NET OF TIME
Helen Britton and Justine McKnight
14 November 2026 – 26 January 2027

Legal Ghost
Stephen Brameld and Jay Staples
2 November 2026 – 17 January 2027

This November, Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre presents two exhibitions exploring what can emerge when artists work in close collaboration — from a 25-year creative exchange between Perth and Munich to a decade-long shared painting practice developed outdoors in Boorloo.

The major exhibition NET OF TIME brings together Perth-based artist Justine McKnight and Munich-based artist Helen Britton, presenting eight interconnected works developed through more than 25 years of friendship, travel, collecting and the exchange of materials between Australia and Europe.

Curated by Anna Louise Richardson, the exhibition brings together jewellery, textiles, wearable sculpture and installation, transforming clothing, shells, beads and salvaged materials into works that explore memory, migration, place and lived experience.

“NET OF TIME reveals a rich material conversation between two artists whose practices have become deeply entangled across time, geography and friendship,” said Richardson.

The relationship between the artists and Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre is also part of the story. In 2024, McKnight and Britton undertook a residency at the Arts Centre, spending time together developing the works that now form the exhibition. Their time in Fremantle brought a long-running exchange of ideas, materials and objects into the place where NET OF TIME will now be presented.

The Spider Coat transforms a fur coat belonging to Britton’s Swiss grandmother-in-law with hundreds of hand-stitched spiders. The work connects with McKnight’s memories of her own grandmother, who migrated from England to Perth with European clothing that was ill-suited to the Australian climate.

The title work, The Net of Time, began with fragments of late-18th-century silk discovered by Britton in a Vienna flea market. Over years, the fragments were gradually hand-netted together using salvaged silk thread, creating a work that reflects the intertwined histories of people and objects as they move across continents and generations.

Other works include The Collide Dress, which evolved over a decade through the accumulation and exchange of materials, The Whispers, altered shoes threaded with hundreds of beaded wires and recorded voices, and The Luggage Coat, a four-metre-high garment carrying bundles of disused clothing and personal histories.

Together, the works reveal how a long-term artistic friendship can become a method of making — with objects, memories and materials exchanged over decades becoming part of a shared creative language.

Legal Ghost

Alongside NET OF TIME, Boorloo-based artistic collaborators Stephen Brameld and Jay Staples present Legal Ghost in the North Galleries: an immersive installation of paintings developed through a long-term collaborative practice.

The exhibition also marks a recent chapter in Brameld and Staples’ relationship with Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre. Earlier this year, the artists undertook a residency at the Arts Centre, working together on the paintings that form Legal Ghost.

Working in a process akin to surrealist automatic painting, Brameld and Staples suppress conscious control and allow material to emerge through their shared process. They describe their collaboration as forming a “third mind” or space — a perspective that exists beyond individual intention or ego.

The artists work simultaneously on the same surfaces, developing a shared visual language in which individual marks become indistinguishable. A painting is only finished when both artists reach a mutual understanding that the work is complete.

The paintings are presented across two gallery spaces as a single installation, curated by Abigail Moncrieff and intended to be experienced holistically, with each work forming part of the larger environment.

Brameld and Staples paint outdoors, placing their boards directly on the ground and allowing the natural environment to become part of the process. Bugs and leaves are caught within the paint and surfaces, while exposure to the elements creates a distinctive patina. Layers of paint are added and removed, leaving behind physical traces of the artists’ dialogue and the environments in which the works are made.

Legal Ghost is the culmination of almost a decade of collaboration between Brameld and Staples, exploring what happens when two artists relinquish individual authorship to create a shared visual language.

Exhibition details

NET OF TIME
Helen Britton and Justine McKnight
Curated by Anna Louise Richardson
14 November 2026 – 26 January 2027

Legal Ghost
Stephen Brameld and Jay Staples
Curated by Abigail Moncrieff
2 November 2026 – 17 January 2027

Opening Night
Friday 20th November 6.00pm-8.00pm

Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre
Free entry

Media previews and exhibition tours are available by appointment in the lead-up to opening.

Media enquiries:
Ella Boekeman
ellabo@fremantle.wa.gov.au

Images and further information: Available on request