Guildhouse, in partnership with Adelaide Fringe, announce South Australian painter Gemma Rose Brook as the recipient of the 2027 Catapult + Adelaide Fringe Mentorship.
Guildhouse is delighted to announce plein air painter Gemma Rose Brook as the recipient of the Catapult + Adelaide Fringe mentorship, to undertake a mentorship with acclaimed contemporary landscape painter Mary Tonkin.
Building upon the highly successful Guildhouse Catapult Mentorship program, which has funded over 60 mentorship opportunities for South Australian artists, Catapult + Adelaide Fringe provides a funded opportunity for a South Australian visual artist, craft practitioner or designer to undertake a 6-month residency with a chosen mentor, culminating in an artist talk as part of the 2027 Adelaide Fringe.
Painting from life, Gemma Rose Brook’s intimate paintings embody the experience of the environments she paints in and are characterised by her distinctive palette and expressive mark-making. The mentorship will shape critical next steps in her practice, including learning large-scale plein air techniques and strengthening critical engagement.
Of the opportunity, Gemma shares ‘I am excited for the opportunity to work alongside landscape painter Mary Tonkin. I am also grateful for the dedicated time this mentorship will provide to refine my artistic voice, develop my professional practice and challenge the way I work from observation through Mary’s guidance.’
Catapult mentorships offer creative professionals essential funding and support to develop their artistic practice through meaningful mentorship. They enable South Australian artists to undertake self-directed research, engage in professional development, and enhance their creative practices by collaborating with mentors locally, nationally, and internationally.
Beth Neate, Guildhouse CEO says ‘Catapult Mentorships make a profound and lasting impact on artistic careers, enabling upskilling, confidence building, peer validation, experimentation and connection. Through our partnership with Adelaide Fringe, the Catapult + Adelaide Fringe mentorship increases visibility to the individual artist and their mentor, providing a powerful platform to share the importance of creative exchange with audiences during Adelaide Fringe. We warmly congratulate Gemma Rose Brook and thank Adelaide Fringe for their wonderful support of this program.’
Andy Beecroft, Adelaide Fringe Marketplace Manager (Honey Pot) shares ‘The Catapult mentorship delivers exceptional collaborations and exciting creative developments of new work that our audiences and communities get to experience each year. We are delighted to partner with Guildhouse for a third year and look forward to seeing what this year’s mentorship delivers.’
Catapult + Adelaide Fringe is presented in collaboration by Guildhouse and the Adelaide Fringe Foundation.
Gemma Rose Brook is an Australian plein air painter, based on Kaurna land. Her work has been selected for The Paddington Art Prize, Heysen Biennale, The National Emerging Art Prize, The Fleurieu Biennale and won first prize in the Royal Society of the Arts SA, ‘Youthscape’ prize.
She has been awarded multiple residencies including the prestigious Country Arts POP residency on Kangaroo Island and the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice. Her work has been exhibited and collected nationally, most recently at Michael Reid Southern Highlands and the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Her intimate paintings with a unique expressive mark and distinctive palette draw on modernist, colourist and formalist depictions of the subjects she paints from life. The paintings she creates explore a hypersensitive and embodied experience of environments that is informed by her perspective as a neurodivergent artist with a psychosocial disability.
Images (L-R): Artwork by Gemma Rose Brook, photograph Rosina Possingham; Gemma Rose Brook, photograph Rosina Possingham.
