected by a national curatorium for an exhibition at Vessel opening during July, 2027.

The images in this post are examples from previous presentations by Vessel and collaborative partners, they are here to inspire you but are not indicative of the work we expect.

This is an invitation for artists to extend their practice, to develop new ideas, work at greater scale, experiment with new forms and methodologies, or bring greater visibility to practices that have not yet had significant institutional exposure. Vessel’s unique scale and architecture provides a space for artists to test possibilities and present ambitious work to new audiences.

Emergent is understood broadly. It is not defined by age or career stage, but by practices, ideas and approaches that are developing or moving in new directions. This might include an artist at an early stage of their career, an established artist pursuing a significant shift in practice, interdisciplinary or experimental approaches, or work responding to changing cultural, social, environmental and geographic conditions.

Read more at the and apply at the link in bio.

01/10/2026

Vessel is proud to announce our first open call:
Groundswell is a new platform for emergent Western Australian artistic practice. Five to seven artists will be selected by a national curatorium for an exhibition at Vessel opening during July, 2027.

Groundswell looks at what is emerging, shifting and gathering momentum in contemporary artistic practice across Western Australia. Groundswell suggests movement and momentum: something gathering beneath the surface, emerging from the ground up. It evokes cultural and political change, grassroots activity, place, and shifting conditions, while connecting to the Naval Store’s position on the river and adjacency to WA’s coastline. The title also looks forward, asking what else this place, and the practices emerging within and around it might become.

Groundswell is interested in practices that imagine alternative futures, test new forms and ways of working, respond to changing social, cultural and environmental conditions, and make visible ideas or possibilities that may only just be beginning to take shape.

This is an invitation for artists to extend their practice, to develop new ideas, work at greater scale, experiment with new forms and methodologies, or bring greater visibility to practices that have not yet had significant institutional exposure. Vessel’s unique scale and architecture provides a space for artists to test possibilities and present ambitious work to new audiences.

Emergent is understood broadly. It is not defined by age or career stage, but by practices, ideas and approaches that are developing or moving in new directions. This might include an artist at an early stage of their career, an established artist pursuing a significant shift in practice, interdisciplinary or experimental approaches, or work responding to changing cultural, social, environmental and geographic conditions.
 
Read the whole open call in the link in bio or on our website.
Please spread this onwards, to anyone that you think might be interested.
We want to reach well beyond our circles, and hope to do so through the community!

29/09/2026

Take our audience survey in a chance to win a gift-pack!

We would love to hear what you thought about the show. Feedback is how we learn and grow as an organisation! Click the link in our bio to take the survey.

Everyone that completes the survey will receive a complementary coffee thanks to our favourite local cafe Best Wishes and one lucky winner will receive a gift pack of 1 x Vessel Cap, 1 x Between Suns T-shirt and a Khaled Sabsabi Monograph, Published by Bandicoot Publishing to the full value of $150.

The winner will be drawn on Thursday 01st of October.

Photographer: Rebecca Mansell

22/09/2026

Take our survey in a chance to win a gift-pack!

We would love to hear what you thought about the show. Feedback is how we learn and grow as an organisation! Click the link in our bio to take the survey.

Everyone that completes the survey will receive a complementary coffee thanks to our favourite local cafe Best Wishes and one lucky winner will receive a gift pack of 1 x Vessel Cap, 1 x Between Suns T-shirt and a Khaled Sabsabi Monograph, Published by Bandicoot Publishing to the full value of $150.

The winner will be drawn on Thursday 01st of October.

Photographer: Rebecca Mansell

20/09/2026

Today is the last day of our exhibition. We couldn’t be prouder of Vessel’s presentation of Between Suns by Khaled Sabsabi, curated by Mikala Tai and we’d like to extend one last invitation to experience the show. It’s open today from 11–5.

Through the exhibition, Khaled invites audiences into a space where intuition, ritual and belief become ways of navigating the world, proposing spirituality not as certainty but as an openness to the unknown.
Presenting a survey show that highlights one of the most important voices of our time feels surreal but timely. For over 35 years, Khaled has worked across mediums and borders, collaborating with communities locally and internationally. His work centres on social justice and lived experience, informed by his migration from Lebanon in 1976 to escape the civil war.

