Media Release

Outlaws, a Magician and Sigmund Freud inspire 2005 Creative Fellows

The role outlaws play in Australian society; the life of Sigmund Freud; children’s diaries during times of trauma; and Greek immigrants’ experience of Australia are some of the diverse research subjects to be tackled by the recipients of the 2005 State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowships.

The grants will allow researchers, writers and artists to work in the Library on 15 projects involving its collections. This year’s Creative Fellowship recipients include author Arnold Zable and playwright Jack Hibberd.

Some other successful Creative Fellowships projects include a publication about European illustrated books from the 15th and 16th centuries, a novel focussing on the life and times of magician Will Alma and an opera based on the Peking Opera performances in the Bendigo goldfields in 1894.

The three-year, $600,000 Creative Fellowship program, launched in 2003, is jointly funded by the Victorian Government and the State Library of Victoria and encourages the scholarly, literary and creative use of the Library’s rich collections.

The Minister for the Arts, Mary Delahunty said, ‘I understand that, as always, applications were of a high standard. I congratulate those who were successful in obtaining fellowships and I look forward to seeing the results of their work.’

CEO and State Librarian Anne-Marie Schwirtlich said the successful Creative Fellows will each be awarded either $25,000 for six months or $12,500 for three months.

Also announced with the 2005 Creative Fellowships is the Redmond Barry Fellowship. This award, worth $20,000, has been made available jointly by the University of Melbourne and the State Library. It commemorates the laying of the foundation stones for both institutions by Sir Redmond Barry, and is designed to facilitate use of the extensive collections of both organisations.

This year, the Redmond Barry Fellowship has been awarded to poet and essayist Olivier Burckhardt.

State Library Of Victoria Creative Fellowships 2005

Six month funded Fellowships:
Researcher	Dr Hilary Maddocks	‘The Art of Print: documentation of European Illustrated printed books c. 1470 – 1550’
Three month funded Fellowships:
Author	Dr Fiona Capp	‘Once an Outlaw’
Radio producer	Dr Lyn Gallacher	‘Magic Words: an exploration of the life and art of Will Alma’
Curator	Elizabeth Gertsakis	‘Horror, Calamity and Graphthos in Victorian popular illustrated news in Melbourne 1875 – 1877’
Artist and writer	Xenia Hanusiak	‘Golden Threads: an opera’
Playwright	Dr Jack Hibberd	The Nunawading Messiah and the Chosen People of Victoria’
Writer and artist	Brian Lipson	‘Bergasse 19: the apartments of Sigmund Freud’
Art historian	Dr Paul Paffen	‘War and Peace: H. Septimus Power and M. Napier and the murals of the State Library of Victoria’
Artist	John Ryrie	‘A book in the form of a medieval bestiary representing some of the people and animals Europeans believed to exist on the Great Southern continent’
Architectural historian	Terence Sawyer	‘Tracing the Line: an analysis of the development of the architecture of William Pitt’
Curator	Lisa Sullivan	‘Sybil Craig: art and archive’
Artist	Christian Bumbarra Thompson	‘A Reinterpretation of Percy Leason’s Aboriginal paintings’
Writer and researcher	Dr Maria Tumarkin	‘The Chronicles of Unaccompanied Minors’
Historian	Dr Rachel Weaver	‘Defending the Homestead: representations of Aboriginal and settler violence in colonial and late-colonial Australian popular culture’
Author	Arnold Zable	‘Sea of Many Returns’
Redmond Barry Fellowship:
Poet and Essayist	Olivier Burckhardt	‘Pencilled Lines on Poetry’