Victoria Hempstead is a conceptual artist, whose work spans the mediums of sculpture, installation and mark-making. Victoria's work explores the energetic exchange between maker and material as a liminal, ever-morphic relationship. Known for creating pieces that remain in process - oxidising, expanding, bursting, dispersing - the artwork often acts as a conduit between site, self and psyche. Victoria integrates found materials such as wood, ash and charcoal alongside metal, glass, paper and most recently soil. Her process-based practice is influenced by intuitive guidance, motherhood, care and labour.  

Victoria’s current research work explores the potential of intuitive guidance in the act of artmaking. Of particular interest is proposing intuitive thinking as an effective and successful alternative to analytical reasoning or a goal-attainment approach. Avenues of research include radical embodied cognitive science (RECS), trauma release therapy and somatic healing, child attachment play and physical contact healing with infants (Aletha Solter PhD), and the disabled community’s heightened connection to the body through intuition.

Victoria is currently preparing for a joint PhD candidature between Munich, Germany and Sydney, Australia.

Hempstead recently unveiled her significant public commission Reminiscence at Royal Automobile Club Victoria (RACV) City Club in Melbourne’s CBD. Her other public commissions include Eternal Gaze - a large (12m x 8m) collaborative digital projection work at 80 Collins St in Melbourne’s CBD. In 2020, she was named a joint winner of the 2020 Macquarie Emerging Artist Prize and in the same year, was also a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Award and awarded the prestigious Art Incubator Grant. Across 2019, Hempstead was named a finalist in the Kennedy Prize, the Clayton Utz Art Award and the Incinerator Art Award. She was the recipient of the University Postgraduate Award (2011) and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney with a 6 month placement at Parsons, The New School of Design (NYC). Her Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) was undertaken at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.