Creative Australia is thrilled to announce the 10 participants in the 2024 Digital Fellowship program, in partnership with Creative New Zealand. This program provides recipients with a $10,000 investment to assist with exploring and developing their digital practice across six months of expert mentoring, workshops and collaboration.
In 2024, the in-person and online workshop facilitators are Aotearoa and New York-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and facilitator Pelenakeke Brown, and Yagera/Butchulla woman Kamarra Bell-Wykes, a playwright, director, performer, education consultant and alumni of ILBIJERRI.
This year’s cohort includes five participants from Australia and five from Aotearoa/New Zealand, spanning disciplines from contemporary multidisciplinary and audio/visual art to film, digital media and poetry/short fiction.
Creative Australia’s Director, Industry Development, Adam McGowan said, “It’s great to be offering this career development opportunity to ten artists who are foregrounding Pasifika and First Nations Australian storytelling, self-determination and innovative digital practice through their work.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Creative New Zealand to deliver the program for a third year and congratulate the artists who will meet in Melbourne for the start of the Digital Fellowship next month.”
The five Aotearoa/New Zealand artists are:
Fijian (Navala, Nakoroboya, Ba) and Pākeha digital artist and illustrator Elsie Andrewes, whose work focuses on identity, natural heritage and the impacts of climate change on Pacific regions.
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Hinerangi, Ngāti Mahuta, Tainui/Waikato), an artist and writer who works across mediums including textiles, ceramics, performance, film, and writing.
Jayden Purcell (Aukilani, Aotearoa), a proud Polynesian artist whose practice converges on indigenous sustainability, blending cultural celebration and contemporary creativity.
Natasha Ratuva, a Fiji (Kadavu vasu i Bua) born and raised multi-disciplinary creative working in the mediums of photography, digital art, poetry, gardening and Taukei traditional practices.
Poetry, flash fiction, and short story writer Mere Taito (Rotuma (Fiji): Malha’a and Noa’tau), a PhD candidate whose work explores the educational potential of digitally-authored multilingual poetry.
And the five Australian artists:
Moorina Bonini (Yorta Yorta, Wurundjeri and Wiradjuri) whose work – informed by her experiences as an Aboriginal and Italian woman – critiques the Eurocentric foundations of Indigenous categorisation in Western institutions.
Max Brading specialises in real-time visual arts and interactive programming, and artistic integration with multimedia systems.
Taungurung artist and curator Kate ten Buuren, whose contemporary visual art, film and storytelling practice is grounded in self-determination, self-representation and collectivism.
Multi-disciplinary artist Kasey Gambling, whose works create site-specific experiences that bridge performance, digital media and audio.
Sze Tsang, a published researcher, performer, photographer, and audio-visual artist. Their practice and research uses audio-visual work to focus on the relationships between self and place, and how this can produce emotional catharsis.
