2010

In 2010 over 60 artists were involved in the program, with critical commentary, thoughtful pondering, hands-on creativity and even some maniacal musing. Download a PDF of the 2010 Critical Animals program here, or take a look at our 2010 artists…

CA Co-Director Aden Rolfe is a Melbourne-based writer, curator and radiomaker whose work traverses poetry, collage and cultural studies. He is interested in crows, memory and poetics.

Amy Spiers is an artist interested in socially engaged and participatory art. Some of her projects include The Photobooth Project, which won the Best Special Event Award at 2006 Melbourne Fringe Festival; Agents of Proximity, a collaboration with Victoria Stead which presented an artist-run travel service in Brunswick during the 2008 Next Wave Festival; and Sob Stories a handkerchief exchange that took place at the 2010 Tiny Stadiums Festival. Amy has also been a guest speaker on interdisciplinary and socially engaged art practice at TINA and the Melbourne Emerging Writer’s Festival.

Andrew Ramadge is an Australian journalist and music critic. He has written for Mess+Noise, Overland and The Weekend Australian and writes about technology for news.com.au.

Anna Westbrook is currently a Phd candidate in English at UNSW, after completing her honours in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney in 2007. Anna is interested in fictionally exploring the rupture and displacement of gender roles, the growth of queer subculture and the cementing of Australian mythologies of masculinities in the aftermath of World War Two. Critically, she like monsters, the carnivalesque, the abject, affect and embodiment, historiography, liminality and demented descants about politics/erotics/poetics.

Ari Chand is a Newcastle artist and illustrator predominantly working in watercolour and 2-D mediums. He explores the importance of the natural world, creativity and beauty in artistic practice. Moving from Queensland to study at the University of Newcastle, he has been motivated and inspired by Newcastle’s growing focus on Natural History illustration. The ability to uphold the importance of nature’s gifts and having an eco-friendly relationship with this earth is essential.

Astrid Lorange is a PhD student at UTS, working on the poetry of Gertrude Stein, the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and early twentieth-century philosophies of science. In 2008 she was the co-director of Critical Animals. In 2009 and 2010 she has been a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, working alongside the English and Comparative Literature departments and with the Kelly Writers House. In Sydney, 2010 her poetry was exhibited in Geometries of Attention, a collaborative project with new-media artist René Christen. She is currently writing her thesis, working on a manuscript of poems, and teaching.

Bastian Fox Phelan is a writer/musician/zinemaker/trans activist from Sydney. They talk a lot about gender & queer shit and they especially like getting fancy.

Bella Li is a Melbourne poet and musician. Her poems have been published in Meanjin, Cordite and the Paradise Poetry Anthology. She is one of the featured poets in the Melbourne Poetry Map project, launched at the Overload Poetry Festival in September this year.

Ben Byrne is an artist, musician, tutor, researcher, writer, radio producer and curator who lives and works in Melbourne and is currently writing a PhD.

Brendan Murphy teaches in the Bachelor of Multimedia Studies at the Rockhampton campus Central Queensland University. He specialises in design, digital audio and video and digital photography. Brendan is a practising photographer with a fondness for the Chinese Holga and other cheap plastic cameras. He prefers to work with and develop medium format film, then turn the negatives into digital files.

Briohny Doyle has published poetry and criticism in Overland, Going Down Swinging, Ampersand, Voiceworks and Cordite. Her short fiction is anthologized by Cardigan Press and Noise. In 2008 she received an Ausco grant to write the solo spoken word show Meet me at The End, which was first staged in a closed off subway as part of Melbourne Fringe 2009. She has performed spoken word at the Art Gallery of NSW, MCA Sydney, and the Melbourne and Sydney Writers’ festivals. In 2010 she is an Asialink resident at Hiroshima City University, Japan, working on a collection of prose poems about apocalypse and the cinematic imagination. Her website is passionpoppistol.blogspot.com.

