Future Australian Muslim Artists 2026

Kerrie Poliness is known for painting and drawing works that revisit the ideas and practices of conceptual art, using everyday materials to produce large scale asymmetrical geometric artworks which respond to the place in which they are made. Since the early 1990s she has designed systems for making art: patterns are drawn onto various surfaces via instruction manuals, which let other people take part in making her artworks.

The drawings, and the process of making them, reveal something intrinsic about matter — that nothing is really physically perfect or symmetrical even if it looks like it is. These artworks highlight the interconnective processes and patterns of nature and people. Poliness regularly works with art galleries, museums, councils, schools and architects to deliver workshops where large groups can collectively make public artworks, and since 1997 has produced site responsive public artworks incorporating everyday industrial materials installed by skilled local trades people. Her works are held by the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Dowse Art Museum in New Zealand, Griffith University Art Gallery, Monash University of Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Ian Potter Museum, QAGOMA and prominent private and corporate collections. She is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Leslie Eastman is a visual artist and educator who has exhibited nationally at venues including ACCA, Linden Gallery, Gertrude Contemporary and Experimenta. He works primarily with ephemeral installations that explore the human sensorium through drawing, video, optics, sculpture and photography, often using architectural interventions specific to site.

Leslie collaborates with other artists and writers, most recently the New York based artist Natasha Johns-Messenger and astronomer Professor Sarah Maddison of the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. In 2017 he exhibited The Illuminated Field at the Islamic Museum of Australia, comprising footage filmed in Andalucía while on the Australia Council Barcelona studio residency. He was a founding member, curator and exhibitor at Light Projects (2010–12), an experimental project space in Melbourne. He completed a PhD at Monash University in 2015, where he coordinated the Drawing, Painting and Fine Art programs for many years, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Interior Design at RMIT. Recent exhibitions include Light Matter at Station Sydney and Light Sensitive at Town Hall Gallery in Hawthorn. Leslie is a consultant and contributor to the Coburg Islamic Centre rebuild.

Mahmoud is responsible for the art department and research activities at the museum. His role covers curatorial work, exhibition management, and collections care and conservation.

He holds a PhD in Cultural Materials Conservation from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor in Conservation from Cairo University, Fayoum Branch, and is a casual lecturer at the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation. Mahmoud has long experience in collections care and conservation science, both professionally and academically, and throughout his learning journey has collaborated with and trained at international institutions in the USA, Italy and Egypt.