Issue 2 2009
Ulanda Blair is a curator, arts project manager and arts writer, and Artistic Program Manager at Next Wave. Ulanda manages the Next Wave Festival’s keynote projects, as well as the organisation’s professional development program for artists, Kickstart. Prior to Next Wave Ulanda was Gallery Coordinator at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, where she worked from 2004 – 2007. In addition to writing numerous catalogue essays for local and international exhibitions, Ulanda’s writing has appeared in Art & Australia, Art World, Artlink, Eyeline, Flash, Green Pages and un Magazine. In 2008 she undertook a curatorial research trip to Japan, China and Singapore, which was supported through the Australia Council’s RUN_WAY program and the Harold Mitchell Foundation. Ulanda is also a member of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Youth Access Committee.
Naomi Cass, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), curator and writer, has worked in the fields of contemporary art, craft, design and music since completing her honours degree at the University of Melbourne. In 2005 she oversaw relocation of the CCP, now in its 22nd year, to purpose designed premises.
Ross Coulter is a Melbourne based visual artist. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2007. In 2009 he also featured as a dancer in the Lucy Guerin Inc production Untrained. Recent exhibitions include, in 2008: Fuck Your Heroes, West Space, Melbourne; Worlds End, Carlton Hotel, Melbourne; Man Running… Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy; Play Heads, Alliance Française Gallery, St Kilda; Mono Brow, Hell Gallery, Richmond; Contemporary Australian Video Screening Institute of Contemporary Art, London, all 2008; National Graduation Exhibition Federation Square, Melbourne; Camera Obscura, TCB Gallery, Melbourne; Melbourne Operatic, Te Tuhi, Auckland, New Zealand and Loop, Melbourne; Slide, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne and the Experimental & Conceptual Shorts Program, Melbourne International Film Festival. Ross has received several awards and grants, including the City of Melbourne Arts Project Grant in 2008, the Orloff Family Charitable Trust Scholarship and the Alliance Française Award in 2007; the National Gallery of Victoria Trustees Award in 2006 and the Stella Dilger Encouragement Award in 2005. While working at Channel 31 in the mid 90s, he was awarded ‘Best TV Entertainment’ three times for Richmond 3121 Oh! by the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia.
Linda Daley teaches literary studies and communication studies in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne where she is a senior lecturer. She has also worked as a journalist, editor and secondary teacher in Melbourne and country Victoria. Her research interests focus on indigenous visual culture and production, literary philosophy, and the sociology of literature. Linda holds a PhD from Monash University in contemporary European philosophy.
Bec Dean, curator, writer and artist, is currently Associate Director of Performance Space, Sydney. Selected recent curatorial projects include Trace Elements: Spirit and Memory in Japanese and Australian Photomedia, (with Shihoko Iida) Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, 2008 and Performance Space, Sydney, 2009; Girl Parade, Australian Centre for Photography (ACP), Sydney, 2007; Paul Knight: Don’t Be Something Strong, ACP, Sydney, 2006; Mirror Worlds: Contemporary Video from Asia (with Zoe Butt) ACP, Sydney, 2005; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane 2006 and Auckland Festival 2007. Recent commissioning projects include ECR by Marley Dawson & Chris Hanrahan, Performance Space, Sydney, 2008 and Portable Cenotaph by Sussi Porsborg, Performance Space, Sydney, 2008. Recent publications include the Column 2: 2008 Biennale of Sydney Critical Response, Artspace, Sydney, 2008; ‘Raquel Ormella: Landscape and Complexity’, Artlink August 2008 and ‘Deborah Kelly’, Broadsheet 37.3 2008.
Kyla McFarlane is a writer, editor and Assistant Curator - Exhibitions at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne. Kyla has written on contemporary visual art in Australia and New Zealand since 1996, with a particular emphasis on photography. She has published numerous catalogue essays, articles, book chapters and reviews. Kyla’s curatorial projects at Monash University Museum of Art include The Ecologies Project, with Geraldine Barlow, 2008 and The Line Between Us: The Maternal Relation in Contemporary Photography, 2005. Kyla holds a PhD in visual culture from Monash University which focuses on the relationship between contemporary photography, feminism and psychoanalysis. She has also worked as a pictorial editor at The Age and the New Zealand Herald.
