Creative Exchanges: 1999

Dhani Turner (Indonesia) Victorian Arts Centre & Gasworks Art Park

Supported by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta

At the time of her residency, Dhani Turner was Development Consultant, Gedung Kesenian Jakarta. She worked with the Victorian Arts Centre and Gasworks Art Park and visited Sydney in the first two weeks of September to meet organizations during the Olympic Arts Festival.

Jusuf Sugito (Indonesia) Carnivale Multicultural Arts Festival

Supported by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta

At the time of his residency, Jusuf Sugito was Chief of the Secretariat of the Dewan Kesenian Jakarta. In Australia he worked with Carnivale Multicultural Arts Festival in Sydney. He also travelled to Melbourne and Adelaide to meet with various arts organizations and attend the National Art and Community Conference in Melbourne.

Rifky Effendy (Indonesia) Adelaide International Festival

Supported by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta

At the time of his residency, Rifky Effendy was curator at Galleripadi, Bandung. He was hosted by Art Space in Sydney and worked with the Visual Arts Department of the Adelaide International Festival, travelled to Canberra, Brisbane and New Zealand.

Carolin Window (QLD)

Supported by Arts Queensland and the Australia Council for the Arts

Carolin Window is the author of two novels, Dim and Shark Song, both published by Vintage. In Shark Song Window explored the myths and history of Oceania and she has a strong interest in the connections to be made between Australian and Asian fictions. During her residency in China, Window worked on a new novel about racial tensions in small-town Australia involving a young Chinese girl and other Chinese characters. The residency provided the background research and understanding for her portrait of the Chinese diaspora in Australia and Window completed a quarter of her novel while there.

Philipa Veitch (NSW) Beijing Art Academy

Supported by the Visual Arts Craft Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australia China Council & the NSW Ministry for the Arts

New South Wales based painter, Philipa Veitch spent four months in 1999 at the Beijing Art Academy.

Xiao-Xiong Zhang (SA) Guangdong Modern Dance Company & the Beijing Modern Dance Company

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australia China Council and Arts South Australia

Xiao-Xiong Zhang was born in Cambodia in 1958, moving to China in 1971 before emigrating to Australia in 1983.  A graduate of the Centre for Performing Arts, Adelaide, he has danced with One Extra Dance Company, Australian Dance Theatre, Vis-a-Vis Dance and Green Mill Dance Project, and has won awards for both his dance performance and his choreography. During his residency Xiao-Xiong worked with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and the Beijing Modern Dance Company, coordinating an ongoing exchange between Beijing dancers and students from the Centre of Performing Arts in Adelaide.

Zheng-Ting Wang (VIC) Frontiers Chinese Orchestra

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

At the time of his residency Zheng-Ting Wang was director of the Australian Chinese Music Ensemble. He has experimented extensively with the integration of Chinese and Western music and has performed with senior musicians and major Symphony Orchestras in Australia and the USA, where he is a regular lecturer and performer of the sheng, a Chinese mouth organ. On his residency Wang worked with sheng master, Hu Tian-Qian and the Frontiers Chinese Orchestra and was priviledged to spend time with Wang Junhua, ‘Sheng Wang’ (King of the sheng makers). Wang also lectured on music education in China and Australia and spent a few days in Malaysia pursuing sheng education.

Anna Marsden (QLD) Hong Kong Fringe

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Queensland

At the time of her residency Anna Marsden was the Administrator at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. She had previously worked with performing arts companies and festivals in Queensland such as Renegade Theatre Company, Brisbane Film Festival and the Brisbane Biennial of Music and as co-host of the 4ZZZ radio program Art To Lunch. During her residency, Marsden worked with the Hong Kong Fringe on the 2000 Star Alliance City Festival, particularly in the area of marketing, and made contact with various artists and managers across art forms.

Jaime Redfern (QLD) The City Contemporary Dance Company

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Jaime Redfern is a dancer and choreographer. He has danced with the Australian Ballet and Queensland Ballet, has choreographed his own works, A State Of Grace and One Foot Lifted Caught Stepping Forward, and collaborated with Maggi Sietsma on Under Her Breath, Adam In Wonderland, Alone Together and Direct Heat for Expressions Dance. During his residency Redfern spent two months at The City Contemporary Dance Company in Hong Kong.

