Event Type: Free

Hera Fox 

Hera is a playwright, and circus & cabaret creator based in nipaluna (Hobart). Having grown up in the Huon Valley starting in community musicals, they have had a varied career in burlesque and drag to circus and acrobatics. Now they have found their voice as a transgender woman returning to song and cabaret creating work for and by transgender people. Her plays have endeavored to assist in changing the culture of the live performing arts, to be more inclusive, and to not take itself too seriously. She has a tendency to write about love, lust, and loss, with a style reflecting reactions of your various ex partners.

They are the founder and artistic director of QT Cabaret, a space for transgender and gender queer performers to trial new cabaret and circus work, which won Artfully Queers unifying voice award 2019. Hera is also the winner of 2020’s Out For Australia Community Champion award.

Davina Wright

Davina Wright is a site-specific artist currently living in nipaluna/Hobart. 

She makes site specific, nonlinear and immersive theatre that looks at loneliness, suburbia, violence and feminism. She wrote and directed This is Grayson; a performance for audience 8+ with her collective Gold Satino. It received four Green Room Award Nominations in the Contemporary and Experimental Performance panel and received the awards for Innovation in Site Responsive Performance and Performance for Young Audiences.

Risa Muramatsu Ray

Risa began her dancing career at an early age,  studying both classical and modern ballet and receiving numerous awards at the national competition level. In 2006 she entered the Japan Women’s College of Physical Education, home to some of Japan’s rhythmic sports  gymnastics olympic medal winners, where she majored in contemporary dance and poured her creative energies into choreography, stage production and dramatic composition while performing as a contemporary dancer in Tokyo.  

Complimenting her work in the contemporary sphere, Risa has also  

performed regularly at numerous music festivals and many of Tokyo’s  most famous clubs, as well as contributing her skills in event production  and choreography to many artists both in Japan and on the international stage. Now Risa is based in Tasmania and she is enjoying creating her  works inspired by Tasmanian nature.

Adie Delaney 

Adie began her circus career at NICA in 2004. After graduating she left Australia to Europe to join the UK’s largest touring contemporary circus company NoFitState. Over 8 years she performed swinging and flying trapeze, hula hoops, fire, acrobatics, trampolining, roller skating etc. Adie also spent two years with Cie Oncore’s flying trapeze show ‘Une Drole de Maison’ flexing her clowning muscles, and among other various events performed a season with La Clique at Edinburgh Fringe.

Andy Vagg

Andy Vagg is an artist, designer, writer, poet and performer. His practice explores the qualities and limitations of contemporary existence, and how the choices we make inherently effect, respond to, and delineate social evolution. Using post-consumer objects and materials, he creates work in social contexts, to activate spaces to form literal and metaphorical platforms for the development of ideas to encourage positive social change. His performances explore the role of religion, liturgy and ritual in a contemporary secular context, and how they can help us navigate the ongoing ecological and psychosocial changes caused by industrialisation, globalisation and consumerism. Andy has created work in public and private spaces in Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Hobart. He has collaborated with community in colleges, high schools, primary schools, community centres, and child and family centres.

www.andyvagg.com

Troy Melville

Troy has worked on an extensive range of film and art projects over 20 years. His projects have involved working for and in collaboration with many different organisations and has often involved working with at risk youth, First Nations and CALD groups. Recent art projects include Paul Boam – A Creative Life, a film for his retrospective exhibition at Moonah Arts Centre. The Partnershipping Project, a national touring exhibition where Troy worked remotely with 19 artists to edit short bio films and Regenerate where New Town primary students created a series of short films about connectivity.

Yumemi Hiraki

Yumemi Hiraki is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Nipaluna. Her practice delves into the interactions between memory, nostalgia, history and connection to place, while re-examining the relationship to her Japanese heritage. Viewing herself as a resident of cultural gaps, her works evokes a familiar yet foreign sense of longing, belonging and holding on, while hinting at life’s inevitable continuity and ephemerality. 

Yumemi is originally from Hiroshima, Japan. She completed her BFA(Sculpture and Spatial Practice) at the Victorian College of the Arts and has been an active Arts Worker while exhibiting and developing her practice in both Naarm and Nipaluna. Yumemi has a growing interest in community-based arts, mentorship and education, and currently also works as a Youth Arts Officer at the Youth Arts and Recreation Centre.

Julie Waddington

A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Julie has been directing and producing theatre for over 20 years during which she has worked for many organisation including St Martin’s Youth Arts, La Mama, MTC, Melbourne Fringe, Tasmanian Theatre Company, Ten Days and Tasmania Performs. From 2007 to 2010 she was the Artistic Director of Riverland Youth Theatre in South Australia. Julie is currently a specialist drama teacher and independent director and producer. Her latest work, The Motherload, a creative documentary performance made through engagement with over 500 mothers across Tasmania and Australia recently premiered at Junction Arts Festival.

