WALK: DOWN CITY STREETS PARTICIPANTS
Olivia Barr: I am a Lecturer at UTS: Law, write at the intersections of jurisprudence, geography and philosophy and curious about questions of movement, lawful place, roads of the South, and the creation and conduct of the laws of friendship. I have nearly finished my first book, ‘A Jurisprudence of Movement: Common Law, Walking, Unsettling Place’, which opens with a series of walking stories as a way of responding to the question I always ask myself: how to live with and take responsibility for Australian law (warts and all) while living on Aboriginal land: lawful land. With this question always present, though very rarely answered, I walk and cycle Redfern, and wonder.
Saskia Beudel is a writer and historian whose recent books include A Country in Mind and Curating Sydney: Imagining the City’s Future. She is interested in the idea of ‘country’, especially in an urban setting, as a concept that bridges people, places, the plants and animals that live among them, along with other environmental aspects (geology, hydrology, atmosphere, etc).
Clint Bracknell: I’m a musician, writer, composer, language enthusiast and lecturer at the University of Sydney across the Division of Architecture and Creative Arts, but based in Music. As a Wirlomin Nyungar <wirlomin.com.au> from the south coast of Western Australia who suddenly lives in Redfern now, I’m am keen to get better acquainted <clintbracknell.com>.
Danny Butt: I’m a writer and critic, currently Research Fellow in the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. I work with the Aotearoa New Zealand-based collective Local Time <http://www.local-time.net> on site-specific arts projects that engage issues of sovereignty, local knowledge, customary maintenance of land, and self-determination. I lived close to Redfern in 1991/1992 and first walked there for band practice.
Barbara Campbell: I’m an artist and PhD candidate at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. I’m a descendent of Anglo-Celtic settlers on both sides of my family and grew up in Bundjalung country in South East Queensland. I’m one of the team that’s put this event together. Through this process I’m beginning to understand Redfern as being rebuilt daily through untold numbers of micro-encounters, fully comprehended by no-one.
Cathy Craigie has spent most of her adult life living and working in the inner city Aboriginal community. She has been an active member of the community and has been involved in projects such as ‘Guwanyi’, the Story of Redfern’s Aboriginal community with the Museum of Sydney. Cathy recently worked on ‘Home’ with the Sydney Story Factory. This was a collection of stories from people living and working in Redfern and its surrounds. Cathy is also the founder of Gadigal Information Service and Koori Radio and is currently the Chairperson of this Redfern organisation.
Brenda L Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudpurra peoples; Anglo-Australian heritage) moved to Sydney from Canberra in 1985 to attend Sydney College of the Arts. She lived in Renwick Street Redfern because she wanted to be part of the local Aboriginal community. Croft’s group house was next door to the Redfern Aboriginal Dance Theatre and adjacent to the Black Theatre in Cope Street. From 1986 – 1990 Brenda worked as a volunteer radio presenter with Radio Skid Row/Radio Redfern, 88.9 FM, at its original premises in the basement of The Wentworth Building, University of Sydney and then its Cope Street premises. Her work as a presenter was shown in Film Australia’s ‘Radio Redfern’ (1988) and Michaela Perske’s, ’88 Documentary’ (2014). In 1987, with 9 other artists Brenda was a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative. Working as a photographic artist Brenda’s first ever acquired works – by the National Gallery of Australia in 1988 – were documentary images of a Stop Black Deaths in Custody Rally, held in Redfern in 1985. Brenda considers that she received her political education while living and working in 1980s inner-city Sydney, particularly with the local Koori community.
Ross Gibson works for the University of Canberra. Recent books include The Summer Exercises (2008) and 26 Views of the Starburst World (2012), both published by UWAP, both obsessed with Sydney. See: www.rossgibson.com.au
Bianca Hester: I moved from Melbourne to Sydney in 2012 to begin a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at Sydney College of the Arts. Through that I started working with the Space, Place and Country research cluster with Saskia Beudel, Barbara Campbell and Glenn Wallace. I am an artist <www.biancahester.net> and my projects explore the various ways that space is constructed, regulated and inhabited. I work closely with collectives and collaborations such as CLUBSproject inc (2002-2007) and the Open Spatial Workshop since 2003. <http://www.osw.com.au>
Lucas Ihlein is an artist who lives in Wollongong. He works with SquatSpace, an artist group which from 2005-9 ran the Redfern-Waterloo Tour of Beauty. His artworks often take the form of walks and public education events around contested urban and agricultural land. http://lucasihlein.net
Jonathan Jones: As a Sydney-based installation artist I’m concerned with acknowledging local knowledge systems and connecting with local concerns in order to make relevant artworks that explore relationships between the community and individual, the personal and public, the historical and contemporary.
