Presented in partnership with Creative Australia and SAC Gallery, Bangkok, UNSW Galleries, Sydney is proud to support the Debra Porch Award, a three-year initiative from 2024 to 2026.
Each year, both institutions will host an artist for bespoke residencies, strengthening local networks. An Australian visual artist will be awarded a grant for a supported residency at SAC Gallery in Bangkok, Thailand. A Thai visual artist will also be awarded a reciprocal grant for a supported residency at UNSW Galleries in Sydney, Australia.
Debra Porch was an artist whose practice focused on memory, mortality and the relationship between presence and absence. Working and teaching during residencies she undertook in our neighbouring regions became vital in her art, work and life.
This award, in honour of Debra Porch’s life’s work, supports artists in pursuing long-term engagement through international residencies and strengthening strong intercultural connections across the Asia Pacific region.
2026 Participants
Natalie Sasi Organ
Visiting Gadigal Nura/ Sydney, Australia from Bangkok, Thailand
Sasi Organ examines fragmented historiographies, creating artificial yet familiar scenes of composite memories and territories. Her practice, defined by continuous dualities and dichotomies, mirrors the binary thinking of cultural hybridity, also tracing the artist’s personal search for living in the in-between. Drawing from settings close to her heritage, Sasi Organ builds a composite archive of visual evidence, often crossing generations and geographies, confronting personal and cultural tensions of migration, displacement, and assimilation. She stitches together archival relics and speculative mythologies, challenging dominant paradigms of Eurocentric assimilation and unearthing ancestral practices. Forming a practice of recollection, recontextualisation, and reclamation, Sasi Organ highlights the ephemeral and overlooked, challenging the subjective ambiguities of identity and memory.
Sasi Organ has participated in numerous group exhibitions including What Binds Me to This Land, Ames Yavuz, Singapore; Soft Forgetting, Sangheeut, Seoul, South Korea (2025); Affinities, Nova Contemporary, Bangkok, Thailand (2025); We Begin with Everything, ara contemporary, Jakarta, Indonesia (2025); from here to here, Nova Contemporary, Thailand (2023); Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds & Bernice Bing Open Call, Asian Art Museum, San Fransisco, U.S (2023); and Friends and Family: Part II, Pi Artworks, London, UK (2023).
Photo: Lauren Hillsdon
Elyas Alavi
Visiting Bangkok, Thailand from Naarm/Melbourne,
Alavi is an Afghanistan born Hazara artist living in Naarm/Melbourne. His multi-disciplinary practice examines the intersections of displacement, memory, gender, and sexuality through painting, installation, poetry and performance. His practice often interrogates histories in the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region, exploring their entanglements with globalization, settler colonialism, and the mobility and displacement of Black and Brown bodies. Alavi holds a Master of Visual Arts from the University of South Australia (2016) and a Master of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Arts, University of London (2020). His recent projects include a solo exhibition ALAM (2024) at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney, and presentations and commissions for the 24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns (2024); the 03 Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2024); That I Could Fear a Door (2024) at the Museo della Scultura Contemporanea Matera; JOY at the Immigration Museum Victoria (2024), and the TarraWarra Biennial: ua usiusi fa ʻava ʻasavili (2023).
Alavi has published three poetry collections, earning critical acclaim and has been translated into English, Greek, Urdu, Kurdish, and Spanish, and has appeared in prominent publications such as World Literature Today (University of Oklahoma) and the PARSE Journal (University of Gothenburg).
Photo: Kai Wasikowki
2025 Participants
Kanchalee Ngamdamronk
8 January – 19 February 2026
Visiting Gadigal Nura/ Sydney, Australia from Bangkok, Thailand
Kanchalee Ngamdamronk (b.1989) is a textile artist exploring belonging and cultural memory through material-led craft. Trained in textile design and Shibori, she co-founded Slowstitch Studio. Her work reinterprets traditional techniques, examining materiality, evolving traditions, and the shifting boundaries between craft and art through experimentation, collaboration, and form.
Mehwish Iqbal
Visiting Bangkok, Thailand from Gadigal Nura/Sydney, Australia
Mehwish Iqbal is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans printmaking, painting, sculpture, and installation to explore identity, displacement, and human connection. Engaging with global communities, she reflects on conflict, ecological resilience, and cultural survival. Widely exhibited and supported by major grants and residencies, her practice resonates across international contexts.
2024 Participants
Naraphat Sakarthornsap
5 November 2024 – 7 January 2025
Visiting Gadigal Nura/Sydney, Australia from Bangkok, Thailand
Naraphat Sakarthornsap uses photography and installation to probe themes of social inequality and gender discrimination. He meticulously selects flowers as central motifs, imbuing each blossom with symbolic depth. These floral arrangements serve as conduits, revealing hidden messages and reflecting deeper emotional layers.
Nathan Beard
Visiting Bangkok, Thailand from Naarm/ Melbourne, Australia
Nathan Beard is a multidisciplinary artist who draws from his Australian-Thai heritage to unpack the porous and precarious influences of culture and memory. In exploring the slippery intersection of family history, archives and broad cultural signifiers of ‘Thainess’, Beard’s work articulates the complexities surrounding authenticity and diasporic identity.
Acknowledgements
The 'Debra Porch Award' is presented in partnership with Creative Australia and SAC Gallery, Bangkok, in honour of Debra Porch's lifetime of work. In 2019, UNSW Galleries celebrated her work with the survey exhibition 'Debra Porch: Art Should Make Life More Interesting Than Art'.
Image
Debra Porch, Regards to the Family 2011 (detail). Installation view: Canberra Contemporary Art Space. Photograph: Brenton McGeachie