James Cunningham & Suzon Fuks (QLD) Draavidia Art & Performance Gallery

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

James Cunningham, choreographer, and Suzon Fulks, director, photographer and film maker are the co-artistic directors of IGNEOUS. They have produced dance-videos, the multimedia dance theatre productions BODY IN QUESTION and THE HANDS PROJECT and short works for collective dance events in Sydney and Montreal. During their residency Cunningham and Fulks collaborated with Draavidia Art and Performance Gallery in Cochin to work with local performing artists, including Kathakali dancers, Kalari martial artists, musicians and performers. Their collaborations with local artists resulted in well publicised projects such as Flow and Cheating Death, of which a video was made. As a direct result of the residency and support from the Australia-India Council, kalaripayatt master Vinildas Gurukkal travelled to Australia in 2003 to give master classes and participate in Cunningham and Fulk’s new production.

Supported by Arts WA and the Australia Council for the Arts

Josh Wilson is a writer of fiction, humour and travel. He has completed an MA on travel writing and India at The University of Melbourne, and has returned to Fremantle to run In Emergency Press. During the term of his residency Wilson completed work on Passions, a novel about love, travel and coincidence, furthered his study of Hindi and researched a range of essays on Indian cosmology. Wilson also gave numerous lectures at various universities around the country and appeared on national television discussing Australian culture. He is currently working on an essay about life and death in Varanasi and has assisted with a report to further develop Australian Studies in India.

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria

At the time of his residency Mark Wilkinson was the Acting Director, Federation Centre for Decorative Arts, City of Darebin. Previously held the positions of Arts and Cultural Planner for Darebin, Administrator for the Melbourne Workers Theatre, Melbourne Writers Theatre and manager of the Carlton Courthouse Theatre. In India Wilkinson worked with the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai where he conducted a feasibility study on establishing a formal arts network in Mumbai and the practicalities of staging an international arts festival. He also participated in a range of arts management workshops at Sanskriti Pratisthan and the Morarka Craft Centre.

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, New South Wales Ministry for the Arts and the Australia India Council

Nicholas McBride is one of Sydney’s most sought after jazz drummers. He has performed with Sam Rivers, Dale Barlow, Judith Durham and Andrew Hill and toured Asia extensively with Mike Nock. In India McBride worked with the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad in the lead up to their Golden Jubilee. McBride integrated his knowledge of rhythms and his interest in the drumming traditions from India through composition and performance and worked with performers across all disciplines. He created a work for the Darpana Group called Art Beat and wrote music for Tabla artist, Akash Bhatt who will feature on McBride’s next CD.

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Tasmania

Rodney Stennard works predominantly within the drawing medium producing art based from models constructed in his studio. Stennard has been the recipient of Australia Council and Arts Tasmania grants which have contributed to solo and group exhibitions in Tasmania, Sydney and Melbourne. During his residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Stennard was influenced by colour and Hindustani classical music as well as the meditative discipline of yoga. He produced large pastel drawings on handmade paper for an exhibition entitled Jhana Raga at the Lalit Kala Akademi Gallery in Delhi, and these were subsequently shown at Smyrnios Gallery in Melbourne.

Supported Arts ACT and the Australia Council for the Arts

Satendra Nandan was born in Fiji and completed his doctorate at ANU. He was a member of the Fiji Parliament from 1982 then moved to Canberra following the coups in the late 1980’s. Nandan’s publications include three volumes of poetry, one acclaimed novel, The Wounded Sea, and 3 co-edited collections of essays. The residency provided him with the opportunity to work on a range of India-related projects: a novel set in New Delhi, Canberra and Suva, a collection of semi-autobiographical pieces titled Indian Fragments, a book on the life and values of Mahatma Gandhi, and the Delhi section of his autobiography, Requiem for a Rainbow: An Indo-Fijian Journey. He also worked on a translation of Patrick White’s Tree of Man into Hindi with academics at JNU.

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Victoria Spence has worked in a wide variety of contexts as producer, coordinator, curator, director, performer and collaborator in a range of performances, events and site specific installations. During her residency at the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, Spence worked on the construction and decoration of the Academy’s new café and creating a new work A Sup(p)er Happening. This work was a performance and food event facilitated in the finished café and utilising the performance skills of a variety of Darpana students and staff.

