Creative Exchanges: 2000

Dorothea Rosa Herliany (Indonesia) University of Western Australia & La Trobe University

Supported by the Australia Indonesia Institute and La Trobe University

Dorothea Rosa Herliany writes short stories and poetry, as well as running a publishing company in Indonesia. Her work boldly and uncompromisingly explores the tensions arising from conventional patriarchal expectations towards women in a rapidly changing Indonesia. The first Asialink Literature Resident to Australia in 2000, she was hosted by the University of Western Australia and La Trobe University, Melbourne as well as giving talks in Tasmania and Sydney. During her residency Herliany worked on a bilingual translation of her poetry with Harry Aveling from La Trobe University as well as writing a great deal of new material inspired by her visit to Australia.

Maggi Sietsma (SA) Beijing Dance Academy & the Beijing Modern Dance Company

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Maggi Sietsma is the Artistic Director of the highly acclaimed Expressions Dance Company in Brisbane and has previously worked with the Australian Ballet, London Festival Ballet and Theatre du Chene Noir in France. Under her direction, Expressions has toured extensively throughout Australia, the USA, Germany, PNG, India, UK, Israel, Singapore and Taiwan, and in 1997 the Company won the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award. During her residency Sietsma spent six weeks in Beijing to help develop a program of contemporary dance, dance composition and giving seminars on modern dance in Australia for the Beijing Dance Academy and the Beijing Modern Dance Company.

Megan Keating (TAS) Beijing Art Academy

Supported by Arts Tasmania and the Australia Council for the Arts

Tasmanian painter and installation artist, Megan Keating, maintains a practice that includes painting, installation and paper cutting. Keating has exhibited extensively with solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia. At the Taipei International Artists Village, Keating undertook a broad range of activities, extending her practice to include performance, collaboration and site-specific outdoor installation work. She participated in two major exhibitions, Loop and In Dreams Begin Responsibilities; two performances, Her name is Tan Hua and On A Winter's Night; as well as giving workshops, artist's talks and an open studio. She has since held several exhibitions in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney which have continued to explore the theme of displacement, using the paper-cutting technique she learnt in China.

Ouyang Yu (VIC) Beijing University

Supported by the Australia China Council and Arts Victoria

Ouyang Yu is a Melbourne-based poet, translator, editor, academic and essayist.  He is the author of four books of poetry including Songs of the Last Chinese Poet and has also translated and published a number of Australian works into Chinese. During Ouyang’s literature residency he worked on his non-fiction book, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Notes in the Margins which explores the similarities and differences between Australian and Chinese literary and cultural traditions. He also launched his translation of The Man Who Loved Children, published his own novel The Angy Wu Zili, and gave numerous lectures and talks.

Pan Geng Shen (VIC) Nanjing Normal University

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

Shen Pan Geng was born in Suzhou, China and started learning erhu (Chinese violin) at the age of 18. He arrived in Australia in 1989 and has been the Musical Director and Conductor of the Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School (PEGS) Chinese Orchestra since 1991. During his residency at Music Dept of Nanjing Normal University, Shen developed his repertoire and techniques as a professional erhu soloist, built up a collection of new pieces for the PEGS Chinese Orchestra and learnt various skills in Chinese instrumental repair. Shen returned to China in September 2000 for a recital with the Nanjing Normal University Chinese Orchestra and the Nanjing City Chinese Orchestra.

Santha Press (VIC) Hong Kong City Festival

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

Santha Press is an accomplished event organiser and performer with ten years experience covering every aspect of events from conception and creative development through to the co-ordination of production. She has co-ordinated events in various capacities at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, St Kilda, Canberra and Woodford Folk Festivals, and has musically directed and composed for large scale outdoor comunity events. As a performer she has toured her award winning one-woman show Song For A Siren to the 1999 Hong Kong City Festival and the 2000 Adelaide Fringe Festival. During her residency Press returned to the Hong Kong City Festival as an arts manager to assist with the co-ordination of its outdoor events program in 2000/2001.

Virginia Hyam (NSW) Hong Kong Arts Centre

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

At the time of her residency, Virginia Hyam was the Executive Producer of the Studio Space at The Sydney Opera House. She has previously been Director of the Melbourne Fringe Festival and has also worked in the youth arts sector in program development and Festival project management. During her residency Hyam worked with the Hong Kong Arts Centre on an international conference program as well as on the development of the 2001 Little Asia Exchange project, which involved the touring performance works between key Asian centres, including Tokyo, Manila, Taipei, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Shanghai. This widened her engagement with a diverse range of artists, organisations and producers across Asia working in multimedia, dance and theatre.

