2011 PROGRAM

Laura Castagnini is a Melbourne based curator, writer, and member of Wemakeus collective. She is currently the Curatorial Assistant at Anna Pappas Gallery and was recently awarded the NAVA Curator Mentorship Award to fund the development of a project about humour and feminist art to be held at Margaret Lawrence Gallery in 2013. In 2010 Laura lived in New York on an Australia Council grant to fund an internship at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Feminist Art Centre, Brooklyn Museum, while simultaneously working at MoMA Ps1 as the Administrative Intern in the Director’s Office. In 2010 she curated “Re/Gendered” at Platform Artist Group Inc., finished a thesis about feminist contemporary art and produced Tape Projects’ ’100 Proofs’ exhibition for the 2010 Next Wave Festival. She was the 2009 Curator in Residence at Platform Artist Inc., and in 2008 she co-initiated and managed an artist run space, O Projects. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma (Art History) from University of Melbourne, a Bachelor of Visual Art (Painting) from Monash University and has exhibited in Australia, Italy and Japan.

Eileen Chong is a Sydney poet and an Australian Poetry Fellow for 2010-2011. Her chapbook will be published in November 2011. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Creative Arts at UWS.

Tess Chudy is currently completing a PHD in creative writing at Southern Cross University. She us especially interested in the intersection of gothic and noir and the role of the landscape in fiction and the idea of creating an internal reality in my work. She is also a visual artist and has lived on the mid north coast of NSW all her life.

Michael Farrell has published a handful of books including most recently thempark and Out of the Box: Contemporary Lesbian and Gay Poets(coedited with Jill Jones). He is writing a Phd on the ‘unsettled texts of early Australia’.

Sj Finch is a PhD student at Curtin University. He manages a literary journal called ‘dotdotdash’. He lives in squalor and is allergic to bees.

Emma Fraser is currently completing her MA Thesis on Walter Benjamin and ruins, which sometimes involves photographing decaying buildings in Pripyat, New York, Berlin.

Clancy Wilmott is in between and doing this for fun, having recently completed an Honours degree in mobile mapping. In the meantime she’s searching for a map to the future.

Rebecca Giggs is a writer from Western Australia, recently relocated to Sydney. Her work concerns critical interventions in environmental crisis.

Keri Glastonbury is a lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Newcastle and past Director of Critical Animals.

Iolanthe Iezzi is a Melbourne based artist working primarily in the mediums of film and video. She also works with photography, sculpture, installation and short story writing.

Nick Keys is a writer based in sydney, also studying an mfa at bard college, in new york.

Sophie Lamond is a student. She is writing a thesis about polar art, currently she is not sure if she will finish before the ice caps melt.

Leah Landau is a graduate of Postgraduate Dance Animateuring (VCA 2010). She has performed in works by Gareth Hart, Martin del Amo and Dario Varcirca, and considers Ros Warby, Helen Herbertson, Silvia Mercuriali (Rotozaza), Nikki Heywood and Teresa Blake (desoxy Theatre) as strong influences on her current work. Most recent highlights include choreographing and performing in her own solo improvised work Shedding (2010) and two thanks (2010), choreography and direction for Holiday (Winner of Best Production, MudFest 2009) and various musicals, plays and revues.

Astrid Lorange is a PhD student, teacher and poet. Her books include Eating and Speaking, Minor Dogs and Pussy pussy pussy what what: Or aux lait day aux lait day.

Joe Mariglio is a sound artist who often explores alternative forms of narrative and masculinity with his work. He typically uses techniques associated with popular music in subversive, unexpected contexts.

Carolyn McKay is a visual artist engaged in inter-disciplinary criminology research at Sydney Law School, with an interest in creating insights and new knowledge through art practice.

Cleo Mees works in video production and has a background in contemporary dance. She is currently completing her Honours in screen production at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Hugo Moline works with people to make pieces of city: housing cooperatives, adaptable street furniture, hand-made maps, personalised vehicles, suburban games and conversational infrastructure. He has worked in Berlin, Lautoka, Nakhon Pathom and Sydney.

