DEBUT XXII
Lance Zuniga, Phoebe Haig, Sam Jones
11–28 Feb 2026
Announcing DEBUT XXII - an annual curated exhibition of works by recent graduates from Melbourne’s major art institutions.
This year, Blindside is honoured to showcase the excellent work of Lance Zuniga (RMIT), Phoebe Haig (Monash) and Sam Jones (VCA). While distinct in style and concept, each of these artists playfully engages the element of light. Light, that traditional symbol of hope, becomes a potent medium for distortion or revelation within our hyperreal media landscape. For DEBUT XXII, we invite audiences to consider what stays shrouded when the light creeps in.
All DEBUT artists received curatorial advice, technical assistance, and professional documentation as part of the three week exhibition.
Showing Feb 11th - Feb 28th. Opening event Thursday Feb 12th, 6-8pm.
Curated by Siying Zhou.
DEBUT is a Blindside project committed to fostering new talent from Melbourne’s major art institutions. Now in its 22nd year, DEBUTXXII showcases the outstanding graduate work of Lance Zuniga (RMIT), Phoebe Haig (Monash) and Sam Jones (VCA).
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Lance Zuniga is a Filipino-New Zealand artist whose practice investigates the material, visual, and semiotic dimensions of diasporic experience through the intersections of postcolonial critique. Rejecting the inherited euro-centric authority of the stretched canvas, he turned to liquid latex, employing processes of casting and imprinting. In this continual act of reconfiguration, Zuniga’s practice inhabits the tension between disappearance and declaration, finding agency within the unstable skin of diaspora.
Phoebe Haig is a Naarm based visual artist. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2022, followed recently in 2025 by a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at Monash University. Phoebe’s painting practice currently explores viscosity, as substance and sensation through the manipulation of oil paint. Her work explores affective ruptures within representation – light, shadow, and digital imagery are approached as fields that act to obscure and dissolve the visible. Viscosity is posited as both substance and method: a slow, consuming, thinking-through-paint that prioritises absence and sensation over narrative clarity.
Sam Jones (b. 2004) is a Melbourne based artist. He recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (photography) at VCA in 2025. His practice spans photography and sculpture.
Siying Zhou is a China-born Australian artist. Her practice is mostly identified within the visual art discipline and drawn upon my self-reflection on my Chinese heritage and my social status as an Asian female immigrant. She obtained the Master of Fine Art, at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne in 2018. She is the recipient of Linden Art Prize 2019. Her works have been exhibited in those, Buxton Contemporary Art (VIC), Newcastle Art Gallery (NSW), Ararat Art Gallery TAMA (VIC), Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NT), and Meinblau Projektraum (Germany).
Teagan Ramsay is an independent curator, arts practitioner and art documenter based in Naarm/Melbourne. They work primarily with sound and image which is informed by affect theory and spatial perception. Their curatorial practice is underpinned by collaborative frameworks, socialist ethics and intersectional feminist methodologies.
Curatorial Assistance: Fiona Morgan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Wadawurrung country, in regional Victoria. Morgan’s practice is focused on painting and installation, primarily concentrating on abstraction, materiality and space, employing strategies for maintaining hope and joy in an ever more anxious world and political environment.
Curatorial Assistance: Audrey Merton is an emerging curator, writer and arts practitioner based in Naarm / Melbourne. Her curatorial practice is focused on making connections between processes, practices and people.