WhyGather2008LocBios

FORUMS & WORKSHOPS

Forthcoming Events

About South Forums & Workshops

Dian Islamiat Fatwa is a journalist and producer for Radio Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Prior to working for the ABC, she worked as a talk show host, producer and also as a documentary film maker in various Indonesian TV Media. Ms Fatwa has produced a wide range of topical documentaries on human rights; issues regarding women and the environmental; exploring the lives of indigenous peoples as well as political themes. Her documentary work has been nominated for a number of awards in Indonesian film festivals. She is also facilitator, trainer, and professional public speaker, delivering capacity building workshop on journalism, human rights and issues regarding women. Prior migrating to Australia, Ms. Fatwa was selected as a young ambassador representing Indonesia in various youth exchange and leadership programs such as the 21st Century Youth Exchange Program in Japan (1993), the Ship for South-East Asian Youth Program (1992) and the Leadership for Environment and Development Program (LEAD 1996-1998).

Jeff Khan is a Melbourne-based curator, writer and arts administrator. As Artistic Director of the 2008 Next Wave Festival, Jeff oversaw the development and delivery of a multidisciplinary Festival program which included 61 projects and nearly 400 artists from diverse backgrounds and artforms. Originally from Western Australia, Jeff moved to Melbourne in 2003 to take up the role of Communications Manager at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. Prior to this, he held positions at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and the John Curtin Gallery, and in 2002 undertook a six month internship at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Jeff has developed numerous projects including exhibitions, publications, performances and special events with galleries and museums, performance spaces, artist-run initiatives, and unconventional spaces such as nightclubs, laneways and public spaces. Jeff was a Curatorial Advisor for Rapt!, a major cultural exchange project between Australia and Japan in 2005-6. He is also a founding Board member of un Projects, was a member of the Midsumma Festival’s Visual Arts Working group from 2003 – 2006 and currently sits on the City of Yarra’s Arts Advisory Committee. As a writer he has contributed to numerous magazines and journals as well as catalogue essays for museums, galleries and artists’ projects.

Panther (Madeleine Hodge and Sarah Rodigari) is an ongoing performance collaboration between Madeleine Hodge and Sarah Rodigari. Panther create work across documentary, performance, improvisation, video and site based intervention. Our collaboration is compact, adaptable and open, extending across disciplines to create live art events specific to each space, every encounter. Through our work we are seeking to create a space for cultural enquiry, audience activation and social critique. We produce work that is rigorous, engaging and often funny, whilst always testing new possibilities for live performance. In 2008 Panther will create new works for video and performance spaces including Next Wave and Melbourne International Arts festival. We will be in residency through A Month in the Country in Albury to create This is what it takes to make it through the night, the second part in the performance trilogy of The Travels. In 2008/2009 we will work with Tape Project Artists to create a new work for video and performance We don’t want to shop anymore. In November 2008 Panther will present work at this is the time a symposium presented by PICA and Artrage as part of PVI’s ten-year anniversary celebrations. Panther have presented work in festivals and venues throughout Europe and Asia, including Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, UK (2005), ANTI Festival of Contemporary Art, Finland (2007), PACT Zollverein, Germany (2007), Fresh Festival, England (2007) and the Singapore Fringe Festival (2008). Panther have also developed work in Australia, with the support of the Performance Space, Sydney and Arts House in Melbourne. For more information about all of our works please see www.pantherpanther.com

Australian Participants

Why Gather? Symposium, Melbourne (2008)

