Jessyca Hutchens

Dr Jessyca Hutchens is a Palyku woman living and working on Noongar boodja as a Lecturer in the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. She holds an assigned role with the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, where she manages teaching and learning and serves as co-director alongside Dr Stephen Gilchrist. An art historian, curator, and writer, Hutchens earned her DPhil in art history from the University of Oxford. She also holds a Bachelor of Laws with Distinction and a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in Fine Art History from the University of Western Australia. Her career history includes serving as Curator at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, Curatorial Assistant to the Artistic Director for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, and Lecturer in Global Art History at the University of Birmingham. She has contributed to various publications on contemporary art and maintains active roles in the field through curatorial projects and writing.

Hutchens' research specializations focus on contemporary Indigenous art, the histories of Australian Indigenous printmaking, and intersections between contemporary art and museum collections, including her involvement in the ERC-funded Repatriates research project. She co-curated the exhibition Black Sky for the 2023 Perth Festival and curated Inhabiting the Trace in 2022, exploring Indigenous printmaking and archival histories. Key publications include 'Indexical Thresholds: Between and Beyond' (2025, co-authored with Stephen Gilchrist) in Birrundudu Drawings, 'Fly In Fly Out artists of Western Australia' (2015, with Darren Jorgensen) in Artlink, and a review of The Legacies of Bernard Smith (2017) in the Journal of Art Historiography. Her accolades encompass the Creative Australia Curatorial Fellowship (2025-2029), Kluge-Ruhe Residential Fellowship as First Nations Curator (2023-2025), Charlie Perkins Scholarship, and Chevening Scholarship. Hutchens is a co-founder and editor of the online journal of artistic research oarplatform.com and serves on the editorial committee of Un Magazine. Her work has impacted the academic field through exhibitions that highlight Indigenous cultural heritage and sovereign artistic expressions, alongside public lectures such as her TEDxYouth@KingsPark presentation on Indigenous archives.

Professional Email: jessyca.hutchens@uwa.edu.au