Arlo Mountford is a Melbourne based artist, who has exhibited regularly since completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2002. In 2003 he took up a studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. Arlo has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Best of Discovery, ShContemporary, Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair, Shanghai, 2008; Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2008; Order and Dissent: Works From the Heide Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2008 and 21st Century Modern, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2006. Arlo’s most recent solo exhibitions have been at Grantpirrie, Sydney, 2009; Conical Inc. Melbourne, 2008 and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 2007. Arlo was awarded the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award in 2007 and has recently returned from a residency at the Frank Mohr Institute, Groningen, Netherlands. Arlo exhibits regularly in both artist run and public galleries nationally and internationally.
Phip Murray is a Melbourne based artist and writer who is currently the Director of West Space ARI. Her previous employment includes lecturing in contemporary art history and theory at Swinburne and RMIT universities, and working for the Next Wave Festival for which she helped create the artist-run initiative exhibition Containers Village in 2006 as well as the interdisciplinary Nightclub projects in 2008. Phip has completed a Masters degree through RMIT’s Media Arts department and also studied Arts/Law at the University of Melbourne. She is a Board and Editorial Committee member of the independent contemporary art journal un Magazine, as well as a board member of the Georges Mora Foundation. Phip writes often about art, with recent projects including writing the audio guides for the Salvadaor Dali and John Brack exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria, a series of articles for Photofile, and taking on the role of editor for the next issue of un Magazine. She also works with her Dad on the family cattle farm one day per week.
Damian Smith is a Melbourne based curator and writer. He is currently Curator of the Maroondah Art Gallery and Vice-president of the Public Galleries Association of Victoria. He has been a guest curator for institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Major projects include, with Kendrah Morgan, the survey exhibition Unmasked: Sidney Nolan and Ned Kelly 1950-1990, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2007 and a monograph, Mike Nicholls: A Work in Progress, 2007. He has written extensively on contemporary Australian and Chinese art including essays for the Guangdong Museum, China and Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four novels: Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award. He has been awarded the 2009 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the Best Book and shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and ALS Gold Medal for his latest novel, The Slap. He wrote the collaborative dialogue Jump Cuts: An Autobiography with Sasha Soldatow and, as an artist, has also collaborated with photographer Zoe Ali on a series of exhibitions dealing with refuge and exile: Destination Unknown 1, 2 & 3. One of his more recent plays, Non Parlo di Salo, co-written with Spiro Economopoulos, is based on the censoring of director-poet Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film, Salo. He lives in Melbourne.
Meredith Turnbull is a Melbourne based artist, writer and curator. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Art History from Latrobe University in 2000 followed later by a Bachelor of Fine Art from RMIT University in 2005. She was editor of the online magazine ACCAMag between 2004 and 2005 and Project Manager/Assistant to the Artistic Director at ACCA from 2003-5. Recent exhibitions include Folded curated by Kyla McFarlane, Monash Art and Design Faculty Gallery, Caulfield; De Architectura, curated by Kirsten Rann, Level 17 Artspace, Victoria University, Melbourne; Transmission, Slide, Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; I Thought That Love Was Science Fiction, TCB art inc, Melbourne, 2008; Happiness is a Complex Form, The Narrows, Melbourne; AO, Peloton, Sydney, 2007 and Selekta, Westspace, Melbourne, 2006. Curatorial projects include Once More with Feeling, VCA Gallery, Melbourne, 2009, World’s End, Carlton Hotel and Studios, Melbourne, 2008 and Zonal Marx, VCA Gallery, Melbourne, 2007. Meredith is currently a member of the Next Wave Festival’s Curatorial Advisory Committee and Gallery Manager/Curator of the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery.
