PACT Centre for Emerging Artists has announced a dramatic re-visioning of the artistic direction of the organisation, piloting an exciting collaborative leadership model that puts artists at the heart of all decision making.
Made up of extraordinary mid-career artists who are leaders in their respective artforms, the five-member PACT Artistic Directorate are Amrita Hepi, Sarah Houbolt, Tulleah Pearce, Nat Randall and Malcolm Whittaker. Working across dance, theatre, performance, interdisciplinary work, curating and creative producing, these artists will all bring a unique perspective to artistic decision-making at PACT.
The Directorate will advise on the artistic program, helping to devise the call-out and assess applications for our 2020 @PACT Residencies alongside PACT’s Executive Producer/ CEO, Nuala Furtado. The Artistic Directorate will each run a Masterclass in their area of practice, providing our emerging resident artists with a unique opportunity to engage with mid-career practitioners in a rigorous environment.
“We are thrilled to launch this new artistic collaborative leadership model which creates a new pathway for mid-career artists into creative leadership and increases the advocacy for the incredible development opportunities PACT provides to artists annually,” said Furtado.
“This new approach supports the ecology of the sector and the rigorous learning opportunities that are needed to foster contemporary Australian culture.”
For more information about PACT, visit: www.pact.net.au for details.
Image: Nat Randall – photo by Teresa Tan
The PACT Artistic Directorate:
Amrita Hepi
Amrita Hepi is an award winning first nations choreographer and dancer from from Bundjulung (Aus) and Ngapuhi (NZ) territories. Her mission as an artist is to push the barriers of intersectionality in form and make work that garners multiple access points through allegories. Her practice at present is interested in forms hybridity – especially those that arise under empire.
An artist with a broad following and reach her work has taken various forms (film, performance, sculpture, text, lecture, participatory installation) but always begins from working with the body as a point of archive, memory , dance and resistance.
In 2018 she was the recipient of the people’s choice award for the Keir Choreographic award and was named one of Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30. In 2019 she is one of the participants for The National 2019 commissioned by Art Gallery of NSW, whilst touring work through Australia, Europe and America – and undertaking the Danceweb scholarship as part of Impulstanz in Vienna Austria.
Amrita trained at the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) dance college, New South Wales, Australia and Alvin Ailey American Dance School, New York. And has been an artist in residence at BANFF centre for the arts Canada, ACE OPEN South Australia.
Sarah Houbolt
Sarah Houbolt likes to take risks in the name of leadership. As an international circus and physical theatre performer, arts manager and diversity advocate, Sarah designs her life around creativity, deep understandings of accessibility, and the need to question what we can actually see. And what we haven’t seen already but should see.
Born in North Queensland, Sarah began her dialogue around disability at age five, with her first media interview. Sarah is a Paralympian and a freak show performer. Her performance credits include Cirque du Soleil. She was the manager of Arts Activated 2016, and a speaker at the Sydney Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2016, on the topic of disability arts history.
Sarah works with the University of Technology Sydney from its Equity and Diversity unit, coordinating central staff and student accessibility policy responses across the University. Her work champions the importance of cultural leadership and getting specific around how we look at accessibility in education, employment, design and innovation. Sarah is now working as a freelance consultant.
Tulleah Pearce
Tulleah is a producer and programmer with significant experience working with independent artists across Australia and the Asia Pacific to commission, present and tour their works. She has worked across multiple performing arts practices engaging audiences in conventional and unconventional ways.
She works as the Associate Producer for Artist and Sector Development at Sydney Opera House. Prior to this she was Program Manager at Performance Space developing and producing Liveworks Festival of Experimental art and has worked across the small-to-medium sector with roles at Creative Practice Lab (UNSW), Blacktown Arts Centre and Firstdraft.
Tulleah has a strong understanding of the sector’s national and international landscape, great networks with independent artists, organisations, and peak bodies, and experience working creatively and collaboratively in a small team.
Nat Randall
Nat Randall is an artist working at the intersection of performance, video and film experimenting with interdisciplinary practices that seek to explore liveness, contingency and power dynamics. Randall has presented work at major institutions, galleries and festivals nationally and internationally.
In 2019 Randall and collaborator Anna Breckon and Performing Lines were nominated for a Helpmann Award for ‘Best Production of a Play’ for their critically acclaimed The Second Woman. Randall is also a founding member of art collective Hissy Fit and performance collective Team MESS. Through these collaborations she has presented work extensively across Australia. Randall studied at the University of Wollongong where she developed a breadth of performance practice including devised work, site specific practice and participatory work.
In 2020 The Second Woman will travel to Theatre der Welt at Germany, London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) to be presented at the Young Vic in London, Hong Kong International Black Box Festival at Freespace in West Kowloon Cultural District and Kyoto Experiment at the Kyoto Arts Center, Japan.
Randall, in collaboration with Breckon, is currently developing a new performance project co-commissioned by Performance Space, Arts House and Vitalstatistix titled Set Piece to premiere in 2021.
Malcolm Whittaker
Malcolm Whittaker works as an artist, writer, researcher, performer, producer and educator. He does this in solo pursuits and in collaborations with other artists and non-artists. His work is mostly made and executed through the engagement of participants and collaborators in the framing of play spaces that adopt social forms and rituals from popular culture and the everyday.
His projects have taken the form of theatre and gallery situations, site-specific and public interventions, performance lectures, film shoots, phone calls, support groups, radio programs, elevator rides, teeth-brushing services, walks in the park, games of chess, gift shops, handshakes, letters in the mail, digging holes and the borrowing of books from the library.
Malcolm has made and presented work extensively across Australia, as well as in the UK, Finland and Europe. He has done so through a range of initiatives and organisations, including Performance Space (Sydney), Arts House (Melbourne), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), State Library of NSW, The Wheeler Centre (Melbourne), Vitalstatistix (Adelaide), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Campbelltown Arts Centre, ANTI Festival (Kuopio), Next Wave Festival (Melbourne), Proximity Festival (Perth), World Theatre Festival (Brisbane), Junction Arts Festival (Launceston), Field Theory (Melbourne), Merrigong Theatre Company (Wollongong), Berlin Performing Arts Festival, Prague Quadrennial and Cementa (Kandos). Malcolm recently completed his PhD at The University of Wollongong, where he also works as a sessional teacher.