Creative Exchanges: 2009

Yin-Ju Chien (Taiwan) Freemantle Arts Centre and The University of Tasmania

Supported by Freemantle Arts Centre and The University of Tasmania

During her residency at Freemantle Arts Centre and The University of Tasmania, Yin-Ju Chien worked in the community visiting elderly people to share collective images, letters and daily clothing. By asking local people about their recollections and memories, Chien partially constructed their biographies and created through text, photography and installations, a reflection of their life experiences. Chien has undertaken residencies in many countries and has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including Austria, Italy and Romania.

Laura Jean McKay (VIC) Nou Hatch Literary Project

Supported by Arts Victoria and The Australia Council for the Arts

Laura Jean McKay is a writer and performer whose award-winning prose has been published and featured broadly, from Best Australian Stories to ABC Radio National. Her short story collection received high commendation in the Clouds of Magellan Novel Competition, and she has recently completed a Young Adult fiction novel. She has lived and worked in Southeast Asia, with her travel writing published by Lonely Planet. McKay used her residency to work closely with the Nou Hach Literary Association to research Cambodian storytelling, and assisted with workshops and organising an international poetry festival. She also researched and began writing a novel exploring 1960s Cambodia in the build up to the Pol Pot regime, an underrepresented period in Cambodian history set against the Vietnam War.

Christen Cornell (NSW) Shanghai 99

Supported by The Australia China Council and The Australia Council for the Arts

Christen Cornell has worked as Rights Manager at the publishing house Allen & Unwin for three years, travelling regularly to international book fairs, selling foreign rights for books, and arranging for the export of Australian literature to the major Asian markets. She has lived and worked in China, and has an ongoing interest in contemporary Chinese literature and Chinese-Australian cross-cultural exchange. Cornell also co-runs a small, Sydney-based independent publishing company, Local Consumption Publications. She spent three months working in China hosted by leading independent literary publisher, Shanghai 99, where she will developed translation projects with Chinese literary editors, and worked with the major literary festivals in China.

John Mateer (WA) The Bookworm

Supported by The Department of Culture And The Arts, WA and The Australia China Council

John Mateer is a poet and art-critic. He has published five books of poems in Australia, and a number of smaller publications, often in translation, in Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Japan, Macao and Portugal. His forthcoming books are Southern Barbarians, a collection of poems about the Portuguese empire, a gathering of twenty years of his South African poetry titled Ex-White, and a New and Selected edition of his Australian poems, The West. His residency at the Bookworm allowed him to investigating the experience and thought of European writers — Luis de Camoes, Camillo Pessanha and Victor Segalen — who lived in those regions in the early modern period.

Martyn Coutts & Willoh S. Weiland (TAS) LAB

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts

Martyn Coutts and Willoh S. Weiland form the live art collaboration, Deadpan. Their work is an ongoing research-based practice that utilises multi-media, rage and nonsense to challenge the definition of performative artworks. Deadpan has shown work at Electro fringe (Newcastle) and the national live art symposium 'this is the time this is the record of the time' (Perth), and have an ongoing mentorship with Scott Rankin, the artistic director of Big hART. Deadpan were resident at the LAB in Beijing, developing works that address the existence of a social responsibility to care for strangers.

Mimi Tong (NSW) OCAT

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts

Sydney-based artist Mimi Tong uses photography and installation to explore architectural abstraction in the landscape. Tong completed a Masters of Visual Arts in 2004 at Sydney College of the Arts.  Her residency at Oct Contemporary Art Terminal in Shenzhen represents a continuing interest in exploring cultural experience and identity that she has established with her recent exhibitions, Unfolding Ground, Artspace, Sydney, and Folding Cities: China, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, both held in 2007. During her time in China, she created new work that directly engages with the Nanshan social and architectural landscape.

Steve Eland (NT) Zendai MOMA

Supported by Arts NT and The Australia Council

Steve Eland has worked in arts management for the past 12 years, including working in Maningrida, Arnhem Land, being founding Director of Mass Gallery, Melbourne, and Director of 24HR Art – NT Centre for Contemporary Art in Darwin since 2005. His time at 24HR Art has seen the development of a broad range of artistic projects. Eland was based at Zendai MOMA, Shanghai, assisting with the project ‘The Edge – Contemporary Art from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and Indonesia’, to building networks for developing exchange projects between the Northern Territory and Asia.

