Actor 1 (Icecream Coles Polygon)

A sculpture made of polyurethane, epoxy resin, pigment and lacquer depicting a ice-cream melting into the form of a nine sided geometric figure.

Future perfect

"Future Perfect" is a solo artist exhibition featuring a 9 channel video installation, which is comprised of looped computer animation projections. In the first room, the big one, there are nine projections of looped computer animations. Many of these look like representations of gallery spaces containing sculptures, including rotating interpenetrating discs, bouncing coloured coffins, and jostling cardboard cubes (the cubes are blank, then covered in drawings, then covered in photographic imagery). In one video, a man and a woman walk towards one another but never get together. In the second room, an animated video on a flatscreen suggests an origin story. The subtitles tell how, in Russia, my great-grandfather made a joke about Stalin's child bride that cost him his life. That one isn’t a loop; it has a beginning, middle, and end. Lying on the floor, in front of the video, are two slightly crumpled mural prints of photographs of the ocean. There's also a clear Perspex cloud shape on a wall. Viewers will see themselves reflected in it, as if it were a distant hovering mirage. The first room of the exhibition, where objects are set in perpetual motion, is about departure. The second room registers some sense of arrival. The future perfect implies looking back on something that hasn't happened yet; future and past are conflated and the present is somehow deferred. The future perfect combines anticipation and reflection, and it relates to my interest in combining 3-D animation with other mediums like drawing, painting, and shot video. In my work, the virtual and actual coexist in tension, just like experience and expectation in the future perfect.

The declaration of resemblance and fluid insurgents

A large scale installation over three gallery spaces that addresses Wymans ongoing in exploring feminist strategies for negotiating individual and collective identities, equality, and social activism.

Flood inquiry : Grantham victims’ patience wears thin

"Grief and loss are giving way to anger and frustration among flood survivors of the rural towns in the Lockyer Valley as the Queensland Flood Commission hears from senior police, disaster management staff and flood survivors. For bereaved families in the public gallery waiting for answers to why 22 people died in the catastrophic flash flooding in the Lockyer Valley on January 10, patience is wearing thin."

Qld floods inquest : stories of courage, sacrifice in emotional replay

"The last acts of courage and sacrifice by parents desperately trying to save their children as a deadly flash flood ripped through south-east Queensland in January fell like repeated emotional hammer-blows on survivors in the public gallery of the Brisbane Coroners Court yesterday. The speed with which the disaster tore lives and homes apart on January 10 was replicated by the speed at which police summarised the circumstances of the deaths for the coroner. After months of investigation by hundreds of police, the final desperate minutes of 14 people’s lives were summed up for the court before the morning tea break, in as little as three minutes each."

Renewing the Sustainable Energy Curriculum – Providing Internationally Relevant Skills for a Carbon Constrained Economy : Final Report 2014

The aims of the project were to scope and develop sustainable energy curriculum frameworks for Australian higher education Institutions that meet the needs of Australian and international student graduates and employers, both now and into the near future. The focus was on student centred learning and outcomes and to support graduates with the knowledge, skills and generic attributes required to work in the rapidly expanding sustainable energy industry in Australia and globally. The outputs of the project are designed to be relevant to specialist Sustainable Engineering and Energy Studies programs, as well as conventional engineering, science and humanities and social science programs that have a sustainable energy focus or major.

Renewing the Sustainable Energy Curriculum : Curriculum Frameworks and Guidance for Course Delivery

This guide is to support institutions in developing and teaching tertiary level programmes for sustainable energy professionals. Ongoing curriculum renewal is more difficult but vital for multidisciplinary courses preparing graduates to work in a specialised rapidly changing field. After more than 15 years of offering tertiary level “sustainable energy” qualifications in Australian Universities there was a clear need to assess how these courses are taught and develop curriculum frameworks to guide Universities designing/redesigning programs and courses to provide graduates with the relevant skills, knowledge and attributes (capabilities) seen by graduates and employers as required to work in this rapidly changing field. This guide presents the sustainable energy curriculum frameworks developed by the “Renewing the sustainable energy curriculum – providing internationally relevant skills for a carbon constrained economy” project, which was conducted over a two-and-a-quarter year period.

Uneducated : play becomes artwork, artwork becomes play

Over the past twenty years the contemporary art world has seen a significant shift in the modes and structures of connection between work and its audiences. This shift is termed by Irit Rogoff, amongst others, as an ‘educational turn’. The turn has been described as the eruption of discussions and investigations, inside and outside of institutions, that interrupt the presumed power hierarchies and bureaucratised systems of both art and education. This essay was written to accompany artist/curator Kym Maxwell's exhibition project, 'Uneducated', exploring these ideas. It was held at the Counihan Gallery in Melbourne, 2014.

Wood density : a tool to find complementary species for the design of mixed species plantations

The successful establishment and growth of mixed-species forest plantations requires that complementary or facilitatory species be identified. This can be difficult in many tropical areas because the growth characteristics of endemic species are often unknown, particularly when grown at potentially higher densities in plantations than in natural forests. Here, we investigate whether wood density is a useful and readily accessible trait for choosing complementary species for mixed species plantations. Wood density represents the carbon investment per unit volume of stem with a trade-off generally found between fast (low wood density) and slow (high wood density) growing species. To do this, we use data collected from 18 highly diverse mixed species plantations (4–23 mostly native species) aged from 6 to 11 years at the time of data collection located on Leyte Island, Philippines. We found significant negative correlations between wood densities and the height of the most abundant species, as well as with measures of overall stand growth and tree diameter size distribution. Not only do species with denser woods have slower growth rates, but also mixed-species plantations with higher average wood density and higher stem density were also less productive, at least in these young plantations. Similarly, stands with a high diversity in wood densities were less productive. There is growing interest in making greater use of native multi-species mixtures in smallholder and community planting programs in the tropics, and our results show databases of wood density values may help improve their design. In the early development stages of plantations, canopy closure and rapid height growth are usually key silvicultural targets, and wood density values can predict the rapid height development of species. If plantations are being grown for the livelihood of small landholders then the best target is to choose some species with different wood densities. This allows an early harvest of low-wood density species for early income, and will also reduce competition for slower growing trees with higher wood densities for later income generation.

