Creative Exchanges: 2002

Agung Hujatnika (Indonesia) Australia National University

Supported by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta

Agung Hujatnika is a lecturer at Bandung Institute of Technology and curator at Selasar Sunaryo Art Centre. At the time of his residency he was head of the Exhibition Program for the Bandung Arts Event Biennial. In Australia he was hosted by the Humanities Research Centre, Australia National University in Canberra, from September to November 2002. He worked on the Drawing Biennial with the Drill Hall Gallery and with specialist departments of the National Gallery of Australia. Through the residency he was able to develop his skills in visual arts and on curatorial issues. The residency assisted him in developing a program for Indonesian universities in art history and art criticism.

Sari Asih (Indonesia) Brisbane Powerhouse

Supported by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta

At the time of her residency, Sari Asih was Curator of the Bandung Art Event. Asih was based at the Brisbane Powerhouse - Centre for the Live Arts for where she participated in their education and public programs.

Sitok Srengenge (Indonesia) Next Wave

Supported by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta

Sitok Srengenge, writer and project coordinator from Teater Utan Kayu in Jakarta, worked with Melbourne's Next Wave Festival. Sitok was one of twenty exceptional people in Asia honoured by Asiaweek magazine as a leader for the Millennium in society and culture. His work includes anthologies of poetry Wild Love and Wild Rooster and an anthology of short stories, Liars. Over the last five years, Sitok has participated in events in Europe, including the Rotterdam International Poetry Reading and Winternachten Festival in the Netherlands and the Poetry Society in England.

Frances D'Ath (VIC) Guangdong Modern Dance Company

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia China Council

At the time of the residency Frances D’Ath was choreographer for zeroballet, which produced the short dance film shadetreemechanic with film-maker Paul Williams in July 2001. D'Ath worked as choreographer-in-residence with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in Guangzhou, China. In collaboration with the Company and Australian lighting designer, John Dutton, d’Ath choreographed for the Company's 10th Anniversary Celebrations in June 2002. This innovative work has generated international interest in his work. In 2003 D’Ath will return to China to work and teach with the Beijing Academy and the GMDC and to work as a sound engineer for the National Day celebrations held in Nanhai City, Guangzhou.

Linda Judge (VIC) Beijing Art Academy

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

Linda Judge studied fashion design at RMIT in the early 1980s, and spent several years working in the industry before completing a BA majoring in painting at VCA. Judges’s monochromatic, stencilled works reflect her interest in early photography.  Judge has held eight solo shows in Australia, the two most recent with Smyrnios Gallery. During her residency at Beijing Art Academy, Judge exhibited work made at Renmin University in the Australian Studies Department in an exhibition entitled few thinkings.

Tony Strachan (NSW) Theatre of Silence

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

Tony Strachan is Artistic Director for The Australian Theatre of the Deaf. He has directed for the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Sidetrack and Death Defying Theatre. Strachan's residency in Hong Kong was based with the Arts with the Disabled Association, where he worked with six deaf actors. Strachan developed a theatre work Untie the Boat from the Ugly Wharf, using physical gestures and visual performance modes. The show was very successful with seven performances in Hong Kong and Macau. It also toured to Montreal in July 2003 representing Hong Kong at the World Federation of the Deaf.

Amanda McDonald Crowley (SA) Sarai: The New Media Initiative

Supported by Arts SA and the Australia Council for the Arts

Amanda McDonald Crowley worked on the International Symposium of Electronic Art 2004 and was previously Associate Director of the 2002 Adelaide Festival of Arts and Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology. McDonald Crowley undertook a residency with Sarai: The New Media Initiative, Delhi, a recently opened space for independent research and practice in media and urban culture. She conducted a series of lectures and workshops on curatorial practice in the new media field and assisted to coordinate and design effective regional and international networks with Sarai.

Caroline Lynn-Bayne (NSW) Jazz India

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

Vocalist Caroline Lynn was initially trained in jazz at the Guildhall School of Music, London. She currently works as a jazz singer, also with her own project 'World Edge', and with composers/musicians Mark Isaacs and Peter Shaeffer. Her residency in India was undertaken with Jazz India, where she was immersed and trained in the rich traditions and musical sophistication of Indian music. She worked intensively with Indian vocalists on her vocal skills (technical ability, flexibility, stamina) and her musical skills (ear, melodic sense, rhythm). She also performed six nights a week at the exclusive Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, teaming up with local jazz musicians.

