Rose Rigley is a Cairns/Gimuy-based conceptual artist who values engagement, connection, and collaboration.
In 2025, she temporarily relocated to Sydney to undertake her Post-Graduate Diploma / Master of Fine Art at the National Art School. The artist continues to have strong affiliations with far north Queensland, being a Member of the Cairns RADF Grant Committee and a Director on the Board of NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Cairns.
Growing up north of Brisbane (Bribie Island) in a rambling house packed with “stuff”, the artist has an ambiguous relationship with objects. Her practice considers absence in the fullness of what remains and the role of everyday detritus as triggers for memory. Drawing on personal experiences, Rigley wrestles with ideas around loss and the untranslatable space between words, using sculptural assemblage, drawing, and installation to pursue her creative considerations.
After graduating with a Diploma of Visual Arts in 2011, Rigley attended the Centre of Book Arts, New York, and undertook several mentorships with prominent book arts artists and printmakers. Completing her Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) through Curtin University (Perth, WA) in 2018, Rigley was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant in 2014/15, won the 2015 QRAA Wayne Kratzmann Acquisitive Prize for $10,000, collaboratively co-won the 2019 QRAA Art for Life Prize for $10,000, was highly commended in the 2021 STILL National Still Life Awards , and won the 2022 QRAA Art Educator Award.
Rigley has exhibited on a local, national, and international level and has produced numerous solo exhibitions. Co-founding artist-run-initiative Knock Knock (now Sixfold Project) in 2010, the group continues to challenge each other and contemporary approaches to art. The artist has been part of the TAFE Queensland (Cairns/Gimuy campus) visual art teaching team since 2015, at the same campus where her creative meanderings first started.
In 2025, she temporarily relocated to Sydney to undertake her Post-Graduate Diploma / Master of Fine Art at the National Art School. The artist continues to have strong affiliations with far north Queensland, being a Member of the Cairns RADF Grant Committee and a Director on the Board of NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Cairns.
Growing up north of Brisbane (Bribie Island) in a rambling house packed with “stuff”, the artist has an ambiguous relationship with objects. Her practice considers absence in the fullness of what remains and the role of everyday detritus as triggers for memory. Drawing on personal experiences, Rigley wrestles with ideas around loss and the untranslatable space between words, using sculptural assemblage, drawing, and installation to pursue her creative considerations.
After graduating with a Diploma of Visual Arts in 2011, Rigley attended the Centre of Book Arts, New York, and undertook several mentorships with prominent book arts artists and printmakers. Completing her Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) through Curtin University (Perth, WA) in 2018, Rigley was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant in 2014/15, won the 2015 QRAA Wayne Kratzmann Acquisitive Prize for $10,000, collaboratively co-won the 2019 QRAA Art for Life Prize for $10,000, was highly commended in the 2021 STILL National Still Life Awards , and won the 2022 QRAA Art Educator Award.
Rigley has exhibited on a local, national, and international level and has produced numerous solo exhibitions. Co-founding artist-run-initiative Knock Knock (now Sixfold Project) in 2010, the group continues to challenge each other and contemporary approaches to art. The artist has been part of the TAFE Queensland (Cairns/Gimuy campus) visual art teaching team since 2015, at the same campus where her creative meanderings first started.