For emerging artist and storyteller Samantha Kucurs, the National Regional Arts Fellowship has become an opportunity to honour the place she comes from and celebrate the artists who help shape it.

A fifth-generation Atherton Tablelander, Samantha is developing an exhibition that profiles five local artists through film and photography as part of her fellowship project.

The National Regional Arts Fellowship Program is a strategic project supported by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. Fellowships provide guaranteed income for regional artists and arts workers to develop work, skills, networks, or research.

The fellowship project is grounded in a shared sense of place, capturing the creative lives of artists who live and work across the Atherton Tablelands.

“I set out an exhibition to showcase five local artists,” Samantha says. “Informed by their sense of place, of the Tablelands, such a beautiful place up here.”

For Samantha, the project is personal. Her family history is deeply tied to the land, with generations of artists, musicians and farmers behind her.

“I’m a fifth generation Atherton Tablelander,” she says proudly. “My family, they’re artists, everyone from music to visual arts… but they’re also farmers.”

That connection to land and creativity has shaped Samantha from a young age. She remembers receiving an iPad at seven and immediately using it to film in the garden. Looking back, she now sees those early experiments as a precursor to the documentary work she is making today.

“I realised that I was actually filming documentaries, which is what I’m doing now,” she says. “It was documentary then and documentaries now.”

The fellowship has enabled Samantha to continue and expand a creative direction that first emerged through a university assessment. After creating a micro-documentary and photographic series about her boss at The Art Garage, people responded strongly to the work and began asking her to make similar pieces. But without enough time, space or equipment, she could not keep going at that scale.

“The fellowship really helped me to actually get that time, the space and the equipment to be able to do it,” she says.

Samantha has selected five artists for the exhibition: author and illustrator Brenner Lowe, printmaker Maryke Dobe, mixed media artist Rose Watts, potter Jean McMaster, and silversmith Isabelle Hesketh. Each brings a different practice, but all are connected by their relationship to the Tablelands.

The process is built on trust. Samantha begins by researching each artist, then sends an expression of interest that explains how she works and what collaboration might look like. She visits their studios, talks with them, and adapts her process depending on each artist’s needs.

“It’s definitely very much built on trust,” she says. “It’s definitely a collaboration, how we work together.”

That flexibility has become one of her biggest learnings. Some artists have preferred to speak freely, while others needed a more structured approach and Samantha has adapted her interviewing, filming and creative methods in response.

“It has been quite a learning curve with how my process can change and adapt with each of my artists,” she says.

The fellowship has also introduced the emerging artist to the realities of planning her first exhibition. 

Samantha has been learning how many small decisions sit behind presenting work publicly, from framing choices to managing screens, reflections and installation details.

“I was really surprised by the amount of small details that go into actually putting an exhibition together,” she says. “It’s not just making the work.”

The exhibition is scheduled to be shown across September and October, with an opening night planned for Saturday 5 September at Frond Cafe, Lake Eacham Tourist Park. 

As she moves through the editing process, Samantha says she feels the weight of responsibility that comes with telling other artists’ stories.

“I’m responsible for telling their story,” she says. “For me to choose what goes into it and what doesn’t go into it, it’s really big.”

Samantha sees this project as “series one” — the beginning of a broader creative pathway as a regional storyteller.

“I definitely see this as like series one,” she says. “It’s the first kind of jump into doing something myself as an artist.”

Ultimately, the fellowship is helping Samantha see herself more clearly as an emerging artist, while creating a platform for others in her community.

“Growing up here is really, really beautiful, really magical,” she says. “Living amongst the nature has really shaped the people.”

Through film, photography and careful listening, Samantha is capturing not only five artists, but a regional creative community rooted in place, trust and authenticity.