NAVA: in conversation

Sophia Cai is a curator and arts writer based in Melbourne, Australia. In this podcast, NAVA's Leya Reid talks to Sophia Cai about community-based practice, cultural safety, creative nourishment, and the importance of joy in our work.

Arts Day on the Hill is Australia’s annual focus on building sector capacity for sustained government engagement and lasting policy reform. This year’s Arts Day on the Hill took place on Wednesday 12 August 2020. In this podcast, NAVA’s Esther Anatolitis is joined by artists Nadia Odlum and Sha Sarwari in reviewing our experiences and next steps, with Nicholas Pickard, former policy adviser, joining half-way to offer a national political perspective on the debrief.

Rohin Kickett is a NAVA Board Member and Nyoongar artist from the Balardong region Western Australia. In this podcast, NAVA’s Esther Anatolitis talks to Rohin Kickett about his personal leadership journey, community development models for Art Centres and key issues around Indigenous art production.

Santilla Chingaipe is a journalist, filmmaker and author whose work explores migration, cultural identities and politics. In this podcast, NAVA's Tanushri Saha talks to Chingaipe about interrogating whiteness and centring blackness in the arts.

This episode bridges the cross-generational experiences of Helen Grace, on behalf of the historical Artsworkers Union, and Dylan Batty, a co-founder of the Australian Arts Workers Alliance. NAVA’s Professional Practice Coordinator, Justine Youssef, speaks with the pair about the cyclical issues and widespread instability facing arts workers, the amount of free labour still subsidised by artists, how unfairness and illegality can be challenged, and the rights that the Artsworkers Union were able to fight for and achieve.

Emele Ugavule is a Tokelauan Fijian storyteller. Her research and practice area of interest is Oceanic Indigenous-led storytelling, working across live performance, film, tv & digital media as a writer, director, creative producer, performer, educator and mentor. Her work explores creative processes and outcomes grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, and nurturing the vā where embodiment, cultural expression, digitisation and neuroscience intersect.

In this podcast, Esther Anatolitis is in conversation with Toby Dennett from the Arts Council of Ireland about their 'Paying the Artist' policy released earlier this year.

Following the culmination of the 42nd Sydney Mardi Gras Parade, we opened a conversation about the role of art in worldbuilding and community mobilisation with four 78ers on Wednesday 11 March at I.C.E., Parramatta NSW. Facilitated by artists Enoch Mailangi and Justine Youssef in conversation with artist activists Ray Delaney, Dj Gemma, Alissar Chidiac, Beau James and Yul Scarf on behalf of the Department of Homo Affairs. This program was presented in partnership with I.C.E. and Twenty 10. More information here: https://visualarts.net.au/news-opinion/2020/past-becomes-our-future/

Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, Cr Jess Scully in conversation with Penelope Benton about the importance of having more creative people in politics and in government and how to get involved at a local level.

"I was thinking a lot about what an art museum of Indigenous moving image work from this region, the Great Ocean and all its shores would look like and how it would feel. And to use the words that we have in English, how do you archive living knowledge of bodies? How do you go beyond shame? How do you bring all these things together?" - Dr Léuli Eshrāghi Dr Léuli Eshrāghi is an artist, curator, writer, and researcher from the Samoan archipelago and Persian ancestries. Léuli's creative practice is based around performance, installation and curatorial projects primarily working with the body, language, ceremony and positive futures for First Nations peoples and cultures, in addition to regularly featuring in publications and contributing to the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (Canada) on the board. In this episode of NAVA: In Conversation, Georgia and Léuli chat about global First Peoples collaboration, language, display culture and improving our First Nations leadership in institutions in Australia. Wansolwara: One Salt Water is showing at UNSW Galleries until 18 April 2020

Mandy Quadrio is a contemporary artist and doctoral candidate at Queensland College of the Arts with the Griffith University. Her multidisciplinary practice is intertwined with her proud Palawa identity in her ancestral country of Tebrakunna, Coastal Plains Nation on the lands colonially referred to as North-East of Tasmania.
 In this podcast, Mandy talks to Justine Youssef about her work 'Here lies lies' showing at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's Bond Store Basement as part of Hobiennale 2019.

"The artist doesn't have to be starving. It should not be starving. It is not the way that it should be. You should be able to be an artist and sustain yourself." In this episode, NAVA's Executive Director, Esther Anatolitis, is in conversation with Renuka Bauri, Director of Communications and Advocacy for Canadian Artists Representation / Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC National). CARFAC was established by artists in 1968 and promotes the national voice of Canada’s professional visual artists; promotes a socio-economic climate that is conducive to the production of visual arts in Canada; and conducts research and engages in public education for these purposes.

In this podcast, Eme, artist and member of the Anticolonial Asian Alliance, is in conversation with Soo-Min Shim from NAVA's Membership and Communications team. Eme is an interdisciplinary Filipinx artist based in Sydney - Gadigal land. Identity and personal experience are the driving force to their art practice where ideas are transformed into objects, installations, and naturally, action; a collective experience of creating spaces that welcome inclusivity, diversity, dialogue, self-expression, self-determination, reflection and healing. Anticolonial Asian Alliance are a group of Asian peoples living on unceded land, and working in solidarity with First Nations communities and elders to dismantle colonialism.

In this podcast, Latai Taumoepeau speaks with NAVA’s Professional Development Coordinator, Justine Youssef, about her practice relative to climate justice and the environmental, ethical and political effects of climate change in the Pacific region. Further to this Latai, shares ideas on how the art sector can transform the conversation around climate change and translate it into action. Latai Taumoepeau is a contemporary Punake — a body-centred performance artist whose powerful artistic practice tells the stories of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga, and her birthplace of the Eora Nation, Sydney. Working in durational performance and documenting it through photographs, she addresses issues of race, class and the female body. In her recent practice, Taumoepeau explores the effects of climate change in the Pacific, probing existing power structures and the looming possibility of dispossession that many island communities face.

Recorded live at the launch of Arts Day on the Hill and the inauguration of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Contemporary Arts and Culture, Co-Chaired by John Alexander, Maria Vamvakinou, and Adam Bandt. Hosted by Esther Anatolitis, we also heard from guest speakers including the Minister and Shadow Minister for the Arts and Welcome to Country by Aunty Matilda House. Arts Day on the Hill is a new program presented by the National Association by the Visual Arts (NAVA) to create an annual national focus on advocacy for the arts. https://visualarts.net.au/nava-events/2019/arts-day-hill/