Folding Ritual Workshop with Jacky Cheng

Folding Ritual Workshop with Jacky Cheng

Join artist Jacky Cheng for a gentle, hands-on workshop inspired by her work Where Conversations Gather, created for the 2026 Invitation Art Prize.

Drawing on themes from her artwork, the workshop explores folding as a creative and ritual practice, using paper to consider how simple acts of making can create space for gathering, conversation and exchange. Participants will be guided through a sequence of folds, transforming individual sheets of paper into repeated forms that gradually come together as something more intricate and unexpected.

Through touch, repetition and gesture, folding becomes a quiet act of care, a way to hold memory, mark time and connect through the shared experience of making.

No prior experience is required. All materials are provided. Come curious and spend a Saturday afternoon slowing down, making and gathering together.

About the Artist:

Jacky Cheng is a Malaysian-born, Chinese heritage artist currently based on Yawuru Country in Broome, Western Australia. Trained in architecture at the University of New South Wales, Cheng brings a precise spatial sensibility to her sculptural and installation-based practice, which investigates the material, psychological and cultural architectures of ritual. Her work is informed by intergenerational knowledge and an ongoing dialogue between inherited cultural lineages and contemporary craft methodologies.

Drawing from the rhythms and symbolic structures of her Chinese Malaysian upbringing, Cheng explores belonging, diaspora and the transmission of ancestral memory through materially driven processes. Paper and fibre are central to her practice — not simply as mediums, but as sites of devotion, labour and transformation.

Cheng’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial, Fremantle Arts Centre, the Cheongju Craft Biennale (South Korea), the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale (South Korea), the National Art School (Sydney) and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Getting there

You’ll find Joondalup Contemporary Art Gallery between the Joondalup Library and City of Joondalup Administration Building, next to the Council Chambers.

Free public parking is available in the Library Car Park. Alternatively, the gallery is a 13-minute walk from Joondalup Train Station, or you can catch the Blue CAT bus, which departs every 15 minutes from the station.

Accessibility

Joondalup Contemporary Art Gallery features a flat, level floor surface and wide doorways. Accessible toilets are available in the gallery. The Joondalup Library Car Park includes accessible parking bays, with lift access to the main walkway from the underground car park. 

This is an indoor, seated workshop involving hands-on activities. If you require alternative seating or have any accessibility requirements, please contact us at [email protected] or on 9400 4000.

Other

This event forms part of the 2026 Invitation Art Prize public program and is inspired by Jacky Cheng’s artwork Where Conversations Gather, featured in this year’s exhibition.

After the workshop, take the opportunity to explore the 2026 Invitation Art Prize exhibition and see Jacky’s artwork at Joondalup Contemporary Art Gallery. Entry to the exhibition is free.

The Invitation Art Prize brings together ten Western Australian artists presenting brand-new works, with one artwork selected for the City of Joondalup’s $25,000 acquisitive prize. Find out more about this year's Invitation Art Prize here.

Image credit: Courtesy of the artist. Headshot: Jacky Cheng. Photo by Michael Jalaru Torres