Arif Hidayat (NSW) Farabi Music School

Funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia Indonesia Institute

As producer of Arimba Cultural Exchange, Arif Hidayat has managed various Australian and Indonesian cultural exchange projects beginning with Bengkel Theatre Rendra’s Australian tour in 1992 and most recently the jazz fusion group Krakatau. During his residency with the Farabi Music School Hidayat sourced sponsorship possibilities and facilitated new opportunities for cultural exchange through working with arts organisations, sponsors and government bodies. He has been assisting other artists to strengthen their links with Indonesia, including Performing Lines and the Adelaide Festival project The Theft of Sita. He also organised a tour of the Jakarta-based jazz fusion band, Krakatau in October 2000.

Melissa Lucashenko (NSW) University of Indonesia & Petra Christian University

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Melissa Lucashenko is a novelist and writer for young adults. She is the author of Steam Pigs, winner of the 1998 Dobbie Award, Killing Darcy and Arms Full of Flies. In 1997 Lukashenko spent a year living in Tonga and she was keen to further develop her understanding of the connections between her Indigenous culture and that of Polynesia and Indonesia. During her residency she spent time at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta and Petra Christian University in Surabaya where she gave talks and lectures to staff and students.

Nigel Jamieson (NSW) Tedung Agung

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts

Nigel Jamieson has worked with the Royal National Theatre and the acclaimed Trickster Theatre Company in London.  He has directed productions for organisations such as the Adelaide Festival, Legs On The Wall and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus.  During his residency Jamieson was hosted by Tedung Agung in Bali focusing on traditions like Wayang Kulit (shadow puppetry) and spent his residency developing The Theft of Sita for the 2000 Adelaide Festival; a work combining Balinese artists, animation, a 40-piece gamelan orchestra and the Australian Art Orchestra.  Jamieson went on to direct a segment for the Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony and work on the National Corroboree.

Peter Adsett (NT)

Supported by the Northern Territory Government Department of Arts and Museums, the Australia Indonesia Institute and the Australia Council for the Arts

Peter Adsett is a Northern Territorian artist born in New Zealand in 1959. Prior to this residency Adsett had participated in the Australasian Print Project which included Filipino, Indonesian and Aboriginal artists. This centred around the Meeting of Waters through which the artists explored a visual language for understanding ‘Place/Site’. Working with Ardiyanto Pranata, a batik painter and designer from Yogyakarta, Adsett began to compare ideas of land/site as a sacred area. In Indonesia Adsett, with his wife and two small children, lived in a village house overlooking Mt Merapi. This active volcano was the inspiration for his series of works entitled Seven Winds of Merapi which were exhibited at Galeri Ardiyanto in December 1999.  Adsett has been invited by the custodians of Mt Lawu to return to paint the sacred cloud there in 2001.

Wendy McPhee (TAS) Institut Seni Indonesia

Supported by the Australia Indonesia Institute, Arts Tasmania & the Australia Council for the Arts

Wendy McPhee is an experienced performer, teacher and choreographer. She has worked with national and international dance companies since 1982. In 1995 she formed the Tasmanian company Two Turns, in order to pursue her interests in performance. McPhee completed half of her residency based at the Institut Seni Indonesia in Yogyakarta and during this time she taught and took part in traditional and western technique workshops while also attending performances during the Yogyakarta Arts Festival.  McPhee returned home early due to the reformasi upheavals and completed the residency in late 2000 when she worked on a new dance production with the ISI students.

Gillian Rubinstein (SA)

Supported by Arts SA & the Japan Cultural Program, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Gillian Rubinstein is one of Australia’s best-known writers for young people. She is the author of nearly 30 books, including the best-selling Space Demons trilogy, and the award-winning Beyond the Labyrinth and Foxspell. Rubinstein has also written eight plays, the most recent, Wake Baby, touring internationally. During her residency Rubinstein worked on a new fantasy novel, Across the Nightingale Floor, based on Japanese history and culture. She also developed a children’s play with Urinko Children’s Theatre and is planning a Japanese Australian co-production. A serialised story by Rubenstein ran in the Asahi Weekly from July to December 2000.

