Biographies

Ilona Jetmar

Ilona Jetmar first began studying art and painting at the age of 16 learning in the tradition of Max Meldrum’s Australian Tonalism. Whilst raising a family and feeling the drive to achieve something more she enrolled in the Bachelor or Contemporary Art at Deakin University. Completing the degree part time Jetmar went on to study at Honours level - receiving the 2008 Vice Chancellor’s Award for her exhibition entitled ‘Light Chasing’ which dealt with ideas of the sublime and the spiritual in painting. Jetmar’s creative research interests explore: home, belonging, culture and the unheimlich, completing her PhD with Deakin University (2019).

Todd Johnson

Todd Johnson is an artist and lecturer who employs analogue techniques to investigate the materiality of photographic images. His photographs result from a physical exchange between the camera, film and elements of the environment. Todd has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including the exhibitions Climarte: Tree (2022) at Forty-five Downstairs, Melbourne; Traces Unseen (2021), Photo Access Gallery, Canberra; Abstract Prospectus, SE Centre for Photography, North Carolina, America (2020); Surfaces (2019), Millepiani Exhibition Space, Rome City, Italy; The Found Object (2018), Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis, United States; Materialist Photograph (2018); Jarvis Dooney Gallerie in Berlin. Todd completed a firstclass Honours (2014) and PhD degree (2022) in Film and Photography at Deakin University.

Dan Koop

Dan Koop is an artist, curator-producer and facilitator working in public and unusual spaces. Creatively, he makes situated performance works in unexpected and public places that engage audiences to become participants. Professionally, he has worked for contemporary multiartform venues and festivals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and London. As a facilitator, he has also hosted conferences, lectured at several universities in Melbourne and works as a conduit between community groups and arts organisations. He holds a Bachelor of Performing Arts from Monash university, a Masters of Public Art from RMIT and is currently undertaking a PhD at Deakin.

Biographies

Fiona Lee

Fiona Lee is a Geelong based artist-researcher, curator and founder of the art-education collective, The Rogue Academy. Her research practice and artworks focus on public art, public engagement and community participation, sculpture, installation and painting. Her major public art works include the international project Our Day Will Come, an alternative art school coproduced with Paul O’Neill for Contemporary Art Tasmania, and The Plimsoll Inquiry – a seven-week participatory intervention into a public gallery space. As part of the collective The Rogue Academy, she has been commissioned to undertake a site-specific public artwork, with Amanda Shone, for the third in the trilogy of Treatment projects curated by the Public Art Commission at Deakin. Lee holds a BFA(Hons) MFA(Research) and a PhD from the University of Tasmania Art School. She has had several international residencies in Paris, England, Scotland and Canada funded by theA ustralia Council for the Arts, University of Alberta, Arts Tasmania and UTAS. She worked for the Australia Council for the Arts during the Venice Biennale in 2009.

Katie Lee

Katie Lee is a Naarm/ Melbourne based artist and lecturer at Deakin University in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. Lee completed her PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2019).

Working with performance, installation and sculptural form, Lee’s practice is an exploration of the physical and psychological consequences of the built environment and our negotiations within it. Previous exhibitions include: Subliminal, IG Bildende Kunst Gallery, Vienna (2019); and New12, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2013). Lee works collaboratively and is a member of the Last Collective (Light and Air and Space and Time) recent projects include: Front Beach Back Beach at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery (2022) and a commission for the Melbourne Art Fair (2022).

Sean Loughrey

Sean Loughrey is an artist and lecturer based on the Surf Coast, Victoria on Wadawurrung Country. He first studied a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art, at the Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education (now Deakin University) (1982-84); followed by a Postgraduate Diploma of Fine Art, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (1986-87); a Masters in Fine Art by Research, at RMIT (1996-98); and completed his PhD, Victorian College of the Arts and Music, University of Melbourne (2016). Loughrey works within a multidisciplinary art practice, which includes photography, video, painting, drawing and sound-based projects. His current studio-based projects have been devoted to experimental approaches to photography, in which digital and analogue processes are united, reflecting questions relating to the history of representation in art and what might be considered ‘medium materiality’. Experimentation has been a critical part of his art practice and his approach to teaching.

