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Wednesday 12pm - 5pm Thursday 12pm - 5pm Friday 12pm - 5pm Saturday 10am - 2pm

Watch This Space

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Alice Springs, NT
Watch This Space

Watch This Space (WTS) is an artist-led organisation established in 1993 on Arrernte land here in Mparntwe.

Watch This Space is the only contemporary experimental art space in Central Australia. We support local, national and international artists, both emerging and established.

12/08/2026

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN! ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

We’re excited to announce our 2027 Program Callout is now open until 11:59pm September 20!

Contribute to the creative ecology of Mparntwe/Alice Springs through our core programming, including exhibitions, residencies and screenings.

Applications are open to artists and curators local to Mparntwe/Alice Springs, across ‘Australia’, and internationally.

At WTS we strongly believe in the potential of art as a vehicle of change, connection and beauty. WTS posits that art’s definition has broad and soft boundaries, and that everyone is invited. We are proudly artist-run, and aim to amplify the voices of local, interstate, and international artists that may go unheard in mainstream spaces.

Apply to our Exhibitions program or join us as a Travelling Artist in Residence. We welcome individual artists, duos and groups. Our Walk-in Cinema screenings and Pantry exhibitions are always open for applications — but no better time to submit a proposal.

Read more about each program and apply via our website.

Questions? Send us an email [email protected] or visit us at 8 Gap Road.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Link in bio ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Callout images show:
Install image of Jacquie Meng’s solo exhibition ‘Smile’ at WTS March-April 2026 Jacquie Meng
Install image Lille Madden from their solo exhibition ‘Altherrpe’ at WTS May-June 2026 Lille Madden
Live drawing by Yul Scarf from the 2025 Zine Fair opening night at WTS July 2025
All images by Sara Maiorino Sara Maiorino

07/08/2026

WTS’ Maker’s Market is back!

Annually, the WTS carpark fills with a huge array of creations by local makers.
For makers of all kinds: ceramicists, jewellers, illustrators, bakers, zine-makers, musicians, crafters, painters, printmakers, and more.

💖 Saturday 29 August
💖9am — 1pm in the WTS carpark.
💖Entry by donation, free for First Nations.

This is a fundraising event for WTS — all proceeds from stall bookings and entries go towards supporting your favourite desert ARI, and our annual operations. Stall holders keep 100% of their profits.

More details to be announced! Expect food, drinks and music.

BOOK A STALL!
Link in bio to fill in the google form.
Or send us an email [email protected]

31/07/2026

Approaching the final day !!! of Redaction, Absence, Opacity: Architectural witnessing of Australia’s hotel detention network by Mark Romei.

1. Carceral Archipelago — light box, duratrans print
2. Architectural redaction (The Park Hotel, Carlton) — 3D printed resin and PLA, acrylic, LED lights
3. Detention hotels — digital prints on paper

Open Saturday 10am—2pm

Mark Romei
Mark Romei
Mark Romei

29/07/2026

Watch this space presents: UMAAKA, the first solo exhibition by WAARI.

Exhibition period: Saturday 8 August — Saturday 5 September

Join us for the opening next week:
Saturday 8 August
4:00–6:00PM
at WTS

*Artist talk details TBD

The title Umaaka (Kalkutungu for ‘black paint’) works as both material and metaphor. It refers to the black residue left by mining, the scars embedded within Country and the human body, and the permanent imprint of colonial extraction. At the same time, it asks us to consider the stain that remains on our collective conscience. If extraction continues to define our relationship with the land, Umaaka points toward a future darkened by environmental and cultural loss.

WAARI is a Blak artist and storyteller whose work moves through print and sound as a way of holding memory, carrying Country, and speaking back to the conditions of now. Of Waanyi and Kalkutungu descent from so-called Queensland, Australia, and Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Manu, and Te Ātiawa from the north island of Aotearoa, his practice is grounded in lineage, shaped by place, and driven by the urgency of expression.

WAARI

Find out more on our website!

22/07/2026

Join us for Mark Romei’s artist talk, accompanying his exhibition showing in the WTS Gallery until August 1.

‘Redaction, Absence, Opacity: Architectural Witnessing of Australia’s Hotel Detention Network’

Thursday 23 July, 5:30 — 7pm

“This exhibition questions the forms of visibility often privileged within artistic, architectural, and investigative approaches to spatial violence. While such practices frequently seek to make visible built infrastructure, hotel detention is characterised by concealment, bureaucratic redaction, and an architecture whose apparent ordinariness obscures its carceral function. Rather than attempting to produce a complete account, the project attends to these conditions as forms of witnessing.“ — excerpt from exhibition publication, available to purchase at WTS.

