Pressing Ahead

Roberta Joy Rich

traced. robertajoyrich.com

Roberta Joy Rich is a multi-disciplinary artist based on Wurundjeri and Bunurong lands of the Kulin Nation (Melbourne). Rich’s work references her own diaspora, southern African identity and experiences, responding to and reframing constructions of African history and identity, with the aim of deconstructing colonial modalities and proposals of self-determination within her arts practice. traced. is inspired by archival records of indigenous southern African peoples forcibly sent to Australia. In both colonial contexts, they were coerced as trackers by colonists and sometimes alongside Aboriginal men. Through traced. Rich seeks to create a reimagining of an African presence within the colonial-settler-nation context of Australia. traced. follows the speculative walking journeys of southern African settler convicts & ‘Rachel of the Cape’ and ‘Black Peter’. Positioning the viewer as the tracker through an immersive multi-channel moving image installation, traced. reframes ‘tracking’ as an experience of tracing memory and connection to place, and explores understandings between place and self-identity.

Roberta Joy Rich. Image credit: Zelé Angelides.

“My personal connection to this work is bound to my family identity, known in the Apartheid regime as ‘Cape Coloured’. There is great complexity for people of this extremely heterogeneous identity as to how to place themselves because their lineages are both indigenous Khoe and San peoples, and displaced Brown and Black peoples. Locating these identities in ‘the archive’ have ignited new developments for my practice and research.”

Nicholas Mangan

Core Coralations nicholasmangan.com

Nicholas Mangan works at the intersection of sculpture and film. His practice explores the unstable relationship between culture and nature, often in relation to the Asia Pacific. Mangan’s recent projects have focused on Australia’s geopolitical implications within the region, and its broader economic and ethical place within a global ecology. To excavate the contested histories surrounding specific sites and events, his practice incorporates extensive archival research, fieldwork and collaboration across disciplines. Mangan’s project Core Coralations represents a significant shift from his previous projects. “I am pivoting from films centred on historic narratives of the Pacific region, and the detached gaze of an observer, to the real and present narratives of climate-change generated within an Australian context. Secondly, the proposal represents a methodological shift in hierarchy – from sculptural forms integrating film, to primarily filmic elements augmented by the affective environments where they are shown. These re-orientations will give rise to new formal possibilities, new audiences and the potential to significantly up-scale production values, type and quality.” Core Coralations explores the mass bleaching events at the Great Barrier Reef and scientific investigations to restore the fragile ecosystem in our climate emergency. In addition to this material Core Coralations will include interviews and archive footage combined with a soundscape employing the screen language of materialist, structuralist film and expanded cinema.

Nicholas Mangan.

Pressing Ahead

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions, many of our grantees were unable to begin their development projects in the 2020–21 financial year. Here we share the stories of the few who were able to undertake their grantee projects and further their artistic practice.

Dana McMillan

Performing Arts $10,000 Master of Arts in Advanced Theatre Practice at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, England. danamcmillan.com

Please Leave (a message), co-created by grantee Dana McMillan as part of the collective ClusterFlux for Form(at) Festival, Camden People’s Theatre. Featuring performers (L-R) Linda van Egmond, Chris Whyte, Miray Sidhom and Jack Hilton. Image credit: Joe Hazell.

Dana McMillan is a theatre maker whose research-based and cross-disciplinary practice encompasses solo and collaborative performance. Dana’s work uses devised processes to combine original poetic text with physical performance and examine how the queer feminine gaze operates in theatrical spaces. After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in Theatre Practice, Dana sought further formal training on intersections between physical performance, devised theatre, performance theory and immersive performance and to continue her academic research.

A Cultural Trust grant supported Dana to undertake a Master of Arts in Advanced Theatre Practice at the prestigious Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, an industry-leading institution for teaching, learning and research in theatre practice. “Both personally and professionally my confidence and voice as an artist has grown. My solo practice and research have become more defined, and I have developed my critical performance skills, incorporating dramaturgy into my practice. Studying during a pandemic has been difficult especially in a course, which features collaborative performance making, however it has also made me more resilient and able to think in a cross-disciplinary way.” Through her studies, Dana gained a professional network of collaborators and ultimately established ClusterFlux, an experimental performance collective which is scheduled to tour internationally in 2022. Dana plans to transfer her qualification from a Master of Arts to a Master of Fine Art, completing an additional year of study and expanding her opportunities to present work and form industry connections in the United Kingdom.