CELLMATES RESIDENCY
APPROACH | Ryan Jones x Chelsea Holden
Through moving image, photography, rock, moss and floral sculpture, approach brings together the practices of Chelsea Holden and Ryan Jones.
Developed during their 2026 Cellmates Residency, the work emerges from a shared life spent outdoors. Walking, climbing, observing and returning to the natural environments that shape their daily experience. Rather than depicting the landscape as a distant subject, the exhibition considers how sustained attention can foster a deeper relationship with place.
Together, the works invite a slower way of looking; one grounded in curiosity, observation, and appreciation.
RESIDENCY SHOWING |OPENING NIGHT
July 4 | 6pm - 8pm
The Old Lock Up | RSVP
Read Nascent by Bronte Engel Here
Bronte Engel (she/her) is a writer and exhibited photographer. Growing up on Gubbi Gubbi land she gained a deep appreciation for country, which she draws on often in her work. Her photographic practice is meditative in nature often appears alongside her written work. She is currently completing a Bachelor of Communications at Griffith University as she continues to hone her written craft. Having recently relocated to Gadigal country (Sydney), Bronte is harnessing poetry and photography to find a sense of self within a new environment.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
• RYAN JONES • is an artist living and working in the Noosa Hinterland, working across experimental film photography and 8mm videography. Growing up around surf culture, he began documenting the coast and the subculture around him from an early age, developing a strong connection to observation, light, and everyday moments.
His practice focuses on analogue processes and experimentation, often embracing imperfections, grain, movement, and unpredictability. Through film, Jones explores atmosphere and feeling as much as documentation, creating images that feel personal, reflective, and slightly nostalgic.
Alongside his own practice, he works as an installer within public art galleries, where being surrounded by contemporary art and exhibition spaces continues to shape the way he approaches image making and visual storytelling.
His work is driven by curiosity and quiet observation, often capturing subtle moments and environments that might otherwise go unnoticed.
• CHELSEA HOLDEN • is a floral artist based in the Noosa Hinterland whose practice explores the unusual and often unconventional elements of floral design.
Working across both commercial and personal projects, Holden approaches floral design as an art form. Guided by an environmentally conscious philosophy, she favours sustainable methods and leans into organic manipulation.
Her work spans a range of projects and mediums, with a lengthy history working primarily in event and wedding installation. Drawn to composition, subtle detail, Holden explores how the simple flower can shift the atmosphere of a space and alter the way it is experienced, often pairing materials, textures and forms not traditionally found together.
‘My practice is expressed through observation, with a focus on how floral work sits within and responds to the natural world’
CELLMATES RESIDENCY is a development platform that provides an opportunity for exchange. IN | ARI connects two applicants based on an exciting potential in their practices - what they can share, challenge, or transform together. The residency is a space for artists to share how they make, why they make, offer peer-to-peer experimentation + feedback, share research + resources, and create together.
This opportunity is suited to artists looking to expand the boundaries of their current practice and those interested in collaborative approaches to making (and the infinite ways this can look).
Both participating artists will present a public outcome together at the end of the residency. This could look like an exhibition, artist talk, screening, activation, listening party, or whatever best serves the residency. Outcome to be agreed upon in consultation with IN | ARI directors.
Contemporary artists working across all art forms are eligible. Artists that are local and First Nations are strongly encouraged to apply.
WHAT COULD IT LOOK LIKE?
The ways you collaborate and to what degree are entirely up to you.You can make a plan together or you can feel it out as you go. It’s all self-directed and doesn’t have to look a certain way.
Sometimes artists create an entirely new body of work together, sometimes they find mutual interests and create work side-by-side responding to the same conceptual anchors, sometimes they share practice + influences and let their work simply respond to the stimulus. But it’s up to you.
DETAILS
When | March - May 2026
Time | 8 weeks
Space | The Old Lock Up (4 First Ave, Maroochydore, Kabi Kabi Country, 4558)
* Find out more about the space + see floor plans here
Residency Showing | 9 + 10 May 2026
ARTISTS WILL RECEIVE
Materials Stipend $4 464 per artist
Professional Documentation Documentation of either your studio process or the public outcome of the residency. Valued up to $350.
Critical Writer Stipend Support to engage a writer to reflect on and write about your practice or collaborative work. Valued up to $350.
Featured artist profile on our website + social media showcasing artists’ practice and current work.
Potential Income If you’d like to run a ticketed workshop or reading group or performances or something else fun during your residency, artists keep 70% of that income and IN | ARI will manage bookings etc for you.
If there’s work that you sell while in residency, that’s 100% all yours.
Applications now closed.
Please get in touch via in.artistruninitiative@gmail.com with any questions or curiosities.
APPLICATIONS | Accessibility You are welcome to submit your application in a format that is accessible to you (such as audio, video, printed, dictated, electronic and handwritten). Please use URL to link to your alternative method responses.
IN | artist run initiative’s headquarters at The Old Lock Up is made possible through the support of Sunshine Coast Council.
Proudly supported by Sunshine Coast Council.