Frank Madrid (ACT) Hong Kong Fringe Club

Supported by The Australia China Council and Arts ACT

Frank Madrid has over a decade of arts management experience working closely with several international and Australian organisations in areas of audience development, arts and education, multicultural marketing, networking and strategic planning. He has delivered artistic content to major festivals in Australia and overseas with direct responsibility for the selecting of programming, and devising effective communications strategies and marketing campaigns. Madrid’s residency at the Hong Kong Fringe Club will allow further expansion of networks and development of platforms for exchange, and sharing of knowledge and expertise.

Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley (VIC) 1.Shanthiroad

Supported by The Australia-India Council and The Australia Council for the Arts

Based in Melbourne, Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley have been collaborating on artworks for over twenty years. Burchill and McCamley’s work employs a diverse array of media, including neon, sculpture, painting, photography and video. They have exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. A major survey of Burchill and McCamley’s work — Tip of the Iceberg — was presented at University of Queensland and the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, in 2001. While in Bangalore, they explored local architecture and public garden-scapes and worked towards a new photographic series.

Josh Hogan (WA) Darparna Academy

Supported by The Department of Culture and the Arts, WA and The Australia India Council

Josh Hogan works as a percussionist, composer and producer across a range of new performance media. In addition to a range of freelance projects, he is the founder and artistic director of the percussion group Taal Naan, and a member of the groups Nova Ensemble, Pi and Tetrafide. As part of his residency at the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, Ahmedabad, he undertook intensive study of Konnakol (South Indian vocal percussion) and explored a range of northern and southern Indian rhythmic and dance forms. He also recorded and produced material for an album under his solo moniker Rusty Joe, featuring local Ahmedabad musicians.

Kabita Dhara (VIC) Katha

Supported by Arts Victoria and Australia India Council

Melbourne-based editor, bookseller and book reviewer, Kabita Dhara believes that Indian and Australian writers, publishers and readers deserve more direct access to one another. At Katha in New Delhi, she worked on literature that has been translated into English from India’s many regional languages, with a view to understanding the processes behind choosing a title for translation and assessing markets for it. She also spent time with multinational publisher Macmillan, learning how they assess the suitability of titles from overseas markets for the Indian market and the channels of distribution available to international publishers.

Kate Sulan (VIC) Darpana Academy

Supported by Arts Victoria and The Australia Council for the Arts

A director and dramaturge based in Melbourne, Kate Sulan is Artistic Director of Rawcus, an award-winning theatre company of performers with and without disabilities. Her work draws on dance, theatre and visual art disciplines and has been described as “a moving assertion of humanity with a wicked sense of humour”. Sulan has worked with companies including Back to Back Theatre, Stuck Pig Squealing, The Women’s Circus, Next Wave Festival and Malthouse Theatre. Her residency with the Darpana Academy in Ahmedabad allowed for creative dialogue, experimentation, reflection, and the seeding of new works.

Katherine Philp (QLD) Tibetan Institute

Supported by Arts Queensland and The Australia Council for the Arts

Cellist Katherine Philp graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium in 2008. She performs in a wide range of classical chamber music and orchestral settings as well as crossing over to collaborative world music and improvisation projects. Through improvisation, composing and arranging she explores how western musical mediums can be manipulated and crafted to work successfully with Tibetan folk and classical music. Philp undertook a residency at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala, India. There she worked to build on her knowledge of Tibetan classical and folk music traditions through collaborating with local musicians and assisting with the research and documentation program at TIPA.

Keri Glastonbury (NSW) Himachal Pradesh University

Supported by The Australia-India Council and The Australia Council for the Arts

Keri Glastonbury is a poet, essayist and creative writing lecturer at the University of Newcastle. She is currently the poetry editor of Overland, an editor with the small publishing company Local Consumption Publications and has directed ‘Critical Animals: National creative research symposium’ as part of Newcastle’s emerging arts and media festival This Is Not Art (TINA). Her latest poetry collection, Grit Salute, will be published in 2009. Glastonbury was based at The Australian Studies Centre at Himachal Pradesh University, where she worked on various DIY life-writing projects, including introducing zines to the local literary community.

Melissa Keys (VIC) Khoj International Artists

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts and The Department of Culture and The Arts, WA

Curator at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Melissa Keys is responsible for curating and managing PICA’s exhibition, studio and public programs. Over the last ten years she has been employed in a variety of roles at Monash University Museum of Art and Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. Throughout this time she has also been an active independent curator.  During her residency at KHOJ International Artists Association in New Delhi, Keys researched and developed her understanding of local contemporary visual art and curatorial practice, and built build relationships with a view to co-producing a curatorial project and a series of collaborative exchanges.

