Twenty-nine artists from across NSW have been announced as participants in the state-wide Regional Futures project. Regional Futures is a two-year state-wide creative project funded by Create NSW and delivered by the NSW Regional Arts Network which represents 15 members organisations that support and promote artists and creative practice across regional NSW.

At the heart of the project is collaboration across sectors bringing artists and other experts together, exploring the future of the regions. The artists will participate in a ten-week self-directed creative development program that
will involve weekly online sessions with various thought leaders and studio visits from the project’s Creative Director.

Regional Futures will culminate with the showcasing in Sydney of new works developed as part of the project.

Congratulations to all the recipients! 

ARTS MID NORTH COAST
Ronnie Grammatica

Imagining a post-carbon future. How do we think about a world that doesn’t yet exist?

 

Photographer and storyteller Ronnie Grammatica will hit the road, talking to community along the Mid North Coast, producing a series of photo portraits paired with recorded conversations about the journey to a post carbon world.

ARTS NORTHERN RIVERS
Caity Reynolds Using humour, play and satire,artist Caity Reynolds will create a series of paintings that unpack the future socio-economic insecurity faced by the Northern Rivers.
Holly Ahern & Eden Crawford-Harriman It is hard to define the future of the Northern Rivers region in the aftermath of the 2022 major floods.  Using dormant billboards and signpost structures artists Holly Ahern and Eden Crawford-Harriman will take snippets and quotes from community conversations about the future to become a series of vibrant and eye-catching artworks or ‘signs’ installed across the region.
ARTS NORTH WEST
Alana Blackburn and Mike Terry Creative collaborators Alana Blackburn, musician,  and Mike Terry, photographer and multimedia artist, will consult with environmental scientists to create a work that combines film, collage and soundscapes to address the question “How can our past inform our future?”
Joanne Stead and Tania Hartigan Visual artists Joanne Stead, Tamworth, and Tania Hartigan, Wallabadah, will develop a creative response to the conversations across their community that explore the variable understandings of sustainability and the implications that arise from the lack of a common language.
ARTS OUT WEST
Kris Schubert and Yanhadarrambal Jade Flyn Musician Kris Schubert and local songwriter and Wiradyuri elder Yanhadarrambal Jade Flyn will collaborate to create a new composition featuring a combination of orchestral instruments, guitar, piano and voice that explores the theme ‘What is the future of our region’
Laura Baker

Paper cutting artist Laura Baker starts with unmarked paper and uses surgical cuts to explore the qualities and detail of the Australian landscape. The final pieces are as much about the paper imagery, as the emptiness and shadows cast beyond the work.

Using her creative practice she will create an ode to the regional community; a body of work celebrating the unique landscape of our regional towns.

ARTS UPPER HUNTER
Jane Richens Jane Richens is a multidisciplinary visual artist and biodiversity farmer living on Gringai country in Dungog.  Inspired by dialogues with people in her region about possible ‘futures’ and regional issues, she will create a series of site specific performative portraits and tableaus, telling stories of ‘person and practice’
Grace Barnes Multidisciplinary artist and animator, Grace Barnes will create a series of illustrations and animated artworks that explore the bold truths of what the future looks like.  Ever the optimist, she will be using an environmental lens, hoping we will choose innovation to bring prosperity, life and a safe future for us all.
EASTERN RIVERINA ARTS
Juanita McLauchlan A Gamilarray woman living on Wiradjuri country, Juanita McLauchlan is a printmaker and 3D artist.  Her new body of work will be inspired by the belief that you can’t look towards the future without looking back at the past.  Standing at the Heart of Seven Generations will explore her longstanding love for rocks, formations and texture.
MURRAY ARTS
Julianne Piko Julianne Piko is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, film and installation.  Investigating this post covid world and the current state of climate change urgency, she will create sculptural pieces that are at the intersection of art and science.
SOUTH COAST ARTS
Anna Glynn Shoalhaven artist Anna Glynn creates work investigating the connection between humans, history, nature, land, place, physical and the ephemeral.  Her practice includes painting, drawing, video, sculpture, installation, photography, writing, music and sound.  With the influx of people wishing to live in regional areas, this new work will highlight the natural environment to create ways for the community to engage and nurture what we have.
SOUTH EAST ARTS
Scott Baker Multidisciplinary digital artist Scott Baker works across live performance, audio-visual installation and large-scale projection work exploring site specific responses to life, the universe, and everything.  Utilising climate change data modelling he will create video projection vignettes of possible futures mapped to local sites.
Bee Cruse

