NAVA: in conversation

Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, Cr Jess Scully in conversation with Penelope Benton about the importance of having more creative people in politics and in government and how to get involved at a local level.

"I was thinking a lot about what an art museum of Indigenous moving image work from this region, the Great Ocean and all its shores would look like and how it would feel. And to use the words that we have in English, how do you archive living knowledge of bodies? How do you go beyond shame? How do you bring all these things together?" - Dr Léuli Eshrāghi

Dr Léuli Eshrāghi is an artist, curator, writer, and researcher from the Samoan archipelago and Persian ancestries. Léuli's creative practice is based around performance, installation and curatorial projects primarily working with the body, language, ceremony and positive futures for First Nations peoples and cultures, in addition to regularly featuring in publications and contributing to the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (Canada) on the board. In this episode of NAVA: In Conversation, Georgia and Léuli chat about global First Peoples collaboration, language, display culture and improving our First Nations leadership in institutions in Australia.

Wansolwara: One Salt Water is showing at UNSW Galleries until 18 April 2020

Mandy Quadrio is a contemporary artist and doctoral candidate at Queensland College of the Arts with the Griffith University. Her multidisciplinary practice is intertwined with her proud Palawa identity in her ancestral country of Tebrakunna, Coastal Plains Nation on the lands colonially referred to as North-East of Tasmania.


In this podcast, Mandy talks to Justine Youssef about her work 'Here lies lies' showing at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's Bond Store Basement as part of Hobiennale 2019.

"The artist doesn't have to be starving. It should not be starving. It is not the way that it should be. You should be able to be an artist and sustain yourself."

In this episode, NAVA's Executive Director, Esther Anatolitis, is in conversation with Renuka Bauri, Director of Communications and Advocacy for Canadian Artists Representation / Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC National).

CARFAC was established by artists in 1968 and promotes the national voice of Canada’s professional visual artists; promotes a socio-economic climate that is conducive to the production of visual arts in Canada; and conducts research and engages in public education for these purposes.

In this podcast, Eme, artist and member of the Anticolonial Asian Alliance, is in conversation with Soo-Min Shim from NAVA's Membership and Communications team.

Eme is an interdisciplinary Filipinx artist based in Sydney - Gadigal land. Identity and personal experience are the driving force to their art practice where ideas are transformed into objects, installations, and naturally, action; a collective experience of creating spaces that welcome inclusivity, diversity, dialogue, self-expression, self-determination, reflection and healing.

Anticolonial Asian Alliance are a group of Asian peoples living on unceded land, and working in solidarity with First Nations communities and elders to dismantle colonialism.

In this podcast, Latai Taumoepeau speaks with NAVA’s Professional Development Coordinator, Justine Youssef, about her practice relative to climate justice and the environmental, ethical and political effects of climate change in the Pacific region. Further to this Latai, shares ideas on how the art sector can transform the conversation around climate change and translate it into action.

Latai Taumoepeau is a contemporary Punake — a body-centred performance artist whose powerful artistic practice tells the stories of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga, and her birthplace of the Eora Nation, Sydney. Working in durational performance and documenting it through photographs, she addresses issues of race, class and the female body. In her recent practice, Taumoepeau explores the effects of climate change in the Pacific, probing existing power structures and the looming possibility of dispossession that many island communities face.

Recorded live at the launch of Arts Day on the Hill and the inauguration of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Contemporary Arts and Culture, Co-Chaired by John Alexander, Maria Vamvakinou, and Adam Bandt. Hosted by Esther Anatolitis, we also heard from guest speakers including the Minister and Shadow Minister for the Arts and Welcome to Country by Aunty Matilda House.

Arts Day on the Hill is a new program presented by the National Association by the Visual Arts (NAVA) to create an annual national focus on advocacy for the arts.

https://visualarts.net.au/nava-events/2019/arts-day-hill/

“I think we'll see organisations essentially deciding which artists get supported as opposed to artists applying directly to a funding body… There's independence at stake: the idea that artists can maintain independent practices where they instigate projects that may or may not operate within an institutional context...”

This podcast looks at Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo’s collaboration Make or Break and what happens when arts policy neglects artists.

Make or Break is a collaboration between Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo that began in 2015. Make or Break has worked across gallery, institution, festival and nightclub contexts to produce a range of process-based art projects. These have included creating experimental economies that address precarity and privilege; using galleries as live work spaces; performing personal admin for an audience; co-writing texts; circulating fictional currencies; making books; celebrating the invisible labour of strangers; and facilitating conversations and workshops as alternatives to traditional forms of research. Make or Break is passionate about exposing the role and visibility of labour, process and the artist/audience relationship in ways that question and challenge the social and political systems that surround us.

NAVA in conversation

Logo by Laura Pike

Music by Marcus Whale

Editing by Bec Stegh

Genevieve Grieves in conversation with NAVA's Wesley Shaw and Georgia Mokak about her current role teaching students about decolonisation at the Art Gallery NSW as part of their annual Djamu Indigenous Art program, as well as her role as Head of the newly formed First Peoples Department at Museums Victoria, and developing a practice and knowledge around decolonisation more broadly.

Esther Anatolitis in conversation with artists Abdul Abdullah, Çigdem Aydemir and Harriet Body presented in partnership with Parramatta Artist Studios as part of Movers and Makers 2019.