Trashtopia by Maison Briz Vegas

Description of the Work Trashtopia was a fashion exhibition at Craft Queensland’s Artisan gallery showcasing outfits made entirely from rubbish materials. The exhibition was part of an on-going series by the Queensland Fashion Archives, called Remember or Revive. Maison Briz Vegas designers, Carla Binotto and Carla van Lunn created a dystopian beach holiday tableau referencing mid-century Californian and Gold Coast beach culture and style, and today’s plastic pollution of the world’s oceans. The display engaged a popular audience with ideas about environmental destruction and climate change while bringing twentieth and twenty-first century consumer and leisure culture into question. The medium of fashion was used as a means of amusement and provocation. The fashion objects and installation questioned current mores about the material value of rubbish and the installation was also a work of environmental activism. Statement of the Research Component The work was framed by critical reflections of contemporary consumer culture and research fields questioning value in waste materials and fashion objects. The work is situated in the context of conceptual and experimental fashion design practice and fashion presentation. The exhibited work transgressed the conventional production methods and material choice of designer fashion garments, for example, discarded plastic shopping bags were painstakingly shredded to mimic ostrich feathers. The viewer was prompted to reflect on the materiality of rubbish and its potential for transformation. The exhibition also sits in the context of culture jamming and contemporary activist practice. The work references and subverts twentieth century beach holiday culture, contrasting resort wear with a contemporary picture of plastic pollution of the oceans and climate change. Hawaiian style prints contained a playful and dark narrative of dying marine-life and the viewer was invited to take a “Greetings from Trashtopia” postcard depicting fashion models floating in oceans of plastic rubbish. This reflective creative practice sought to address the question of whether fashion made from recycled rubbish materials can critically and emotionally engage viewers with questions about contemporary consumer culture and material value. This work presents an innovative model of fashion design practice in which rubbish materials are transformed into designer garments and rubbish is placed centre stage in the public presentation of the designs. In overturning the traditional model of fashion presentation, the viewer is also given a deeper connection to the recycling process and complex ideas of waste and value. In 2015 two outfits from the exhibition were selected, along with works from three leading Australian fashion labels, and four leading New Zealand labels, for a commemorative ANZAC fashion collection shown at iD Dunedin Fashion Week. The show titled, “Together Alone, revisited” reprised an Australian and New Zealand fashion exhibition first held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2009.

Out of the Box Festival for 3 to 8 year olds (Artistic Director)

The Out of the Box Festival was founded in 1994 by the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and has been held biannually ever since both within and around the centre in what is now known as the Cultural Precinct at Southbank. It is unique in Australia in that it caters entirely to children aged 8 years and under, with a highly curated program of ticketed performance events, workshops and free arts-based events. It is attended by school and kindergarten groups and by families, and besides engaging children in high quality arts experiences, the festival is also a platform for advocating the developmental and educational benefits of the arts for children. Dr Mark Radvan was the artistic director of the 2008 festival, with responsibility for developing the curatorial direction of each festival, for creating and programming its events, and for working with festival partners The Queensland Art Gallery, The Queensland Museum, The State Library of Queensland and The Queensland Theatre Company. Radvan designed selected and commissioned works to demonstrate how the arts create memorable, celebratory and immersive experiences that stimulate children’s imagination, their curiosity and confidence about the material world and the cultures of its people. A core event was an outdoor music and dance performance space featuring entirely Indigenous performers that was not only the beating heart of the festival, but served to underlie the importance of mainstreaming awareness of our first peoples in the increasingly culturally diverse communities of children attending.

Victoria's Child FIRST and IFS differential response system : progress and issues

Differential response has long been utilized by statutory child protection systems in Australia. This article describes the advent and history of Victoria's differential response system, with a particular focus on the Child FIRST and IFS programme. This program entails a partnership arrangement between the Department of Human Services child protection services and community-based, not-for-profit agencies to provide a diverse range of early intervention and prevention services. The findings of a recent external service system evaluation, a judicial inquiry, and the large-scale Child and Family Services Outcomes Survey of parents/carers perspectives of their service experiences are used to critically examine the effectiveness of this differential response approach. Service-user perspectives of the health and wellbeing of children and families are identified, as well as the recognized implementation issues posing significant challenges for the goal of an integrated partnership system. The need for ongoing reform agendas is highlighted along with the policy, program and structural tensions that exist in differential response systems, which are reliant upon partnerships and shared responsibilities for protecting children and assisting vulnerable families. Suggestions are made for utilizing robust research and evaluation that gives voice to service users and promotes their rights and interests.

Mark Shorter : Dry Gulch

This is a catalogue essay for Mark Shorter's exhibition "Dry Gulch" held at Boxcopy, Brisbane, in 2014. "Dry Gulch is a durational performance and installation in which the artist, Mark Shorter, occupies the pitch-­‐black gallery space for the opening hours of the exhibition. While drawing on the vocabulary of 1970s conceptual performance art (think Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic et al.), it is also an exhibition specifically of its time and its place. It probes and, at times, illuminates (pun intended) some of the dark corners of subjective experiences in a contemporary context typically swamped by distractions and saturated with templates for self-­‐actualisation...."