Bee Cruse is a proud Yuin, Biripi and Wiradjuri Storyteller born and raised in Western Sydney and works between Sydney, Canberra and her Grandfather’s Country on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Cruse is a Producer, Writer, Actor and Director across film, television and theatre on productions such as Total Control, In My Blood It Runs, and Nightwalkers.

Her live performance is diverse, she has fun in drag as BeeDazzled Shanks – the Prince of Redfern, and also loves dancing more traditional style as she has over the years with Buuja-Buuja Dance Group.

SOUTHERN TABLELANDS ARTS
Tracy Luff Sculptor and installation artist Tracy Luff will use her skills in community consultation to explore how forced isolation and social restrictions have disrupted normally family life and the increased reports of family and domestic violence.  Drilling down into these problems will frame the creative direction of a sculptural installation.
Jodie Munday Using her heritage of Celtic, Aboriginal and British descent, visual  artist Jodie Munday will continue to represent nature and the environment.  With the rising of the Warragamba and Whyangla dam walls affecting many native species she will pose the question “What does the future look like without these animals and are you happy with that?”
SOUTH WEST ARTS
Wendy McDonald & Kristen Rule Wendy McDonald is a visual artist who lives and works on Thule Lagoon, the ancient bed of the Murray River. She uses visual art as a tool to promote discussions of landscape, science, ecology and cultural heritage. Collaborating with filmmaker and composer Kristen Rule they will explore the future of water in the landscape, creating a cross disciplinary work combining music and visual works.
ORANA ARTS
Kim V Goldsmith Kim V. Goldsmith is a digital media artist and storyteller based in Central West NSW and will undertake a residency at Wellington Caves through the support of Dubbo Council.  In collaboration with poet and painter Kit Kelen she will use the site to highlight educative and emotional journeys of this place plus tell us about long term environmental journeys.
Kit Kelen Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet and painter, resident in the Myall Lakes of NSW and will collaborate with digital media artist Kim V Goldsmith in a residency at Wellington Caves, using the site to highlight educative and emotional journeys of this place plus tell us about long term environmental journeys.
Allison Reynolds Allison Reynolds is a disabled artist who lives in the Pilliga, north of Coonabarabran.  Her art revolves around her passions for social justice issues, such as disability rights and the environment.  Working within the literary genre and art movement of Solarpunk, Allison will create a work that explores the sliver of time where no matter what we do and have done, things will get worse before they get better, where resiliency of the regions will be tested again and again.
OUTBACK ARTS
Andrew Hull Visual artist Andrew Hull is of Barkindji descent from the Darling River, Bourke NSW. He draws heavily on landscape and place as key themes. Working with artists and community members from across the region he will use real objects to be broken down physically (or metaphorically) and re-constructed in the style of Kintsugi – the Japanese practise which repairs broken ceramics with gold, so the cracks which have broken the object are not concealed, but highlighted, and through that process incorporated into the object (or narrative) itself, and making the whole more beautiful.
WEST DARLING ARTS
Sian Harris Sian Harris is a Kurnu Paakantyi Nhuungku artist who has the narratives of Aboriginal women and Blak LGBTQIASB+ people at the centre of her storytelling.  For Sian, the future of the regions is a safer, more welcoming place for people like me. It’s a place that reasserts our connection to country and spirituality, but sees our continual growth as a people with culture. Her work will be immersed in imagery, symbolism and pattern.
WESTERN RIVERINA ARTS
Jacob Charles & Hape Kiddle Emerging young Wiradjuri artist Jacob Charles will work with Griffith based sculptor and jeweller Hape Kiddle to develop his skills and expand his future in this field.

www.regionalfutures.net.au