Takani Clark

Takani Clark is a professional dabbler and multidisciplinary creative from lutruwita, exploring and engaging with mediums of filmmaking, visual art and performance. As a First Nations woman, raised within the staunch palawa community, Takani feels a deep responsibility to protect and document the island and its cultural identity and diversity, both environmentally and socially. As a storyteller she strives to use her creative voice to deepen our understanding of each other, the natural world and ourselves. Takani believes that diversity is an integral part of her creative practice, striving to collaborate with people from different artistic practices, any background and all walks of life.

Neko Kelly

Neko Kelly is a New Zealand born emerging video artist with experience in editing and animation. His work involves a range of content; from stop-frame stories screened in Mona Foma, to LGBTQI+ educational resources for Tasmanian schools. Neko has a keen interest in telling stories that inspire empathy and compassion for marginalised communities.

Sheree Martin (Utopia Now Coordinator)
Info to come

Matt Arbuckle

b.1987, Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand. Lives Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland and Naarm, Melbourne

Matt Arbuckle splits his time living and working as a practicing artist between Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand and Naarm, Melbourne, Australia. He graduated from Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009. Arbuckle has held solo exhibitions at Daine Singer (Melbourne), Two Rooms (Auckland), Vermont Studio Centre (USA), Bus Projects (Melbourne), Parlour Projects (Hawks Bay, New Zealand), Tim Melville (Auckland), Paulnache Gallery (Gisborne, New Zealand), Baustelle Gallery (Berlin). Group exhibitions include ChaShama (New York), Drill Hall Gallery (Canberra), Hugo Michell Gallery (Adelaide), TCB (Melbourne), Hanging Valley (Melbourne), The Pah Homestead, TSB Wallace Arts Trust (Auckland), Arbuckle has also participated in Sydney Contemporary, and Melbourne and Auckland art fairs.

In 2017 Arbuckle was the recipient of the James Wallace Art Fellowship to Vermont Studio Centre, USA. He has held recent solo exhibitions in 2020 and 2021 at Two Rooms (Auckland), Daine Singer (Melbourne) and Hastings City Art Gallery (Hastings, New Zealand). In 2021 he undertook a residency at Driving Creek (New Zealand). Arbuckle’s work is held in the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, James Wallace Arts Trust and Arthur Roe Collection.

Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler

Wona Bae
b.1976, Muan, South Korea. Lives nipaluna/Hobart and Narrm/Melbourne

Charlie Lawler
b. 1980, nipaluna/ Hobart. Lives nipaluna/Hobart and Narrm/Melbourne

Artists Wona Bae (South Korea) and Charlie Lawler (Australia) are a collaborative duo, who have been making work together since 2004. They are internationally recognised for their experimental and concept-driven installations and sculptures that navigate the visceral and symbiotic connections between people and nature. Central to their practice are the essences of minimalism, harmony and balance. Bae and Lawler present the natural world as active and central in an era of polarisation, inequality, inaction and apathy. Using a language of texture and reduction, their work combines immersive installation, sculpture, relief, sound and photography.

Bae and Lawler have held solo exhibitions at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (2019/20); Backwoods Gallery, Melbourne (2022 and 2019); See You Soon Gallery, Tokyo (2017); and Koskela Gallery, Sydney (2016). They were commissioned to create a major new installation for The National at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2021), and have undertaken other major installations throughout Australia, South Korea, Japan, Spain and the UK. Bae and Lawler have won the 2019 Yering Galley Award and the 2018 Yarra Valley Arts/ RACV Award. They have undertaken residencies at Artspace, Sydney (2021) and Gregans Retreat, Lisdillon, Tasmania (2020).

Sean Bailey
b.1977 Kaurna/Adelaide, lives Naarm/Melbourne

Sean Bailey’s paintings and sculptures are predominantly abstract, at once hard-edged and loose, precise and improvised. Bailey uses materials such as paint, paper, linen, wood, hydrostone and concrete to gather and harness a painterly energy, manifest non-representational forms and obscure collage and shapes drawn from his personal lexicon of painted formal, organic and symbolic imagery. Bailey is interested in the strict confines and parameters of the painting surface, seeing what can be conjured within the pictorial space, the process and chance of his practice, its limitations and also its potential to extend beyond the border of the picture frame.

