We congratulate artists Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo, Harriet Body, Nick Dorey, Amala Groom, Shivanjani Lal, Katy Plummer, Linda Sok, Leyla Stevens, JD Reforma, Shireen Taweel and Jelena Telecki, who have been shortlisted for the the $30,000 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship, now in its 23rd presentation at Artspace in Sydney. The initiative was developed to give an emerging artist an opportunity to undertake a program of professional development such as research, further study and internships over two years.
The group of 12 artists from across Sydney and regional NSW have been selected to develop works for a collaborative exhibition, co-curated by Artspace Executive Director Alexie Glass-Kantor and Assistant Curator Elyse Goldfinch. The curators will work closely with each of the artists with a series of studio visits and mentored exchanges to further develop their work for the finalists’ presentation, which will be on show at Artspace from 15 November to 15 December. The 2019 Fellowship assessment panel will make their decision on who the final recipient of the 2019 Fellowship will be during this time.

Back row L-R: Shivanjani Lal, Rebecca Gallo, Amala Groom, Katy B Plumber, Harriet Body
Middle row L-R: Jelena Telecki, Shireen Taweel, JD Reforma, Leyla Stevens. Front row L-R: Connie Anthes, Linda Sok. (Absent) Nick Dorey. Photograph: Anna Kucera. Courtesy Create NSW and Artspace, Sydney
‘This Fellowship is one of the ways that we can help to provide the right opportunities and environment to develop and nurture emerging NSW artists as we expand our arts and culture offering for both artists and audiences in the State,’ said Don Harwin, Minister for the Arts.
Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo‘s Make or break is a collaboration which produces a range of process-based projects that are co-authored with the communities they intersect with, and they are passionate about exposing invisible labour and deploying artistic methods to question and challenge the social and political systems that influence lives and livelihoods.
Harriet Body works in the expanded field of mark making to contemplate process and time. Moving across painting, textiles, ceramics, and dance, Harriet melds traditional materials and processes in unconventional ways, and also works with various community groups, providing workshops and art experiences for people of all ages and abilities.
Nick Dorey’s practice involves sculpture, installation, performance and photography. He creates large environments of a personal and (at times) autobiographic nature, analogically hidden in cipher, compelled by a desire for personal transformation.
Amala Groom is a Wiradjuri artist whose practice, as the performance of her cultural sovereignty, is informed by First Nations methodologies. Working with diverse media Groom’s work often subverts and unsettles western iconographies to enunciate Aboriginal stories, experiences and histories, and to explore the legacy of colonialism.
Shivanjani Lal is a twice-removed Fijian-Indian-Australian artist and curator who works across mediums to explore her dislocation that seeks to account for memory, erasure, healing and the archive. Her current research posits that her body and the landscapes she is from hold the grief of being removed. Her work attempts to document and create gestures of healing.
Katy Plummer makes video installations about the phenomenology of politics and the politics of phenomenology. She juxtaposes cinematic storytelling with anachronistic domestic textile practices and the camp aesthetics of high school theatre.
Linda Sok is a Cambodian-Australian artist whose practice is driven by her Khmer cultural heritage, particularly in relation to the Khmer Rouge Regime, which forced her family’s migration to Australia. She investigates this significant event that has shaped her family and identity, focusing on cultural objects, rituals, traditions and their materiality.
Leyla Stevens is an Australian-Balinese artist and researcher working mostly with moving image and photography. Her practice is informed by ongoing concerns around gesture, ritual, spatial encounters, transculturation and counter histories.
JD Reforma is an interdisciplinary artist whose research-based practice encompasses sculpture, performance, installation, video, photography and writing. His work is embedded in different racialised and classed contexts: the lived experiences of the Asian-Australian diaspora; popular culture and the cult of celebrity; corporate branding and institutional critique; and political dynasticism and cultural imperialism.
Shireen Taweel is multimedia installation artist whose work broaches issues of the construction of cultural heritage, knowledge and identity through language and the constantly shifting public space of the social, political and religious axiom.
Jelena Telecki is interested in representation through painting and sculpture. Installation plays an important part in creating a dialogue between painting and sculpture and is used as a means of articulating her sense of personal and shared narratives, internal and the external.