Nikki Willson

Current Art Practice

I am a feminist, lens-based artist working with photography and moving image installation to explore neurodivergence, interiority, and the gendered gaze. Grounded in my lived experience as a bipolar, neurodiverse woman, my interdisciplinary practice interrogates the dissonance between internal states and external systems of representation, particularly the relationship between photography, agency, and otherness. 

Drawing on my background in psychology, literature, and dance, my process uses the body, movement, light, and sound to evoke emotional and psychological states. Through this I develop photographic series, spatial video works, and multisensory installations foregrounding embodied subjectivity and disrupting conventional viewer-object dynamics.

Influences include artists Pat Brassington, Ayana V. Jackson, Barbara Morgan, Louise Bourgeois, Bill Viola, Ali Tahayori, Marlene Dumas, David Rosetzky, Cate Considine, Bronwyn Kidd, and Aneta Grzeszykowska. These artists inform both the conceptual and aesthetic foundations of my practice, especially around identity, intersectionality, affect, and the gaze.

Program Proposal

Through the MFA at RMIT, I aim to expand the scale and complexity of my installations, deepening the viewer’s embodied engagement with themes of trauma, memory, and neurodivergence. I’m particularly interested in developing immersive spatial works that challenge passive spectatorship and reconfigure the dynamics of the gaze. Access to RMITs facilities and interdisciplinary studio environment will support experimentation with spatial video and photography. Conceptually, I seek to further explore affect theory (Massumi, Ahmed, Watkins) and feminist critique, pushing my work into new intellectual and emotional territory. The opportunity to engage critically with faculty and peers is central to my development—I value rigorous dialogue and the chance to situate my practice within a diverse, thought-provoking community. I believe this program will offer the critical, technical, and conceptual support needed to evolve my practice into one that is more ambitious, resonant, and politically urgent.

Experience

My practice has evolved across various mediums since graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (honours) Sculpture in 2003.  Photography has always been a constant as a solo medium and in a mixed media context incorporating painting, new media, digital manipulation, installation and video.

My work draws from a background in dance and performance and is informed by study in psychology, philosophy and literature from a Bachelor of Arts in 1998.  I have a graduate diploma in education and have taught drawing and painting at adult education courses and drawing masterclasses in high schools in Melbourne and Japan.   

I have consistently exhibited in group and solo shows over the last 20 years in the UK, Japan and Australia including most recently ‘Remember’ (2022) at Yarra Sculpture Gallery, ‘From Where I Begin’ (2024) at Burrinja Cultural Centre,”A Quiet Place’ CS Gallery and an upcoming show at the Cardinia Cultural Centre in January 2026 .  I have participated in competitive residencies in Onishi, Japan and Melbourne,Australia.