Peter Minter is a leading Australian poet, editor and scholar. He is the poetry editor of Overland and teaches Indigenous Studies at the University of Sydney.

Ben Mylius, 23, is an Adelaide writer and almost legal theorist, interested in Wild Law and Performatism, nostalgia, the limits of language, and new methodological paradigms in legal theory. He’s had fiction published in Wet Ink and Visible Ink, a short screenplay produced through the MRC, and has nonfiction forthcoming in Wild Law-focussed editions of some academic journals. He reviews for Lowdown and Good Reading, and has sat on ed-coms for the dB Young Writers’ Page and the Adelaide Law Review. When he’s not finishing his LLB/BA, he’s working on a novel about two boys and a car crash.

John Olstad is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Newcastle from the United States with a background in experimental music, film and theatre.

At three I was abandoned into a Children’s Home, and then placed in foster care when I was eight.  At eighteen I escaped by running away and going into nursing. Later, I trained as an artist, and then retrained as a school teacher.  Now retired, I am doing my PhD in English and Creative Writing to realise my life-long ambition and become a published writer.

William Pascoe is a Masters student at the University of Newcastle. His research includes the history of the international rubber trade, colonial contact and the governance of every day life in modernised cultures.

James Paul is an animator, VJ and visual artist also a teacher, researcher and writer. Working, teaching and performing in Asia for a number of years James has returned to Australia to be awesome over here for a while. He is online at youtube.com/VJSepp

Pickaxe Publishing was established by 3 artists; Andrew Williams, David O’Donoghue & Tim Crawley. Each brings their own unique interest in publishing; methods, styles, desires, techniques, formats, tastes and mediums. Pickaxe was established as a vehicle to explore the limits of what a publication is now, in a world of many and varied technologies. It is a press that wants to explore the grey areas between ‘Old’ & ‘New’ Media, and the possibilities for what a publication can be.

Tom Retter is a PhD candidate at COFA and has also studied at the Central Academy for Fine Arts in Beijing. His current research deals with semiotics, the links between Linguistic and Daoist philosophy and their place in Chinese contemporary art.

George Rose is an artist, designer and zine maker. Find her at georgisattumblr.com.

Oscar Schwartz is writing an Honours thesis in poetics at Monash University, focusing on two contemporary Melbourne poets, Chris Mann and Pi O. He also likes logic, music and travel.

Carl Scrase has conducted significant research into the concept of empathy. He will be undertaking a residency at SymbioticA, UWA in 2012 where he will try to make a biological empathy virus.

Emily Stewart is a currently based in Melbourne, where she is undertaking a Master of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. She graduated from the ANU in 2009 with first-class honours in English Literature. Her interests include theories of authorship, globalisation, creative non-fiction and ecopoetics. She is also a poet; some of her recent work can be found online at Cordite.

Marian Tubbs is a Sydney based artist and writer. Her recent solo exhibitions include Installation (Objects are shit …) at Eastern Bloc Gallery (June 2011), Lightning Said Being at Firstdraft Gallery (February 2011) and Assembly of Phantasms at Serial Space (September 2010). She has contributed to publications including Art Asia Pacific, Art & Australia, Locksmith Project and Un Magazine. Marian also teaches casually in the School of Art at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales where she is also undertaking a practice led PhD on experimental art. Her next exhibition will be held at Canberra Contemporary Art Space in October.

Jessica Tyrrell is a new media artist from Sydney who works that the intersection of installation, video, sound, audiovisual performance, online and locative media. She is currently undertaking her PhD at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.

Ann Vickery is an academic, researcher and poet. Her poetry has recently appeared in Overland, Otoliths, Rabbit, and Steamer. Based in Melbourne, she was a founding member and editor of HOW2.

Peter Wildman is interested in exploring how technology can be used to build new social relationships with oneself and others by subverting current effectual interaction design trends.