Fifteen early career visual arts professionals have been selected from across Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand) to join Creative Australia’s (re)situate Biennale Delegates program.
The diverse group of delegates includes artists, curators, writers, producers, programmers, and arts workers, who will experience the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art in person, connect digitally with the Yokohama Triennale and travel to Venice for this year’s Venice Biennale. The program will facilitate the exchange of ideas, spark new perspectives, and lay the groundwork for future projects and collaborations.
Creative Australia’s Executive Director First Nations Arts and Culture, Franchesca Cubillo, said:
“This is an amazing opportunity for participants to gain international exposure and bring their insights back to enrich their local communities. In 2024, we’re particularly thrilled to support six First Nations participants, offering them a unique chance to explore diverse artistic expressions and program delivery in the context of world leading visual arts events.”
The 2024 Biennale Delegates Program is offered in partnership with Creative New Zealand as well as state and territory arts funding agencies. It is delivered in collaboration with the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and Yokohama Triennale. Additional access support for successful applicants has been made possible through the generosity of the Cross Family Foundations.
Creative New Zealand’s Manager, International Services & Initiatives, Amanda Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) says sending New Zealand artists as part of the delegates programme is a direct response the needs raised by the New Zealand creative sector.
“We heard our artists wanted more development opportunities overseas, so we’re proud to be partnering with Creative Australia for the first time to make this programme happen in 2024,” Amanda says.
“Aotearoa New Zealand has been presenting at the Venice Biennale for 20 years. The Delegates Programme, along with the artists invited to be part of the International Exhibition, means there will be a record number of New Zealand artists in Venice this year – an exciting milestone for our creative community.”
The Biennale Delegates Program has been running for over 12 editions and has supported the careers of generations of Australian artists and artworkers.
Media enquiries:
Brianna Roberts, Media Manager, Creative Australia
Mobile: 0498 123 541
Email: brianna.roberts@creative.gov.au
Participant Bios
Alice Castello
Alice Castello is an arts worker and emerging curator, living and working on unceded Kaurna land. She is the General Manager at Nexus Arts, a contemporary arts organisation fostering culturally diverse artistic practice and a Facilitator at fine print, an independent magazine cultivating critical and experimental discussion around contemporary art, both online and in shared spaces. Alice previously served as a Co-Director of FELTspace, an artist-run initiative and she holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) and Graduate Diploma in Arts and Cultural Management from the University of South Australia. Alice has a broad range of experience in the visual arts sector, spanning exhibition planning, curating, event coordination and the delivery of public programs.
Annika Aitkin
Annika Aitken is a writer and curator based in Naarm (Melbourne). She is currently Curator, Art Museums at the University of Melbourne where she works on exhibitions and publishing projects across Buxton Contemporary and the Potter Museum of Art. Previously, she worked at the National Gallery of Victoria and as co-editor of the first two editions of the NGV's critical imprint series. She has managed a range of arts projects across state, local government and the private sectors, and collaborative projects with artist-run organisations.
Aspen Beattie (Luritja, Warumungu and Yawuru)
Aspen is a Luritja, Warumungu and Yawuru woman from Mparntwe, Central Australia, working with the dynamic Desart team. Desart Inc is the peak body organisation, representing 38 Aboriginal Art and craft centres in the vast Central Desert regions of Australia. Aspen had her curatorial debut for the 2022 10-year celebration exhibition of the Desart Photography Prize and is currently the Assistant Curator for Desert Mob; an annual exhibition that in 2023 showcased over 200 artworks and facilitated a symposium, marketplace, satellite events and other programs. ‘Black Art’ was Aspen’s collection of Indigenous artworks she curated for the October Artbank window. She also completed a curatorial internship at the National Gallery of Australia in Ngambri (Canberra) for the prestigious Emily Kam Kngwarray Exhibition.
Bahar Sayed
Bahar Sayed is a writer and arts worker on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar. Currently, she is the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Bahar’s background spans theology, film, and visual arts, and takes interest in faith-based and cultural traditions within contemporary artistic practices. Her work has been featured in UnMagazine, Fremantle Arts Centre, Runway Magazine, Running Dog, West Space Gallery, Linden New Arts, amongst others.
