The unwanted land

The exhibition/art project will consisted of work by artists who have been through migration and who, in their work, reflect upon issues of relocation/resettlement. The artworks were in the form of spatial (multi/mixed media) installations (and performances) aiming at visualizing migration experience and identification to achieve (new) contexts (and perspectives).

My favourite things - drawing

Large mixed media drawing. Work has been exhibited in 'Something in the air' at Christine Abrahams Gallery, 25 May-6 Jun, 2010. 'Something in the air' was an exhibition in which six selected artists, including Dr Deborah Walker, exhibited their artwork at 27 Gipps St, Richmond, Victoria.

Uneasily along the sand

Uneasily Along the Sand evokes the state of mind of the great Mallee poet John Shaw Neilson during a period of hospitalization for nervous exhaustion around 1900. To his bed come the voices and apparitions of all those people whom he might have met but who in life eluded him. It is a ghost community of jesters, singers and seers, who parade in harlequin costumes and recall the poet to the vanishing spirit of the Mallee forest. In particular, a Wotjobaluk man by the name of ‘Jowley’ haunts him, a man found by white people as a child abandoned in a hollow log - abandoned, lost, stolen? The sound installation ‘Mac’ (that forms part of Uneasily and which will receive its first national broadcast to coincide with Mildura Palimpsest #8) evokes their strange meeting and a kind of reconciliation of peoples and cultures with environments that remains elusive. The hospital, where Neilson heard strange voices and saw strange visions, is evoked in a video work based on a set of ‘actions’ performed in Mildura’s Old Base Hospital, and sound recordings made in Pyrenees House, Ararat (a replica of the Swan Hill Hospital where Neilson was confined). The hospital solarium is transformed into a strangely distorted Mallee paddock, of sand, barbed wire and mattresses that leak like hour glasses. Caught in the fence lines of this dream world are scraps of a woman’s dress, bed sheets inscribed with charcoaled graffiti and footprints alluding to the ‘unevennesses’ of a life. Uneasily Along the sand is inspired by Paul Carter’s recent book, ‘Ground Truthing: explorations in a creative region’. The installation of Uneasily in Mildura coincides with Opening, another work inspired by ‘Ground Truthing’ that Carter and Dirk de Bruyn have created for the big screen at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Contemporary planning education and Indigenous cultural competency agendas : erasing terra nullius, respect and responsibility

As noted in Universities Australia’s (2011a, 2011b) investigations into Indigenous Cultural Competency, most universities have struggled with successfully devising and achieving a translation of Indigenous protocols into their curricula. Walliss & Grant (2000: 65) have also concluded that, given the nature of the built environment disciplines, including planning, and their professional practice activities, there is a “need for specific cultural awareness education” to service these disciplines and not just attempts to insert Indigenous perspectives into their curricula. Bradley’s policy initiative at the University of South Australia (1997-2007), “has not achieved its goal of incorporation of Indigenous perspectives into all its undergraduate programs by 2010, it has achieved an incorporation rate of 61%” (Universities Australia 2011a: 9; http://www.unisa.edu.au/ducier/icup/default.asp).

Contextually, Bradley’s strategic educational aim at University of South Australia led a social reformist agenda, which has been continued in Universities Australia’s release of Indigenous Cultural Competency (2011a; 2011b) reports that has attracted mixed media criticism (Trounson 2012a: 5, 2012b: 5) and concerns that it represents “social engineering” rather than enhancing “criticism as a pedagogical tool ... as a means of advancing knowledge” (Melleuish 2012: 10). While the Planning Institute of Australia’s (PIA) Indigenous Planning Policy Working Party has observed that fundamental changes are needed to the way Australian planning education addresses Indigenous perspectives and interests, it has concluded that planners “! perceptual limitations of their own discipline and the particular discourse of our own craft” were hindering enhanced learning outcomes (Wensing 2007: 2). Gurran (PIA 2007) has noted that the core curriculum in planning includes an expectation of “knowledge of ! Indigenous Australian cultures, including relationships between their physical environment and associated social and economic systems” but that it has not been addressed. This paper critiques these discourses and offers an Indigenous perspective of the debate.

ICON: response[s] to Tower Hill

A solo exhibition of paintings and mixed media artworks based on Tower Hill, an extinct volcanic site located near to Warrnambool.  

Exchange

EXCHANGE was curated by Liza McCosh and highlighted the practice of Beijing artist Zhou Mian and Melbourne artist Denise Keele-bedford who spends several months each year creating and exhibiting her artwork in China.  The exhibition comprised a body of politically based paintings from Zhou Mian executed in a traditional Western style alongside the mixed media artworks from Keele-bedford which had an obvious Eastern influence. 

How to pack a bag

The artworks in this exhibition form part of my practice-led PhD research. As a daily task while travelling, packing a bag becomes a complex process, as we juggle the many movements in acquiring, discarding and arranging objects.

These artworks aim to highlight the many material interactions we have during the packing process, emphasising the ways in which we arrange materials and consider spatial constraints. For instance, how much we can “fit” in a bag, or, how we use the space of the room we are within, as well as the many movements our bodies undertake with the materials.

Exhibited works:
"Packing Diagrams", laminated digital prints
"Tracking the packing process", interactive installation
"Packing (exploring)", interactive installation, mixed media
"Packing (puzzle)", interactive installation
"bodies + bags" (excerpt), digital video loop

Outcomes of a knowledge translation strategy

In this paper we describe how an Australian health promotion agency combined short information sheets and ‘micro-movies’ to encourage the uptake of evidence associated with a food security initiative. Although commended by intended users for being innovative, a follow up study of the dissemination approach produced few tangible examples of learnings being translated into action. The paper provides an overview of the general rationale underlying the mixed-media research dissemination strategy and identifies barriers that resulted in low engagement with the information resources. Furthermore, we offer some general lessons for program planners and researchers who are interested in applying novel reporting methods to encourage evidence uptake.

iSeru : Meleponi Pasifika Exhibition

Mixed-media, Fijian barkcloth (masi), screenprint, digital photographic prints, Fijian wooden comb all exhibited in the exhibition Meleponi Pasifika.

Invisible

Invisible is a series of mixed-media work and a 4-minute video which intend to start a conversation on the notions of exoticism, Orientalism, otherness, hybridism and the western perceptions of a homogenous Islamic cultural identity.

Girl and Iguana

Mixed Media/Panel 24 x 24"

Encounter: Man and Raccoon

Mixed Media/Panel 24 x 24"

Man with Meerkat

http://commons.clarku.edu/vpadrl/1063/thumbnail.jpg

Green Man

Mixed Media/Mylar 24 x 24"

Man With Rabbit

Mixed Media