Antigone Foster (NSW) Niranjan Jhaveri & Jazz India

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

Antigone Foster is a jazz vocalist, specialising in scat and improvisation and familiar with Indian vocal percussion techniques. Foster has worked with the Elektra String Quartet and their composer, Romano Crivici, to develop solo vocal works which combine jazz and Eastern techniques for performance at the Sydney Opera House. During her residency, Foster worked with Niranjan Jhaveri and Jazz India to further develop these techniques of raga (repertoire) and tala (rhythm) and performed at the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai.

Brook Andrew (VIC) Sanskriti Kendra

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

Brook Andrew is an artist whose work encompasses digital photography, video and sound, performance, neon, web based projects, drawing and installation.  During his residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Andrew investigated global issues of capitalism, mainstreaming and propaganda.  He created a collection of hand painted tin signs that mimic advertisements in streets, on buildings, trees, fences and telegraph poles.  He also created work based on the stereotyping of the ‘blak’ body and the dominant modes of capitalist representation within the Bollywood cinema genre.

Maree Delofski (NSW) Jamia Millia Islamia University

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

Maree Delofski is an award-winning documentary screenwriter from New South Wales. Her feature documentary A Calcutta Christmas won a Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival and many of her films have screened nationally on SBS television. Delofski used her Literature residency in India to research and write a script focusing on Hollywood film star Merle Oberon. She conducted extensive research, beginning in Calcutta and traveling to Bombay to interview Bollywood film stars. In Delhi she was based at the Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia University where she gave workshops, seminars and screenings. The resulting film, The Trouble with Merle was premiered at the 2002 Sydney Film Festival and was screened on ABC television.

Grisha Dolgopolov (NSW) STSI

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

Grisha Dolgopolov is a first generation Russian-Australian director, writer and performer. He has worked in cross-cultural performance and research exploring the hybrid combinations of Russian, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian and Asian cultures. His recent productions, which include Vibes, Bombs & Suitcases and Black Russians, are examples of his hybrid, cross-cultural collaborations. In Indonesia Dolgopolov worked with STSI, Bandung as a dramaturg and developed a cross-cultural, dance-musical theatre adaptation of The Demon, a Russian epic poem.

Megan Kirwan-Ward (WA) Institute Ikap Padang

Supported by the Australia Indonesia Institute and Arts Western Australia

Megan Kirwan-Ward is a textiles based craftsperson who also works as an arts administrator. Kirwan-Ward has collaborated with textile workers in Padang, Sumatra in the past and during this residency set up her own experimental textile workshop making resist dyed and stitched quilts and printed and stitched lengths of silk organza which she hopes to exhibit in Padang, Bukittinggi and Perth. Following her residency, Kirwan-Ward exhibited some of the works produced during the residency in Fremantle and Melbourne. She returned to Indonesia in 2001 to maintain the workshop and to establish links between it and the Art Department of IKEP Padang as well as to organise an exhibition in Jakarta.

Simon Wellington (TAS) TIM

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

Simon Wellington was the General Manager of the Salamanca Theatre Company (STC) in Tasmania prior to undertaking his residency with Taman Ismail Marzuki (Jakarta Arts Centre). With previous experience in the areas of venue and events management, Simon has also concentrated on marketing and audience development initiatives. His residency at TIM proved to be more of a springboard into the life of Jakarta and much of what he learned was unexpected. His frustrations with the management style at TIM made him think in new ways about management - both in Australia and Indonesia and to see the dynamism of work that took place outside of the institutions.

Matthew Crosby (VIC) Shinjuku Ryozanpaku

Supported by Arts SA and the Australia-Indonesia Institute

Matthew Crosby has worked in film, TV, Radio and Theatre as a performer, director, writer, designer and manager. He began performing at age seven in such productions as Mame for JC Williamsons, Blue Hills for ABC Radio and The Chant Of Jimmy Blacksmith. A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, Crosby was a member of the SCOT/Playbox project involving training in Toga with Tadashi Suzuki in his performance method, culminating in touring production of Suzuki’s adaptation of Macbeth. Crosby has formed the actors furniture group along a style derived from his earlier training. In Tokyo he worked with Shinjuku Ryozanpaku, one of Japan’s leading modern theatre companies performing in two contemporary Japanese productions.

Philip Samartzis (VIC) Showa University Of Music

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria

Academic and composer of experimental music, Philip Samartzis has organized three Immersion festivals focusing on the theory and practice of sound spatialisation, as well as Variable Resistance - a series of international sound art presentations for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Podewil Arts Center, Berlin. As a solo artist he has performed widely in Australia and internationally including presentations at the Andy Warhol Museum, Cartier Foundation and Mori Arts Museum. During his residency in Japan spent three months working at Showa University Of Music.

