Olivia Koh is an artist and researcher working in moving-image production. She considers how personal migration histories are expressed and performed through the moving image; videos that mediate new relationships to places, memory and forms of storytelling. Koh holds a Master’s degree (Research) from the School of Art, RMIT University (2023). Recent exhibitions include ‘Island Shapes 岛屿形状’ on Runway Journal, ‘Minyak Sawit Keluarga (Palm Oil Family)’ with Hyphenated Projects & ACMI (2023), ‘Artist Film Program’ at Melbourne Now, NGVA (2023). Olivia is a Teaching Associate at Monash University and RMIT University.

Shining 顯影

During this fellowship Olivia Koh will produce an intertextual moving image work that explores twentieth century diaspora stories in East and South East Asian regions. Shining 顯影 takes the format and pages of a community published xerox magazine as inspiration for a new moving image work; drawing on articles, advertisements and gossip tabloids from this publication, the migration history of the artists' paternal family and fictional characters. Drawing on local and international networks, a collection of archival and newly shot footage, using techniques of collage, montage and animation, letters, photos and documents are interspersed throughout this video work in Mandarin, Hokkien, Bahasa Melayu/Indonesia and English language. The research will engage with the history of xerox publications, including how the photocopier replaced or superseded previous technologies, and how this technology affected and increased access to grassroots and community publishing.

Rosie Isaac (b. Naarm/Melbourne, 1990) is an artist with a research-based sculpture, writing and performance practice. Rosie’s practice focuses on the power relations embedded in language and other social institutions. She is interested in art making as a form of attention, one that might imagine different material and social futures. Recent projects include an iterative performance ‘What we habitually call’ first performed in 2021 at Ace Open as part of Reading Circles; ‘Brain blankets’ in collaboration with Aodhan Madden at the Foundation Fiminco, Paris, in 2021; ‘Intestine in my eye’ part of Next Wave Festival 2018; and ‘BACKWARD PLAY’ as part of Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV at 99% and Blindside in 2022. Her writing has been published in un. Magazine and Cordite Poetry review. She has worked in community radio production and as the co-editor of un. Magazine in 2020 with Elena Gomez. She is currently working on a solo sculpture show to be presented at Flippy’s Gallery in November 2022. Rosie is a Sessional Academic Lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts

2021 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FELLOWSHIP

Phuong Ngo is a Vietnamese-Australian artist and curator living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). He is currently co-director of Hyphenated Projects with Nikki Lam, and curator at large at the Substation. His practice is concerned with the interpretation of history, memory and place, and how it impacts individual and collective identity of the Vietnamese diaspora. Through an archival process rooted in a conceptual practice, he seeks to find linkages between culture, politics and oral histories and historic events. Ngo’s collaborative practice with Hwafern Quach, Slippage, examines the cycles of history in conjunction with current geopolitical and economic issues through the lens of vernacular cultures, artifacts and language. Taking their Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry as a starting point and foregrounding their work in the personal, Slippage utlises ceramics as a medium to further critique issues closely linked to historic and contemporary forms of imperialism and global politics. His notable exhibitions include, APT10, QAGOMA (2021); Drunken Swine, First Draft (2019); Expansionism V, Bendigo Art Gallery (2019); Article 14.1, Sydney Festival & MCA (2019); Primavera, MCA (2018); New Histories, Bendigo Art Gallery (2018); Conflicted: Works from the Vietnam Archive Project, The Substation (2017); Article 14.1, Next Wave Festival (2014); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2013); Domino Theory, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2012).

2020 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FELLOWSHIP

Shivanjani Lal is a twice-removed Fijian-Indian-Australian artist and curator. As an artist living in Australia, she is tied to a long history of familial movement; her work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss and trauma. She is a member of the indentured labourer diaspora from the Indian and Pacific oceans. She employs intimate images of family, sourced from photo albums, along with video and images from contemporary travels to the Asia-Pacific to reconstruct temporary landscapes. These landscapes act as shifting sites for diasporic healing - from which she emerges. A fundamental concern in her work is how art develops and represents culture as it transitions between contexts, while also probing the experiences of women in these situations of flux.

