Brook Andrew

Keynote Speaker Brook Andrew

Brook Andrew is a conceptually driven artist who challenges cultural and historical perception, using installation, text and image to comment on local and global issues regarding race, consumerism and history.

His recent inflatable artworks Jumping Castle War Memorial for the 17th Biennale of Sydney, and The Cell, commissioned by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, are hypnotic, immersive, inflatable installations asking viewers to participate in often sticky and contentious issues. Decorated with patterns based on Wiradjuri tradition, the inflatable cell draws on themes concerning the loss of cultural identity, hypnotism, consumerism and perception, challenging truth. Brooks interests take him from blow-up PVC structures to working collaboratively with print makers and within museum collections. His interest in diverse mediums and collaborative experiences aims at a richer engagement with ideas and philosophy to encourage new ways of thinking and making work, and to push pre-conceived boundaries of experience and perception.

Brook Andrew works installations include neon, performance, sculpture, video and print-media. He was the recipient of the Australia Council ISCP residency, New York 2008–09; The Exotic Human. Other cultures as amusement. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Holland, and Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent, Belgium 2009; South Project at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo residency, Santiago 2006; Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship 2001 and a residency at Gasworks and Goldsmiths College, University of London 2000. Reviews include, Rawling, A. Brook Andrew: Archives of the Invisible in ‘Art Asia Pacific’. Issue 69 MAY/JUNE 2010. New York. Pgs 110-117; Gardner, A. Brook Andrew: Sensation and Sensory Politics, in ‘Art & Australia’. Vol 47, No 4, 2010. Publications include Future Images 2010, Theme Park 2008, Current: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand 2008, Eye to Eye 2007 and Hope and Peace 2005.

Jon Hawkes

Panelist Jon Hawkes

Sometime circus strongman, underground press editor, lighthouse keeper and bookseller, Jon is the author of the groundbreaking ‘The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: culture’s essential role in public planning’ (Common Ground, 01) and is one of Australia’s leading commentators on cultural policy. ‘Fourth pillar thinking’ has spread worldwide, with Jon making presentations in the USA, Canada, Spain and New Zealand. He is the Resident Cultural Analyst with the Cultural Development Network of Victoria and has been Director of Community Music Victoria (01-08), a Fellow of the Community Cultural Development Board (Australia Council) (04-05), Director of the Australian Centre of the International Theatre Institute (91-98), Director of the Community Arts Board of the Australia Council (82-87) and was a founding member of Circus Oz and the Australian Performing Group (Pram Factory).

Magdalena Moreno

Panelist Magdalena Moreno

Secretary, Arts Industry Council Victoria

CEO, Kultour; Chair, The South Project

Chilean-born Melbourne creative producer, Magdalena Moreno has managed the South Project since 2004. She has presented at several local and international symposia on themes relating to networks, arts projects & partnerships, and public art in Latin America and the south, including the World Cultural Summit, Brazil (November 2006). After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1997, Magdalena undertook an ethics research fellowship in Paris, based at the International Council of Museums (UNESCO) as the 1999 recipient of the Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Fellowship. She sits on the Public Art Advisory Panel for the City of Melbourne, advisory board for RMIT School of Art, steering committee member of the Network of International Foundations and Tras-national Networks, and has just been appointed Board member of the Arts Industry Council (Victoria). Magdalena is a 2008 Fellow of Asialink’s Leaders Program. Magdalena is currently CEO of Kultour.

Marcus Westbury

Panelist Marcus Westbury. Photo: Narinda Reeders

Marcus Westbury is a broadcaster, writer, media maker and festival director who has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural projects and events. He has also worked across a range of media as a writer, producer, director and presenter covering fields as diverse as culture, art, media, urban planning, sport and politics.

In 2008 Marcus founded Renew Newcastle with his own funds and energy. It’s a low budget, not for profit, DIY urban renewal scheme that has brokered access to 25 empty buildings for creative enterprises, artists and cultural projects in his home town of Newcastle, NSW.

Renew Newcastle is unique scheme that has attracted interest from around the world. It has been described as “a clever partial solution” (Time.com), “a smart, inspired way to deal with unused spaces that might otherwise be left to ruin” (Inside Out), “the transformation of the city centre” (The Newcastle Herald), “an incredible success …. both to assist the business community in the area while simultaneously [giving] a boost to local artists and designers” (ABC TV), “overwhelmingly positive, with the CBD finally starting to re-emerge” (Jetstar in-flight magazine), “There is genius in this … wow!”(wired.com) and “reviving the city” (Daily Telegraph).

