Keinton Butler

Keinton Butler is Senior Curator at Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and Creative Director of Sydney Design Week. She holds a Master of Arts in Curating Contemporary Design from Kingston School of Art, in partnership with the Design Museum, London.

After 10 years in the UK working for British artist Damien Hirst and curating exhibitions across contemporary art, design and photography, she returned to Australia in 2016.

At Powerhouse, Butler leads collaborative exhibition, commission and research projects with a focus on socially and environmentally engaged contemporary design practices. Her exhibitions at Powerhouse include:

• Common Good (2018), a survey of design-led responses to social, ethical and environmental challenges from the Asia-Pacific region featuring Superflux and Lucy McRae
• Design for Life (2020) exploring the central role of design in extending the body’s biological capabilities
• Hybrid: Objects for Future Homes (2020), interrogating the contemporary urban condition, with commissions addressing the global pandemic, declining air quality and rising temperatures, featuring Adam Goodrum, Trent Jansen and Elliat Rich.

Butler has been Creative Director of Sydney Design Week since 2023 and has invited numerous international designers and architects to participate in the festival including Zhang Ke, Anna Puigjaner, Eisuke Tachikawa, Rural Urban Framework and Sumayya Vally.

Butler regularly contributes to design publications and public speaking engagements and has interviewed leading international designers including Bruce Mau, Kwangho Lee and Colin Gibson. At Powerhouse she guides initiatives that support creative talent such as the design residency programs. These partner emerging Australian designers with mentors including Anthony Dunne, Liam Young and Professor Veena Sahajwalla. She also supports the annual Carl Nielsen Design Accelerator awarded to an Australian project that demonstrates outstanding design in sustainability.

Since 2022 Butler has been part of the Industry Advisory Group for the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, an initiative of TAFE NSW and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She is currently working on a major exhibition in collaboration with architecture studio OMA, scheduled to open at Powerhouse Parramatta in 2026. 

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran

Ramesh is a contemporary artist interested in global histories and languages of figurative representation. He explores politics relating to idolatry, the monument, gender, race and religion with specific references to South Asian forms and imagery.

While Ramesh is best known for his inventive approach to ceramic media, his material vernacular is broad. He has presented diverse works in museums, festivals, multi-art centres and the public domain. This has included significant presentations at the National Gallery of Australia, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Dhaka Art Summit, Art Basel Hong Kong and Dark Mofo festival.

While Ramesh is frequently presented to the public in a diverse range of print, online and television media related to art, culture and fashion, his contributions to contemporary art and culture have been acknowledged broadly. In 2019, he received a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship which recognised his outstanding talent and exceptional professional courage. This same year he presented work in the largest historical survey of LGBTQ Asian Art at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre. In 2022, his first 368-page monograph, titled RAMESH, was published and internationally distributed by Thames & Hudson and he was recognised as GQ’s Artist of the Year as part of their Men of the Year Awards.  In 2023, he held his first major international institutional show, Idols of Mud and Water, and Tramway, Glasgow.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired his monumental work ‘Avatar Towers’. This installation of 70 ceramic and bronze figures was originally presented in the gallery’s historic vestibule. His work is held in various other public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Kiran Nadar Museum of Fine Art, the Art Gallery of South Australia, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, the Shepparton Art Museum as well as significant private collections globally.