Susan Hawthorne (QLD) University of Madras

Supported by Arts Queensland and The Australial Council for the Arts

Author of five collections of poetry, Susan Hawthorne has had her work included in Best Australian Poems 2006 and 2008, in Australian and international literary magazines, in metropolitan newspapers and on radio. Since 1998 she has been a Research Associate at Victoria University where she supervises post-graduate students in Creative Writing. Hawthorne is an aerialist, a student of Sanskrit and a publisher whose residency at the University of Madras allowed her to develop her skills in the art of Indian poetry rhythms. Her time in Chennai was used to write a long poem - using the bovine as a central metaphor - that addresses the symbolic role the cow plays in both Indian and Australian culture.

Anna Lowendahl (VIC) Paper Moon

Supported by The Australia Indonesia Institute and The Australia Council for the Arts

Theatre director, animateur and performer, Anna Loewendahl is Co-director of TransVision Arts, an organisation dedicated to social change through performance. Loewendahl has worked with YSpace aerial dance, social theatre in Zimbabwe, and teaches dance to youth at risk. She directs and performs Play at Being, investigating philosophical questions through multimedia performance. Loewendahl’s residency at Paper Moon was a temporary departure from an arts and theatre practice that uses a relatively fixed set of tools and strategies, to an opportunity to engage in Yogyakarta’s unique culture, exchanging creative ideas that challenge her existing theatre-making praxis.

Cassandra Shultz (QLD) Cemeti Art House

Supported by Arts Queensland and The Australia Indonesia Institute

Cassandra Schultz is a multi-disciplinary Brisbane-based visual artist who creates diverse, expressive work along humanitarian, environmental and activist themes. Her previous work has dealt with collecting, and specifically the shifts in value and meaning embodied by objects that serve as vessels of containment and regeneration. Schultz’s practice delves into process of commodification and exchange that deepens these cultural and economic investments. Furthering this theme, she used her residency at Cemeti Art House to explore the history of colonial trade in the region and investigate the subsequent impact of the rising demand for cheap mass-produced products on traditional craft practices.

Kate Ben-Tovim (VIC) Yayasan Bagong Kussudiardja

Supported by The Australia Indonesia Institute and The Australia Council for the Arts

With an academic background in classical music performance and international relations, Kate Ben-Tovim has combined her interest in arts and cultural exchange with projects in Australia, London, China and Papua New Guinea over the last ten years. She is a producer with specialist experience in music-based projects and cross-cultural collaborations. In her current role with Arts House, Melbourne, Ben-Tovim has produced two award-winning intercultural music projects that have toured nationally and internationally. She undertake her residency in Yogyakarta at the non-profit arts centre Padepokan Seni.

Laura Wills (SA) Cemeti Art House

Supported by Arts SA and The Australia-Indonesia Institute

Based in Adelaide, Laura Wills is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work encompasses painting, installation, media arts, performance and community work. The basis of Wills’ expansive art practice is a keen interest in ecological and social issues, themes she explores in her work using a variety of found materials – including maps and other ephemera. Wills has exhibited nationally and internationally in a variety of contexts, including artist-run spaces and on community and collaborative projects. She used her residency with Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta to develop a new body of drawing-based work on materials sourced in Indonesia, and continued her research into site-specific cross-cultural installation projects.

Cass Matthews (NSW) Echigo Tsumari Arts Triennial

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts

An arts lawyer, Cass Matthews has advised artists through the Arts Law Centre of Australia for several years. Since undertaking a Masters of Arts Administration at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, she has curated several exhibitions and worked on a number of international projects including The Armory Show in New York and the Biennale of Sydney. Matthews has previously studied at Yamanashi University and returned to Japan to work with the fourth Echigo Tsumari Arts Triennial. The Triennial  focuses on strong community engagement with leading international and local artists and takes place in the rural Echigo Tsumari region north of Tokyo.

Hamish McDonald (NSW) Temple Uni

Supported by Supported by Arts NSW and The Australia Council for the Arts

A journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald, Hamish McDonald has spent much of his career working from Asian cities – Jakarta, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New Delhi and Beijing – and has won Walkley Awards for his reports. His books are Suharto's Indonesia (1980), The Polyester Prince (1998) and (with Desmond Ball) Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra (2001). McDonald’s writing residency took him to Temple University, where he worked on a narrative involving individuals on both sides of the Pacific war. During his time in Japan he also engaged in current affairs debates in Tokyo around the election, and researched contemporary Japan and its historical interaction with the West since the Meiji period.