Bronwen Kamasz is a Melbourne-based puppeteer and performing artist. Her background is in the visual arts. Trained as a sculptor in WA, Bronwen developed her practise as an installation and performance artist. Puppets and dolls formed an aspect of her critical and creative explorations and in 2008 she was inspired by a symposium on puppetry at UNIMA puppet festival in Perth 2008 to apply to the VCA to do a postgrad in Puppetry in 2009. Her central thesis is an investigation in Australian stories that continue to resonate culturally across time from colonial times to now.

Catherine Connolly’s video installation work examines representation in and the hyperbolic language of popular culture, particularly in cinema, and the ways in which this enforces, subverts or complicates ideas of gender, performativity and space. Her work investigates the relationships people have with these forms of representation as well as their performers. Her practice also includes painting, drawing, sculpture and curating. She has exhibited in and curated for both artist run initiatives and public galleries, including Conical, Bus Projects, Gertrude Contemporary Art Space’s Slide and Centre of Contemporary Photography.

In 2008 Chris Morgan began postgraduate study after many years of teaching visual art. His research involves an exploration of identity in a non-contextual mode focusing on the creation of a sense of being through exhibits that allow audiences to participate and reflect on human existence. He draws upon his teaching experience to connect the universal aspects of the infant world activity to this sense of being. He works with photography for a moment in time and the moving image to create a sense of moving forward in a climate of optimism through the surrealist qualities attributed to both mediums.

Corey Wakeling is a writer of fiction and poetry based in Melbourne. He has been published in Etchings, Peril, Otoliths, and Yomimono. His performance piece The Cherry Revolver was performed at Perth’s Artrage 2005 by his band of jazz improvisers, and collaborated on Joshua Comyn’s The Girl Who Fell Asleep. He is currently completing a PhD in English at the University of Melbourne.

Dan Koop is variously an artist and producer of new performances and events, and has worked at BAC (London), Brisbane Powerhouse and Sydney Festival.

At an early age Ekarasa Prem became actively involved in arts and creative scene. Experimental photography was her first expression with solo and collective exhibitions. In the past years she’s created and exhibited work on the theme of the circle and its sacred geometries. Meditation and singing has been an important part of her creative process and has deepened her realization of the unity between shape, color and sound. The circle is a powerful tool and by using it and other art forms she seeks out new artistic expressions utilizing a range of media in collaborative installations as a means of raising awareness, and compassion for ourselves and our environment.

CA Coordinator Ella O’Keefe has produced programs for The Night Air on ABC Radio National and has recorded a series of interviews and readings with Australian poets for Final Draft, a books and writing program on community radio station 2SER FM. In 2009 she completed an honours thesis at UTS examining the poetry of Barbara Guest.

Sydney-based free improv trio Espadrille uses traditional instruments (tenor saxophone, guitar, drum kit) and various generations of technology/electronics (radio, 1980s effects pedals, non-keyboard synthesizers). Their approach may encompass ambient, noise, groove and motivic elements, rejecting the sometimes implicit notion that free improvisation has itself become a genre typified by noisy and frenetic assaults. Their debut album, First Wave, was released in March 2010. Espadrille consists of John Encarnacao – radio, guitar and electronics; Joshua Isaac – drums and noises; Brendan Smyly – tenor saxophone and electronics.

Gareth Jenkins lectures in experimental writing practices at various Sydney-based universities. He was awarded his PhD, which explored the Outsider writing of Anthony Mannix and his schizophrenic cosmology, in 2008. His theoretical work focuses on avant-garde literature and art-makers that have experienced mental illness. He holds a Masters degree in psychology and has presented and published research in Australia, Europe and the U.S.A. He produces creative works of poetry, new media and hybrid performance. He is on the editorial board of the online literary journal Vitalpoetics, where he writes regular blog posts.

Harriet Johnson is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Sydney University, interested in the tradition of continental philosophy and has previously worked on the philosophical reception of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin.

