Spotlight Talks

As part of the 25th Biennale of Sydney: Rememory, Campbelltown Arts Centre hosts a series of Spotlight Talks with select exhibiting artists Norberto Roldan, Vicente Telles and Helen Grace.

Join us for short, focused conversations that open up the ideas, stories and processes behind the works on display, offering audiences a deeper encounter with Rememory through the voices of the artists themselves.

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Image credit: Helen Grace. Photograph: BACC © BACC

Helen Grace is an award-winning filmmaker, new media producer, artist, writer and teacher, based in Sydney (Wangal Country) and (formerly) Hong Kong. For more than four decades Grace’s documentary photographs have served as a critical archive, capturing the evolution of feminism and queer politics in Australia. Chronicling the social and political context of some of modern Australia’s most impactful protest, or activist movements, Grace’s work is enduringly relevant.

Image credit: Norberto Roldan. Photograph: Conrado Velasco. Courtesy of the artist.

Norberto Roldan’s practice is rooted in political issues. His installations, assemblages and paintings of found objects, text fragments and found images address issues surrounding everyday life and collective memory. His artistic process engages with ways in which material objects arere-appropriated in another context. As a political activist during the dictatorial regime of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., he founded Black Artists in Asia (BAA), a group with a socially and politically progressive practice, immediately after the People Power Revolution in 1986. During his self-exile in Sydney between 1987and 1989, Roldan organised and curated the Philippine contemporary art exhibition ‘Images of the Continuing Struggle’ in Artspace.

Image credit: Vicente Telles. Photo: Roberto Rosales

Vicente Telles is a Santero and Cultural Iconographer whose work navigates the tension between tradition and reinvention. Rooted in the centuries-old practices of his native New Mexico, Telles began painting retablos—saints rendered on hand-carved wood—using pigments ground from local clays and minerals, layered on homemade gesso and sealed with piñon sap varnish. For Telles, the act of making is an act of devotion: to his ancestors, to the land, and to the survival of cultural memory. Pushing beyond traditional forms, Telles reimagines Catholic and cultural iconography, expanding the Santero practice into contemporary contexts. Working with textiles, handmade papers, and salvaged or repurposed materials, his images inhabit the space between the sacred and the everyday, insisting that heritage is not static but alive and evolving. Telles’ Santos and contemporary works transcend religion, becoming symbols for resilience, continuity, and the changing face of heritage. His art embodies both devotion and disruption, preserving centuries of practice alive while reinterpreting its themes and motifs for modern life.