Bilquis Ghani
Dr Bilquis Ghani is Lecturer at the University of Canberra in the Faculty of Arts and Design. Her research focuses on the aesthetics of resistance and the mobilisation of the creative process through moments of social and cultural rupture, with Kabul, Afghanistan, as a primary site of work. Bilquis is also co-founder and lead for Hunar Symposia, a collective of academics and artists creating spaces of decolonisation, discourse and collaboration between practice and theory. Through Hunar, Bilquis and her team explore creative responses to conflict, crisis and colonisation. She is also on the board of directors for HADIA foundation, an organization who run mobile libraries, multivitamin distribution and emergency support in Afghanistan. In 2011, Bilquis was a founding member of the refugee Art Project, working closely with Asylum seekers detained in Australian detention centres. Bilquis’s book, ‘Sociology from art praxis in Afghanistan: Expression and resistance in Kabul’ is forthcoming.
Eloise Breskvar
Eloise Breskvar is a passionate arts educator based in Naarm (Melbourne). She has over 12 years of experience working in arts and education contexts, for local, interstate, and international institutions. She has contributed to Visual Arts and STEAM learning outcomes for many interdisciplinary educational programs and projects in roles such as: Learning and Outreach Manager (Visual Arts), University of Melbourne; Education and Access Coordinator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); Learning Program Assistant and Curatorial Assistant for Top Arts at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV); and the VCAA Assistant Curator of Top Designs at the Melbourne Museum. Eloise has also participated in the esteemed internship program at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
Emily Jean Robertson (Palawa)
Emily is a proud Palawa woman from the Trawlwoolway people in the north-eastern part of Lutruwita, Tasmania. She is an Aboriginal Health Practitioner for her local Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service, a mum to seven beautiful children, four girls and three boys and married to husband Jason. Emily expresses herself creatively and loves to combine cultural practice with contemporary methods. She is an artist and cultural practitioner who enjoys exploring new ideas and pushing the limits of her imagination. She loves to work with natural materials such as kelp, fibres and shells and utilise them in contemporary designs. She continues to expand her skills and explore other mediums such as photography and digital graphic design and wishes to explore more around public art installations and sculpture.
Georgia Hayward (Mardigan)
Georgia Hayward [she/her] is an artist, writer and artsworker of Mardigan/Maranganji and Anglo-Celtic descent. Utilising the urban environment as both subject and substrate to investigate the construction of civic space in so-called Australia and its impacts on contemporary social dynamics and community development. Georgia investigates these ideas through social, spatial and digital practices to engage with polyphonic and polycentric readings of public space to cultivate relational, place-based and regenerative community outcomes. Based in Meanjin [Brisbane], Georgia works as the General Manager at Outer Space, a non-for-profit contemporary arts organisation focused on supporting the ambitious development and professionalised practice of emerging, early and mid-career artists. Driven by processes of knowledge-sharing and collaboration, Georgia’s practice also extends to her role as an Editor and incoming Co-Chair for Runway Journal, an experimental digital publication platform critically engaging with current threads of so-called Australian and international contemporary art.
Israel Randell (Rarotonga and Tainui, Ngāti Kahungunu)
Israel Randell is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, writer and maamaa of Cook Island (Rarotonga) and Māori (Tainui, Ngāti Kahungunu) descent. Her art practice explores the notions of innovation as tradition through installations, performances and spatial activations. Randell is the new Curator Toi Maori at City Gallery, her recent projects include curating for the Circuit Artist Film and Video Aotearoa Mason Screen and Marinade Pacific Arts Journal.
Jasmine Craciun (Barkindji, Malyangapa)
Jasmine is a Barkindji and Malyangapa multi-media artist and graphic designer residing on Gadigal land. While working predominantly in digital illustration and mural, her artistic practice also includes animation, sculpture, textile and installation. “I’m passionate about preserving the experiences of my grandparents especially my maternal grandmother. With her getting older, safekeeping her memories through art has become my priority. As a young Aboriginal woman, my Nan photographed her life in Far western NSW through a brownie box camera gifted to her by her mother. The images she captured of our family show us a joyous perspective not often seen in archival photos of Aboriginal people. The driving force in my current practice is my Nan and her ability to collect and gather not only verbal stories but also imagery in a country that tried so hard to erase her. I see my current practice as an obligation to her and all of my family.”
