Known by the artist name Heesco®, Khosnaran Khurelbaatar is a Mongolian-Australian muralist and fine artist. 

Born in 1979 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Heesco moved to Australia in 1999. He graduated Sydney College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree in 2005. Heesco relocated to Melbourne in 2010, where he has established himself as one of the leading contemporary mural artists.

In 2020 Heesco was commissioned by the residents of Yarram, VIC, to create a series of murals to garner visitors into the small town, in a project known as “Heesco Town”, which got national and international media attention, and was awarded “Best Street Art Trail”. Currently there are 27 murals by Heesco in Yarram. (Watch the ABC News coverage of Heesco Town here).

The same year Heesco was commissioned by Her Excellency the Governor of Victoria to create a mural expressing gratitude towards the frontline workers during the catastrophic bushfires and the COVID19 pandemic.

The Governor subsequently has donated the mural to Yarram where it is on permanent display at the Memorial Garden (watch news coverage here).

Heesco is one of Australia’s most prolific silo artists, with five silos and three water towers to date. Heesco’s Weethalle silo art was featured on limited edition stamps by Australia Post in 2018, which featured the first silos painted in each state.

Other notable projects include a mural for World’s 50 Best event in Melbourne; curating a 100m mural for the United Nations in Ulaanbaatar; collaborations with Marvel, Youtube, Puma, Nike, Nikon, NEP Australia, Ground Central Coffee Co (NYC), Superchief Gallery (NYC) etc.

Heesco’s murals have been featured in National Geographic, Geo Saison (Germany), StuArt Magazine (France), Graffiti and Street Art Around the Globe (Spain), and numerous local books and magazines. His politically charged work was featured on the cover of the Griffith Review, and a poster for black comedy Bad President (2020).

Aside from his art, Heesco is the President of Lantuun Dohio Australia – an ACNC registered non-profit charity organisation dedicated to eradicating child abuse and human trafficking in Mongolia and internationally.

He works with his team of volunteers in support of Magic Mongolia centres in the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar and in rural towns around Mongolia.

He also frequently works with local councils in youth and community development programs, as well as schools and universities, as a mentor and workshop coordinator, as well as pro bono work for various NGOs and charity organisations. 

Heesco is a Doug Moran National Portrait Prize finalist, winner of Footscray Art Prize, and is the subject of a 2018 documentary film “Heesco – Homeland, Mongolia” by filmmaker Kevin Flores.

Heesco lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

Jeremy Kasper born in Canada 1977, migrated to Australia in 2003. He received a diploma of Visual Arts from RMIT and completed a bachelor’s degree in fine art from Federation University, Gippsland.

Kasper’s practice is highly explorative in his abstract compositions, taking inspiration from his roots in skate culture and street art using the line and mark as a form of expression strongly tied to emotion and perceived memory. Kasper’s practice is both an automative and responsive process. His choice of medium influences and affects his aesthetics in his work using aerosol paints, mixed media, and oil paint to achieve fluid and gestural mark making.

He’s a recipient of the 2019 Dick Bishop memorial art prize, and 2020 LRG emerging artist of the year. Kasper’s had many solo exhibitions across Melbourne and Gippsland, including many regional galleries and Latrobe Regional Gallery through 50 Years, 50 Artists group exhibition.

Cynthia Bracken is a visual artist whose practice centres on black-and-white photography, with a particular fascination for the interplay of light and the shadows it creates. Working within the medium’s fundamental principle of “drawing with light,” the artist explores the expressive range of photography through delicate tonal gradations, subtle textures, and moments of dramatic contrast. Her work reflects a deep appreciation for both what is immediately visible and what remains hidden, inviting viewers to look beyond the surface and discover new layers of meaning.

Liam Maree Rogers (1998) is a queer and late-diagnosed neurodivergent artist born and raised in Gippsland. His experiences of living with invisible disability, as well as his passion for stories, are major influences on his artistic practice. First drawn to art through the escapism of cartoons and comics as a young child, he found joy in the transformation of materials into something new. The creation process has taught him about the things that bring him pain and joy and brought forth a new philosophy on life with disability. Each day is a new challenge, made easier to process and articulate through artistic expression.

Initially based in digital illustration, Rogers’s practice encompasses a wide range of mediums. Acrylic and watercolour painting, digital media, textiles and woodcraft are approached with an intuitive and an occasionally chaotic meditative method, integrating planning and impulsivity in equal measure. There is a distinct tenderness and vulnerability to his work, asking to be seen while also affirming to the viewer that the acknowledgement is mutual.

Jeremy Elkington has been painting now for 30 years and drawing for much longer. He has been exhibiting his artwork throughout galleries in regional Victoria and Melbourne via solo and group exhibitions, art prizes and gallery displays since 1997. Upon joining the Australian online art gallery Bluethumb in May 2012, Jeremy has been regularly selling his artworks which have now reached private collections throughout Australia, UK, USA and New Zealand.