Bailey’s solo exhibitions include: Sydney Contemporary; RM, Auckland; First Draft, Sydney; and in Melbourne at Daine Singer, Gertrude Contemporary, Neon Parc, West Space, T.C.B., Joint Hassles and Clubs Project Space. He has participated in group exhibitions at University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; Gambia Castle, Auckland; Special, Auckland; Amsterdam Biennial; Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; CAST, Hobart; and in many Melbourne spaces including: Spring 1883 Art Fair, Gertrude Contemporary, Sutton Project Space, Hell Gallery, Bus Gallery, Utopian Slumps, T.C.B. and Seventh. As a musician he is known for playing in groups including Paeces, Wasted Truth, Vivian Girls, Lakes, TOL and TAX as well as running the private press label Inverted Crux. He has a BFA (2005) from the Victorian College of Arts and has been a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary.

Bronwyn Dillon
b. 1982, nipuluna, lutruwita/Tasmania. Lives nipaluna and Western Australia

Bronwyn Dillon is a proud born palawa woman with strong cultural connections. A muka nawnta — salt water sista. Dillon is a shell stringer and basket weaver, learning the ancient techniques, passed onto her by her elders. As well as being a cultural artist and knowledge keeper, Dillon is a mother to 3 pliri (boys), whom she is bringing up strong and proud. Dillon’s creations are inspired by her culture, her people, and Mother Earth. Each unique piece is created with strong cultural knowledge and explodes with positive energy.

Eloise Kirk
b. 1984, New South Wales. Lives St Marys, lutriwita/Tasmania

Eloise Kirk works predominantly with collage and poured resins, creating works about suspension, erasure and fragmentation. Often these works contain a central rock or geological form, severed from its context and suspended in resin. Kirk’s works contain landscape imagery sourced from books, which are collaged into her sculptures and paintings, with the torn edges of the books they are ripped from left visible. Her landscapes and mountainous forms are devoid of recognisable locations and references, but favour mountainous peaks, vertiginous slopes, volcanic and geological formations: they are the landscape of the sublime.

Eloise Kirk lives and works from her home studio in St Mary’s, Tasmania, regularly showing in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. Having achieved Bachelor of Visual Arts with first class honours, she subsequently completed a Masters of Fine Arts with an Australian Postgraduate Award at Sydney College of the Arts in 2013. Since then, Kirk has exhibited solo in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Christchurch, Chasm Gallery in New York. Her works have been part of group shows at Darren Knight Gallery, Roslyn Oxley, Art Space (Sydney), and the College of Fine Arts (Canterbury, New Zealand), Safari Arts Festival and the Underbelly Arts Festival. Kirk was a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Prize, the John Fries Emerging Art Award, the Macquarie Bank Emerging Artist Award and the Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize. In 2014 Kirk was awarded a two month Moya Dyring residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. In 2019 she was the recipient of SHOTGUN8, a mentorship program supported by Contemporary Art Tasmania, MONA and Detached. Kirk is represented by Gallery 9, Sydney.

Grant Nimmo
b. 1979 Naarm/Melbourne. Lives Naarm/Melbourne)

Grant Nimmo has held solo exhibitions at Daine Singer (2021, 2016); Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland (2019); Fort Delta, Melbourne (2018); Westspace, Melbourne (2014); Chapter House Lane, Melbourne (2014); Sawtooth, Launceston (2013); Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne (2013, 2011, 2010); Stockroom Kyneton, Victoria (2012); TCB Art Inc (2011); Rearview Gallery, Melbourne (2010); and Evan Hughes Gallery, Sydney (2009). He has participated in group exhibitions at galleries including the National Gallery of Victoria, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Spring 1883, Bus Projects, Westspace, TCB Art Inc, Art Athena Athens Art Fair, Seventh, Anna Pappas, Death Be Kind, Korean International Art Fair, Melbourne Art Fair, and Gertrude Contemporary. Nimmo has a Bachelor of Fine Art from Monash University. His work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Victoria and Artbank.

Kate Tucker
b.1980 Canberra. Lives Melbourne/Naarm

Kate Tucker’s works are created through a collage-like accumulative process of layering, where paintings are cut and combined, with some pieces left raw and others subjected to continuous iterative changes. Alongside large new paintings are a series of hybrid painting/ sculpture works that have complex ceramic bases holding and supporting paintings. There is an interchangeability between material characteristics of painting and sculpture, textiles and printing, and a play between what is holding and what is being held, with an emphasis on literal and metaphoric supports.

Kate Tucker is a Melbourne/ Naarm-based artist. Her recent projects include solo exhibitions at Daine Singer, Galerie Pompom, Art Stage Singapore, Chapter House Lane, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Platform and Helen Gory, and group exhibitions at NADA New York, Sutton Projects, Dutton Gallery, Caves, Tristian Koenig, SPRING1883, Incinerator Gallery, Bus Projects and LON Gallery. Tucker has been a finalist in the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, The Substation Prize, Albany Art Prize, Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, The Churchie Emerging Art Prize, Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards, and The Archibald Prize. Her work is held in collections including Artbank, Shepparton Art Museum and Bendigo Art Gallery. Tucker graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2009.