Lachlan Skipworth (NSW) Aura J

Supported by Arts NSW and The Australia Council for the Arts

Lachlan Skipworth is a Sydney-based composer, originally from Perth. He has studied composition with Roger Smalley and Anne Boyd, and spent two and a half years in Japan learning shakuhachi with Kakizakai Kaoru and revered master Yokoyama Katsuya. Skipworth was a featured composer and guest conductor at the 2008 World Shakuhachi Festival in Sydney where master performers premiered two of his works. His residency was in Tokyo, hosted by “Aura-J”, an ensemble of traditional Japanese instruments directed by Minoru Miki. He worked with members of the ensemble to produce new works for this exciting combination of instruments.

Lucy Bleach (TAS) Echigo Tsumari

Supported by Arts Tasmania and The Australia Council for the Arts

Lucy Bleach works within an installation–based practice, developing works that explore and reflect the way we engage with the world. Bleach lectures at the Tasmanian School of Art in Sculpture and Core Studies and exhibits both locally and nationally. While in Japan, she was a participating artist in the 2009 Echigo Tsumari Triennial where she worked within the community to explore notions of touch. Researching local domestic, industrial and agricultural materials, Bleach also experimented with ways to inhabit the site of the community and the art Triennial.

Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (VIC) Future University

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts

Tim Humphrey and Madeleine Flynn are composers, performers and sound designers, with a long-term collaborative practice. Curiosity about sound and artistic expression inspires them to seek partnerships in dance, theatre, installation and film. They combine their artistic and academic expression in directing the megaphone project – an installation concerned with intimate listening in public spaces. Recent collaborations with the tony yap company (tyc) include creating scores with The Necessary Stage, Singapore and Theatre Nottle, Korea. In 2008 they worked on a sonification of data with the Garvan Institute for Medical Research. During their residency they explored distributed networking concepts to map a sonic landscape across Hokkaido, and initiated a connection between Future University in Hokkaido and Griffith University, Queensland.

Owen Leong (VIC) Tokyo Wonder Site

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

An inter-disciplinary artist exploring race and transformation, Owen Leong works with photography, video and installation. His practice examines how the body is physically, socially and culturally framed. Leong has held residencies at the Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester and Cite des Arts, Paris and exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. Whilst at Tokyo Wonder Site, he will conduct research on the history of the body and performance in contemporary Japanese art. Leong will then develop a new series of photographic portraits based on his studies of subcultures in Tokyo.

Michele Lee (VIC) CEPCA

Supported by Arts Victoria and The Australia Council for the Arts

A playwright who works with Platform Youth Theatre and Victoria Legal Aid, Michele Lee has presented work in the Melbourne Fringe Festival, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, 3DFest and Short + Sweet. She runs an independent theatre collective, Theatre in Bars, and is a member of St Martins Youth Theatre’s Emerging Writers Group. She is currently developing full-length plays See how the leaf people run and In refuge, which are about her people - the Hmong. During her time in Laos she wrote her autobiography, a treatment for a film, a short story and re-worked an existing play.

Dean Linguey (VIC) Lost Generation Space

Supported by The Australian High Commission - Kuala Lumpur, and The Australia Council for the Arts

Dean Linguey’s experiences in sound and performance have flourished under the influence of a visual art education and an ongoing installation practice.  His installations have included elements of sound, objects, video and performance, and have been exhibited in Australia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. He released a CD of sound compositions in 2009. During his residency in Malaysia, Linguey focused on the improvisations, ingenuity and actions of the street workers and stall owners of Kuala Lumpur. He also worked with local artists and, employing moving image, sound and installation practices, investigated the situation of the clan jetties of Penang (villages built on stilts).

Don Henderson (SA) Areca Books

Supported by Arts SA and The Australia Malaysia Institute

Don Henderson is an author and teacher whose first three novels, Half the Battle (2006), Keepinitreal (2009) and Macbeth, You Idiot! (2009) are aimed at young adult readers. During his residency at Areca Books he worked on a speculative fiction novel (partially set in Asia) that explores the importance of cultural diversity and the dangers of environmental exploitation. While in Malaysia Henderson worked and lived at the historical Penang house of Dr Sun Yat Sen, and presented workshops at various schools.