Linda Iriza
Linda Iriza is a Rwandan people weaver, creative producer, and community-aunty-in-training living on Whadjuk Country. Her work navigates African methodologies, ways of being and frameworks of collectiveness. Spanning across producing intimate writing workshops to large community gatherings, they continue to find ways of honouring traditions of dreaming up expansive worlds. She has worked with Perth Festival, Fremantle Arts Centre, Arts House, Studio Kiin, Community Arts Network, West Australian Music, Talanoa and the Ministry of Youth and Culture in Rwanda. Iriza is interested in learning more about the art of storytelling, Indigenous approaches to anti-colonial resistance, afropresentism and intersectional feminist work.
Matariki Williams (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi)
Matariki Williams (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi) is a doctoral candidate, curator, writer and editor in the arts and cultural sector. Previous roles include as Senior Historian, Mātauranga Māori at Manatū Taonga and Curator Mātauranga Māori at Te Papa Tongarewa. She co-authored Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance with Puawai Cairns and Stephanie Gibson and co-founded ATE Journal of Māori Art with Bridget Reweti. Her writing has appeared nationally and internationally in print publications including Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda, Māori Moving Image, Climates. Habitats. Environments., and online publications including frieze, Art in America, Pantograph Punch, and e-Tangata. Matariki is a committee member for the national Māori curatorial network and serves on the editorial board of the Turnbull Library Record journal. She is a Trustee on the Judith Binney Trust, and former board member of Museums Aotearoa, and Contemporary HUM.
Moorina Bonini (Yorta Yorta, Wurundjeri and Wiradjuri)
Moorina Bonini is a proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta Dhulunyagen family clan of Ulupna and the Yorta Yorta, Wurundjeri and Wiradjuri Briggs/McCrae family. Moorina is an artist whose works are informed by her experiences as an Aboriginal and Italian woman. Her practice attempts to disrupt and critique the eurocentric foundations that centralise Indigenous categorisation wi––thin western institutions. By unsettling the narrative placed upon Aboriginal people as a result of colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, Moorina’s practice is based within Indigenous Knowledge systems and brings this to the fore. Her work has been exhibited in various shows across Australia and also internationally. Galleries and Institutions include ACMI, The Shed (NY), Sydney Festival, Blak Dot Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Photography and the Koorie Heritage Trust. Most recent major commissions include Primavera: Young Australian Artists (2023) and her PhD exhibition across Bunjilaka Aboriginal Culture Centre, Melbourne Museum and MADA Gallery (2023).
Peggy Kasabad Lane (Saibai Koedal Awgadhalayg)
Peggy Kasabad Lane is a proud Saibai Koedal Awgadhalayg woman from the Guda Maluylgal Nation in Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait). She is the First Nations Curator at Cairns Regional Council which has two galleries – Court House Gallery and Tanks Arts Centre, and a third - Mulgrave Gallery opening in late 2024. Peggy was previously the Assistant Curator of Australian Indigenous Art at Cairns Art Gallery, Emerging Producer with Miriki Performing Arts, and has worked with the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. Peggy is an advocate of First Nations Arts and Culture in all forms of traditional and contemporary expression and advocates for the benefits and opportunities that the arts can create socially, culturally and economically. Her ethos as a First Nations Curator is to consider the spaces in which she works, the colonial history and trauma it represents for Indigenous people and create opportunities for healing by reclaiming the space and changing the narrative through thoughtful and meaningful exhibitions.
Samia Sayed
Living and working on the land of the Gadigal people, Samia Sayed is a contemporary artist, writer, producer, and performer. Sayed’s writing has been published in Runway Journal and she has co-authored a guideline for the National Association of Visual Arts. She has been part of performance residencies at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Artspace, and FirstDraft; exhibited at Fringe Festival (Melbourne), FirstDraft, Carriageworks, Campbelltown Arts Centre, PARI, Cement Fondu, Granville Arts Centre and West Space Offsite; performed at Day for Night, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Studio Stories, Queer Stories, Word in Hand; and is a co-founder of ‘Troppo Galaktika’ a party collective who have produced events at the Red Rattler, FirstDraft and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Sayed is currently working as a Public Program Producer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and is a Board Member at ReadyMade works Inc.
Contact details:
Brianna Roberts, Media Manager, Creative Australia
Mobile: 0498 123 541
Email: Brianna.Roberts@creative.gov.au