In 2003 Jeremy was awarded the Master of Art (By Research) degree through Monash University, Gippsland Campus and in 2005 was awarded the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) (Monash University, Gippsland) and has been teaching since that year.

In 2001 Jeremy spent several weeks spent in Egypt that provided a strong degree of inspiration, reinforcing his fascination with desert landscapes, Islamic art and architecture and ancient history. Since 2011 Ancient Rome has been a pivotal aspect of Jeremy’s practice, reflecting a longstanding fascination with that period of time.

Christine Cochran is a painter, who also owns and operates The Serigraph Gallery in Neerim South, West Gippsland, together with her partner Keith Graham, a furniture maker.

Christine’s paintings are often inspired by her observation of sculptural forms in landscape, its contrasts and splendour, light and shadow, the contained beauty, and the man-made presence within it. Acrylic on linen or handmade papers and mixed media, often using copper or metallic leaf, or paint, captures varying reflective qualities and textures.

Born in 1954, Christine grew up on a farm near Shepparton, Victoria. She completed a Diploma of Fine Art – Painting at RMIT in 1975. Since then, she has been creating and selling artwork, and in 1996 established The Serigraph Gallery, as an outlet for her paintings and silkscreen prints, and it is still operating today.

In 2013-14 she was one of three artists (along with Phil Henshall & Keith Graham), responsible for the vision and artistic design of the Neerim Bower. This large roadside sculpture, spanning the southern entrance to Neerim South, was part of a Regional Arts Victoria, Small Town Transformation grant of $350,000. From this she has been co-exhibition coordinator four times, for ‘The Neerim District Community Bank Art Prize – Neerim Bower Acquisition’, a biennial sculpture exhibition.

Sean Cowen was born in 2002 and grew up in Palmerston NT before relocating to study fine arts. Sean was a student at Federation university in Churchill before the recent discontinuation of arts and currently lives and works in Morwell. Sean is an emerging artist who has taken part in group exhibitions within the local community.

Phil Henshall (born 1944, Melbourne) completed his matriculation in 1962 and had to decide between an Art Course or Architecture. Since he performed better in maths subjects, he chose Architecture at RMIT. This introduced him to SPACE, which, in turn, required a skill in perspective rendering of proposed buildings to future clients.

Henshall only did two years of the architecture course before working in construction and raising a family. In the mid-1990s the opportunity came to spend more time on his lifelong painting interest. Upon deciding to chase SPACE and TIME, he found validation in the works of Brett Whiteley and William Robinson, by their warping of perspective and extreme and moving viewpoints. In turn, he would use these tools when painting a variety of subjects; Landscapes, Ideas, Comments, Portraits and Still Lifes.

Ashlee Warren is an elusive Gippsland-based interdisciplinary artist and designer with a special interest in archiving, semiotics and the relationships between all things. Her work can be understood as a multi-medium auto/biography, where different materials and processes become fragments of a larger interpersonal narrative. Rather than conforming a subject to one medium, Warren allows the nature of each subject to determine how it should be recorded and represented.

Warren is interested in the ways places and objects can accumulate meaning, becoming evidence of a lived moment in time. Through collecting, documenting and recontextualising these fragments, Warren creates an evolving archive that is both personal and relational. In this way her work becomes an inherently collaborative tool for noticing, preserving, and making sense of the world.

Dale Ackermann is an active Victorian educator and visual artist, though to call him prominent would be an overstatement. Fuelled by a heated rivalry between him and his more successful older brother (Devon), Ackermann made his first artistic debut at just 18 years old with a series of photographic works displayed at Top Arts in 2005. This experience, combined with the loss of his childhood pet vervet, drew Ackermann towards a career in education, where he continues to inspire young creatives and impart a lens of critical media theory.

Much like his early work, Ackermann’s current practice continues to utilise traditional photographic methods to study the relationship between people and place, challenging conventional ideas about beauty and community in Australian suburbia. Combined with his philanthropic work in arts education and leadership, Ackermann’s practice demonstrates a sustained engagement with visual storytelling and the important role of art in understanding the world around us. If he could leave his audience with one question, it would be, “Can you roll in the wind?”.

Emma Hearnes is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited widely across Gippsland and Melbourne, including solo exhibitions at Brunswick Street Gallery and Maffra Exhibition Space. Her work explores notions such as domesticity, femininity and human connection, often incorporating poetic elements. Alongside her art practice, Emma has a background in writing and editing, having contributed to publications including contributions to Gippslandia, Galah Press and Pandaemonium. She is currently Digital Communications Coordinator at Regional Arts Victoria.