Panel Statement n.a.

Panel: Re:imag(in)ing Indigenous media art histories

• Brenda L. Croft is from the Gurindji/Malngin/Mudpurra peoples in the Northern Territory on her paternal side, and Anglo-Australian/German/Irish heritage on her maternal side. She has been involved in the arts and cultural sectors for three decades as an artist, arts administrator, curator, academic and consultant. Since March 2012 Brenda has been a Senior Research Fellow with the National Institute for Experimental Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. In 2011, she was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous Award. She is currently undertaking her PhD. Still in my mind: Gurindji experience, location and visuality draws inspiration from the words of revered Gurindji elder and kadijeri (senior law man), Vincent Lingiari, ‘that land… I still got it on my mind’, a profound statement reiterating his deep commitment to his Gurindji/Malgnin peoples and their customary homelands on Wave Hill in the Northern Territory. On 23 August 1966, alongside his compatriots, Lingiari led the ‘Gurindji Walkoff’ commencing an 8 year-long strike by Aboriginal stockmen and their families working at Wave Hill Station, owned by British Pastoral Company Vestey’s. A retelling of this story from an Indigenous perspective forms the basis of this project. Croft is a direct descendant of these senior Gurindji/Malgnin elders, and these familial relationships underline the significance of this project in ensuring that living family members maintain Indigenous cultural practices of obligation and responsibility for transmitting knowledge through kinship connections.
• Jenny Fraser works within a fluid screen-based practice of bold and confronting art that utilises popular cultural references as a bridge to challenge viewers’ frames of reference. Her practice has also been partly defined through a strong commitment to collaboration with others, and she is motivated to redefine the art of curating as an act of sovereignty and emancipation, founding cyberTribe online gallery over a decade ago. A Murri of mixed ancestry, she was born in Far North Queensland and her old people originally hailed from Yugambeh Country in the Gold Coast Hinterland on the border of South East Queensland/ Northern New South Wales. She has a professional background in Art and Media Education, and has since completed a Master of Indigenous Wellbeing at Southern Cross University in Lismore, NSW. Jenny is a celebrated screen artist. She was awarded an honourable mention at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, and in 2009 she was nominated for a Deadly Award.  She has travelled extensively and completed residency programs in remote communities from Queensland and the Northern Territory to the Rocky Mountains in Canada, and also Raw Space and New Flames in Brisbane. She was the first Aboriginal Curator to present a Triennial exhibition in Australia: the other APT. This exhibition coincided with, and responded to, the Asia Pacific Triennial, and was then accepted for inclusion into the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. Her upcoming Australia Council fellowship project Midden was awarded in 2012. Because of the diverse creative mediums Jenny uses, much of her work defies categorisation. Most recently her work takes iconic and everyday symbols of Australian life and places them into a context that questions the values they represent. With a laconic sense of humour she picks away at the fabric of our society, exposing contradictions, absurdities, and denial.
• r e a is an artist whose work transforms across a number of art forms and flows into a new-media interdisciplinary arts practice which examines: history, memory, body politics and language, and the construction of Indigenous [Australian] identity. She is a descendent of the Gamilaraay and Wailwan peoples of Coonabarabran in north-west New South Wales. In 1994 she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, followed by a Master of Arts (Visual Art) from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University and a Master of Science in Digital Imaging and Design from New York University. She has received numerous scholarships and grants throughout her professional creative and academic career, including a Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, a New Media Arts Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts, a Fulbright Scholarship, and recently an APA and R.E.A., from UNSW. r e a has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1992 and has been involved in a number of international and national residency programs since 1996. She has participated in the Live-I Workshops presented by Troika Ranch Contemporary Dance Company, New York City; and the Witness Relocation Master-Class (based in New York City) at Legs On The Wall, Sydney, supported by ACAPTA. r e a is currently undertaking her PhD in Visual Anthropology at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, full-time.
• Esteban Garcia is a Colombian-born artist and researcher currently working on his Doctorate studies in Technology at Purdue University in Indiana. Garcia’s research interests include computer art history and digital media art practices. At Purdue he is a Course Instructor of digital image foundations in the Department of Computer Graphics. Garcia’s research has been featured in significant electronic art venues such as SIGGRAPH (2011), Leonardo Journal (2011) and ISEA2012. He has been awarded artist in residency by the Estímulos program Colombia-Venezuela (2004) and in Lugar a Dudas arts space in Cali, Colombia (2007). His hybrid art practice has allowed him to participate in curated art shows and workshops across the globe such as Kilómetro-0 Urbano in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (2005), the Live Performers Meeting in Rome (2011), and most recently at the Delicious Spectacle gallery in Washington D.C.