Featured Artist Profile – Emma Coulter

Emma Coulter is a visual artist, living and working in greater Melbourne. Born in Northern Ireland, Emma grew up in Brisbane, Queensland (mostly), until she relocated to Melbourne in her late twenties.

Practising as a visual artist for over twenty years, Emma also has a background working in interior architecture. One of the key projects she led was the design for a 14000m2 office fit out for Allens Law firm, at 101 Collins Street in central Melbourne.

Having studied straight from school, both a Bachelor of Visual Arts, and a Bachelor of Built Environment at QUT, Emma worked for many years in both fields, before making the leap of faith in 2014 to quit her serious day job, and undertake a Masters at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. It was during this time that her painting practice, and deep knowledge in architecture and space collided to create a new ongoing series of site-specific works, named, ‘spatial deconstructions’. Painted in situ, these works took the elements of each space as a canvas for a painting. It was during this time that she started to refine her colour palette, creating a series of colours, that could be taken across painting, installation and sculpture.

spatial deconstruction #23 (resilience), 2021 to 2023 – CITY SQUARE, Melbourne, Australia

Since then, Emma has created over 30 site-specific installations, including 10 major public art commissions. Significant public art projects include, Yarrila Place, Coffs Harbour, (2023); Shepparton Art Museum, (2023); City Square, Melbourne (2021); Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne (2021), QUT Art Museum, Brisbane (2021) and William Jolly Bridge (2020).

In 2019, Emma was invited to make a site-specific work at the Museum of Brisbane, for a retrospective exhibition, titled, ‘NEW WOMAN’, a centenary exhibition celebrating the work of ‘ground-breaking female artists’, of a Brisbane origin. Through the process of being included with a major commission in this exhibition, (her work filled an entire room in the museum, which at the time was the largest work she had ever made), she was then invited to create the work for the William Jolly Bridge by the curatorial team at the Brisbane City Council.

spatial deconstruction #21 (portals), 2019 to 2020 – Commissioned for ‘New Woman’ at Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane, Australia.

multichromatic synaesthesia, on the William Jolly Bridge, celebrates the movement of the city, and the river, whilst deconstructing the unique form of this civic heritage structure, during night fall, and the shared non-hierarchical public space of the William Jolly Bridge. Utilising a study for a painting, and her serial colour palette, and the tools of light projection, the bridge was transformed into an ephemeral site-specific light intervention.

For around ten years, from 2010 to 2020, the Brisbane City Council ran an initiative to highlight the historical and iconic structure of the William Jolly Bridge, by transforming it into a large-scale temporary public artwork celebrating artists and cultural events around the city.

The William Jolly Bridge projection was one of Emma’s first (paid for) public art commissions. Through the transformation of the bridge, as a canvas for Emma’s work, at this great scale, she was able to break into the public art realm to be shortlisted for more commissions. The breakthrough work demonstrated the potential for Emma’s work to transform public spaces into multichromatic interventions, celebrating, colour, light and space.

In 2020, Emma was shortlisted and won the commission to transform a building occupying a whole city block in central Melbourne, whilst the construction for the new Metro tunnel stations were under way. The following year she was also awarded a competition to create a new work on Footscray Community Art Centre’s façade, as part of the Footscray Art Prize. Other additions to the urban environment, include an enormous multi sided artwork on a construction site in South Melbourne, a public mural in Malvern East, a streetscape intervention on Richmond Town Hall’s facade, a public facing window intervention at QUT Art Museum, as well as a spatial deconstruction work in Burnett Lane, Brisbane CBD.

In 2023, Emma completed her first integrated, site-specific, light and sculpture commission, ‘let them feel the light’, at Yarrila Place, Coffs Harbour’s new civic and cultural centre, in NSW. Being shortlisted through national callout, Emma was awarded the commission through her winning concept design proposal. Emma worked on the development of this project for over two years.

Existing at the heart of the building, the work traverses the light filled atrium space, dispersing colour and illumination, in acknowledgement of the meaning of Yarrila, whilst also drawing inspiration from Coffs Harbour’s geographic coastal location. Through her voice as an artist these ideas intersect with concepts of memory, time and feeling to culminate into a unique site-specific work. It is her most significant public art work to date.

When she is not working on big public art projects, you can find Emma in her studio working on smaller scale paintings and sculptures. Alongside her larger scale public works, she regularly exhibits work in both solo exhibitions and invited group shows. Her work is held in the permanent collections of Artbank, the City of Melbourne, QUT Art Museum, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, St John of God Healthcare, and private collections here and overseas.

Emma’s works have also been exhibited internationally, in both Germany and New York.

Emma is currently working on her next solo exhibition, SUPERIMPOSITION, which will run from 3 – 24 May, at James Makin Gallery in Melbourne.

If you are interested in finding out more about Emma Coulter, you can view her website at www.emmacoulter.com.au or contact her gallery at info@jamesmakingallery.com