Hayley Singer is completing her Honours in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. Her current study focus is titled Painted Worlds. This study is on the invocation of painted images within written works. Her focus is specifically on the painted world of Frida Kahlo. In 2009 Hayley travelled to Mexico for research. “As the fruits of light, paintings should be viewed under the artist’s native sun” (Herbert). In 2009 Hayley was first place recipient of the Grace Marion Wilson Literary Competition for Literary Non-Fiction with her work, Life: an Exercise in Words.

Hugh Davies is an artist, researcher and former content producer at ABC Television Multiplatform. Hugh is currently employed in academia and is Chair of the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

Imogen Heath is a filmmaker and artist from Sydney, who is currently living in Berlin, Germany. Her work is concerned with experiential installation, corrupted narratives rupturing on the simultaneity of existence, exposing or concealing themselves through multiple screens and disconnected points of view. Imogen takes delight in discovering come what may from experimenting and questioning form, the intersection of sound and image, and the meaning created amongst the waves between making, perception and imagination. Imogen has won awards for cinematography, directing and experimental filmmaking. She is currently trying to decide between commencing a Masters in Fine Arts or Philosophy.

Imogen Semmler is a documentary researcher, an independent arts producer, and has moonlighted as a radio presenter. She’s been involved with numberous arts and music festivals including The Great Escape, Sydney Festival, Live Bait, The Melbourne Comedy Festival and The Edinburgh Fringe, and is founder and director of Underbelly Arts, for emerging and experimental arts in Sydney.

Ivan Cheng approaches performance with a yearning for clarity. He uses music, movement, aesthetic notions, and sensory assault to devise work.

Ivan Smith is a physical theatre practitioner, graduate of NICA, co-creator of The Red Button, and has been performing locally and internationally since 2001.

Jade Muratore contributes regularly to Slit Magazine and studies Art Theory at COFA, UNSW. Her work focuses on the gaze, female sexual agency, abject, shame, power, and exploring pluralities of Queer and Femme identities through visual image.

Jal Nicholl is a poet living in Melbourne. His work has appeared in various places online and in print, most recently Otoliths, Arena and The Age.

Janet Starr is studying at the University of Western Sydney and is in the final stages of a PhD that uses theories of affect, gender politics and cultural analysis in order to investigate the fag hag identity. Janet organises a fag hag float in the Sydney Mardi Gras each year and believes that the growing number of women who register for the event is convincing evidence that the fag hag identity is now considered to be an important part of gay culture. Janet believes that her dissertation will add to the limited amount of research that exists into the cultural significance of the relationship between women and gay men.

Jennifer Hamilton is completing a thesis on storms in Shakespeare. She teaches English at UNSW and has begun freelance arts writing for publications like New Matilda. In her free time she rides a bike and helps her garden grow.

Jessica Wilkinson is a Melbourne poet. Her work has appeared in several Australian and international journals including Southerly, Overland, HOW2 and UNUSUAL WORK.

Jiann Hughes is a digital media artist and interaction designer. A PhD candidate at the University of Technology Sydney she is undertaking a practice-based investigation into embodied interactivity in digital art works. Her creative practice encompasses a number of mediums including photography, video, sound, and interactive media. Her research practice explores innovative ways of engaging the public with issues of forced displacement. She has focused on digital interactivity in projects with humanitarian organisations working extensively with asylum seekers and refugees. Jiann has been a practicing zen yoga therapist for over ten years.

John Encarnacao is a performer and composer with a field of interest that extends from song-based work to free improvisation. He lectures in music performance and music analysis at the University of Western Sydney.

Joshua Comyn was born, raised and educated in South Africa. He is a writer of poetry and short fiction as well as a performance-maker. Past performances include The Girl Who Fell Asleep (PICA, Putting On An Act 2006) and Crow (Theatre Works, Moving Works, 2009). He is currently living in Melbourne.

