Image: Truc Truong studio portrait, 2024, photograph Lana Adams; Truc Truong, I Pray You Eat Cake, 2023, Mixed-materials, photograph Zan Wimberly.
Guildhouse, in partnership with Adelaide Fringe, are pleased to announce multidisciplinary artist Truc Truong as the recipient of the Catapult + Adelaide Fringe Mentorship opportunity.
The Catapult Mentorship program provides creative professionals with essential funding and support to develop their artistic practice through a meaningful mentorship.
Building upon the highly successful Guildhouse Catapult Mentorship program, which has provided over 53 mentorship opportunities, Catapult + Adelaide Fringe provides a funded opportunity for a South Australian visual artist, craftsperson or designer to undertake a 6-month residency with a chose mentor, culminating in a public program, presentation of new work or performance as part of the 2025 Adelaide Fringe.
Catapult + Adelaide Fringe is presented in partnership by Guildhouse and Adelaide Fringe with generous support from the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation.
Working in portraiture, assemblage and installation, Truc Truong’s practice explores themes of power, identity, family, assimilation and displacement, drawing influence from postcolonial theory and her Vietnamese heritage. Graduating from University of South Australia with First Class Honours in 2022, Truc has since exhibited throughout Australia. She was awarded a studio residency at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental throughout 2023, and she was one of six Australian emerging artists to be selected from Primavera: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2023.
Truc will be mentored by sculpture and installation artist Jennifer Mathews to develop welding skills and steel fabrication techniques as a critical next step in her practice. Co-director of fab, an artist studio and workshop based in Kent Town, Jennifer has exhibited widely throughout Australia including ACE, Laila, KINGS Artist-Run and Seventh Gallery.
Of the opportunity, Truc says: “I’m incredibly excited for this mentorship, as it allows me to dive deeper into new skills and push the boundaries of my practice. This is an amazing opportunity to grow as an artist and explore fresh creative directions.”
Sarah Norris, Adelaide Fringe Artist and Venue Coordinator says, “The Catapult + Adelaide Fringe mentorship is an exciting new project within our Arts Industry Collaboration program, which has been generously supported by the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation. This new partnership with Guildhouse will provide the opportunity to bring meaningful and impactful professional development opportunities for the local visual arts community.
We believe the strength of this program lies in the combined support and guidance of the Guildhouse and Adelaide Fringe teams. Guildhouse bring their extensive knowledge and experience facilitating mentorships to this project, alongside their broader program of comprehensive support and their passionate advocacy for the creative sector.
We’re excited to see the outcome of this mentorship between Jen and Truc during the 2025 Adelaide Fringe! As a part of the fab workshop team (previously George Street Studios) Jen Mathews has continued to demonstrate their ongoing commitment to providing support, advice and skill development opportunities to emerging creatives.”
Guildhouse Marketing and Development Manager and 2024 Selection Panel member Merinda Edwards PhD, says, “It was a joy to work with the Adelaide Fringe as the selection panel, and I would like to acknowledge the high calibre and unique projects presented by the applicants for this year’s Catapult + Adelaide Fringe mentorship program. It was a difficult task to narrow the selection, but we are thrilled to support Truc Truong as the successful applicant who demonstrated a strong potential to build a meaningful new relationship with their mentor Jen Mathews and a new medium of work. We are excited for the Adelaide Fringe presentation of work and are so proud to be a part of bringing a diverse voice of visual artists, craftspeople and designers to the largest festival in the Southern Hemisphere.”
The Catapult + Adelaide Fringe Mentorship opportunity will provide Truc with the skills to create large-scale physical structures and increase her ability to independently execute complex installations, reducing reliance on external fabricators.
Truc will present new work integrating textiles and steel fabrication techniques as an outcome of the Catapult + Adelaide Fringe Mentorship in the 2025 Adelaide Fringe program.
Image: Truc Truong, 2023, Buoyancy, Mixed-materials, Photo: Silver Salt Photography
Truc Truong works in portraiture, assemblage and installation. Her creative process, rooted in play and animism, often manipulates everyday objects and explores complex and multi-layered themes concerned with love and power, family, assimilation and spirituality. These works draw inspiration from colonial legacies, her Vietnamese heritage, and drive to celebrate joy amid adversity.
Truong graduated from the University of South Australia with a Bachelor of Art and Design (Honours) in 2022. In the year following she was selected for the ACE Studio Program, Adelaide, and Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Truong has also recently exhibited at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2024; Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, 2024; The Condensery, Toogoolawah, 2024; FUMA, Adelaide, 2024. ACE, Adelaide, 2023; MCA, Sydney, 2023; Post Office Projects, Adelaide, 2023; 4A Centre for Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2021; and PICA, Perth, 2020.
Image: Jennifer Mathews, 2023, Waiting to get cooked, Ceiling tiles, LED light panels, pine, Photo: Sam Roberts
Jennifer Mathews (b. 1994) is a sculpture and installation artist based in South Australia. Her recent projects examine human dominion over the non-human, the architectural impulse to measure and contain, and how technological advances alter our relationships with the organic world, often leading to confusion, disconnection or romanticisation. Mathews addresses these changes by suspending mundane food items within controlled architectural forms, creating installations that combine steel, resin, digital collage, building materials, and light. Her work evokes themes of absurdity, alienation, and the symbolic order and disorder inherent in geometry.
Mathews holds First Class Honours in Fine Art (2016) from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (2015) from the University of South Australia, where she received the Constance Gordon-Johnson Sculpture and Installation Prize. In 2023, she was awarded a 12-month studio residency at ACE, Adelaide. She is the co-director of fab, an artist studio and workshop in Kent Town, South Australia, established in late 2023, where she supports artists-in-residence in learning metalwork skills. Recent exhibitions include Studios: 2023, ACE, Adelaide (2023); Coercion Cradle, Al Fresco, Canberra (2023); Staple, Laila, Sydney (2023); and The Sun Ceases to Give Without Receiving, Kings Artist-Run, Melbourne (2022).
