Shear Zone Residency (2025-2026)
The ShearZone Collective brings together three interdisciplinary visual artists who live and work in different places across Australia. ShearZone came into being in 2023. Since then, Perdita Phillips (WA), Sarah Tomasetti (VIC) and Penny Coss (NSW/WA). Our collective name, ShearZone, is a reflection of its geological origins.
A shear zone is a region where rocks have undergone deformation rather than fracture, usually because heat and pressure deeper in the crust favours bending over cracking. Sometimes shear zones can be belts of intense and complicated change that cannot be fully mapped at small scales. Over time concentrations of precious minerals may also concentrate, forming rich veins of possibility. In this project, artistic practices come together leading to new forms through discussion collaboration and cooperation rather than rupture and usurpation.
In the four-month Walyalup Fremantle Art Centre residency, the artists came together several times and undertook intensive on-site walking and fieldwork in the southwest of Western Australia, exploring limestone caves, their watery flows and microbial histories. The field encounters triggered several material intrusions in situ, and later ShearZone developed a large-scale installation together that included largescale banners, sound recordings and an experimental performance. The artists continued their connection, presenting practice-based research papers at the 2025 Unruly Objects, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) Conference, and are working toward future manifestations.