Mark Romei

17/07/2026

Áki:
For me the main focus for this residency was working on a script for a multimedia stage-performance set for premiere in April 2027.
The performance is in part inspired by the layered and dreamlike short-stories of Jorge Luis Borges and countless recordings and interviews I conducted in recent years with people about their dreams.

Milly:
The land doesn’t know you. You are a stranger to it. I tried to grow a mountain, inside of a room. But six weeks wasn’t enough time to raise the floor or pierce the roof.
Either way, only half that studio was mine.

Read more of their generous words (link in our bio).

16/07/2026

Meet our next TAiR artist — Tré Turner! Joining us July 9 - August 12.

Tré Turner (re/they) is an Arrernte painter, producer, performer based in narrm. Working through multi disciplinary projects, they create spaces to highlight and centre q***r and/or Blak communities. Exploring Blak futurism, gender and sexuality, sovereignty and Country through q***r fantastical scenes, dreaming of distant and forgotten futures that the land remembers.

Turner will be spending time on Country, collecting natural and recylced materials to experiment with and find audio and visual references for the fantastical q***r utopia world they are creating in their artwork. Working with language and ancestral memories that are held in the grain of sands of the ephemeral river that runs through Country, connecting with q***r memories that are beyond the everywhen and speak their dreams through q***r blakfullas today.

Stone Motherless Cold
—

Images captured by Grace Auld Photography at the opening night of ‘a Quick way home’, an exhibition by Tré Turner

15/07/2026

“i came to the red centre with the intent to create works that mediate the news cycles through the living environment (having definitely doom scrolled into states of paralysis over the last few years).

but when i arrived to arrernte country, so too did the media cycles ~ in a sudden moment of raw, collective trauma and grief; right here. a new necessity for a depth of sensitivity and care that i was not ready or equipped for. mostly, i was trying not to impose, and this signalled a deviation.

i took to the senses ~ to listening, hearing, and feeling through ~ the elements, the debris, and the people amongst them. i’d been quite drawn to the clay pans; the winds and unexpected waters, tapping into reverent forms of environmental attunement and archiving.

thinking lots about my position on these lands, i found a pile of burnt out cars (a sightly more NT-ubiquitous scene than i’d first thought), and felt a strong resonance, like they were a reflection of me, in this place.”

Nadeem’s journal is now online, accompanying their audiovisual work here. Read the rest of this very special reflection (link in our bio).

nadeem tiafau eshraghi

05/07/2026

This video piece is put together from footage filmed in
Mparntwe by Icelander Áki Frostason who was artist in
Residence at WTS from 18.05.-30.06.2026. The clips are to be used in a multimedia stage-performance set for premiere in April 2027. The performance as well as this short sequence is in part inspired by the layered and dreamlike short-stories of Jorge Luis Borges and countless recordings and interviews Áki conducted in recent years with people about their dreams.

Another major inspiration is the story of Danish seafarer and adventurer Jorgen Jorgensen who briefly ruled Iceland for a few months in 1809. He and his crew weren’t allowed to sell their merchandise in Reykjavík, resulting in them arresting the highest ranking Danish official without any shots fired and effectively taking over the country. Later in life, Jorgen was sent as a convict to Hobart, Tasmania after having collected a huge debt because of his gambling addiction — ironically since as a young sailor he had partaken in the founding of Hobart. His story ties together these two distant parts of the world: Iceland and Australia.

The video includes a performance by Áki Frostason as well as Alice Springs actor Wazzadeeno Wharton-Thomas. Áki Frostason

26/06/2026

Join Milly (Milly Yencken ) and Áki (Áki Frostason ) before they wrap up their residency at their Open Studio.

It has been wonderful having them with us, and we’d love for you to drop in, see what they’ve been working on, and wish them well before they depart!

“Opening doors, to a closing studio. We wish to bid you adieu, before we depart. By sharing some works in progress. Of our ideas in motion.” 
— Tamarind juice supplied.

July 29th 2:00–5:00pm

Address

8 Gap Road
Alice Springs, NT
0870

Opening Hours

Wednesday	12pm - 5pm
Thursday	12pm - 5pm
Friday	12pm - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 2pm

Telephone

+61889521949

Website

http://www.wts.org.au/

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