Supported by the City of Melbourne and the Australia Council for the Arts

Keiko Aoki was born in Japan and studied TV and film production in the USA. Since moving to Australia she has worked in the area of film, TV and various Japanese-Australian collaborations such as The Floating World for the Melbourne International Festival, and the Greenmill World Dance Alliance. Aoki has set up the Global Japan Network to promote cross-cultural exchange between Japan and Australia. During her residency she worked with Tadashi Suzuki on the second Theatre Olympics in Shizuoka and toured Japan with three international companies.

Supported by Arts NSW and the Australia Council for the Arts

Keith Thompson is an award-winning TV screenwriter for popular programs such as Halifax F.P, Wildside, and G.P., and episodes of Seven Deadly Sins. He has also been a producer and script editor for numerous films and TV programs and taught screenwriting. In Japan Thompson researched an original feature film screenplay about the surprisingly close relationships that developed between Australian soldiers and the local Japanese in Hiroshima during the occupation.

Supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts

Michael Snelling's residency was hosted by The Fukuoka Art Museum and was part of the Australia Japan Arts Network (AJAN), a program for senior arts managers to develop ongoing networks between key organisations in Australia and Japan.

Supported by The Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria

At the time of the residency Sandra Parker was the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Dance Works. Parker has extensive experience as a teacher, dancer, choreographer and producer of contemporary dance and has worked in Australia and internationally. In Japan, Parker was based with renowned Japanese choreographer Kei Takei and her company Kei Takei's Moving Earth Orient Sphere.  During her residency Parker focused on new contemporary performance as well as the work of Kei Takei.

Brian Ash (WA) Galeri Petronas

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

Brian Ash is a sculptor whose work explores the changing nature of Darwin's cityscape and how it’s residents interact with their built environment. He has exhibited overseas and his work is represented in international collections. During his residency at Galeri Petronas Ash took part in the Sekali Lagi: Australian artists revisit Malaysia exhibition. He also delivered a lecture on his own work and contemporary art practice in Darwin as part of the gallery’s education program.

Tanya Cawthorne (VIC) National Arts Council

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria

Tanya Cawthorne has worked as a film dubber, radio journalist, theatre director and as an arts manager with a variety of Melbourne arts organisations including Performing Arts Projects, St Martins Youth Arts Centre, Multicultural Supported by Arts Victoria and most recently with the Melbourne Festival. During her residency Cawthorne was hosted by the National Arts Council of Singapore to work on the Singapore Festival.

Martin Kwasner (NSW) Korean National University of the Arts

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia Korea Foundation

Martin Kwasner has worked as a dancer, choreographer and teacher with dance companies, teaching institutions and independent dance artists including 2 Dance Plus, Danceworks, Dance Compass, Didi Koi and the Victorian Arts Centre’s Winter Arts Program. He has taught students from preparatory to tertiary standards as well as professional dancers and adults of all levels of experience. During his residency in Korea Kwasner worked with dancers, choreographers and students in a Visiting Professor role at the School of Dance, Korean National University of the Arts. He has been invited to return to work with the School in 2001, prior to which he will be involved in a dance exchange in Osaka through Keiko Aoki’s Global Japan Network.

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and The Australia-Korea Foundation

Petrus Spronk is a both a traditional ceramic artist and conceptual sculptor who has been influenced by the techniques and traditions of North Asian pottery and religion. His woodfired, earthenware  bowls are burnished rather than glazed and often broken and reassembled to create a compositional effect. During his residency Spronk lived and worked in Seoul, based at Kook Min University for six months.  During that time he taught extensively, exhibited his work and wrote a fortnightly column for the his local newspaper, The Daylesford Advocate. Since his residency Spronk has returned to Korea twice: to present a paper to a Private Art school International Conference and to present a summer school workshop for Unesco.

Solrun Hoaas migrated to Australia from Norway via Japan in 1972. She has worked as a teacher, academic and journalist, and then began filming in Okinawa in 1978. She has since written, produced and directed several documentaries, including Sacred Vandals, Green Tea and Cherry Ripe, Pyongyang Diaries and the feature film, Aya. While in Seoul, Hoaas worked on an original feature film script and a documentary. She also gave lectures and film screenings and attended film festivals. In 2001 she completed the documentary Rushing to Sunshine which reflects changes in South Korea in the wake of the ‘sunshine policy’ and increased contact with North Korea.

