Step into the shadows.
In this immersive installation, Kuweni Dias Mendis and Grant x Wilkes create a sensory experience that draws on the mechanics of optics, testing what it means to see and be seen. Mirrors fracture perspective, screens pulse gently with shifting images, and handmade objects anchor the space with material presence. Light becomes both instrument and subject; unsettling the boundary between observer and observed.
The collaboration brings together Dias Mendis’ commitment to natural materials and elemental processes with Grant x Wilkes’ ongoing interrogation of image-making across analogue and digital forms. United by a shared dedication to process, their work creates a rich and intimate space for audiences to navigate their own role in the image.
Building on their award-winning collaboration at the 2025 Brisbane Portrait Prize, this exhibition extends a practice recognised for its inventive approach to representation, materiality, and the unstable nature of images.
Venue
Gallery 2
Accessibility
- Wheelchair Access
- Assistive Listening
- 100% Visual Content
Credits
Image by Niru Mendis
Supported By
Metro Arts’ 2026 program is supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its funding and advisory body. Metro Arts is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and the Visual Art, Craft and Design Framework, an initiative of the Australian, state and territory governments.
Artists
Kuweni Dias Mendis
Kuweni Dias Mendis is a Sri Lankan-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, performance, installation, film and sound, exploring the relationship between land, ritual and the body. Working through raw mark-making, movement and sensory response, she creates works shaped by intuition, embodied memory and the dialogue between material and unseen worlds.
Her work navigates migration, belonging and diasporic identity, often through improvised performance and installation that hold ritual, vulnerability and transformation in tension. In 2024, her work was presented in Here and Now: Gold Coast Triennial 2024 at HOTA, Home of the Arts, and she presented the solo exhibition Running Rivers: People of Place at Outer Space, extending her ongoing exploration of place, ritual and migrant belonging.
Grant x Wilkes
Grant x Wilkes is a collaborative partnership between Claire Grant and Lee Wilkes that explores the evolving relationship between image, material, process and place. A deep curiosity for photographic experimentation and material innovation drives their work, pushing the photograph beyond its traditional boundaries. By combining analogue and digital processes, they merge historical craftsmanship with contemporary research.
Their collaborative practice is rooted in shared intent, reflecting the dynamics of working partners and the possibilities that arise from mutual trust. Their approach is guided by a commitment to non-toxic processes and conscious material choices influenced by the sustainable darkroom movement. Drawing from personal experience and experimental traditions, their work comprises interdisciplinary collaborations, and ongoing research into sustainable and experimental image-making.