Artist Collaboration / 17
For our 17th peer-to-peer collaboration, Indonesian Tab space artist Claudia Panca Fadilla, collaborated with Australia artist Anna Louise Richardson. This project is supported by grant funding from the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Creative Australia and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and its Arts Grants Program.
Claudia Panca Fadilla
Claudia is a peer-to-peer collaborator and was paired with Anna. Claudia, is a Bandung-based neurodivergent artist whose practice is shaped by her cheerful and feminine character.
Deeply fond of cats, she often depicts the lives of her cat characters, Manis and Milo, in everyday scenes—eating, pregnancy, nursing, and playing hide-and-seek with their kittens. While cats remain her primary inspiration, she has recently expanded her interest to drawing other beautiful subjects such as flowers and animals that captivate her.
Claudia has showcased her works in exhibitions including Open Arms (2023), Rumpang Rimpang Rampung (2024), and Senang Bersamamu (2025).
Image courtesy Tab Space
Anna Louise Richardson
Anna is a peer-to-peer artist, paired with Claudia. She lives and works on Bindjareb Nyoongar Boodja in the Peel region of WA. Raised on a multigenerational beef cattle farm, her deeply autobiographical work uses animals, domestic objects, and rural landscapes as metaphors for life, death, and humananimal relationships.
As a sixth-generation settler-colonial Australian, her practice engages with the cultural complexity of living on unceded land. Exploring themes of parenthood, preternatural experiences, and connection to place, she primarily works with charcoal and graphite on cement fibreboard, creating drawings that use flattened perspectives and manipulated scales to amplify emotional resonance. Richardson holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Curtin University.
Recent projects include the 2024 TILT commission and her solo exhibition The Good, touring regional galleries nationally until 2026. In 2023, she won the inaugural Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize.
Image courtesy Anna Louise Richardson
ARTWORK BEFORE THE COLLABORATION
Click on each image below for a larger view of each artist’s work before the collaboration.
Anna Louise Richardson
Claudia Panca Fadilla
THE BEGINNING
Over many Zoom sessions, Anna and Claudia learned more about each other their homes, environments and working environments. Claudia shared images of her work, home, studio and love of cats! So many cats. Which was hard at first for Anna, who lives on a farm in Perth, Australia where cats are pets, harming native birds and small animals.
The Zoom image appearing here shows one of the first peer-to-peer Zoom meetings, from top left clockwise: Imaniar from Tab Space, Sim, Anna, Nurul and Claudia.
ZOOM SESSIONS
Over many Zoom sessions, Anna and Claudia discovered fascinating parallels in their artistic worlds through their shared fascination with animals. Anna works from her multigenerational beef cattle farm on Bindjareb Nyoongar Boodja in Western Australia, while Claudia creates from her studio in Bandung, surrounded by her beloved cats Manis and Milo. What emerged during their collaboration was an intricate artistic dialogue that transformed their different relationships with animals into a rich, multi-layered exhibition.
During their collaborative process, both artists developed an ambitious series of interactive artworks that brought their animal subjects to life through innovative installation techniques. Anna created detailed drawings of cats in various playful scenarios - imagine the cats playing with mice, looking at geckos, chasing butterflies, and playing with balls of yarn.
But the magic happened in how these static images were transformed by Claudia: acrylic butterflies glued above frames to flutter over watching cats, real yarn connecting separate drawings, and feather toys suspended to create the illusion of a cat at play. Claudia, inspired by Anna's playful approach with her drawn cats, expanded her own animal repertoire to include the unique fauna of both their countries.
The cultural exchange proved particularly rich when Claudia tackled an Australian animal series. Claudia created vibrant depictions of kangaroos with bellies revealing joeys inside and interactive duck families.
What has emerged is a celebration of both Indonesian and Australian animals that embodied the project's "Expanding Surrounding" theme - creating an immersive environment where Anna's rural Australian farm animals alongside iconic Australian animals and Claudia's urban Indonesian cats could coexist in a whimsical, interactive space that invites visitors to engage with the artists' worlds simultaneously.
“So good to meet you and see all your smiling faces yesterday. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be working in this project with you Claudia. Im a big fan of your work. I’m heading out to check the cows and calves tomorrow and will take pictures around the farm. For now here is a selection of my family and the farm including a fantastic double rainbow. ”
Sharing Images: Anna Louise Richardson
Here are the some of the images Anna shared with Claudia of her farm and family to start the project.