Alice Wormald
b.1987 Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand. Lives Melbourne/Naarm)

Alice Wormald creates paintings depicting strange constructed spaces where surface and depth, representation and abstraction and naturalism and artifice converge. The works often emerge through the process of image collection and collage. She exercises a controlled sense of representation, grounded in concerns around the act of painting and the physicality of paint itself, while reflecting a hallucinatory experience of space and nature.

Alice Wormald completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with first class honours at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne in 2011. She has held six solo exhibitions at Daine Singer, as well as solo exhibitions at Gallery 9, Linden New Art, Blindside and Shifted. Her work has been exhibited in Synthetica, a NETS touring exhibition at Wangaratta Art Gallery, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Counihan Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Latrobe Regional Gallery and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. She has also been included in exhibitions including Accession, Bundoora Homestead (2018), Analogue Art in a Digital World, RMIT Art Gallery (2018), Gardening is not a Rational Act at c3 Contemporary Art Space (2017), Visiting Painting at Horsham Regional Art Gallery (2016), Imagined Worlds, Town Hall Gallery (2016) and Vertigo, an Asialink touring exhibition at Galeri Soemardja, Bandung, Indonesia, Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Taipei, Taiwan and POSCO Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2014). Other group exhibitions include Sydney Contemporary, Spring 1883 Art Fair (Sydney 2017 and 2015, Melbourne 2020, 2018, 2016 and 2014) and New Horizons at Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale (2013).

Wormald is the winner of the 2022 Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize and the 2022 Grace Cossington Smith Early Career Award. She has also been a finalist in the Bayside Art Prize (2020, 2017), Darebin Art Prize (2017, 2015), Bruny Island Art Prize (2016), City of Albany Art Prize (2015), Geelong Contemporary Art Prize (2018 and 2014), the John Leslie Art Prize (2016, 2014 – Highly Commended, 2012), the Macquarie Group Prize for Emerging Artists (2013), and the Banyule City Prize for Works on Paper (2013).

Her work is held in the ACU, Artbank, Bayside Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Darebin City Council, Macquarie Group, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Fiona Myer, Artisit and Joyce Nissan Collections.

CURATOR

Daine Singer
b.1980 Victoria, Australia. Lives Naarm/Melbourne

Daine Singer is a curator and art dealer. Since 2011 she has run her own independent gallery, representing a group of fifteen artists from Australia and New Zealand with a dynamic program that includes solo exhibitions by gallery artists, as well as projects by unrepresented artists and occasional curated exhibitions. As an adjunct to the exhibition program, she has also published four limited edition artist books through her independent small press, VERSION: Lane Cormick NOHARDATTACK, Jordan Marani EGGS, Kate Moss Wild Thoughts and Peter Davidson Words/ Lines.

Curatorial projects external to her gallery program include Experimenta Utopia Now: International Biennial of Media Art (curatorium, touring Australia 2010-2011), Dream Weavers (CAST Gallery, Hobart 2010), Draw the Line: the Architecture of Lab (National Gallery of Victoria 2009), The Nauru Elegies (DJ Spooky and Annie K Kwon, Experimenta at Blindside and Shed 4, 2010) and Big Screen Shorts (Federation Square 2010).

Before opening her own gallery, Singer has held positions including Gallery Manager at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Associate Curator at Experimenta Media Arts, and Curator at the Museum of Chinese Australian History. She has a BA (art history and history), Grad Dip in Arts Management, and Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne. Singer currently sits on the Business Advisory Council of the City of Yarra and the MLC Friends of Art Committee, previously she has been a board member of Blindside. She has been a mentor to the University of Melbourne’s Arts Career Mentoring Program, the Seventh Gallery Emerging Curator Program, Wundergym, Contemporary Art Tasmania’s Shotgun program, and The Smith Family’s iTrack Mentor program.
www.dainesinger.com

Obon lanterns – see the installation of lanterns created in the lead up to Winter Light by community members and facilitated by Yumemi Hiraki, mirroring the practice of Japanese obon festival to commemorate and honour ancestors.

Obon dance – gather beneath the lanterns to learn the Obon dance, practiced throughout Japan as part of the Obon Festival, with Yumemi Hiraki and Eri Mulloolly-Hill Konishi.

Rhythmz Bollywood – get ready for high energy classic Bollywood dance from nipaluna (Hobart) bollywood dance institution, Rhythmz Bollywood. Workshop participants have the opportunity to perform during opening night event. (workshop dates to come)

MMT – Madi Mega Talent Hita Man and Rasta Jay of South Sudan. These energetic MC’s rip up the stage with their brand of Badman style East African Dancehall.