Over the next year, Lal will be building on her current research into Indentured Labour of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This research considers 2020 as a date which marks the centenary of the end of indentured labour. This historical moment is the crux of what Lal will be reflecting upon as she embarks on this research in the United Kingdom and Bangladesh. She will be using this award to support her time in the UK visiting the Ameena Gafoor Institute, the Goldsmiths Film Archives. During this time she will also be mentored by Mauritian British artist Shiraz Bayjoo. In conclusion she will do a residency at the Bengal Art Foundation, in Dhaka Bangladesh.

ARTIST WEBSITE

2019 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FELLOWSHIP

Ruth was born in Munich, Germany and holds an MFA from Bard College, New York and a BA (Hons.) from The Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her artistic practice encompasses photography, video and print.

During her Fellowship, Ruth will develop new audio-visual material working with the concept of 'magic', drawing inspiration from the collections at State Library Victoria. Combined with a personalised database of images, video and sound, this material will be the basis of a new time-based artwork entitled Reality Is Only A Word.

Ruth's interest in magic lies in its disruption of logical sense patterns, and in its potential to offer alternative modes of being in and experiencing the world. As part of her research project, she will also produce a stand-alone printed work to be included in the State Library Collection.

ARTIST WEBSITE

2018 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FELLOWSHIP

Jude Walton's work spans site-specific, installation, and screen-based practice. She has directed solo and group works in art galleries and specific sites in major cities across Australia and overseas. Her practice is at the edge of the ephemeral and the material, in which the performances create visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic environments that invite experiential, embodied responses from the viewer.

Recent practice has focused on the process of 'response-to-site' initially developed during a CultureLab residency at the Meat Market, North Melbourne with Structural Adjustments (2007) and continued with Lehte // (2015) at Heide Museum of Modern Art, and The Drill Hall Project (2017/18) at the Drill Hall, CBD Melbourne. All are concerned with the formulation of new discourses around the intersections of spatial practice, live bodies, sound and installation. In 2010 a list of positive things for later when things may not be so positive, a collaboration with Aleks Danko, was presented in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens, as part of DUETTO, Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), Adelaide.

In 2009 she was resident artist at the International Centre for Fine Arts Research, London as part of the 'From Scratch' festival at The Drawing Room, Tannery Arts, London exploring the legacy of British composer Cornelius Cardew.

As part of her Fellowship project Jude presented a highly successful activated installation and performance 'Nadja-Léona' at the Alliance Francaise in Melbourne.  Her project, based on the book Nadja by André Breton, focused on female muses and artists that were part of the early Surrealist movement in Paris. Jude continues her social and political artistic process with her new project, Muses.

ARTIST WEBSITE

2017 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FELLOWSHIP

Catherine Evans is an internationally exhibited cross-disciplinary artist with degrees in science, Asian studies and photography, who currently based between Melbourne and Berlin. 

Working across both photography and sculpture, Catherine’s practice incorporates everyday objects such as rocks, sticky tape and carpet, and through a considered, poetic approach, creates unexpected juxtapositions that allow the viewer an entry point into the work.

Her Georges Mora Fellowship project, The View from Mount Disappointment, is inspired by the English naming of the Victorian mountain by two explorers in 1824. Hamilton Hume and William Hovell made the difficult journey to the summit hoping to be rewarded with a view of Port Phillip Bay. However on reaching the top, the view was completely obscured by trees.

The View from Mount Disappointment will use this historical event as a poetic metaphor for how an individual today can look back critically on their homeland’s history, which is invariably affected by one’s personal experience and expectations.

INTERVIEW

ARTIST WEBSITE

RECIPIENT OF THE 2016 GEORGES MORA FELLOWSHIP

James Geurts completed his Masters of Art at RMIT Melbourne in 2009 and has been producing large-scale, site and time-specific projects and gallery works in international contexts since 2002. Through critical investigation he draws out geographic and conceptual forms that are layered within sites of research. The artist examines how natural and cultural forces shape perception. Geurts works across the disciplines of sculpture, drawing, video, photography and Land Art.

Exhibitions include: National Gallery of Victoria; White Cube, London; Gemak, Den Haag Netherlands; Centre for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Israel; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; La Chambre Blanche, Quebec; and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

2018 Projects include: Seismic Field, exhibition, 21 November – 21 December, GAGPROJECTS/Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide; Geophony, public sculpture CATO Square Prahran Melbourne; Refraction Principle, public sculpture in the Derwent River, GASP (Glenorchy Art & Sculpture Park) Tasmania; Drawing Origins, Synapse research residency with CSIRO and ANAT, November - January 2019; Floodplain, series of conceptually linked site works along the Birrarung (Yarra River) Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria- Ian Potter Centre Supported by the Georges Mora Fellowship, State library of Victoria, Melbourne Water, Australia Council for the Arts.

