Nava: In Conversation

98% of us engage with the arts and 45% of us create art, yet the majority of Australian visual artists and arts workers remain deeply concerned by income security, cuts to arts education, program cancellations and reduced sales due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. All Australians would benefit immensely from ambitious visual arts and culture experiences made possible through strategic policy and funding investment. In the electorate of Moreton, Queensland, POPSART's Bec Mac facilitates a conversation with artist Gordon Hookey (Waanyi), Pat Hoffie AM artist and Professor Emeritus, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Penelope Benton, Executive Director National Association for the Visual Arts, Paul Osuch Founder and CEO of Anywhere Festival and Carmel Haugh, Program Director Chrysalis Projects about NAVA's call for federal election candidates to take bold action for arts and culture by committing to a whole-of-government National Cultural Plan to effectively invest for impact in the medium a

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. Wans

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.

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/

“I think we'll see organisations essentially deciding which artists get supported as opposed to artists applying directly to a funding body… There's independence at stake: the idea that artists can maintain independent practices where they instigate projects that may or may not operate within an institutional context...” This podcast looks at Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo’s collaboration Make or Break and what happens when arts policy neglects artists. Make or Break is a collaboration between Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo that began in 2015. Make or Break has worked across gallery, institution, festival and nightclub contexts to produce a range of process-based art projects. These have included creating experimental economies that address precarity and privilege; using galleries as live work spaces; performing personal admin for an audience; co-writing texts; circulating fictional currencies; making books; celebrating the invisible labour of strangers; and facilitating conversations and workshops as al

Genevieve Grieves in conversation with NAVA's Wesley Shaw and Georgia Mokak about her current role teaching students about decolonisation at the Art Gallery NSW as part of their annual Djamu Indigenous Art program, as well as her role as Head of the newly formed First Peoples Department at Museums Victoria, and developing a practice and knowledge around decolonisation more broadly.

Esther Anatolitis in conversation with artists Abdul Abdullah, Çigdem Aydemir and Harriet Body presented in partnership with Parramatta Artist Studios as part of Movers and Makers 2019.

What would an artist run world look like? Imagine if artistic courage was a guiding force in the policy arena. What sort of cities could we build? What sort of housing, health, schooling, agriculture, transport or data governance could we put in place? In the lead up to the federal election, 7 artists and critical thinkers joined us for a feisty conversation about voting for a world fit for artists and culture makers. Bek Conroy hosted this conversation with guests: Alex Wisser (Cementa Festival), Bec Dean (The Big Anxiety), Jehan Kanga, Jess Cook (107 Projects), Louise Crabtree (Institute Society and Culture, WSU), Nadeena Dixon and Ange Abdilla (Old Ways, New). 630pm - 730pm Thursday May 8 Venue: 107 Projects at 107 Redfern St, Redfern NSW 2016