Miettes – A contemporary and performative journey into the musical history of France. This unique trio explore their Gallic roots and present a show full of striking sounds and sights, leaving you begging for more than just the crumbs!

Svetlana Bunic – Accordionista Svetlana Bunic presents a well-travelled cinematic repertoire of Frech musette, Argentinian tango, continental movie themes, retro melodies, gypsy grooves, smoking jazz, Latin and cabaret show tunes.

Son Del Sur – Son del Sur is an exciting 10 piece Latin-Jazz and Salsa band. Son del Sur (meaning “they are from the South”) has performed at many of Tasmania’s premier music events and has wowed audiences with their impressive sound.

Kattleya – Kattleya are an acoustic duo from Colombia featuring Latin American music with distinctive upbeat, tropical sounds and uplifting melodies. 

Salsita Kids – Salsitas is an intergenerational dance group with ancestral roots transmitting folklore stories. Salsitas explores traditions which are then performed by modern Latin Americans with a mission to rediscover their unique histories, through Latino rhythms and traditional dance.

Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie

Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and community development worker based in nipaluna/Hobart, lutruwita/Tasmania.

Her creative practice is responsive and explores belonging and cultural heritage in contemporary Australia, drawing on lived experience as an Asian-Australian woman. Representation, connection and community building are central themes which ground her curatorial practice.

Hayley Millar Baker

 b. 1990, Melbourne, AU 

Hayley Millar Baker is First Nations (Gunditjmara/Djabwurrung) woman born in Melbourne, Australia (1990). She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2010) and Master of Fine Arts (2017) at RMIT University in Melbourne. 

Through examining the role our identities play in translating and conveying our experiences, Hayley works across photography, collage, and film to interrogate and abstract autobiographical narratives and themes relating to her own identity. Her oblique storytelling methods and methodologies encourage us to embrace that the passage of identity, culture, and memory are not linear nor fixed. 

Hayley’s works are held in significant public institutional collections across Australia and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Hayley has been a finalist in several prestigious national art prizes including the Ramsay Art Prize (2019 and 2021), Bowness Photography Prize (2021), John Fries Award (2019), and international prizes including Hong Kong’s Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2021), and United Arab Emirates Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (2021), and has won the John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for the National Photography Prize (2020), the Darebin Art Prize (2019), and the Special Commendation Award for The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize (2017). She was selected as one of eight artists to exhibit in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera: Young Australian Artists (2018) and has been awarded several residencies including the Artist-in-residence at Monash University Prato, Italy (2022), the First Nations Residency at Collingwood Yards (2021), the Photography Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria (2019). Hayley was a feature artist in PHOTO2021: International Festival of Photography (2021) and has exhibited in other art festivals including the International Ballarat Foto Biennale (2017), and Tarnanthi (2017). Hayley will present a new commission for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia (2022). 

In 2021 Hayley presented her first early career-survey ‘There we were all in one place’ at UTS Gallery, curated by Stella McDonald. The exhibition brought together five pivotal bodies of work from Hayley’s early career for the first time and will tour Australia in 2022. 

Millar Baker’s work is held in significant collections across Australia: Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Melbourne Museum, Melbourne; Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne; Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne; Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), Albury; State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; University of Technology Sydney, Sydney; University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney; Warrnambool Art Gallery, Warrnambool; Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), Shepparton; Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne; Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham; City of Melbourne, Melbourne. 

Hayley Millar Baker is represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia. 

Jessie French

Based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, the work of Jessie French explores speculative futures through algae-based bioplastic and water-based ecologies. Housed within an ethos of consumption, sustainability and regeneration, her practice invites others to engage with the possibilities of a post-petrochemical world. Through experimenting with other materials, she explores the potential of closed-loop systems of (re)use and conscious consumption and interaction with objects. In 2020, French founded OTHER MATTER, an experimental design studio working with algae-based bioplastics which engages others in the possibilities of new materials though objects, experiences and futures.

Loren Kronemyer | Artist Talk, Facilitator

Loren Kronemyer (b.1988) is an artist living and working in remote lutruwita (Tasmania), Australia. Her experimental artworks are aimed at exploring ecological futures and survival skills through hands-on immersion and deep learning. In 2021, she learned to hand-build millet brooms from Tumut, the last factory in Australia, setting up her own self-sufficient replica of their factory in the project Millennial Reaper (Fremantle Biennale, Melbourne Art Fair). In 2018, she learned to shoot arrows, then became a coach so she could train her audience to shoot at her artwork for the project After Erika Eiffel (ANTI Festival of Live Art, MONA FOMA). In 2016, her collaboration Pony Express created Ecosexual Bathhouse, a touring queer sex club for the entire ecosystem. In 2017, Kronemyer was the first artist in residence at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. She collaborates frequently with laboratories and received the first Masters of Biological Arts Degree from SymbioticA Lab at the University of Western Australia.