These are the moments we do this for. We believe WA needs more shows like this - more contemporary art and more voices like Khaled’s.

Thank you Mikala and Khaled for trusting us, and thanks to all visitors and supporters!

Photographer: Ebony Vukelic and Aaron Claringbold.

18/09/2026

17/09/2026

Last weekend of Between Suns! 

We still can’t believe it - this is the final week of Between Suns. To everyone who’s come through the doors and shared such generous feedback: thank you. 

If you haven’t made it down yet, this is it. This is your last chance to engage with one of Australia’s most prominent contemporary artists at the moment.  Come and experience the breadth of this survey of Khaled Sabsabi’s practice - thirty years of work, brought together in one show. Curated by Mikala Tai, who’s done an incredible job shaping how it sits in our unique space.

Open 11-5 Fri-Sun.

Photographer: Rebecca Mansell

16/09/2026

Behind the scenes: Dry Point Etching with Artist-in-Residence, Emma-Lee Maher.

‘Printmaking has become a new way of thinking and feeling my way through the archive. Working with photographs, government records and family documents that have been copied, stored, scanned and shared across decades and states. I started to notice the marks left behind, tracing the journeys paper makes through administrative systems, Xerox machines and family hands.

A dog-eared corner. A deep fold from travelling in an envelope. Images blurring and buckling under new digital pressures. The grain of a photocopy reproduced and reproduced again and again. These papers are copies of copies scattered across archives I might never visit, stored in my uncle’s garage or in institutions out of my reach.

The archive is not fixed. It holds the marks of every hand that has carried and cared for it.

Each of my prints carry some degree of loss and alteration. My plates will wear down. Burrs soften. Just like memory, no image can be retrieved unchanged. Through marks, scratches and decisions, I cannot reproduce these images perfectly. With every impression, I carry something forward and I’ll leave something behind.

My hand will slip, weary. My hand will slip, thoughtless. My hand will slip, misguided.

This loss is not a failure of process but a reflection of memory itself. My work does not seek faithful reproduction. Instead, reproduction is transformation. Reproduction is reclamation.’
-Emma-Lee Maher

Join us next Thursday for ‘BE MINDFUL OF OUR ANCESTORS’ by Emma-Lee Maher
Current.

Opening night:
Thursday, 24 SEP | 5–8pm
Exhibition continues:
Friday 25 September 1.00pm to 5.00pm
Saturday 26 September Closed
Sunday 27 September 10.00am to 1.00pm

CURRENT Gallery (substation of Naval Store), 141 Queen Victoria St

Thanks to the Fulcrum Fund via Fremantle Foundation for supporting this program.

Photographer: Nina Juniper

15/09/2026

Only one week left of Between Suns by Khaled Sabsabi, curated by Mikala Tai. Don’t miss your chance to see one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists on home ground.

📍 Vessel, 141 Queen Victoria Street, Walyalup/Fremantle

🕒 Wed 1–7pm | Thu–Sun 11am–5pm

📅 Closes 20 September

📷 Aaron Claringbold

08/09/2026

Only two weeks left! Don’t miss your chance to experience Between Suns by Khaled Sabsabi, a survey exhibition of one of Australia’s most important contemporary artists. 

Between Suns, curated by Mikala Tai, brings together works by Khaled Sabsabi spanning almost three decades of artistic practice for the first time. From a reimagining of his earliest work, Aajyna (1998), to the recent painting series In Between Suns (2024–25), the exhibition traces the evolution of an enduring visual and spiritual language.

Threading many of these works together is Sabsabi’s sustained use of Lebanese coffee as a medium. Rich in cultural, domestic and spiritual associations, coffee is far more than a material. Throughout the exhibition it becomes a vessel for memory and ritual, connecting personal histories with collective experience and spiritual inquiry. It functions simultaneously as pigment, archive and blessing, its stains and residues bearing witness to gestures of making that seek connection between the seen and the unseen.

Opening hours:
Wednesday 1pm-7pm
Thu-Sun: 11am - 5pm

07 Aug - 20 September.

Vessel is located at 141 Queen Victoria Street, Walyalup / Fremantle.

Photographer: Aaron Claringbold