Sera Waters awarded $50,000 Guildhouse Fellowship

Nat Rogers
Sera waters with her Ramsay Art Prize work *Falling: Line By Line*

2019 Ramsay Art Prize finalist and respected textile artist Sera Waters will be the second recipient of Guildhouse’s annual fellowship, following the opening of inaugural fellow Troy-Anthony Baylis’ SALA Festival exhibition Nomenclatures at AGSA.

11 August 2020 by Walter Marsh

Waters was today named as 2020 Guildhouse Fellow, unanimously selected by a panel that includes AGSA director Rhana Devenport, Guildhouse CEO Emma Fey and newly announced Adelaide Biennial 2022 curator Sebastian Goldspink. The news comes days after the unveiling of Troy-Anthony Baylis’ Nomenclatures at AGSA, a body of work created through his fellowship.

“I don’t think we could have asked for a more exceptional inaugural fellow,” Fey tells The Adelaide Review. “Troy-Anthony Baylis seized the opportunity with both hands, and from the very minute we saw his submission and he accepted the fellowship, he has really thrown himself into this year of creative practice, and the work speaks for itself. His travel to Berlin was really integral to the outcomes he was seeking, and that’s really played out in one of the three new bodies of work he’s created.”

Such international ambitions are, for obvious reasons, a trickier proposal this time around, which made Waters’ more domestically-oriented proposal a fortuitous fit for the program’s second year.

“As a mid-career artist, Sera has very clearly identified where she is in her practice,” Fey says. “It’s her own aesthetic, and the materials and concepts she’s exploring – but also the academic rigour she brings to her practice – is clearly entrenched in her work. It’s really evident what this period of time, with some financial support, will enable her to do.

“It will be very much a studio-based research and making fellowship; given this time we’re in, with such uncertainty around international travel, we have no doubt as a panel that she will make the most of this fellowship, and it will be a very ambitious time for her – even if it’s done at home.”

With a PhD in visual arts from the University of South Australia, Waters has exhibited widely around Australia with notable works including her expansive 2018 piece Falling: Line By Line, which last year saw Waters become a Ramsay Art Prize finalist, and 2017 solo exhibition Domestic Arts, completed as part of ACE Open’s inaugural South Australian artist exhibition.

The Guildhouse Fellowship is supported by the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation. Troy-Anthony Baylis’ Nomenclatures is now on display at AGSA.

The Adelaide Review is a media partner of Guildhouse