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Coterie-2

The VAS Hansen Little Coterie

The Coterie launched in 2024, made possible by a $10,000 gift from the Hansen Little Foundation. The program has been formulated to provide essential opportunities and support to professional artists at critical stages of their early to mid-careers, helping them to cultivate an artistic home at the VAS. Selected artists in the Coterie actively participate in the VAS. They receive multiple opportunities to exhibit and engage with each other and with other VAS artists. By the end of the program, these artists will have been supported to become part of the VAS community of artists. It is our hope that they will be motivated to continue building their careers with VAS and take the benefits of mentorship with them into future leadership roles within the Society and the arts community.

2025 Coterie Members

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Andrew Li
Andrew Li is a painter who works both in traditional and digital mediums.
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Caterina Leone
Caterina Leone is a Melbourne-based artist revitalising the ancient silverpoint technique to explore gender, the societal reading of physical appearance, and our relationship with nature. Originally from Sydney, she studied at the National Art School and worked in arts administration before focusing on her practice. Her work has been exhibited in Australia and the USA, and she is a 2025 VAS Coterie scholar.
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Jemma Cakebread
Jemma Cakebread is a Melbourne-based artist working in the fields of painting, textiles and fibre. Her work reflects an interest in the workings of the body, both animal and human, death and decay, and the natural world. 
Jennifer Huang Profile Image
Jennifer Huang
I have drawn the world around me for as long as I can remember. This love for working from life is foundational to my practice, alongside a respect for process, craft, and deep research.
Madaline Harris Schober Profile Image
Madaline Harris-Schober
Working mainly in oil paints both in studio and plein air, I aim to create pieces that represent the glow of the natural world and my subject(s).
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Swathi Madike
Swathi is an award-winning artist whose love for oil painting flourished at a summer course at the Florence Academy of Art which led to formal training at the Julian Ashton Art School. Swathi identifies as a South Asian artist driven by a passion to increase representation of people of colour painted by people of colour.

2024 Coterie members

Genevieve Gadd-Carolan Profile Image
Genevieve Gadd-Carolan
Genny has studied at some prestigious Art Schools including the Julian Ashton School and the VAS Art School. She has exhibited in Melbourne Galleries since 2015.
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Liz Gridley
Liz Gridley’s oil paintings explore her experiences of states of hyper-emotion alongside the personal inevitability of death & death care. This point of caring for others in death is shared across cultures and has dialogue and ritual which can be culturally celebrated or silenced. Gridley’s works make room for conversation that is often pushed aside as taboo. Through contemporary figurative and still life paintings Gridley reflects her internal states & research to connect viscerally with the viewer. In 2024, Gridley won the Featured artist award in the “Victorian Artists Society Coterie” by the Hansen Little Foundation. and was a finalist in the Lester Portrait Prize in WA"
Michael Smith Profile Image
M Wesley
Michael is a professional oil painter and communication designer based in Melbourne.
Natasha Ber Profile Image
Natasha Ber
Natasha is a self-taught painter with a Bachelor of Arts from Deakin University. She is a three time finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait.
RhiEdwards
Rhi Edwards
Rhi is a visual artist from Naarm, Australia. Currently she primarily works with oil paint, and branches out to various mediums such as acrylic paint, graphite pencil, body paint and elements of nature.
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We would like to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which our building stands, their leaders, past, present and emerging.