Christine McKenzie (VIC) Katha

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

Christine McKenzie was Director of the Victorian Writers' Centre and has run literary events and projects for over a decade. During her residency with Katha in Delhi, she contributed to the programming of two major literary festivals and conferences, organised various literary events, wrote promotional material and identified promotional strategies that could be developed to suit the context of India. The many contacts and cultural insights she developed into the way that events are organised in India proved to be vital to the planning and success of the Asialink Literature Tour with Peter Carey and Kim Scott in 2003.

Emily Floyd (VIC) Sanskriti Kendra

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

Melbourne artist Emily Floyd completed her Fine Arts Degree at RMIT University in 1999. Her sculptural installations have investigated ‘the space of literature’, mapping out the structure of several novels including Heart of Darkness, Wuthering Heights and Crime and Punishment. In India Floyd was based at Sanskriti Kendra in Delhi where she used the retreat in part to plan for a major exhibition called New03 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in March 2003. While there she also to devised a performative work about cross cultural experiences critiquing the model of the guide book.

Inez Baranay (QLD) Madras University & Sanskriti Kendra

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Inez Baranay is the author of six published books: four novels, including The Edge of Bali and Sheila Power; a prose collection, The Saddest Pleasure, and a non-fiction account of a year in Papua New Guinea Rascal Rain. She has also published many short stories, articles and reviews in a range of publications since the early 1980s. Rupa Press in India will publish Baranay’s new novel, neem dreams, set in southern India, later this year. This publication is a direct result of the residency program. During her four months residency Baranay researched a new work planned as linked novellas about contemporary India.

Joan Grounds (VIC) Collaboration with NS Harsh

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

Joan Grounds went to Silpakorn University in Bangkok in 1989-90 as the first resident with this program, then initiated and run by the Australia Council's Visual Arts Crafts Board. Grounds has forged a strong working relationship with Thai artists, in particular La Harsha, and has since returned to Thailand to lecture in Chiang Mai. In 1996, she was selected to work with NS Harsh who she previously worked with in Asialink's Fire and Life exhibition. Her self-initiated residency in Mysore, India in 2002/3 continued an artistic dialogue maintained between these two artists. Grounds and Harsha initiated and completed a temporal work together and completed a video-document of their work.

Meaghan Delahunt (VIC) Sarai New Media Collective

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

Meaghan Delahunt is a prominent novelist and writer who was hosted by Sarai New Media Collective in New Delhi. During her residency she researched and worked on her second novel The Prayer Wheel, which is about the many lives and deaths of a Buddhist monk as he strives and fails to gain enlightenment. An essay written during the residency was published by Sunday’s Spectrum magazine in Scotland. Delahunt maintains ongoing links with Sarai Media Initiative, Rupa Publishing, the mediation centres in Dharamsala and Delhi, writers in Delhi and Bhopal and the Tibet Support Group.

Robyn Friend (TAS)

Supported by Arts Tasmania and the Australia Council for the Arts

Robyn Friend writes fiction, oral histories, reviews, essays, and occasionally poetry. Her second novel, The Butterfly Stalker was published in 2002. During her residency Friend researched her next novel The Lovers’ Handbook in which the pivotal action is a terrorist attack in rural Punjab. Friend conducted literary research as well as investigations into the cultures of rural northern Indian communities.

Kirsty Ellem (VIC) Kelola Foundation

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

Kirsty Ellem, previously the Manager of the Wellington Entertainment Centre in Sale, Victoria spent two months working with the Kelola Foundation in Solo towards meeting their aim of providing learning opportunities, funding and access to information to Indonesian arts organisations. Over the course of the residency she presented four workshops, two on business partnering and two on arts management practices. This was complemented by extensive travel throughout Indonesia and to Singapore, which allowed her to build a greater knowledge of the diversity of the arts across Indonesia and networks with Indonesian arts managers and performers.

Stuart Koop (VIC) Cemeti Art Foundation

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

Stuart Koop has developed diverse skills across a range of art and cultural contexts, while serving in positions such as Curator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography and with the Ewing and George Paton Galleries at the University of Melbourne. In Indonesia Koop worked with the Cemeti Art Foundation in Yogyakarta, initially to collaborate on a textiles exhibition but also contributed ideas and models to the discussion of industry developments in Indonesia. The outcomes of his residency were considerable: two exhibitions, two catalogue essays, two reviews, three screenings, one professional development workshop, two lectures, two forums and several translations.