Sharing Images: Claudia Panca Fadilla
Here are some images that Claudia shared with Anna of her home and beloved cats.
THE THEMES
Through their regular Zoom calls, Anna and Claudia realised they both centred animals in their work—just very different ones. Rather than see this as a divide, they decided to bridge their worlds, with Anna exploring Claudia's feline subjects and Claudia venturing into Australian (and other) wildlife. Here were some of the early ideas they shared with us:
Claudia will share images of her cats with Anna.
Anna will share images of Australian animals from her farm.
Anna will create a series of cats based on Claudia’s pet cats, then will share the drawings with Claudia to add her drawings of butterflies, birds, balls of yarn, feathers, and skinks to the drawings.
Claudia will also create a suite of personal works based on farm animals and Australian animals.
A short animation of Anna’s cats and Claudia’s drawings interacting with them will be created by Tab Space.
A collaborative installation of decals with Claudia and Anna’s drawings will be installed in the space as a landscape.
CONNECTING
“Animals are a common thread in our practices. Animal relationships, ours to them (pets, farm animals and not pets) and theirs to each other (mother and baby). And learning about the animals that surround each other.”
TWO WORLDS, MANY ANIMALS
Anna and Claudia decided they would explore the concept of animal relationships through intimate, collaborative artmaking - creating drawings that would inspire innovative material outcomes from each other.
Anna planned to work on high-quality paper, creating cat drawings in poses that looked like they were interacting with something unseen, while Claudia continued developing her beloved characters Manis and Milo alongside explorations of Australian wildlife and farm animals.
During their collaboration, both artists worked on developing their animal concepts through regular Zoom calls, with progress images exchanged over email. Anna focused on drawing cats in anticipation of Claudia's collaboration and further reworking. Cats emerged with playful and thoughtful poses and expressions that invited interaction. Claudia, responded to the series of six cat artworks by workshopping and integrating butterflies, birds, skinks and everyday cat toys. Also, inspired by Anna's farm environment, Claudia began incorporating Australian fauna into her practice alongside her signature characters and cats.
When Anna's original drawings featured cats in interactive poses, Claudia responded by working directly on the same physical pieces, adding her own drawings in any medium she chose. The collaboration expanded into innovative material forms: wall decals that allowed their animal drawings to inhabit gallery space together, and animations that brought their static drawings into playful digital life. What emerged throughout this process was seeing how their different relationships with animals - Anna's farm-based understanding of livestock and working animals versus Claudia's urban love of companion cats - created a rich dialogue about the varied ways animals surround and shape our daily lives.
ANNA LOUISE RICHARDSON
Original drawings that Anna sent to Claudia to add her drawings to.
Stage 1 “Cat-1”, artwork started by Anna and sent to Claudia in Bandung to develop Stage 2,
Stage 1 “Cat-2”, artwork started by Anna and sent to Claudia in Bandung to develop Stage 2,
CLAUDIA PANCA FADILLA
Rendering of Claudia’s landscape that Claudia and Anna will develop further with decals.
Claudia Panca Fadilla & Anna Louise Richardson | A family of cats hanging out at daisy field | Wall sticker/decal work in progress, started by Claudia.
A sample of Australian animals by Claudia.
Digital artworks by Claudia based on her research of Australian animals introduced as a result of “Expending Surrounding” collaboration.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We ask each artist a few questions about their collaboration.
What was your favourite part of the collaboration?
What was the experience of meeting Vipoo in Bandung like? What did you do there?
Can you describe Vipoo in just three words?
Can you speak to what you made during the collaboration?
What was is about exploring ‘superheroes’ that inspired you?
What do you hope audiences get from seeing this collaboration?
What was the biggest surprise for you during the collaboration?
What was the biggest challenge for you during the collaboration?
For others potentially undertaking peer-to-peer collaborations in the future, what would be your advice to them?
THANK YOU
With thanks to Tab Space staff including Damar, Nurul, and Imaniar, Claudia and Anna for working so passionately on this peer-to-peer collaboration. Special thanks also to our project funders the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Creative Australia and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and its Arts Grants Program.