Davina Wright

Davina Wright is a site-specific artist currently living in nipaluna/Hobart. 

She makes site specific, nonlinear and immersive theatre that looks at loneliness, suburbia, violence and feminism. She wrote and directed This is Grayson; a performance for audience 8+ with her collective Gold Satino. It received four Green Room Award Nominations in the Contemporary and Experimental Performance panel and received the awards for Innovation in Site Responsive Performance and Performance for Young Audiences.

Risa Muramatsu Ray

Risa began her dancing career at an early age,  studying both classical and modern ballet and receiving numerous awards at the national competition level. In 2006 she entered the Japan Women’s College of Physical Education, home to some of Japan’s rhythmic sports  gymnastics olympic medal winners, where she majored in contemporary dance and poured her creative energies into choreography, stage production and dramatic composition while performing as a contemporary dancer in Tokyo.  

Complimenting her work in the contemporary sphere, Risa has also  

performed regularly at numerous music festivals and many of Tokyo’s  most famous clubs, as well as contributing her skills in event production  and choreography to many artists both in Japan and on the international stage. Now Risa is based in Tasmania and she is enjoying creating her  works inspired by Tasmanian nature.

Adie Delaney 

Adie began her circus career at NICA in 2004. After graduating she left Australia to Europe to join the UK’s largest touring contemporary circus company NoFitState. Over 8 years she performed swinging and flying trapeze, hula hoops, fire, acrobatics, trampolining, roller skating etc. Adie also spent two years with Cie Oncore’s flying trapeze show ‘Une Drole de Maison’ flexing her clowning muscles, and among other various events performed a season with La Clique at Edinburgh Fringe.

Andy Vagg

Andy Vagg is an artist, designer, writer, poet and performer. His practice explores the qualities and limitations of contemporary existence, and how the choices we make inherently effect, respond to, and delineate social evolution. Using post-consumer objects and materials, he creates work in social contexts, to activate spaces to form literal and metaphorical platforms for the development of ideas to encourage positive social change. His performances explore the role of religion, liturgy and ritual in a contemporary secular context, and how they can help us navigate the ongoing ecological and psychosocial changes caused by industrialisation, globalisation and consumerism. Andy has created work in public and private spaces in Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Hobart. He has collaborated with community in colleges, high schools, primary schools, community centres, and child and family centres.

www.andyvagg.com

Troy Melville

Troy has worked on an extensive range of film and art projects over 20 years. His projects have involved working for and in collaboration with many different organisations and has often involved working with at risk youth, First Nations and CALD groups. Recent art projects include Paul Boam – A Creative Life, a film for his retrospective exhibition at Moonah Arts Centre. The Partnershipping Project, a national touring exhibition where Troy worked remotely with 19 artists to edit short bio films and Regenerate where New Town primary students created a series of short films about connectivity.

Yumemi Hiraki

Yumemi Hiraki is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Nipaluna. Her practice delves into the interactions between memory, nostalgia, history and connection to place, while re-examining the relationship to her Japanese heritage. Viewing herself as a resident of cultural gaps, her works evokes a familiar yet foreign sense of longing, belonging and holding on, while hinting at life’s inevitable continuity and ephemerality. 

Yumemi is originally from Hiroshima, Japan. She completed her BFA(Sculpture and Spatial Practice) at the Victorian College of the Arts and has been an active Arts Worker while exhibiting and developing her practice in both Naarm and Nipaluna. Yumemi has a growing interest in community-based arts, mentorship and education, and currently also works as a Youth Arts Officer at the Youth Arts and Recreation Centre.

Julie Waddington

A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Julie has been directing and producing theatre for over 20 years during which she has worked for many organisation including St Martin’s Youth Arts, La Mama, MTC, Melbourne Fringe, Tasmanian Theatre Company, Ten Days and Tasmania Performs. From 2007 to 2010 she was the Artistic Director of Riverland Youth Theatre in South Australia. Julie is currently a specialist drama teacher and independent director and producer. Her latest work, The Motherload, a creative documentary performance made through engagement with over 500 mothers across Tasmania and Australia recently premiered at Junction Arts Festival.

Takani Clark

Takani Clark is a professional dabbler and multidisciplinary creative from lutruwita, exploring and engaging with mediums of filmmaking, visual art and performance. As a First Nations woman, raised within the staunch palawa community, Takani feels a deep responsibility to protect and document the island and its cultural identity and diversity, both environmentally and socially. As a storyteller she strives to use her creative voice to deepen our understanding of each other, the natural world and ourselves. Takani believes that diversity is an integral part of her creative practice, striving to collaborate with people from different artistic practices, any background and all walks of life.