Rebecca Edwards (QLD) Keio University

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

Rebecca Edwards is a Queensland poet with two published collections of work, Eating the Experience and Scar Country. Edwards’ award-winning work has also appeared in various journals and anthologies including the Oxford Anthology of Australian Verse and Two Hundred Years of Australian Poetry. During the residency Edwards was hosted by prestigious Keio University,Tokyo, where she taught a course on Australian culture. She used her residency to develop ideas and research for a range of poems set in both Japan and Australia and wrote short stories and essays. She also held an exhibition of her art work at a commercial gallery in Tokyo and gave a number of public talks. Edward's next book is titled Holiday Coast Medusa.

Rhana Davenport (QLD) Fukuoka Asian Arts Museum

Supported by Arts Queensland and the Australia Council for the Arts

Rhana Devenport has worked extensively in the area of contemporary Asian arts as Senior Project Officer with the Queensland Art Gallery’s Second and Third Asia-Pacific Triennials. In 1997 she curated the exhibition Contemporary Vessels and Jewels: Australian Fine Metalwork for the new Shanghai Museum and Regional Queensland venues. Hosted by the Fukuoka Asian Arts Museum, Devenport’s residency focus was on major recurring contemporary Asian art events such as the Fukuoka Trienniale and also on the curating and collecting of Japanese art.

Adam Broinowski (VIC) Dramalab

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

Adam Broinowski is a performer, writer and film maker.  He made the SBS Japanese counter-culture documentary Hell Bento! with Tetrapod and his documentary won the Columbia Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, and Sydney Film Festival best documentary awards and was awarded the 1998 Age Green Room Award for Best Lead Actor. In Malaysia Broinowski worked with Dramalab as a writer/dramaturg.  The theme of progress and its application through cultural deprogramming and reprogramming within the global regime is the focus of the play No Known Cure that Broinowski wrote during the residency. A reading was held at The Arts Café, National Arts Gallery performed by Albakri and Broinowski with video images by Koen Wastijn.

Christine Gillespie (VIC) Rimbun Dahan

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Hijjas Foundation, Malaysia

Christine Gillespie is a Melbourne-based writer who has published short fiction in Australia, India and Paris. She has won a number of competitions and awards and her first play, White Stars, was commissioned by Playbox Theatre, Melbourne and performed in 2000. During her residency Gillespie spent nearly nine months in Malaysia as well as undertaking a research trip to India. Hosted by the Hijjas Foundation at their Rimbun Dahan studios, Gillespie gave talks, readings and workshops at various universities and the Australian High Commission and networked extensively with Malaysian and Indian writers and artists. She completed the first draft of her novel, Ornamental Bodies based on the story of Muddupalani, an Indian dancer and courtesan.

Lisa Roet (VIC) Balai Seni Lukis Negara

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

Lisa Roet has spent much of her career travelling and exhibiting overseas in Europe and the USA. Since 1995 her art practice has led her into the world of zoo entertainment. Her residency was based at Balai Seni Lukis Negara in Kuala Lumpur where she produced a series of work based on the information gathered in Borneo and from her investigations into folklore aspects of the orangutan in traditional Malaysian literature and arts. At the end of the residency she held a drawing seminar/open day and an exhibition of drawings and a video piece featuring orangutan hands and fingers, investigating the genetic closeness we share with these animals as expressed through gesture.

Guan Wei (NSW) La Salle College of the Arts

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Guan Wei is a Chinese born artist who emigrated to Australia in 1989. His painting focuses on east/west interactions, often with humor and whimsy but also with political critique. This residency was Guan Wei’s first visit to Singapore and resulted from a request from La Salle College of the Arts for him to exhibit at their Earl Lu Gallery in February 2000. There he worked with students giving lectures, talks and open studios as well as completing two large bodies of work.

Helen Herbertson (VIC) Theatreworks

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts

Helen Herbertson is a Melbourne based choreographer, director and performer with 30 years experience in developing new performance works for traditional theatre settings, outdoor sites and non theatre venues. As Artistic Director of the Melbourne based Danceworks (1989-97) Herbertson choreographed 16 new works including the award winning Descansos...resting places. Her latest work DELERIUM, developed in collaboration with Jenny Kemp, Trevor Patrick, Ben Cobham and Livia Ruzic, recently won the 1999 Green Room Award for Outstanding Creative Collaboration. During her residency Herbertson worked with Singapore’s Theatreworks as a collaborator on Spirits by Kuo Pao Kun. Directed by Ong Keng Sen, the piece involved nine visual artists from Japan and 5 Singaporean performers.