Karma Barnes recently returned home to NZ from a artist residency at the El Hayelo centre of Colombia, where she developed a series of site-specific installations works in the desert of Villa de Leyva. She has exhibited internationally in Europe, North America and Latin America. Her artistic career has spanned an array of creativity ranging through fine-arts, installation work, multi-media, textiles, masks and performance art. Her intention is to research the collective responsibility of the artist and the higher purpose of art, in order to awaken the ceremonial relationship to life that lies within the human conscience.

Keri Glastonbury teaches creative writing at the University of Newcastle, is editor for Local Consumption Publications, poetry editor for Overland and interested in fostering new local writing.

Lisa Dempster is a: writer (Neon Pilgrim); editor (The Australian Veg Food Guide); publisher (Vignette Press); Festival Director (Emerging Writers’ Festival); and blogger (lisadempster.com.au).

Lucinda Strahan is a lecturer in the School of Media and Communication. She has worked extensively as an arts journalist, writer and critic and presented the panel “Contemporary Art and the Mainstream Media” at TiNA ’08.

Mike Rosenthal has worked on the logistical and curatorial side of electronic music since founding The Tank, a Manhattan-based performance space for the emerging arts, in 2003. He curated hundreds of experimental music events at The Tank, and from that position co-founded two annual festivals of electronic music – Blip Festival and Bent Festival – which are now in their fifth and seventh years respectively. With his Blip Festival partners Josh Davis and Jeremiah Johnson, Mike helps oversee the 8bitpeoples record label of chip music and organizes Blip Festival events around the world. He is also the digital and online strategy manager for the rock band OK Go as well as the manager of their label, Paracadute.

Miranda Wheen is a dancer and choreographer. She has a BA(Dance) and is currently completing an Honours thesis on the special relationship a dancer has with their pelvis. This is partly inspired by studying traditional and contemporary African dance at Ecole des Sables, School of the Sands, in Senegal and partly from messing around in empty studios. She is a member of Mirramu Dance Company and Shaun Parker and Company, which premiered Happy As Larry as this year’s Sydney Festival. She is also a regular performer in the Sydney independent dance scene. Traditional dance techniques and rhythms have deeply informed her movement style and vocabulary.

Miyuki Jokiranta is a radio-maker, a linguist and dilettante festival director. She has freelanced for National Public Radio, WFMU, the ABC, free103.9, YLE and Radio Itinerante producing pieces on acoustic ecology, cultural poverty reduction, youth AIDS, and societal snapshots for spacetime capsules. Recently she has become interested in how art can push the sustainability frontline and set up the not-for-profit, seven thousand oaks, as a vehicle for the arts to contribute, engage and shape the sustainability dialogue. In Winter 2010, seven thousand oaks hosted its inaugural festival with over 20 artists presenting works in and outside venues across Melbourne.

Naomi Milthorpe is a Canberra writer and arts worker. She is publicist at The Street Theatre, literature tutor at ANU and until recently was editor of Exhibitionist in BMA Magazine.

Nat Grant is a percussionist, sound-artist, composer and teacher whose experiences include playing in pop, classical, experimental and new music groups. In 2009 she branched out on her own under the name ‘mellow kitty’, and some of her first performances in this format were at the Y2K9 International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz, California. She was the first Australian artist to perform at this festival in its 9-year history, and has been invited back in 2010. Nat works predominantly as a freelance artist and her experiences as a performer also encompass orchestral, theatre and session work, as well as new compositions for puppetry, theatre and dance. She is currently studying her Master’s of Music (performance/composition) at the VCA, and performs regularly at venues around Melbourne.

nick keys has grazed knees from doing too many slide tackles at soccer. how many hours a day do you have to be thinking about soccer before you clinically qualify as obsessed? this obsession will really be put to the test in june 2010 when he will be starting a masters in fine arts at bard college in upstate new york. this intensive summer semester clashes directly with the world cup in south africa. perhaps if he makes art based on the structural patterns of a soccer game then everything wil be ok.

Pauline Manley has been a dancer for many years. Through phenomenology, movement became an act of discovery, freed from tyranny of past knowledge and sedimented habit. Improvisation is the performance ever unfolding.