Neko Kelly

Neko Kelly is a New Zealand born emerging video artist with experience in editing and animation. His work involves a range of content; from stop-frame stories screened in Mona Foma, to LGBTQI+ educational resources for Tasmanian schools. Neko has a keen interest in telling stories that inspire empathy and compassion for marginalised communities.

Adonay Tsegezeab
I’m Adonay Tsegezeab, 23 years old, working with Troy Melville as mentoree on Utopia now for winter light as well as with Tastafe STUDENTS AGAINST RACISM group to make this happen. It’s been amazing working on this project and to be part of it. 

Indigo Garcia is a 16-year-old visual artist working and creating in Nipaluna/Hobart. Swimming through pattern and form, ink stains her identity as she works to represent culture and individuality. Exploring the extent in which she can portray and incorporate all works of organic life, examining the runs of skin, the paths on land. Working with mentor Andy Vagg and the youth of Goodwood, the development and embodiment of their instillation helps to further the representation of utopia and the developing world.

Sheree Martin (Utopia Now Coordinator)
Embracing and trusting in the unravelling uncertainties of creativity is integral to the artistic practice and way of life for New Zealander and Tasmanian Artist, Sheree Martin. Sheree is a passionate nurturer and advocate for ‘art as a process’ and the value that engaging in this open explorative process brings to enhancing our mental health and wellbeing. Sheree shares the joy of this process through her uniquely designed and facilitated ARTplayful experiences within The Little Red Art Shed for young children and families, with her creative arts and wellbeing clients and community projects.

@shereemartin_artist

@thelittleredartshed

Halima Bhatti

Halima Bhatti is a 26 yrs old, locally based contemporary Arabic calligraphy artist from Lahore, Pakistan. Her artworks reflect deep connections and sacred knowledge with every stroke and letter. Taking the opportunity to be a part of the Winter light festival, UTOPIA project, as a mentee with the artist “Yumeimi Hiraki”, from Youth Arts and Re-creation center (Hobart city) Halima aims to express the element of peace, diversity and connectedness through her teams youth based theatre work reflecting upon the vision of Utopia, and thereby connect and influence the mainstream community.

Lucas Rilyey-Lyne
My name is Lucas and I’m 16 years old and my mentor artist is Julie Waddington. I am working with a group from my school which is Campania District School. We are working to create an improvised cross art-form performance installation using physical ensemble theatre, drawing and creative writing. I hope my love for the preforming arts will only grow from this experience. 

Ailbhe Maria Szypura
My name is Ailbhe and I am 14 years old. My mentor is Risa Ray and we are doing a movement based performance with around 10 kids about what they envision their future to look like. 

Our group is located in Cygnet. I’m hoping that this mentee role will teach me how to work with kids and groups, and how to collaborate with others. I have been having a really great time doing this.

Bailey Mifsud

My name is Bailey and I’m 15. I’m working with my mentor artist Adie Delaney and a few of my peers from The Circus Studio in Kingston. We will be putting together a short performance involving ground based circus skills and other elements of movement; around what we as a group perceive to be the theme of Utopia Now! I’m really looking forward to improving my circus and collaboration skills with this project. 

Ari Soo
Ari Soo is a young stand-up comedian, who is occasionally funny and hates people who speak in third person. He recently was flown to Melbourne to perform in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival as part of the Class Clowns National Grand Final – most likely his greatest achievement. 

Malachi
My name is Malachi and I’m 16. I have a passion for sound engineering. I help at school mixing and setting up for the school rock band and have my own home studio where I record and mix songs. I’m hoping to extend my knowledge in sound engineering and working with the people around me so that everyone can have the best experience of Utopia Now! 

Kieran Mulvany
Kieran Mulvany is a homegrown Tassie artist who has been writing and recording music their bedroom since the beginning of time itself. With stories of robots, nights with friends and self reflection there is something for everyone in Kieran’s folio. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2suxg5ymscPaZUKzNsZb2v? si=wsPt_YSHQ6i6LapOdXRI-w Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kieranmulvanymusic/ 

‘Live Art’
Hello, we are Lucas, Josh, Anna, Mia and Belle. We are students from Campania District School. We will be performing a live art experience via a group painting on a large canvas, exploring what utopia is to us personally and how they are different from one another. We hope to show that everyones personal idea of Utopia is different and very diverse, as we all are. 