Renee McIntosh & Andrew Hale (WA) Instant Theatre Café

Supported by Australia Malaysia Institute and The Australia Council for the Arts

Andrew Hale, a graduate from École Jacques Lecoq, and Renée McIntosh, a graduate of West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, formed Happy Dagger Theatre to explore the essence of theatre and its necessity for audiences in a world of blockbuster entertainment. Receiving four Equity Guild Award nominations and recipient of a 2006 Blue Room Award, their style is actor-driven, economical and physical with a reputation for vigorous collaboration and controversy.  Their residency with Instant Café Theatre in Kuala Lumpur exposed them to other collaborative approaches and working methods, especially with regards to traditional physical storytelling, comedy and instant creation from constant chaos.

Steven Alderton (NSW) Arts Council Mongolia

Supported by Arts NSW and The Australia Council for the Arts

Director of Lismore Regional Gallery, Steven Alderton has initiated a progressive program of contemporary Australian and international art exhibitions and digital media projects. While located with the Arts Council of Mongolia, he developed exhibition projects with local and Australian artists, as well as a business model to promote the establishment of an arts centre incorporating studios, performance and gallery spaces. Alderton has developed a collaborative program with Shisha, a leading international agency for contemporary Asian crafts and visual arts, which will be supporting an exhibition from this residency.

David Griggs (VIC) Green Papaya Art Projects

Supported by Arts Victoria and The Australia Council for the Arts

David Griggs works across various mediums. Predominantly a painter and photographer, Griggs has also created large-scale site-specific installations that comment on politics, poverty, prostitution, gang tattooing and freak shows. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and Asia and conducted research for projects during residencies in Barcelona, Manila, Thailand and Burma. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions including Fluid Zones Biennale Jakarta XIII (2009), Blood on the Streets, Artspace, Sydney (2007), The Independence Project, Galerie Petronas, Kuala Lumpur (2007), Exchanging Culture for Flesh, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2006), Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2006), and The Buko Police, Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila (2005).

Jeff Khan (NSW) Art Cabinet

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts

Melbourne-based curator and writer Jeff Khan is currently Artistic Director of Next Wave, a biennial festival and artist development organisation. He has held positions at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in Melbourne, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and the John Curtin Gallery in Perth. Khan was a Curatorial Advisor for Rapt!, a major cultural exchange project between Australia and Japan in 2005-6. He is a founding board member of unProjects, an editorial committee member of unMagazine and has contributed to numerous magazines, catalogues and artists’ projects. Khan undertook his residency with Art Cabinet Philippines, an organisation that works with emerging artists.

Jacqueline Felstead (VIC) Objectifs - Centre for Photography and Filmmaking

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts

Jacqueline Felstead is a photo-media artist working with digital and experimental photo formats. Currently completing her MFA she also holds Bachelor degrees in Media Art and Social Science. She was awarded a studio residency at the Banff Centre, Canada, in 2005 and has participated in numerous exhibitions Australia-wide, including recently commissioned works for Melbourne’s City Museum in 2008. To date the exploration of shared personal insecurities forms the lynchpin of Felstead’s art practice. During her Objectifs residency in Singapore she developed new photo-media works that intersect illuminated handwritten text with cityscapes, in a response to the country’s experience of industrialisation.

Rebecca Pearce (SA) Singapore Arts Festival

Supported by Arts SA and The Australia Council for the Arts

Rebecca Pearce is the Program Executive for the International Theatre and Dance seasons at the Adelaide Festival Centre in South Australia. She has worked on a variety of international events including the OZAsia Festival, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, WOMADelaide, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Australian International Documentary Conference, the Dublin Fringe Festival, and the Adelaide Film Festival, in areas such as programming, marketing and publicity, and project and event management. Her residency at The Singapore Arts Festival was be spent in the programming department.

Sohan Ariel Hayes (WA) Objectifs - Centre for Photography and Filmmaking

Supported by The Department of Culture and The Arts, WA and The Australia Council for the Arts

Sohan Ariel Hayes is an award-winning animator and visual artist working across a variety of media. Based in Perth, he has developed animated films, illustrations, public art sculptures, computer games and projections for theatre and still photography. Recurrent themes in Hayes’ work include the physics of perception, time, love, deity, the unbearable grief of separation and its manifest symptoms in the mind and body, as well as the fantastic imagery of dreams and hallucinations. During his residency at Objectifs in Singapore Hayes collaborated with writer and theorist Laetitia Wilson on DATADRUM - a digital filmmaking percussion instrument. Artists using DATADRUM can create palettes of images/sequences, which can be edited or remixed in real-time by DATADRUM players.