Pip Stafford‘s practice includes instructive and interactive works concerned with personal rituals and group communication. She has shown at the Next Wave Festival, Six A Artist Run Initiative and Casula Powerhouse.

The Red Button is a performance company focused on exploring new territory through collaboration. Their latest project, ‘Object Manipulation Research Lab’, challenges the concept of experimental by involving the audience in the experiment. It is a true experiment in that the researchers, along with the audience, do not know what the results of their research will be.

Ryszard Dabek is an artist and full-time lecturer in Film and Digital Art at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Much of his work coalesces around ideas engaged with the recent past and in particular the idea of a present haunted by the spectral vestiges of Modernity.

Sam Henning is Australia’s premier expert in Bubbleuation and brass instrument disembowelling, with a MDA in anything he can make up.

CA Co-director Sarah Caufield has mail delivered to both Melbourne and Vancouver. She plays with community radio, photography, music from the fringes, bicycles, cultural theory, sustainable design, food politics and asking ‘Why?’.

CA Coordinator Scott Brewer is a PhD candidate in contemporary Australian literature at the University of Newcastle. Occasionally, he teaches there too, but for the most part he loiters round the photocopier. He has recently been published in JASAL.

Siobhan Hodge is a 21-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of Western Australia, and her thesis aims to identify a feminist tradition in Sapphic-inspired poetry through images of obsession. Born in the UK, Siobhan lives alternately in Australia and Hong Kong, and is particularly interested in literary explorations of intersections between gender, race and culture. She is an aspiring author, occasional literary critic, and poetry enthusiast who divides her time between PhD studies, karate, training and obsessing over horses, and making biscuit-themed jewellery.

Sonja Hornung is a Melbourne-based student interested in art and art-writing. She has recently returned from study in Berlin and is currently working towards Honours in Visual Media. Her work has featured in group exhibitions at George Paton Gallery, the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and MUDFEST. Sonja uses simple materials to document the gap between ideals and reality and is interested in art as a form of social interaction and as a means to enact a narrative, to tell a truth.

Stu Hatton is a Melbourne-based poet, blogger and freelancer who teaches writing and editing at Deakin University. His interests include remixing text, addiction and chin-stroking. He has a book in the pipeline entitled How to be Hungry. You can find him at www.stuhatton.net.

Tega Brain is an artist and engineer whose background includes studies in environmental engineering, physics and visual art. Her transdisciplinary practice aims to destroy the silos and explore new perspectives an the intersection of these fields. Her work playfully focuses on technology and the environment.

Tim Wright is a PhD candidate at Monash University, writing about contemporary Australian poetry.

Tom Lee is a PhD candidate with the Writing and Society Research Group at UWS. His PhD topic is constituted by a preoccupation with W. G. Sebald’s prose fiction, he someday hopes to write books on the significance and hypnotic capacity of parking cones, a poetic history of hairdressing, and a narrative tribute to pop icon Roisin Murphy. He lives in Annandale, eats dates, drinks tea, prefers Bronte beach, and is presently listening to the T. V. over his left shoulder.

Tully Arnot creates large scale inflated sculptures and architectural spaces. Originally exploring different geometric or figurative structures, he has since moved towards the use of found materials to influence final forms. The nature of these remnants defines the shape of the work, resulting in more abstract forms. This process also produces innovative surfaces, which layer it with reference to their previous manifestation.

Waldo Garrido is a PhD candidate at the Macquarie University where he was awarded an APA Scholarship. Waldo has a Master of Design Science from the University of Sydney and a BA First Class Honours (Contemporary Music Studies) from Macquarie University. Waldo is also a lecturer and tutor at Macquarie University. Waldo has written and produced two Latin solo albums; ‘Dejame Tocarte’, a South American release through Sony, and ‘Loco’, released by FMG. Waldo was a member of the Catholics. As a composer/producer he has worked with artists like: Disco Montego, Mark Walton, and Anthony Copping.