Amanda Card (NSW) Contemporary Dance Network

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

Amanda Card’s residency was hosted by the Japan Contemporary Dance Network 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.

John Mateer (VIC)

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts

John Mateer won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry 2001. His publications include Loanwords, Barefoot Speech, Anachronism and Burning Swans all published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Mateer’s residency in Japan resulted in a folio of poems, The Ancient Capital of Images that was published in English and Japanese. Contacts made with Japanese writers and academics have resulted in an invitation for Mateer to return to Tokyo and Kyoto in 2003 to present bilingual readings from his collection of poems. A reciprocal residency has resulted in his translator visiting Australia to research Australian poetry.

Jonathan Dimond (QLD) Hosted by Satoko Fujii

Supported by Arts Queensland and the Australia Council for the Arts

Jonathan Dimond is a Queensland jazz educator, and a performer and composer in the areas of jazz, classical, contemporary and Indian music. His activities in Tokyo whilst hosted by composer, pianist Satoko Fujii, included performing in concerts with diverse Japanese artists from traditional Koto masters to contemporary jazz musicians. During this period he wrote and composed new musical material for himself and his band, and produced material for two books on music. Networks forged with key figures in the music industry in Japan led to Dimond being invited by the Tokyo School of Music to return with his band Loops to perform and teach in 2003.

Maxine McArthur (ACT) Akiyoshidai International Art Village

Supported Arts ACT and the Australia Council for the Arts

Maxine McArthur’s first book, Time Future, was the winner of the 1999 George Turner Prize for best-unpublished science fiction/fantasy novel, and was published by Random House. The sequel, Time Past, was published in Australia and the US in 2002. During her Residency McArthur completed one novel and researched her new novel, the story of a painter who lives in an imaginary society which incorporates elements of Japanese and Chinese art and culture. She also accomplished a great deal of research on local history, folk tales and legends, by visiting libraries, folk museums and art galleries in Yamaguchi.

Russell Fewster (SA) Daisan Erotica

Supported by Arts SA and the Australia Council for the Arts

South Australian Russell Fewster is a theatre director and lecturer who has worked with state theatre companies, professional companies, community and youth theatres, universities and schools over the last two decades. Fewster had previously spent one week in Japan with avant garde theatre group Daisan Erotica to develop a co-production of The Lost Babylon. The residency enabled him to return for a month to consolidate and further develop the creative partnership with Daisan Erotica. He conducted workshops with the Company and undertook creative development for The Lost Babylon. He returned in April 2003 to complete the project.

Suzanne Knight (ACT) Nagasawa Art Park

Printmaker Suzanne Knight extends her practice to drawing and textiles. Knight has worked for a number of years as a lithographic editions printer in Canberra and Darwin, working with Aboriginal, non-Indigenous and Asian artists and completed her Masters degree at the Canberra School of Art in 1996. Her work has been exhibited in Poland, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia. During her residency at Nagasawa Art Park Knight explored techniques of Japanese woodblock printing with master craftspeople. Since returning to Australia she has incorporated her experiences through exploring Japanese advertising and digital media/screen printing as well as continuing practice into Japanese woodblock techniques in a new body of work.

Timothy O'Dwyer (VIC) Seian University of Visual Arts

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts

Timothy O'Dwyer is a composer and saxophonist who performs in a wide variety of contexts including improvisation and contemporary classical music. His residency with the Seian University of Visual Arts, Kyoto and the Mssohkan Gallery, Kobe, was an intensely creative and productive period as he collaborated with a vast array of Japanese artists ranging from Butoh dancers, sculptors, contemporary dancers and musicians. In addition he conducted lectures and workshops and performed in and completed a studio recording to be released in Japan in 2003. O’Dwyer will return to Japan to present an installation at the Kyoto Arts Centre  along with concerts with Japanese musicians, and a tour in the Kansai area with an electro- acoustic improvising ensemble that was formed while he stayed in Kobe.