Andrea Kleist (VIC) Artsonje Centre

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Andrea Kleist has worked extensively in the areas of Visual Arts, film and public relations in Australia. At the time of her residency she was the Exhibitions Manager at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and previously held the position of  Executive Officer of the Visual Arts Program for the Adelaide Festival 1998 & 2000.  In Korea Kleist worked with the Artsonje Centre in Seoul on a range of  projects focussing on the solo exhibition Stockexchange II by Korean-French artist Kim Soun-Gui and Artsonje’s contribution to MAAP’s 2000 online conference.

Don'o Kim (NSW) Sogang University

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

Don'o Kim is a Korean-born writer and translator who has lived in Australia for many years. He has published three novels My Name is Tian, Password and The Chinaman, all of which have been translated into Korean. He has also written plays, screenplays, short stories and libretti, and his play, The Bell of Korea, is being produced this year by the renowned Hak-Chon Theatre during the Seoul International Theatre Festival in September. Kim is currently working on The Grand Circle, a novel exploring the politics and the personal turmoil of reunification in Korea and Korea's relationship with Australia. Kim used his time in Seoul to complete this work and to teach Korean students about Australian culture and literature.

Gai Bryant (NSW) Jang-Hyun Won, Master of Taegum

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

Gai Bryant is a saxophonist from Sydney. With her own quartet she has undertaken three successful tours of Asia between 1996-98, performing original contemporary jazz compositions and playing with local musicians in Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. During her residency, Bryant worked with Jang-Hyun Won, an acclaimed Master of Taegum (transverse flute) and composed seven pieces incorporating Taegum, traditional percussion and song forms with jazz quartet and harmony. These pieces were performed in Korea and Sydney.

Christopher Kremmer (India) Lunuganga Estate

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Christopher Kremmer is author of the award-winning Stalking the Elephant Kings: In Search of Laos and The Carpet Wars. A former foreign correspondent for print and television, he has spent over a decade in South Asia and the Middle East. During his residency in Sri Lanka, the Lunugunga Estate hosted Kremmer. There he researched and wrote a large part of a screenplay adaptation of 19th century French playwrite Octave Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden.

Sue Pedley (NSW) Lunuganga

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

Sue Pedley has a Master of Visual Art from the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales and has studied at Tasmanian School of Art, Sydney College of the Arts and the Stadelschule, Frankfurt, Germany. During her residency at Lunuganga, Sri Lanka Pedley created a series of cyanotypes and site specific works which she exhibited at Paradise Road Gallery, Colombo. Pedley was also involved in a road painting project on suicide bombing sites around Colombo. In Australia, Pedley exhibited the cyanotypes, photographs of the site drawings and produced a sound sculpture in collaboration with Boyd, titled Sound of Bamboo. The work Sound of Lotus and Sound of Bamboo was exhibited at Gallery 4A, Mori Gallery and Artspace in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

Peter Sheedy (SA) National Institute of the Arts & The Cross-over Dance Company

Supported by Arts SA and the Australia Council for the Arts

Peter Sheedy is a dancer, choreographer who at the time of the residency was working with the Centre for the Performing Arts in Adelaide. His previous experience included Leigh Warren and Dancers, Chrissie Parrott Dance Company, Dance North, Human Veins, as well as a residency at the Choreographic Centre, Canberra and developing site-specific choreographic works for Leigh Warren and Dancers at the Maritime Museum in 1999. During his residency Sheedy worked with the Department of Dance at the National Institute of the Arts, Taipei and The Cross-over Dance Company.

Chris Caines (NSW) Chulalongkorn University

Supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology, the Australia Council & the Australian Embassy, Bangkok

Chris Caines is an artist working in online and disk based multimedia as well as video and sound. He has been exhibiting widely since the early nineties in national and international galleries including MoMA in New York, The Tate, UK and the State Galleries of NSW and QLD. During his residency at Chulalongkorn University, Caines was able to research and develop various ideas for writing, video and on-line projects. He also collaborated with the non profit artspace, Project 304, in Bangkok, in the design and development of their website as well as planning an outdoor installation project and site specific video works scheduled for realisation in 2002.

Chi Vu (VIC)

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts

Chi Vu was born in Vietnam and arrived in Australia in 1979. A Bachelor of Arts/Commerce graduate of the University of Melbourne, she has worked as an artist, theatre maker & performer, writer, artistic director, lecturer and artist-in-residence. In 2000, Chi was awarded an Asialink writer’s residency to Vietnam where she wrote Vietnam: a Psychic Guide. In 2003, this text was adapted under the direction of Sandra Long into a bilingual cross-disciplinary performance, performed at the North Melbourne Arts House. Chi’s plays have had professional productions in Melbourne and in Sydney at the Sidetrack Theatre and the Sydney Opera House's Studio. Her short stories have been published in Meanjin, The Age, Refo, and in anthologies by Random House, Picador, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Black Inc and Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.