Volunteer roles
Applications are now OPEN Visitor Services Volunteers at The Dax Centre
Visitor Services - This volunteer position supports the daily operations of The Dax Centre gallery by welcoming visitors, ensuring artwork safety, providing information, and assisting with events, requiring strong communication skills, reliability and an interest in the arts and mental health.
Education Volunteer - This volunteer position supports the delivery of education programs at The Dax Centre by assisting with setup, welcoming school groups and assiting with presentations focused on mental health and the arts.
View position descriptions by clicking the title of each role above. For more information please refer to our Volunteer Policy
Internships
Applications are now OPEN for internship opportunities at The Dax Centre
Collections Management Intern - an internship designed for those interested in art history, museology, conservation practices and the documentation and digitisation processes behind maintaining a heritage listed collection
Curation & Exhibition Intern - an internship designed for those interested in curatorial research and hands-on exhibition installation experience
The selected applicants will work with artists with lived experiences of mental health issues and with a collection containing artworks created by artists with lived experience of mental illness. View position descriptions by clicking the title of each role above.
We require interns to be available for on-site participation. The internships cannot be completed remotely and as we are a not-for-profit the roles are unpaid.
2025 Collection Management Intern
Caitlyn Pertzel
"Over the past few weeks, I have had the unique opportunity to be a part of the Dax Centre’s exhibition Re/Connect. As a Collections Intern, I worked behind-the-scenes with the collection artworks and have grown very familiar with them. The way in which the exhibiting RMIT artists have connected their own work and experiences with the collection is truly inspiring and encourages new perspectives on works that have not previously been considered.
Re/Connect features 12 recent RMIT graduates alongside a collection of artworks from the Cunningham Dax Collection. Each artist has considered their own artwork and artistic themes and chosen a selection of artworks from the collection to display alongside their own work. The relationships between the artworks encourages a reconsideration of how we look at the artworks, with unique, specific connections drawn between each other.
Tucked away in the library, Bo-Dene Steiler’s site-specific installation Yellow’s Corridor creates an atmospheric experience, paired with collection works by Renee Sutton. Ordinarily, the library provides a quiet and calming space for visitors who may have become overwhelmed during educational programming and events.
I had grown curious about this work over the installation period, as I wondered how the installation would work in such a unique space. When I saw it for the first time, however, I was amazed at how Steiler had used the colour in a way that brought a light into the room without changing the fundamentals of the room itself.
Steiler has transformed the library into an artwork, with bold yellow features throughout bringing a new light into the space. The bookstands in the shelves have been temporarily replaced with yellow ones, books from the collection have been strategically placed to showcase the colour, and even some corner decorations for the bookshelves have been included. When the sun shines through the opaque yellow cube at the window, the entire room becomes bathed in a muted warm glow. The entire room has become a yellow haven, including an interactive activity involving almost exclusively yellow stationary.
The accompanying collection artworks by Renee Sutton adds to the room, with artwork that reflects on scenes and experiences from her childhood, as well as the therapeutic relationship that she had with art. Both Sutton and Steiler demonstrate the way in which colour and art can be therapeutic. Through the installation, Steiler implores us to enjoy the spaces created by and for people with lived experiences of mental health and neurodiversity.
Steiler’s idea of responding to a space through her neurodivergent perspective transforms the entire room into an artwork itself. On top of this, she has encouraged us all to reconsider the library space in – literally – a new light. Her work also demonstrates how institutions can allow artists to respond to spaces, whether through a large-scale installation, or a flood of colour."
2025 Curation & Exhibition Intern
Megan Willey
"As this semester’s Curatorial intern for The Dax Centre, I have been privileged of learning under Eliza and Emily for the past few months. The Re/Connect exhibition has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of artists with lived experiences and the prioritization of process-based creation. Through an artist-led curation, the RMIT artists chose a Cunningham Dax Collection piece they felt resonated with their practices. The exhibition presents a side by side of the artist's work and their chosen Dax collection works, aiming to focus on shared lived experiences.
For the first few weeks of the internship, I assisted with the writing of the exhibition catalogue where I learnt the importance of recognizing lived experiences and breaking down the stigma towards mental health. It was meaningful to engage with both the emerging artists’ and the Dax Collection works, to emphasize their specific personal connections to one another.
I was drawn specifically to the pieces by Molly Jane Baker titled Love me, Touch me, Hold me. Baker is a recent RMIT graduate, who has completed a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts, their practice now centers on ideas of process-based artistic workings and finding a flow state where they needle felt into soft sculptures, in a repetitive and meditative movement. I was drawn to these works by the tactile, textural and interesting forms of Baker’s work. I felt that the works were a complex statement of identity and bodily form. It was interesting to understand Baker’s perspective with the engagement of ideas like touch, the ungendered form and the body as an object.
Choosing to pair her work with Sophia Xeros-Constantinides' Rorschach, Baker identifies with her perspective of metamorphoses and one’s agency with the feminine form. Both artists challenge and dismantle traditional stereotypes about the female body and an experimentation with materiality. Furthermore, through critiquing images of representations of motherhood, Xeros-Constantinides shares her exploration of “antique gynecological and obstetric engravings...collaged together [along] an axis.” Baker felt a connection to Xeros-Constantinides through her anatomical representations of the female body. In a similar way, Baker presents a challenge to the societal and considered normality of the presentation of the female/un-gendered body and the female experience.
I hope and recommend that you take your time with both Molly Jane Baker and Sophia Xeros-Constantinides' pieces, the lengthy process and intricacy with the choices of materials make these pieces an important statement in the reclaim over sovereignty of oneself and identity. Ultimately, the creativity of both works allow for a deeper understanding of Xeros-Constantinides' and Baker’s agency and perseverance. They both reflect on societies' perception of body and identity, they both aim to reclaim themselves, the ungendered form and portrayals of body in their pieces."
2024 Curation & Exhibition Intern
Grace Murphy
"As this year’s Curatorial Intern for The Dax Centre’s She Who Persists exhibition, I have had the pleasure of working and learning alongside Stef and Emily for the past 14 weeks, to help give light to these incredible textile works made by women with lived experiences of mental health.
For the initial few weeks, I worked alongside the 40 textile works, photographing and documenting them for the exhibition. One of the most gratifying experiences at The Dax Centre has been the time I spent with the hero pieces of the show, all created by Edith Agnes Harrington.
Edith was a patient at Mayday Hills Asylum located in Beechworth, which opened in 1867 and closed in 1995. In a time of women’s mental health having a severe lack of understanding in society, women often were taken to Asylums if they disrupted gender norms or displayed any symptoms of the highly misogynistic medical diagnosis, “Female Hysteria”.
With a desire for autonomy and self-expression, outside of the patients’ mandatory ill-fitted calico clothes, Edith began to embroider intricate and beautiful clothing items, 3 of which are included in the exhibition. She embroidered these pieces between 1950 and 1960 in the mental institution. Staff reported that she rarely took the pieces off, often embroidering the pieces as she wore them.
I encourage you to take your time with Edith’s pieces, pay attention to the delicate stitch work, the small bows, the countless intertwined flowers and leaves, the bold colours of the yarn she chose. And ultimately, stepping back to recognise Edith’s creativity and use of textiles as an act of courage and perseverance.”
