MEDIA ART CURATING FORUMS
For Regional Gallery, Museum & Library Professionals

Media art: video installations, interactive artworks and web based art are now part of mainstream contemporary visual arts and are continually growing in popularity. The forums address commonly asked questions and present an overview of contemporary media arts. Learn from local and interstate experts about curating and collecting works of media art. Topics include: exhibition design and presentation; technical/equipment requirements; maintenance and logistics; installation; invigilation; and audiences.

Who should attend:
Public gallery, museum and library directors and staff, volunteers, artists, independent curators, arts educators and students.

Admission is free. Refreshments provided. Bookings required for catering purposes.
RSVP to the venue. See details below.

Speakers
Liz Hughes, Artistic Director, Experimenta
Emma McRae, Curatorial and Project Co-ordinator, Experimenta
Matthew Gingold, Freelance Technical Director

(See speakers' biographies below)

MEDIA ART EXHIBITION:: EXPERIMENTA PLAYGROUND

Many of the forums will be held during Experimenta Playground, a touring exhibition of inspiring and thought-provoking media artworks by over 30 Australian and international artists. Artist and curator floortalks will be held at each of the venues. Admission is free.

Performance Space @ CarriageWorks, SYDNEY :: 8 May-7June 08
Samstag Museum of Art, ADELAIDE ::30 Aug- 17 Oct 08
WA Museum, PERTH:: 15 Nov 08 - 1 Feb 09
Bendigo Art Gallery, BENDIGO, Victoria :: 25 April - 7 June 09
Albury Library Museum, ALBURY, NSW 25 July- 7 Sept 09

Please visit the Experimenta Playground national tour site for details: www.experimenta.org/playground-touring/

SPEAKERS BIOGRAPHIES

Liz Hughes
Liz Hughes has worked in the film and media art sectors for 15 years as an innovative filmmaker, curator and senior arts manager. Her films have screened at over 130 film festivals, winning 21 international awards and selling to a number of TV networks. She has also directed documentaries for the Aboriginal media group CAAMA, as well as several episodes of the children’s TV  series Short Cuts, which received an Australian Film Institute award in 2002.

As Artistic Director of Experimenta for the last six years, Liz has contributed significantly to the organization’s transformation and success through her efforts to reposition Experimenta, generate inspiring and accessible programming, expand its funding base and develop new local partnerships and international networks.

While at Experimenta, Liz has also driven, managed, curated or co-curated, and toured a number of ambitious projects, including House of Tomorrow and Vanishing Point, which have attracted large and diverse audiences and extensive media coverage, both in Australia and overseas. Liz also co-curated the 2004 Seoul International Media Art Biennale, contributed to the curation of Multimedia Art and Asia Pacific (China 2002 and Singapore 2004) and has curated Experimenta’s Under the Radar, a collection of Australian media art which toured to Liverpool’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Recently, Liz co-curated Experimenta Playground, which launched in Melbourne in August 2007 and is currently touring Australia.

Liz is currently planning, researching and developing Experimenta’s next large scale exhibition to be launched in 2010.

Emma McRae
Emma McRae has been working with video and new media for over 10 years and is currently Curatorial & Project Coordinator with Experimenta Media Arts. In this position she has co-curated Experimenta Playground (2007) and Experimenta Vanishing Point (2005), and curated the Oz Digital Shorts program for the 53rd Sydney Film Festival (2006). Emma has co-ordinated the highly successful Experimenta Vanishing Point National Tour to 5 states in Australia, the Experimenta Under the Radar tour of Australian media art to the UK in 2006, and Experimenta Playground which launched in Melbourne in August 2007 and is currently touring Australia.
 
Emma has previously worked on project management for exhibitions including "I thought I knew but I was wrong", an ACMI/Asialink touring exhibition of Australian video art, and her video artworks have been screened and performed at galleries and festivals nationally and internationally including ISEA, Japan; Futuresonic, UK; Electrofringe, Australia; Champ Libre, Canada; Root X, UK; Next Wave, Australia; and Gwangju Biennale, Korea.

Matthew Gingold
Matthew Gingold has been working as a technical director, arts project manager, and new media artist in Australia and abroad for the last 10 years. His work has taken him to Korea, Britain, Germany, China and many regional areas and capital cities in Australia. As a technical director Matthew coordinates large-scale national and international new media productions for a number of arts organisations and institutions, including Experimenta Media Arts, ACCA, ACMI and the State Library of Victoria. Matthew is considered to be one of the best in his field, not only understanding and delivering the most appropriate hardware and software for clients, but also building strong collaborative and creative relationships directly with artists and their work to produce systems that are flexible, reliable, transportable and durable whilst remaining at the cutting edge of technology and conceptual art practices.

Matthew’s art practice spans photographic exhibition, interactive, sound and video installation, live audio visual performance, sound and video design for theatre, dance, film and documentary productions as well as cultural and community development and public art projects. Recent projects have been presented at CarriageWorks, Sydney (during the Sydney International Art Festival); Bus Gallery, Melbourne; Tap Seac Square, Macau; BlackBox, the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne; and ACMI Memory Grid, Melbourne.

This project is an initiative of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body and assisted by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, state and territory governments.