About

Annette Wagner is an artist who grew up along the Murray–Barka (Darling) rivers, Australia’s largest and most complex river system, and understands water is a social medium as much as it is a biological necessity. Her interdisciplinary practice is situated in contemporary arts exploring concepts of memory and water ecology. Seeking to reveal new understandings of our connection with water she records memories and conducts spatial investigations to map social assemblages of consumption, sustainability and ecology.

A social engagment practice deconstructs psychological distance using water as both subject and medium. Regularly conducting interviews to build an archive of recordings she reveals our diverse knowledge systems of both fact and fiction and our social and political memories of water.

Symbolically for the artist, she considers humanities outer space exploration for the life giving resource as curiously absurdist, revealing the duality in our nature, joy and hope, fear and despair. Her own site based absurdist performances, documented by both moving and still images, consider place across diverse bodies of water and explore the tension of an individual within the anthropocene.

Both practices coalesce into multimedia immersive installations, combining sculpture, abstracted sound, light and site installations which seek to reveal our collective understanding of water and act to provoke the audience’s attention to consider water’s critical currency. She does this to reveal and highlight our emotive interdependence with water as she argues, we are part of the fragile ecosystem itself.

Exhibitions

2025 Absurd Ecologies, PhD Presentation Exhibition Deakin Waterfront Project Gallery

2025 Preconcieved Interrogation - Body, Trocadero

2024 In The Deep West, West End Art Space, Melbourne

2023 Voice Plains and Memory Depth Meters, fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.

2021 Autobiographical Memories of Water, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2021 The Last Act, Yoho Collective, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne.

2020 Provocative Cakes, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2020 Use Your Words, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2020 Motif Repeat, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2019 UnShut, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2019 VCA Grad Show GCVA, Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne University (OCT 2019)

2019 Linear Notion, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2019 Camouflage, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2019 Beg. Borrow. Steal. Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne

2018 CCP Salon, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne

Public Engagement - Lectures, Presentations and Workshops

2025 Boston University, Tuesday Night Lecture Series Speaker

College Art Association Conference New York, Abstract - Sustaining Artistic Practice through Community Engagement and Feminist Theories

VCUArts Qatar, Guest Lecturer

2024 The Arctic Circle Residency, Svalbard Norway

Public Exchange Bureau Symposium, Testing Grounds, Melbourne AU

2023 California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Guest Lecturer and presentation: On Water & Irrigation Flows of the Chaffey’s,facilitated by Tom Lawson

Q&A Interview, Elvis Richardson, NGV Ian Potter Gallery, for Wunder Gym x Melbourne

Fringe Festival and Wyhndam City and Hobson Bay

2022 National Gallery of Victoria Design Week and Art Book Fair Event & Publication release, No Shit. (17-20 March 2022)

2021 How to Price Artworks, Dr. Annie Wilson, facilitated by Annette Wagner, Wyndham City Council (2021)

How to Write About Your Art, Dr. Fiona Lee, facilitated by Annette Wagner, Wyndham City Council

Art Direction Workshop, Craft Cubed Festival, Craft Victoria (2018, 2019, 2021)

2019 Art Direction Workshop, Craft Cubed Festival, Craft Victoria (2018, 2019, 2021)

2018 Art Direction Workshop, Craft Cubed Festival, Craft Victoria (2018, 2019, 2021)

Grants, Awards and Residencies

2025 Finalist Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Darebin A1 Art Salon

2024 Finalist Incinerator Art Prize

2024 Selected residency participant The Arctic Circle Expedition (October)

2024 Selected HDR Candidate, Deakin University & European Cultural Centre ‘Veneitan Bind’ Venice Biennale at Pelazzo Mora (March/April)

2024 Selected Bundanon Artist Residency (May)

2023 UTS x Australia Council of the Arts, Digital Transformation for the Creative Industries

2022 Finalist Wyndham Art Prize

2021 PICA Hatched, National Graduate Award (Nominee), at Perth Institute for Contemporary Art

2020 Yarra City Arts, Resident Grant, Schoolhouse Studio