In 2007 and 2008 Marcus was the writer and presenter of Not Quite Art on ABC1. Over two three part series Not Quite Art was variously been described as “the kick up the arse Australia’s TV arts needed” (Arts Hub), “the freshest, most illuminating, thoughtful and funny locally made arts program in years” (The Age), “a delightful, witty and above all intelligent journey” (Stilgherian), “informative, provocative and mind-blowing. Everything the ABC should be proud to be about” (Margaret Pomeranz) and proof that “coverage of the arts can be arresting, provocative and relevant” (The Age). The series was awarded the “Best Arts Show of the Year” in 2008 and short listed as of the best documentaries of 2009 by The Sydney Morning Herald. Marcus has also appeared as panelist on ABC TV programs including QandA, Vulture, Critical Mass and Recovery.

Marcus has also appeared regularly on ABC Local radio. This has included hosting and co-hosting programs on 1233 ABC Newcastle and 774 ABC Melbourne and taking on on-air projects such as choosing which AFL team to support by going to games with fans of all 16 clubs or trying his hand at 8 Olympic sports. In the past he has also had regular roles on ABC 702 Sydney (as a culture and technology commentator) and has appeared often on Radio National and Triple J.

Marcus has worked on a range of pioneering projects in online media. In 2007 he created and project managed the howshouldivote.com.au website with GetUp! and Yahoo7 – the site produced personalised how to vote cards for 150,000 Australians (more than one percent of eligible voters) in the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election. In the past he worked as a project manager for ABC Online and Radio National, developing the online models of forums, interactive programming and audio downloads that are now common on that network and in the 1990s he was the manager of the Australia Council’s LOUD and Noise media festivals responsible for projects described by The Sydney Morning Herald as “as good as anything achieved on the web in Australia, and probably better.”

As a festival director Marcus was a founder of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival. This Is Not Art is now Newcastle’s largest annual tourism event and one the largest media arts events in the world. From 2002 to 2006 Marcus was the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival and was a director of Festival Melbourne 2006, the Cultural Program of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. He also co-founded Free Play, Australia’s largest independent computer games developers conference.

Marcus currently works part time with the The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation and is a fellow of The Centre for Policy Development (a public interest think tank dedicated to promoting alternative voices in Australia’s public debate). He currently writes a weekly column for The Age newspaper and has co-written an arts guidebook for the Australia Council, a love-hate tourist guide to Newcastle and his writing about media, culture and politics has been published in Griffith REVIEW, Meanjin, Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Spinach7 magazine, several anthologies, journals, and countless web sites.

Marcus is currently a member of the Federal governments’ Creative Australia Advisory Panel. He has sat on Committees of The Australia Council, Arts Victoria, NSW Ministry for the Arts, The Australian Film Commission and numerous agencies and was a delegate to Australia’s 2020 Summit. Marcus is currently based in Melbourne and working on projects in Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle.

Ben Eltham

Panelist Ben Eltham

Ben Eltham was the founding director of new culture festival Straight Out of Brisbane and assistant manager of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival, before producing events for festivals including Melbourne Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Valley Fiesta, the Brisbane Festival and Woodford Folk Festival. Ben also writes regularly about the arts and culture: he was a music and theatre critic for the Courier-Mail for five years in the 2000s and is now Crikey.com.au’s arts correspondent. Ben is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and is completing a PhD in cultural policy at the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Research.

Virginia Maywald

Facilitator Virginia Maywald

Virginia is an Arts business consultant, Designer and (sometimes) Cook. She grew up in Waikerie, South Australia and moved to Adelaide to study at the South Australian School of Art (now UNISA), majoring in ceramics and graduating in 1982. Virginia has taken an entrepreneurial approach to art and design and has always aimed to earn a living from what she produces. I n 1988, along with business partner Tim Dolan, she set up the Big Duck and Fish Co., a manufacturing pottery that grew to design, produce and export plates to hotels and restaurants both in Australia and overseas. In 2005, no longer desiring to compete with Chinas industrial might, the company ceased production.

Virginia now runs an Arts Business and Marketing consultancy. She also works as workshop facilitator with AMAG ( arts management advisory group ).

Virginia feels strongly about the disenfranchisement of our arts practitioners whose creative input helps form great suburbs and towns, but ultimately excludes them when they can no longer afford to live in these places, whose desirability they helped create.

Observing the large number of artists moving to regional Australia, Virginia works with local councils, assisting with developing business and marketing strategies for this growing cultural community.

When not on the road she lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children and fills the creative void by cooking for her family and friends.