Congratulations to artists Wassila Abboud (Sydney/Beirut/Amsterdam) and Daisy (Naarm/Melbourne), recipients of the 2026 West Space Commission.
A nationally recognised opportunity elevating underrepresented artists, the West Space Commission is a period of development with the arts organisations’ team culminating in a major exhibition in our main space.
Over twelve to eighteen months, Melbourne’s West Space provides a high level of curatorial support for the commission artists, supporting creative and professional development, contextualising their work, and building their networks and momentum for further opportunities. Artists are also provided with a fee of $5,000 and support to gain additional funding, and an exhibition in West Space’s main gallery space in Collingwood Yards, with a presentation period of eight to ten weeks.
Wassila Abboud, Rotterdam Workshop
About the artists:
With a background in journalism, Wassila Abboud’s research examines the material and metaphysical conditions of past and present historical struggles, and what emerges within these moments of transformation. Through intergenerational archives, essays, film, and diagrams, Wassila explores the limits of imagination in moments of rupture.
“Wassila Abboud’s work contains both the urgency of our current political climate and the weight of generations of occupation, resistance and revolutionary struggle.
“Her archival research project at West Space will revive a series of 20th Century revolutionary texts with both public and personal resonances, linking Arab/Levantine diaspora across continents and generations.” — Sarah Poulgrain (Meanjin/Brisbane), West Space Artist Committee member.
Daisy, installation view, Victorian College for the Arts, 2025
Daisy embraces the humour and humility of survival and belonging in a schismatic, deep-fake post-truth context. Their expanded artistic practice fuses noise, data, installation and performance in response to the systemic effects and psychopolitics of global conditioning.
Daisy’s work offers sustainable and spirited challenges to the depravities of discipline and the complacent carceral logistics of contemporary art. Their unapologetic critique forms part of an ongoing search for futures that haven’t already been redacted, or destroyed.
“Daisy’s current investigations are timely, given the ongoing crisis of Aboriginal deaths in custody and the high incarceration rates of Aboriginal people.”
— Jahkarli Romanis (Pitta Pitta, Naarm/Melbourne) West Space Board member.
The 2026 West Space Commissions were selected by West Space’s Artist Committee, a collaborative cohort of creatives based across the nation: Aida Azin, Alicia Frankovich, Tristen Harwood, Eugenia Lim, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, James Nguyen, Jahkarli Romanis, Joshua Pether, Sarah Poulgrain, Joanna Kitto and Sebastian Henry-Jones.
Recent recipients of the West Space Commission include: Akil Ahamat (NSW), Gabi Briggs (Vic), Grace Culley (Vic), Hoang Tran Nguyen (Vic), Victoria Pham (France/Aus) and Joel Sherwood Spring (NSW), Anna Louise Richardson (WA) and Abdhul-Rahman Abdullah (WA).