Biographies

Olivia

Millard

Olivia Millard is a Senior Lecturer in Dance at Deakin University who completed her PhD in 2013. Olivia’s early career was as a performer and choreographer working nationally and internationally and she received grants to create twelve works as an independent dance maker as well as several local and international commissions. Olivia’s current research includes various collaborative projects centred around improvisation in dance performance including the AllPlay Dance project exploring the benefits of inclusion in dance activities for children with disabilities.

Amber Smith

Amber Smith is an artist, curator, producer, and writer working within the sphere of objects, thing theory and collection practices. Smith has a PhD from Deakin University, awarded for their exegesis Collecting, Display, and World-Building in Contemporary Art Practice: Putting the Wunderkammer back to work (2021). They hold a Bachelor of Design Arts (Visual Arts) from the Australian Academy of Design and a First-Class Honours in Creative Arts from Deakin University. They are currently studying for a Graduate Diploma in Information and Library Science at Curtin University. Amber is the Curator at Platform Arts and an academic at LaSalle College International Melbourne (LCIM) and Deakin University.

Luigi Vescio

Luigi Vescio is a choreographer, performer and dance academic creating works for theatres, galleries, digital and outdoor spaces. Notions of care, community, agency, unknowing and spontaneous shared-authorship are central to his research which acknowledges art as a site-specific social encounter. Vescio’s work predominantly manifests as live performance, installation, moving image or participatory encounter. Vescio has been supported by Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Temperance Hall, Chunky Move, Dancehouse, PACT and EIRA (Portugal). Vescio is currently a Teaching Scholar at Deakin University and completed a Master of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2020). He previously graduated from New Zealand School of Dance (2013). Vescio’s work is part of the Nillumbik Art Collection.

Biographies

Sorcha Wilcox

Sorcha Wilcox is an IrishAustralian visual artist and musical performer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts/ Teaching (secondary), Honours in Creative Arts, and a and a PhD from Deakin University (2020). Her practice investigates photographic processes, often with integration of soundscapes. Key interests lie in the development of fields through creative material, and new lines of logic that can be created from abstractions of this material. Sorcha is also a musical performer including electric guitar and vocal performances, and composes and performs with La Bronco, Dowser, Aardvark, Sonic Electric and various other collaborations.

Anne Scott Wilson

Anne Scott Wilson is an artist, academic and curator. Her practice as an artist has developed from a live performance career before studying Visual Art (painting) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and a PhD at Monash University (2006). Her works are held in public and private collections in Australia and Hong Kong. Drawing on 30 years of live performance and exhibitions she explores the dichotomous relationship between movement and meaning – the years of strenuous practice and endurance relative to brief moments of glory as a performer. Transitioning from live performance to the performative in curation and solo practice her exhibitions are often site responsive and engage in AI, photography in the expanded field, video, installation, sculpture and kinetics. She collaborates with colleagues Cameron Bishop and Mirjana Lozanovska (architecture) in projects with VacantGeelong and with ARS Electronica and was represented by Conny Dietzschold Gallery Sydney, Hong Kong and Cologne.

Bruce Zhou

Artist Bruce Zhou has worked as a writer, director, animator, graphic designer, trainer, branch manager, program manager and production manager in the prepress, graphic art, printing, multimedia, film and TV industry for more than twenty years in Australia. Zhou has received numerous award for his animations and his current practice explorers augmented reality and artistic contexts. Zhou is an experienced educator and has taught Bachelor, Advance Diploma, Diploma of Graphic Design, Graphic Prepress, Digital Printing and Multimedia, screen and media in the higher education sector for over ten years.