Jas Shalimar is a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist working across drawing, painting, and object-based practice. Employing figurative composition and evocative imagery, her work explores desire, identity, personal mythology, and the construction of meaning through storytelling.
Working intuitively across material and image, motifs such as chairs, hands, windows, and fabric begin to recur, forming a kind of alternate lexicon. This visual language constructs lyrical narratives that weave together the personal and the archetypal. Playing with costume and adornment, this intuitive logic moves towards the body, examining how identity is collected, constructed, and performed.
Growing up in a house built by her father, where chairs hung from the ceiling and secret passageways threaded through the house. Jas has developed an enduring sensitivity to the symbolic potential of objects, spaces, and the imaginative possibilities embedded in everyday life.
Jas graduated with a BFA (Honours) from RMIT in 2019. Her debut solo exhibition, Something Feels Familiar: Memorialising the Everyday, was presented in 2023 at Meat Market Melbourne. She has been celebrated as a finalist in a range of prizes, including the National Emerging Art Prize (2024), Gosford Art Prize (2025), and Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2026). In 2025, she was one of the three recipients of the Centre for Contemporary Photography x Metro-Auto-Photo commission at RMIT Gallery.
Working intuitively across material and image, motifs such as chairs, hands, windows, and fabric begin to recur, forming a kind of alternate lexicon. This visual language constructs lyrical narratives that weave together the personal and the archetypal. Playing with costume and adornment, this intuitive logic moves towards the body, examining how identity is collected, constructed, and performed.
Growing up in a house built by her father, where chairs hung from the ceiling and secret passageways threaded through the house. Jas has developed an enduring sensitivity to the symbolic potential of objects, spaces, and the imaginative possibilities embedded in everyday life.
Jas graduated with a BFA (Honours) from RMIT in 2019. Her debut solo exhibition, Something Feels Familiar: Memorialising the Everyday, was presented in 2023 at Meat Market Melbourne. She has been celebrated as a finalist in a range of prizes, including the National Emerging Art Prize (2024), Gosford Art Prize (2025), and Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2026). In 2025, she was one of the three recipients of the Centre for Contemporary Photography x Metro-Auto-Photo commission at RMIT Gallery.
EDUCATION
2019 - Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours)
2018 - Bachelor of Fine Art
PRIZES
2026 - Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize Finalist, Sydney
2025 - Gosford Art Prize Finalist, Gosford Regional Gallery
2024 - National Emerging Art Prize Finalist, Sydney
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026 - The Private Theatre, Mars Gallery, Windsor︎︎︎ (upcoming 15th October - 14th November)
2023 - Something Feels Familiar, Memorialising The Everyday, Meat Market, North Melbourne︎︎︎
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 - Feeling Drawing Thinking, curated by Ruth O’Leary and Ben Sheppard, Mejia Gallery, Brunswick ︎︎︎
2022 – A Little Off Centre, Raillery Gallery, St Arnaud
2021- Rock Paper Scissors, Red Gallery, North Fitzroy
2020 – Collapse & Collapse Again, Blindside ARI, Melbourne
2020 – The Gap, The Interval and The In-between, Rubicon ARI, Melbourne
2019 – RMIT Bachelor of Fine Art Honours Graduate Exhibtion, Melbourne
2018, 2019 - Global Drawing Studio curated by Greg Creek RMIT University, Melbourne
2018 – RMIT Bachelor of Fine Art Graduate Exhibition, Melbourne
2018 - Up to now, RMIT CAST Gallery
2018 - Querelle IDAHOBIT Art Show, Monash University, Monash
2017 - In their own words, RMIT, Melbourne
2017 - Dodgy Art Show, The Stockroom, Ringwood
2017 - Arts for Change, Abbotsford Convent, Abbotsford
2016 - Burgerhaus art show, Burgerhaus, Port Melbourne
2016 - Signal presents Mine, Fort Delta, Melbourne
RESIDENCIES
2020 - Blindside Summer Studio: Collapse & Collapse Again. ︎︎︎
INTERNSHIPS
2017 – Beci Orpin
2014 – Cat Rabbit and Isobel Knowles