Sara Thron (VIC) Balai Seni Lukis Negara & Society Atelier

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

With an extensive background working in fashion and textiles, Sara Thorn co-founded her own label in Melbourne which focused on original hand printed collections in 1983. In 1997 she relocated to Paris where she designed customized laces, prints and embroideries for Christian Lacroix. Thorn undertook her residency in Sarawak, Malaysia to study weaving and textiles and was cohosted by Balai Seni Lukis Negara (National Art Gallery) in Kuala Lumpur and Society Atelier in Kuching. There she worked wtih Iban weavers to creative three substantial ikat hangings which blend local myths and Thorn’s own iconography. Thorn  returned to Sarawak to participate in an international textile festival and conference.

Beth Yahp (Malaysia) Bienvenido Santos Creative Writing Centre

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Beth Yahp was born in Malaysia before moving to Australia as a teenager. She has written a novel, The Crocodile Fury, a libretto Yue Ling Jie: Moon Spirit Feasting, for composer Liza Lim, as well as numerous stories and articles. Yahp was in the Philippines as a literature resident at the Bienvenido Santos Creative Writing Centre of De La Salle University in Manila where she researched a new novel and undertook several workshops, readings and collaborative events with local writers. The Crocodile Fury is under consideration for publication by De La Salle University and she has been invited back to participate in workshops and also to contribute short works for publication in local journals.

Rodney Glick (WA) Ssamzie Space

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

Over the past twenty years, Rodney Glick has endeavoured to redefine the nature of his art by undertaking numerous collaborations and exploring non-traditional outlets. One example is the Glick International Collection, which, together with writer David Solomon, tested the high seriousness of art institutions and their emphasis on texts and the artist's biography. Ssamzie Space in Seoul, Korea was the host for the Glick's residency where he created a new multimedia and video work documenting daily activities of the local community within this cultural and urban context. The dual syncronised DVD projection is entitled 'LIFE plus TV' was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in February, 2004.

Simon Barker (NSW) Muju, Chegu Do & Phoenix Park jazz festivals

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

Simon Barker is a drummer, percussionist and composer who has toured throughout East Asia over the last ten years. In 1999, Barker organised a concert in Seoul featuring Korean master drummer, Kim Dae Hwan. His residency in Korea enabled him to continue to work with Kim Dae Hwan to create an “Australia Stage” at the Muju, Chegu Do and Phoenix Park jazz festivals. He also worked to create an ensemble dedicated to performing new music by Australian and Korean contemporary artists and on developing an event showcasing Korean and Australian jazz musicians. During the residency Barker also conducted many workshops and became a member of two ensembles that performing around South Korea.

Andrew Seward (VIC) Lunuganga

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts

Artist Andrew Seward’s work is represented in a number of prominent collections including the National Gallery of Victoria and Monash University. Seward was hosted by the Lunuganga Trust in Sri Lanka. During his residency he spent six weeks working in the gardens of the estate producing a large number of plant studies, photographs and nature prints and he also completed a major commission for the English Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to add to their library in London. Working in the lush tropical environment of Lunuganga exposed him to many new varieties of plants and habitats thus deepening his ongoing interest in plant depiction, and enabling his art to develop in new ways.

Fiona Hall (NSW) Lunuganga

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

Fiona Hall's art practice has increasingly concentrated on the ways in which Australia been shaped by its colonial past. With works in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, several State and regional galleries throughout Australia and commissions including the Fern Garden at the National Gallery of Australia, Hall has established herself as one of Australia's leading artists. During her 2001 Lunuganga residency Hall undertook work on a major body of work utilizing aspects of local plant species - focusing on the meanings of plants for local communities and responding to "connections between the plants animals and humans that together shape the land." Hall also conducted two highly successful artists workshops with landscape architecture students and contemporary Sri Lankan artists during her stay.

Tim Newth (NT) Vishawapadma Sansadaya

Supported by Arts Northern Territory and the Australia Council for the Arts

At the time of the residency Tim Newth was Co-Artistic Director of Tracks and a director and visual artist who works in dance, theatre and community arts. In Sri Lanka, Tim was based with Vishawapadma Sansadaya. He participated in three major cultural events: Wesak - Buddha's birthday and lantern festival; Poson and the Kandy Tooth Relic Temples Annual procession. Newth also gave presentations to arts students and indigenous groups both formally and informally. Immersed in the celebrations and rituals of Sri Lanka, Newth explored the interconnectedness between religion, art and theatre. These influences can be seen in the costumes and fire techniques used in Track’s production Rivers of the Underground.

