FRIENDS FAIR
Co-Lab Projects @ Friends Fair
May 7th - 9th, 2026
The Loren at Lady Bird Lake
1211 W Riverside Dr, Austin, TX 78704
Wednesday, May 6th, 6-9pm: Launch Party with Future Front at The Jones Center
Thursday, May 7: Preview by invitation only
Friday, May 8th, 12-7pm & Saturday, May 9th, 12-6pm: Open and free to the public with required RSVP
Email hello@co-labprojects.org for inventory and pricing
For Friends Fair 2026, Co-Lab Projects will present paintings by Elizabeth Schwaiger and Jeremy DePrez, performance, styling, and services by Sean Ripple, ceramics by Rebeca Proctor, and floral arrangements by Antonio Bond
Elizabeth Schwaiger received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011 and currently lives and works in Paris, France. In her decade-long exploration of power dynamics and the climate crises, Schwaiger uses a variegated symbolism of water, fracturing, dimensional overlay, gesture, and dialed levels of representational clarity to construct images suggestive of the interplay among unseen forces that govern our world. She has exhibited in venues in the UK and the USA, including The Walker Gallery National Museum in Liverpool, The Macintosh Museum in Glasgow, The National Portrait Gallery in London, Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Glasgow International, Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh, Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, and Co-Lab Projects and GrayDUCK Gallery in Austin. Recent projects include NYC solo exhibition Now & Now & Now at Nicola Vassell and solo exhibition Pressing Shadows at Gana Art in Seoul in 2023, as well as a solo presentation at the Independent art fair presented by Nicola Vassell.
Jeremy DePrez is a Brooklyn, New York, and Houston, Texas based visual artist whose paintings examine the shifting connections between personal identity, material culture, and the often-overlooked objects of daily life. Through painting, he renders ephemeral, discarded materials with an uncanny sense of permanence, transforming them into static artifacts that suspend the instability of value, memory, and consumer culture. Working at the intersection of personal history and broader cultural forces, DePrez’s work challenges how we assign meaning to the objects we possess, discard, or inherit. Selected solo exhibitions include Night Worker: Works on Paper 2018–2025, Front, Houston; Reality’s Coffin, Post/Times, New York; GLYPHS, Best Western, Santa Fe; Tent Posts, SUNNY, New York, Furnished Head, Marinaro, New York; Boy Meets World, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; Mind Fold, Texas Gallery, Houston; and Tenant, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York. Selected group exhibitions include A Selection of Great Art By People Who Know What They Like (curated by Bob Nickas), The Drawing Center, New York; Hypervision, Magenta Plains, New York; Outside the Lines, Texas Gallery, Houston; Beyond the Frame, Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels; Shapeshifters, Luhring Augustine, New York; Das Bild hängt schief, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; and The Shaped Canvas Revisited, Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. DePrez was an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in 2015.
Sean Ripple is an artist, writer, and curator based in Austin, TX. His projects are often improvisational and interventionist in nature and rely heavily on social media and the Internet to frame the outcomes of a feverish dedication to an idea. Taking inspiration from portrait painting and divination practices like tarot and tea leaf reading, Ripple will host Friends Fair visitors in the booth and style them in fashions drawn from a variety of sources, including his personal collection. Visitors will engage in conversation to develop a look they feel works well for them, and then be given privacy to change into their ensemble. Their fit will be documented, and if the look is purchased, the visitor will be encouraged to walk it around the fair, which can be thought of as a runway for living sculpture. Ripple has been exhibiting with Co-Lab Projects since its founding in 2008. He has mounted exhibitions, projects, and interventions at Neue Welt, Time Being Books, The Contemporary Austin, Pump Project, The Museum of Human Achievement, Wurhaus, The Gatehouse Gallery at Laguna Gloria, inside private homes, numerous big box and department stores, and on internet platforms such as Tumblr, Flickr, Vine, Facebook, and Instagram. Sean Ripple is also currently Co-Lab's digital artist in residency at the colabprojectsbitres instagram account.
Rebeca Proctor is an artist based in Central Texas whose current practice responds to the tensions embedded within the domestic roles of maternal life. Working primarily in clay, she creates quiet monuments to the careful work of mothering, to the repetition of domestic labor, and to the abundance that can exist even in monotony. Her work teeters between at once utilitarian objects and symbolic sculptures - containing, protecting, and bearing the weight of it all while seeking moments of personal transformation amidst the overwhelm. Rebeca’s practice continues to evolve alongside her experience of raising two young children in the countryside outside of Austin, TX. She received her BFA in Studio Art in 2018 from the University of Texas at Austin where she focused on bronze casting and mixed media sculpture. She has held internships and residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado and Penland School of Craft in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her recent exhibitions include Soft Opening at DORF Gallery and Ain’t Hold Much; Ain’t Too Much to Hold at Co-Lab Projects. Proctor is co-owner of East Side Pot Shop, a community ceramics studio in East Austin, and co-founder of Nom Ceramics.
Antonio Bond was born and raised in south Austin, Texas, where he continues to do his part to keep Austin weird and abide by the 78704 way of life. With a style that resists convention and a commitment to artistry over trends, his work has earned both local admiration and national attention. Blending elements of the natural world with the everyday and man-made, Antonio reveals a quiet beauty in the subtleties that often go unnoticed. As a self-taught photographer, collage artist, and floral designer, he brings a distinct aesthetic and a finely tuned eye to every piece he creates. Shaped by his life experiences, Antonio has developed a singular way of seeing the world—one that transforms ordinary moments into layered visual narratives. His creations are more than compositions; they are open-ended stories, inviting viewers to find their own meaning within them.
