Bio

Emma Pinsent is an artist, educator and arts worker originally from Darkinjung lands. Through sculpture and installation, her practice investigates material transformation with a critical lens on industries of extraction and private property in relation to specific locations and ecologies. Guided by consultation, fieldwork, walking, and archival research, her projects often translate as architecturally responsive installations that reveal latent material, ecological, and industrial interdependencies.

In 2019, Emma completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at UNSW: Art & Design, and in 2022 began a PhD (Art & Design) at the same institution, supported by the Australian Government RTP Scholarship. She has exhibited in group and duo shows in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Tasmania, at ARIs and publicly funded spaces such as Firstdraft, Seventh, Canberra Contemporary (Platform), Sawtooth ARI, Gosford Regional Gallery, and Puzzle. She has been a finalist in several awards.

Alongside her artistic practice, Pinsent has held permanent and temporary roles at various public, private and not-for-profit arts organisations, including SAMAG, NAVA, Firstdraft and NRCG (Ballina Shire Council), working across arts administration, exhibition services, curating, communications, membership and public programs. She is currently a sessional academic at UNSW Art & Design.

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the diverse lands from which I have lived and worked over the course of my life: the Arakwal, Gadigal and Bidjigal, and Dharawal people. I also acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the coastal beaches and wetlands from which I grew up, the Darkinjung people. I pay my deep respect to their millennia-old stories, culture and ongoing custodianship of Country. I extend this respect to Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. 

CV