Chuan (Leslie) Zhao (NSW) Taipei International Artists Village

Supported by the Australia China Council, Australia Council and the Taipei City Government

Chuan Zhao is a non-fiction writer who has published two books of essays in Chinese, Bu Qi Jia Yuan ‘Not giving up the years’ and Hai Wai: Ren ‘Overseas: People’, as well as numerous articles and stories appearing in Chinese, Taiwanese and Australian media. Hosted by the Taipei International Artists Village, Zhao developed an anthology of cultural essays, Standing on Two Boats. He also wrote and directed his first theatre work which drew large crowds and a substantial media response and participated in the 2002 Hong Kong and Macau International Literary Festival. He represented Australia and exchanged ideas and also shared his passion for literature with writers from many countries.

Michelle Glaser & Katie Major (WA) Taipei Artists Village

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

Michelle Glaser and Katie Major are curators working principally with new technologies through their company Art To Go. At the time of the residency Glaser was the Development Manager of Awesome Arts Australia, Perth and Major was the Gallery and Marketing Manager for the University of Sydney. In Taiwan they were based at the Taipei International Artists Village where they attended events and performances, networked with the contemporary arts community and visited key arts organizations, in particular those working in contemporary new media. On returning to Australia they have continued their collaboration with Taiwanese curators and artists to develop a range of projects.

Jennifer Nield (VIC) Makhampom Theatre Company

Supported by Australia Council for the Arts

Jennifer Nield is co-founder of Outskirt Productions, a company dedicated to utilising the performing arts as an instrument for social change focussing on rural and regional youth. Nield first encountered Makhampom Theatre Company in 1999 when she undertook a study tour with the company and was impressed by the rituals and energy that the company brought to community workshops and celebrations. During her residency she assisted Makhampom to run workshops in camps set up for Karen refugees and to work with a youth theatre group that emerged to counter problems generated by drug trafficking through the local region. She also participated in a study tour for international theatre workers.

Tina Gonsalves (QLD) Chulalongkorn University

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

Over the last ten years Tina Gonslaves’ work has focused on employing new media to explore the human condition. Her work has been widely exhibited, screened and received awards internationally and is held in the collections of SBS Television and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Gonsalves’ four-month residency in the faculty of New Media at Chulalongkorn University was spent developing new work through writing and researching a major art project called PLASMA. During her residency Gonsalves also exhibited at the Changmai University Museum, spoke at the first Changmai New Media Art Festival and at Khon Kaen University in the Faculty of Fine Art.

Clare Martin (ACT) Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology

Supported Arts ACT and the Australia Council for the Arts

Clare Martin is a sculptor whose ideas tend to come from scientific fields and adapted images from archaeology, anatomy, botany and museum collections. Her installation work focuses on the way museum conventions simultaneously transform the reading, meaning and aesthetics of their objects. In Vietnam, Martin was hosted by the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology where she studied and re-interpreted items from their collection. Martin’s work resulted in the exhibition, Freedom / Tu+. Do, at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology’s temporary exhibition area.

Jane Gibian (NSW) The Gioi Publishers

Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts

Jane Gibian is a Sydney-based poet whose first collection, The Body's Navigation, was published in 1998. At the time of the residency Gibian was working on her doctorate at the University of Western Sydney. Gibian’s literature residency in Vietnam was undertaken with The Gioi Publishers with the aim of producing a significant number of new works for a second collection of poetry. Gibian also visited the poetry section of the Hoi Nha Van (Vietnamese Writers’ Association) where around 20 to 30 poets meet regularly to read their work, listen to others and exchange copies of poems and books.

Stanley Sim Shen (SA) The Gioi Publishers

Supported by Arts SA and the Australia Council for the Arts

Stanley Sim Shen is a poet whose work has appeared in many Australian and overseas literary magazines. His first collection, City of My Skin was published in 2001. In Vietnam Shen was resident with Gioi Publishers in Hanoi where he assisted with editing and translation work; participated in meetings with poets in Hanoi and Dalat and readings run by the Vietnamese Writers’ Association in Hanoi. Shen undertook a wide-ranging tour to the major cities and regions of Vietnam.