Tess Mehonoshen’s practice is focused on site-specific ephemeral installations, utilising locally sourced materials in a variety of everyday ‘domestic’ spaces including homes (both occupied and empty), community halls, and outdoor public spaces. Examining how notions of comfort, belonging and familiarity are imbued in site-specific materials, and how stability, purpose and functionality are interrupted through the uprooting of indoor / outdoor barriers. She investigates how personal experience and loss influence an attachment and longing for place, by interrogating the relationship between site/non-site, and the haptic/materiality.
Tess Mehonoshen is an emerging visual artist, working primarily in sculpture and installation. Originally from rural Queensland, she is currently based in Melbourne and is studying a Master of Fine Art at Victorian College of the Arts. Following early career studies at Sunshine Coast Institute of TAFE, she attended Queensland College of Art (2011-2015) where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours – Class I), and was awarded the ADFAS Young Arts Award. In 2017 she was awarded the Blacktown City Art Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Yering Station Sculpture Prize (2017), and Brisbane Art Prize (2017). Tess has undertaken studio residency programs at House Conspiracy (QLD, 2017), Hill End (NSW, 2018), Fremantle Arts Centre (WA, 2020) and Carss Bush Park (NSW, 2020).