Image Credit: Vasilios Devletoglou, 2008

PVI Collective Founded in 1998, pvi collective are an independent artist collective based in Perth, Western Australia. Members of the group have backgrounds in visual art, film theory, new media, performance, psychology and live art. each contribute their skills towards creating tactical media artworks for galleries, public sites and alternative spaces. Pvi aim to meticulously devise work from an initial raw concept wanting to allow the form to evolve over time into a work of creative depth, intellectual rigour and conceptual integrity. Over the past decade pvi have sought to generate a practice and produce works that bridge a variety of art forms. their work as a result hovers somewhere between visual art and contemporary performance. The group have a long standing pre-occupation with producing artwork that investigates issues of privacy, surveillance and its impact on social codes of behaviour in the public realm, responding to trends in local and global surveillance and increases in national security. the creation of most of their artworks respond directly to a city, town or site investigating it’s fears, hopes and concerns about personal freedoms, often offering up darkly humorous survival tactics for living in a panoptic 21st century. Pvi often engage the public within their artworks - activating viewers through eccentric acts of intervention, on the streets, on-screen and in any other spaces they can get away with. Pvi collective were recipients of an Asialink residency in 2003. Over the past three years have exhibited & showcased work at the Perth institute of contemporary art, Plimsole gallery, Hobart, the MCA Sydney, Performance Space Sydney, rawspace, Brisbane, MCA Santiago, Mori gallery Sydney and Gertrude contemporary art spaces Melbourne. In 2004, the group completed a national tour of controversial new media work ‘tts: australia’, an artwork which investigated a rising politics of fear in relation to threats of terrorism. In 2005 pvi were selected for the highly prestigious exhibition primavera at the MCA Sydney. In 2006 artists from pvi undertook a collaborative german / australian residency at iaska [international artspace kellerberrin Australia] and were invited to represent australian artist collectives as part of the South Project in Wellington nz. In 2006 the group showcased a new major work titled ‘reform’ which is part of a larger body of tactical media artworks and were invited to participate in trans-versa a residency followed by group exhibition curated by Zara Stanhope & Danae Mossman in Santiago Chile during Sept / Oct. Pvi’s annual program of events for 2007 included exhibitions in Sydney ‘lcu: on patrol’ & Brisbane, ‘panopticon: brisbane’ and live performance works in Perth, ‘inform’ & melbourne, ‘reform’. 2008 will see pvi co-produce a national symposium & gathering on hybrid arts in Perth, enter into creative development for major new performance work ‘consumer’ which will take place in a deserted city mall at night and curate a national masterclass on hybrid performance practice. After a successful showcase of performance work ‘reform’ at the 2008 australian performing arts market pvi are touring to Singapore, Hobart & Sydney in 2008 and New Zealand, Korea and Germany in 2009.

Michelle Evans, Michelle holds a Bachelor in Communications (Theatre/Media), a Graduate Diploma in Arts Management and a Master of Creative Arts (Research) and is currently studying towards a PHD with the Melbourne Business School. Michelle is an internationally accredited Partnership Broker by the Overseas Development Institute/International Business Leader Forum. Michelle is the Head of the founding Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, managing the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Art's commitment to Indigenous artists, curriculum change and Indigenous communities and culture. She teaches solely in the Faculty of the VCA's Post Graduate area specializing in Community Cultural Development and Indigenous Arts Management. She has a long-standing research and policy/industry development interests in the Indigenous arts industry, Community Cultural Development and multi sector partnership brokering. She has also been involved as a supervisor for Post Graduate students across all artistic disciplines in the Faculty of the VCA. Michelle comes from the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. Over the past twelve years, she has worked across the arts and cultural sector, being instrumental in the establishment of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student Network, Ngorekah Aboriginal Theatre, 3KND and the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development.

Tom Nicholson (born 1973) is an artist who lives in Melbourne. He is a member of Ocular Lab and is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery. He is also a Lecturer in Drawing in the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University.

Wulan Dirgantoro is an Indonesian curator currently based in Tasmania. She teaches part-time at the Indonesian studies program, while writing her PhD thesis at the School of Asian Languages and Studies, University of Tasmania. In 2007 she curated Intimate Distance: Tracing Feminism in Indonesian contemporary art at the National Gallery of Indonesia (Jakarta) in conjunction with the launch of Indonesian Women Artists: The Curtain Opens, the first book dedicated to tracing the roles and achievements of women artists in Indonesia from the 1950s to the present. Her PhD thesis is on the artist’s body in Indonesian contemporary art, using feminist theories as an analytical framework.

Georgia Sedgwick is an independent arts manager, working for over a decade in Indonesia and Australia on various arts projects and programs. In 2004 she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Indonesian Studies at Monash University. Her thesis focused on the role of Indonesian Arts Communities in post-Suharto Indonesia. In 2006 she completed a Graduate Certificate in Arts Management form the University of Melbourne. Georgia lived in Yogakarta, Indonesia from 1999-2004 researching and studying while working as a freelance writer, curator and translator. Currently working at Regional Arts Victoria, Georgia was formerly Manager of the Visual Arts Residency program and the Indonesia-Australia Arts Management Program at Asialink, the University of Melbourne. During this time she co-developed a strategic partnership with the Northern Territory and Eastern Indonesia that comprised a series of creative collaborations between arts communities from these regions. She has co-curated numerous independent arts projects including RuangPerRuang (Yogyakarta), Under My Skin (Manila, Singapore and Hanoi) as part of Asialink’s international exhibition touring program and is currently developing a survey show of Indonesian artists to be exhibited in Melbourne in 2008. Georgia has contributed articles and reviews to publications including Artlink, Art & Australia, Groundwork and the International Institute of Asian Studies Journal.

Megan Evans has a career involving a broad spectrum of art practices from major public artworks to exhibitions. Megan’s work examines the nature of reality and illusion, with particular reference to historical influences on the virtual. Her work is also firmly situated in a postcolonial investigation of place and landscape. She has worked as a professional artist for over 25 years.