Geurts is represented by:

GAGPROJECTS/Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide & Berlin http://gagprojects.com

Contemporary Art Society, London http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/?s=james+geurts

PRACTICE AND FELLOWSHIP PROJECT

ARTIST WEBSITE

2014 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Inez completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2011. She has exhibited across Australia, Milan, Paris, Chicago, Chongqing and Berlin. Recent exhibitions include Nervous Tensions, Careof Organization for Contemporary Art, Milan; The Act of Seeing, Town Hall Gallery, Melbourne, (2014); Portes Ouvertes, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Dying Not to Be, Kings ARI, Melbourne, Kar Krash Karaoke, The Substation, Newport; Suite, Art Gallery of Ballarat, (2013); Locus of Control, Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne (2012); Greener On The Other Side, International Video Art Festival, Chongqing, China, Hatched 2011, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2011); Show VI, MMX Open Art Venue, Berlin, Germany (2010).

Inez is the recipient of the Art Gallery of NSW Moya Dyring Memorial Studio Scholarship 2013; the Australia Council ArtStart grant 2012; the Orloff Family Scholarship 2011; the Lionel Gell Scholarship and the Maude Glover Fleay Award 2010.

PRACTICE & FELLOWSHIP PROJECT

INTERVIEW

ARTIST WEBSITE

"Through a series of video productions over the past few years, Inez de Vega demonstrates that she possesses a distinct new artistic vision that is intense for its personal symbolism and narrative; that is strikingly imaginative and innovative in its idiom; and which - through its intelligent, passionate drama - makes undeniably commanding and compelling viewing." 
 - Dr Edward Colless
Author and Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

2013  RECIPIENTS OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Brook Andrew challenges cultural and historical perception, using installation, text and image to comment on local and global issues regarding race, the media, consumerism and history. Apart from drawing inspiration from vernacular objects and institutional and found archive collections, Andrew travels internationally to work with communities and museum collections to comment and create new work relating to historical object display and perception.

Brook Andrew is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne & Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris.

Trent Walter is an artist and publisher based in Melbourne. His art practise interrogates the possibility of alternative narratives within a framework of the everyday through the re-imagining and/or remaking of existing objects and documents. Walter's publishing activity is focused on limited artists' editions under the imprint.

READ ABOUT THEIR FELLOWSHIP PROJECT

2012 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Based in Melbourne, Linda Tegg completed a Bachelor of Arts (Photography) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2002, participating in the Parsons School of Design Program in New York from 2001-02. She competed a Master of Visual Arts in 2008 and a Master of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts 2010. Tegg has exhibited across Australia, Switzerland, Japan, New York, Mexico and The Netherlands. Recent solo exhibitions include; Choir, Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle, Goat Study Part 2, Square2 City Gallery, Wellington, 2013; Coexistence, MARSO Galleria, Mexico City, Goat Study, Utopian Slumps Project Space, Melbourne, 2012; Animal Studies, Alpineum Produzentengalerie, Luzern, Unknown Animal, Echo Galeria, Mexico City, 2011; Horse Video Study, Neue Gallery, Bern, 2010; Heart Rate Project, Kings ARI, Melbourne, Heart Rate Project, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Project Space, South Australia, 2007; Selected group exhibitions include Black Box<>White Cube, The Arts Centre, Melbourne, Tree Line, Brisbane, 2011; Sub 12, The Substation, Worm Mountain, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne, 2010; Self Timer / Dancer, Sutton Project Space, Enclosure, Alliance Française, Melbourne, 2009;

Linda has been selected as the Samstag Scholar for 2014 and was the recipient of the Georges Mora Foundation Fellowship 2012; the Australia Council ArtStart grant, the Arts Victoria International Exchange grant 2011, the KPMG Art Award 2010, the Australian Postgraduate award 2009-10, the Keith and Elisabeth Mudoch Travelling Fellowship 2009, National Gallery Women’s Association Postgraduate Encouragement Award, Alliance Francaise Award, Fiona Myer Award, ANZ Art Award People’s Choice in 2008. Tegg received an RMIT Travel Grant and John Storey Junior Memorial Scholarship in 2001 and was named Australian Student Photographer of the Year, AIPP in 2000.