Fiona McGregor: Writer and performance artist. Have published five books and many essays, articles and reviews on art; and have shown my performance across Australia and overseas. Born and bred in Sydney, first lived in Redfern on Wilson Street in mid 1980s, have lived back in Redfern for five years, now the other side of the station. Currently working on a DCA – to be two novels – set in 1930s criminal milieu of inner Sydney. Whilst these books are not set exactly in Redfern, but adjacent in Surry Hills, etc, the research process has taught me a tremendous amount of Sydney’s inner city history. I walk these streets in the 1930s as much as the 2010s. Very conscious of poverty and privilege. Country to me is the past in the present, layers of people, communities, buildings, the natural landforms beneath that persist.
Anne Loxley is Curator, C3West, for Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). One of the MCA’s key external programs, C3West creates situations for artists to work strategically with business and non-arts government organisations, placing artists at the core of projects which give voice to local issues and actively involving the business sector and communities in new ways of working together. Walking through Redfern promises to reveal much about that Country and the myriad ways it is experienced.
Chico Monks: an ATSI cultural arts Teacher at Eora Tafe and renowned artist who use a diverse range of materials and found objects, often crossing disciplines painting on sculptures and sculpting paintings. I’m keen to understand the depth of change in the Redfern area and interested in the outcome of artworks and retaining Aboriginal culture.
Nicole Monks is Sydney based trans-disciplinary creative of Aboriginal, Dutch and English Heritage working across multiple industries including art, interior/fashion/furniture & surface design. I look forward to participating in Down city streets to broaden my knowledge of the lived history of Redfern.
Paul Mylecharane is a designer and lecturer at Monash University, Caulfield. His work is interested in the intersection and democratisation of physical and digital publishing. Paul is currently researching a number of publishing projects concerning Indigenous Storytelling.
Matt Poll: I currently work at the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney as an assistant curator of Indigenous heritage and the repatriation project. I am interested in the social histories and the forms of Sydney University student and academic engagement with Redfern community members and the way these engagements have shaped Redferns social spaces in the post referendum era.
Polly Stanton is an artist and current practice-led PhD student at RMIT whose research investigates temporal observations of site and landscape. For Down City Streets, Polly will use sound and video to map the path of the walk, and its interactions with place, people and country.
Michael Tawa is an architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney. He has taught and practiced architecture in Adelaide, Sydney and Alice Springs – along the way introducing a new university preparatory program for ATSI high school students at the University of NSW, undertaking engagement projects with communities at Warburton and Patjarr (WA), Utopia (NT) and Broken Hill, and developing the 2014 & 2015 Bunga Barabugu programs at the University of Sydney. Michael’s research and publications touch on relationships between narrative, memory, location (space) and opportunity through an `ethics of place’ that is one way of regarding Country. In particular, Michael is interested in the tectonic and material aspects of places and buildings; and the way that intangible cultural, historical and environmental conditions, memories and narratives, presences and absences can be inscribed, triggered and experienced kinaesthetically within the designed environment.
Glenn Wallace is a senior public art project manager at the City of Sydney. Since 2004 he has provided a key role in developing: the City’s long term Sustainable Sydney 2030 vision, the City Art public art strategy, the annual Laneway Art program (2008-2012), and the Eora Journey program that aims to create greater recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and cultures in the city. Glenn is currently a PhD candidate at Sydney College of the Arts where his research responds to recent calls from political philosophy, sociology and urban design for artists working in public space to not only influence the design of cities but to engage in transforming the political and cultural capacities of their citizens. In this sense, the experience and representation of ‘Country’ will be particularly relevant to two of the forthcoming Eora Journey projects, the Redfern Terrace and Redfern Tours.
Alinta Williams is a Ngunnawal Ngambri woman from the ACT. She now lives in Sydney, working as a primary school teacher at Rozelle Public School and as a gallery educator at the Art Gallery of NSW. Alinta also tutored in Indigenous Perspectives in Education at the Australian Catholic University. In 2014 Alinta worked as a consultant and educator at UTS as part of their Art Education Outreach program. For me, Redfern is a home away from home, a meeting place. My Dad, Arnold Williams, passes on many stories and connections. I hope to ensure the continuation of Country through education, and by giving new memories and stories to my children.
Suzie Evans
Down City Streets 