Supported by the Visual Arts Craft Board of the Australia Council for the Arts & the Australia Korea Foundation

Steve Tepper is a furniture maker and sculptor. As well as maintaining a more personal art practice Tepper has travelled extensively in Asia and Europe often working with architects and planners on large public and urban commissions. During his residency at Kook Min University in Seoul in 1999, Tepper taught metal craft students and pursued his furniture design practice influenced directly by the visual stimulation of the market places and shop displays. He participated in a group exhibition of 24 Korean artists titled Silver and Gold for Living within the Happy World department store. He gave several slide talks about his work and Australian furniture design in both informal and formal settings at universities and participated in the 1999 Fusion and Vision Furniture Conference.

Chris White (NT) Kreecha Puphaiboon

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Embassy, Bangkok

Chris White is a sculptor and installation artist who has exhibited throughout Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom since the late 1980s. At the time of the residency, White taught Fine Arts at the Northern Territory University. White first visited Thailand in 1993 after meeting and teaching a number of Thai students in the Sculpture Department at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. During his residency White worked on a collaborative project and exhibition with Kreecha Puphaiboon investigating and comparing cultural values and change occurring in their respective societies.

Domenico de Clario (SA)

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts & the Australian Embassy, Bangkok

" Domenico de Clario is a visual artist with a strong performing component in his work. In Bangkok de Clario collaborated with other artists to create three site specific performances, one of which took place on the rooftop of the About Cafe from sunset to sunrise through a large thunderstorm. De Clario was invited to go back to Bangkok to continue this work and he worked again with the same artists in Melbourne in November 1999.

Duong Le Quy (NSW) Ho Chi Minh City Theatre Company

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

Playwright Duong Le Quy is a recipient of degrees from Vietnam’s National Institute of Theatre and Cinema and NIDA. He has translated plays by David Williamson, Stephen Sewell and Alma De Groen into Vietnamese and was awarded the 1997 NSW Writer’s Fellowship for his play Meat Party. During his residency Le Quy worked with the Ho Chi Minh City Theatre Company on Meat Party exploring the interaction between Vietnamese body language and English text while also producing the play A Green Marigold In The Marsh by Luu Quang Vu. Meat Party won the 1999 Playbox/Asialink Asian Playwrighting Competition and was part of Playbox Theatre’s 2000 Season. Other awards include the 1999 Australia Council Literature Fellowship and a Churchill Fellowship to research traditional Vietnamese Theatre forms in 2001.

Michael Bullock (VIC) Hanoi Arts Design College

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria

Michael Bullock completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Curtin University of Technology and has exhibited widely with sculptural and two-dimensional work exploring tensions between old and new technologies, materials and techniques.  Bullock undertook his residency at the Hanoi Arts Design College in 1999 and followed this by further work at a ceramic village, Bat Trang.  He developed an elegant and well-resolved body of work using fish as a metaphor for the movement of traffic in Hanoi and using materials associated with bicycle repair vendors. The work was exhibited at the Australian Embassy in Hanoi attracting wide press coverage and was further developed in an exhibition called Rubber Fish at Gallery 4A in Sydney.

Peter Keelan (WA) Hanoi Conservatory of Music

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts WA

Peter Keelan’s performance, direction and composition ranges from World Music through to experimental. His credits include film soundtracks, community music projects, music theatre and original recordings with instruments such as pan-flute, didgeridoo, percussion and drums. During his residency in Vietnam Keelan worked with the Hanoi Conservatory of Music to collaborate with Vietnamese composers and musicians to construct a multi-media sound sculpture as an installation at the Conservatory.

Stephanie Luke (SA)

Supported by Arts South Australia and the Australia Council for the Arts

Stephanie Luke completed an Arts/Law Degree at Sydney University and her first novel, Harm, was short listed for the 1998 Vogel Award and published by Allen & Unwin. During her residency in 1999 she researched material for a new work exploring the differences in the mythology of Vietnam and Australia. Luke is currently developing her second novel based on her Vietnam experiences. She was nominated as one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists for 2001.