ARTIST WEBSITE 

"Linda Tegg's body of work is a prime example of the quest to discover new land and provoke new encounters between audiences, curators, and artists. We are convinced that we have to conduct our search in places far away from old patterns of thinking, so that we can change or break the established rules, the rules that led us to where we are now. That is exactly what Linda Tegg does."
- Sandino Scheidegger 
Neue Galerie, Switzerland

2010 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Ross Coulter is a visual artist working on the traditional lands of the Yalukit Willam clan of the Boon Wurrung. He holds a BFA (Hons) and MFA (Research) from the Victoria College of the Arts. Coulter has exhibited widely in a variety of artist-run initiatives and public institutions locally and internationally including a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria and a group exhibition at the Matsudai Nohbutai Arts Centre in Japan. In 2009-2010 Coulter developed and danced with Lucy Guerin Inc.’s production of Untrained, performing at the North Melbourne Meat Markets, the Sydney Opera House and at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Coulter has received numerous awards and grants including the George Mora Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and the Keith and Elizabeth Murdoch Traveling Fellowship for his 10,000 Paper Planes project. In 2013-2014 he undertook the 2 year studio residency program at Gertrude Contemporary. The recent focus of his work has been an exploration of photographic portraiture, performance and community participation. Ross has lectured in visual arts and photography for a several of years at different tertiary institutions including Monash University and Deakin University.

 ARTIST WEBSITE 

2008 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Cyrus Tang's practice reflects sentiment of nostalgia through translation of disappearance into remembrance and fantasy. It reflects her examination of the paradox of reconstructing ephemeral mental images and sensations in permanent materials. Born in Hong Kong, Cyrus (Wai-kuen) Tang moved to Australia in 2003 and is based in Melbourne. She finished her Degree (Hons) of Fine Arts at Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2004, and her Master of Fine Arts (Research) in Monash University, Melbourne in 2009.

Cyrus has engaged in many international residency programmes including Helsinki International Artist Program 2013, The National Art Studio in South Korea in 2012, Cite International de Arts, Paris in 2009 and The Banff Centre, Canada in 2008. Her work has been exhibited in Australia and various countries including Helsinki, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, France, Shanghai and Sweden. She is the recipient of the Skills and Arts Development 2011 and New Work (Emerging) Grant 2009 of Australian Council for the Arts, George Mora Foundation Fellowship 2008, Theodor Urback Encouragement Award 2004, and The National Gallery of Victoria-Trustee Award 2003.

ARTIST WEBSITE

“The Georges Mora Fellowship gave me the opportunity to develop my art practice and explore new directions. Support from the State Library of Victoria provided me with the time, space and resources to conduct my research and review my art practice. The residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris has been invaluable to my art career in that it encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone and to draw inspiration from new environments. It also has greatly helped me build my networks.” - Cyrus Tang

2009 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Philip Brophy has an extensive and accomplished history of art projects across film, video, sound, installation and performance with key interests in pop, sex and music. Brophy’s work often constitutes reworking pre-existing media, composing film, music and soundscapes, and mixing, mastering, installing and presenting audiovisual work in surround sound environments. Philip is also a highly regarded author and speaker who writes regularly for different publications as well as publishing books on audiovisual concepts through the British Film Institute.

ARTIST WEBSITE 

2007 RECIPIENT OF THE GEORGES MORA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

Trinh Vu works within a range of creative disciplines including painting, printing, and 3D spatial and structure. Trinh uses technology in creating artworks, however, she is not interested in computer calculations or mathematical formulae. Living in the age of User Interface technology we are able to operate machine and ultilise software programs without training and knowledge in computer science; we mostly make operational decisions. Over the past ten years Trinh has undertaken research and development of projects that investigate applications and influences of different reproduction technologies in contemporary art practices. She is currently researching characteristics and conventions in current technologies to explore new ways of seeing and representing our changing world.

In 2012 Trinh was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Melbourne and currently works in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University as a Senior Lecturer.

ARTIST WEBSITE

"Trinh’s sculptural works all have their foundation in the natural world, and while she clearly takes a realist approach to her subject matter, the eventual outcome is a long way away from traditional botanical illustration. Rather than attempting simply to imitate the natural form, she uses the organic materials as a starting point for a more complicated process of creative exploration."
- Peter Anderson, Essay on the Blue Skies project