Sophie Henderson 

Sophie Henderson is a eager performer who has always grabbed any opportunity to perform wether that is singing or acting or both at the same time. She has been in quite a few musicals throughout her life her most recent being in Guys and Dolls with the Old Nick Theatre Company and The Little Mermaid at Southern Christian College where she starred as Ursula. Sophie hopes you enjoy her performance as part of the Utopia Now Youth Performance Stage! 

Ross Coulter

Ross Coulter is a visual artist with a BFA (Hons) and MFA (Research) from the Victoria College of the Arts. He has exhibited both locally and internationally at a number of gallery spaces. As the recipient of the 2010-2011 George Mora Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria he undertook a project that involved the release of 10,000 paper planes into the Domed Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria. His photographic series titled “Audience” (2013-2016) was exhibited at the NGV in 2017. In 2018 Ross developed and presented a photographic series titled “Corporate Portraits” that was presented at the Warburton Arts Centre. His recent artworks have been an exploration of photographic portraiture, performance and community participation. Ross has received numerous awards, artist residences and grants.

Dr Meredith Turnbull

Meredith’s practice focuses on the world of things as the form-creating basis of culture. She is interested in making and material, and the experiential and temporal register of forms. Her practice engages various disciplines and approaches to making, writing and curating. Her artworks engage diverse scales, art historical traditions and genres – and manifest in connections between the body and; sculpture, images, decorative objects and jewellery.

Recent projects include Closer, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne University, 2018 and SHE TURNS at c3 Contemporary Art Space, Hardbody Sculpture at Daine Singer and Softbody Sculpture at Pieces of Eight in 2017. Turnbull has held solo exhibitions at Station, MADA Gallery, Pieces of Eight, Bus Projects, The Other Side, West Space, the Centre for Contemporary Photography, TCB and The Narrows. She has exhibited in group exhibitions at galleries including the Heide Museum of Modern Art, the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne University, the National Gallery of Victoria, Craft Victoria, Jam Factory, Adelaide, Melbourne Art Fair, the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery and the George Paton Gallery. Recent curated projects include Material Exchange at c3 Projects (2017), Form and Flex (2015) and Rock Solid (2011), Pieces of Eight, Melbourne, A Condition of Change, Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne (2011), Risk Potential, Die Ecke, Santiago (2010) and Once More with Feeling, VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2009).

Meredith Turnbull completed a Bachelor of Art (Honours) in Art History at LaTrobe University in 2000, a Bachelor of Fine Art (Gold and Silversmithing) at RMIT University in 2005 and a PhD at Monash University in the field of Sculpture and Spatial Practice in 2016. In 2016 Turnbull was co-editor (with Shelley McSpedden) of un Magazine issue 10.1. From 2006 to 2010 Turnbull was Gallery Manager and Curator of the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery. She was editor of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s online magazine ACCAMag from 2004 to 2005 where she also worked as a Project Manager and Assistant to the Artistic Director. Meredith has lecturered in Art History at RMIT University specialising in Contemporary Art and C20th Craft and Design. She currently Coordinator of Bachelor of Fine Art First Year in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University.

Meredith Turnbull is represented by Daine Singer, Melbourne

Roma Turnbull-Coulter

Born in 2014, Roma Turnbull-Coulter is an emerging artist living on Boon Wurrung country. Her art practice includes painting, drawing, photography, video, performance and sculpture. Roma is in Grade 1, (when not being home-schooled due to COVID restrictions). Roma’s first exhibition was in 2016 when she was invited to collaborate with her mother Dr. Meredith Turnbull in the group exhibition Mum at the Stockroom in Kyneton, curated by Claire Needham. Roma has exhibited with her parents in the annual c3 fundraiser, Faux Studio, in 2016. In 2018 and 2019 she exhibited with her contemporaries from Monash Caulfield Childcare Centre at Monash University Museum of Art for her Childcare End of Year exhibition. Mathew Ware, director of Muse du Strip, invited Roma and her father Ross Coulter in 2019 to create an exhibition for his gallery which was titled Roma + Ross.

Yumemi Hiraki 

Yumemi Hiraki is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Nipaluna. Her practice delves into the interactions between memory, nostalgia, history and connection to place, while re-examining the relationship to her Japanese heritage. Viewing herself as a resident of cultural gaps, her works evokes a familiar yet foreign sense of longing, belonging and holding on, while hinting at life’s inevitable continuity and ephemerality. 

Yumemi is originally from Hiroshima, Japan. She completed her BFA(Sculpture and Spatial Practice) at the Victorian College of the Arts and has been an active Arts Worker while exhibiting and developing her practice in both Naarm and Nipaluna. Yumemi has a growing interest in community-based arts, mentorship and education, and currently also works as a Youth Arts Officer at the Youth Arts and Recreation Centre.