Photo by Garry Trinh, 2022
HAYLEY MEGAN FRENCH, Ph.D.
I work with photography, painting and writing to locate myself in places and ideas of home, suburbia and landscape. I live on Dharug land in Western Sydney and believe it is important to engage with the places we live with a renewed wonder and critical attention to better understand who we are and how we live. Since 2018 I have been developing a body of work which documents the suburbs I live and work in, moving between abstraction and representation. It is a growing archive that engages in a conversation of what suburbia means in the Australian imagination. Iterations of this project have been published by Sydney Review of Books, ADSR Zine and Semaphore. This work is expanding as I look for patterns and new ways of documenting suburban mythologies and inheritances. I exhibit regularly in artist-run, regional and commercial galleries around Australia and have held solo exhibitions in Penrith Regional Gallery + The Lewers Bequest, Broken Hill Regional Gallery and The Condensery, Somerset Regional Gallery. I am currently developing a body of work from a 2023 residency with Bundanon Trust.
I completed a PhD on the influence of Aboriginal art on Australian Painting in 2015 at Sydney College of the Arts. This research was awarded the Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Student Prize for its contribution to an understanding of ourselves and our nation. I have since worked as Gallery Coordinator in Warmun Art Centre in the Kimberley Region and as a fieldwork researcher in Cultural Economics at Macquarie University on the National Survey of Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Artists and Making Art Work: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia. As an independent curator I have co-curated the exhibition Landing Points: Race, Place and Identity with Dr Lee-Anne Hall at Penrith Regional Gallery + the Lewers Bequest, and was most recently invited by Wagga Wagga Art Gallery as a curator and mentor in their Regional Artist Development Program. My writing has been published in Sydney Review of Books, ADSR Zine, Art Collector Magazine, Eyeline Contemporary Visual Arts Journal and Semaphore.
In 2018 I began working in the Community + Culture team at the City of Parramatta in a number of roles including as Curator and Artist Development for Parramatta Artists Studios (PAS), and most recently as Cultural Services Coordinator. During my time with PAS, I have worked on curatorial partnerships with Artspace, the Granville Centre, Mosman Art Gallery, Blacktown Arts Centre and through the Riverina partnership; and have commissioned new works for exhibition and public programs including PAS Rydalmere’s NEXT program. I worked in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art’s C3 West program to deliver Being Together: Parramatta Yearbook by Cherine Fahd. In 2024 I have stepped away from this role to run for office as a local Councillor and support the creative and cultural ambitions of the City of Parramatta.