The State Collection will be transformed by sixteen Victorian scholars and creatives undertaking a range of exciting projects through the 2022 Fellowships program.
Among these is a memoir retracing the journey by Chinese-Australian migrants to the goldfields in the 1800s, an audio essay on the history and future of work in Melbourne, an exploration of early contact between Tongans and British missionaries, the continued development of the Woiwurrung language database, and a film about the influence of Irish Gaelic dance in Victoria.
Working out of offices in the Library’s magnificent dome annulus, the 2022 fellows will reimagine our collections through visual arts, performance, writing and scholarship and more – enriching Victorians’ understanding of who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Read more about the Library’s 2022 fellows below.
Announcing the 2022 fellows
We were thrilled to announce the successful applicants of the 2022 State Library Victoria Fellowships Program at a very special onsite event.
The cohort have been chosen not just for their compelling and original project ideas, but also for the range of topics they will delve into.
Watch this video for a snapshot of our announcement and welcome reception.
Meet the fellows
2022 fellow - Dr Ry Haskings
Ry’s project Boxes, bars and rules: Abstraction through newspaper design and historical networks investigates new purposes for seemingly outdated modes of traditional newspaper design. In an age where digital media formats dominate how information is communicated, he will explore whether forms in newspaper design from 30-50 years ago offer important, yet nuanced, visual devices for communication in our current context.
This project will result in an exhibition and an edition of prints for a portfolio.
Dr Ry Haskings is a lecturer at LaTrobe University, specialising in Visual Arts. He has exhibited extensively and researched and undertaken residencies both locally and abroad. Much his art incorporates references to film, politics, social issues, music, popular culture, modern and contemporary art, in particular an examination of abstract art forms through the construction of installations.
2022 fellows - Ana Tiquia and Reanne Browne
Ana and Reanne will collaborate on their project After work, a five-part audio essay that explores the future of work through voices of workers – past, present, and future – based on their research of Melbourne’s historic labour movement.
Ana is an artist, producer, and future strategist. She is founder of All Tomorrow’s Futures, a consultancy using art, design, and creative technology to generate possibility in the present. Her artist practice uses participatory art and live performance to ‘future’ inclusively.
2022 fellow - Juliet Miranda Rowe
Through their project All will be revealed, Juliet will explore the connection between the history of stage magic and the contemporary moving image, investigating both the construction of movable children’s books as well as the memorabilia and ephemera of the WG Alma Conjuring Collection.
Their research will inform and direct a dynamic and interactive series of sculptural illustrations and animations – a modern day magic trick, where viewers have the opportunity to bring the illustrated pop-up installations alive through their smartphones.
Juliet Miranda Rowe is a cross-disciplinary creative, predominantly working with illustration and animation. Balancing time between commercial clients and personal projects, their work centres around storytelling and memoir, often working alongside directors and producers to create animated sequences for documentary film and television.
2022 fellow - Dr Sofi Basseghi
Sofi’s project The road to Pairidaeza, will research the word ‘paradise’, originating from the ancient Persian language. She will examine Persian literature, miniature paintings and manuscripts in the Library’s collection. Her findings aspire to manifest in a multi-media experimental outcome combining lived experiences from Melbourne’s Farsi speaking diaspora with imagined fictional and poetic tales from Persianate culture.
2022 fellow - Veisinia Tonga
Veisinia’s project The darkness will examine accounts of Tongan contact with missionaries to illuminate pre-contact life in Tonga. She plans to cast light on Tongan daily life before European contact, of which little is known, using the memoirs and accounts of early missionaries and explorers. At the conclusion of this fellowship, Veisinia aims to publish articles on her findings, and create a podcast and exhibition.
Sofi Basseghi is a Persian/European/Australian multi-disciplinary visual artist and creative researcher who combines documentary and narrative video art practices to create lens-based outcomes, which morph stories generated from people’s lived experiences with imagined narratives informed by Persian poetry, mythology and folklore.
Veisinia Tonga is a Tongan Kakala artist and storyteller. She is trained in journalism and floristry, and uses the traditional floristry practices of Tonga/Pacifika in her art. As a writer, Veisinia has been published in various publications in New Zealand and Australia. She is the co-founder of the Pasifika Storytellers Collective and Tongan cultural group, Mana-Va.
2022 fellow - Sam Burke
During her fellowship, Sam will research, develop and write the documentary treatment for Raised on fertile ground – an art documentary exploring the Mildura Sculpture Triennials 1961-78.
A series of groundbreaking events held in the regional Victorian town of Mildura, the Triennials left an indelible mark on the Australian experimental art landscape and introduced radical approaches to contemporary art practice. The Triennials were led by visionary curator Tom McCullough, who used his Mildura model to later fashion his directorship of the Sydney Biennale, taking the influence of the Triennials to a worldwide stage.
2022 fellow - Glennys Briggs
Through her project, Glennys will use archival material to investigate the lives of her family and other First Nations women who lived on New South Wales and Victorian reserves and missions set up by the Aboriginal Protectorate. Her focus is to produce documentation of the resilience of First Nations women in overcoming their oppression, and to exhibit artworks based on her findings.
Sam Burke is a multidisciplinary artist and current PhD candidate for a doctorate in visual arts. She holds a Masters of Contemporary Art from the VCA and a Bachelor of Music from The University of Melbourne, and has exhibited and performed extensively throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and the United States. Sam has held residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, The British School at Rome and Bundanon Trust.
Glennys Briggs is a Taungurung/Yorta Yorta/ Wiradjuri elder and a visual and performing artist. She combines her creative, community and cultural skills to celebrate and nurture a strong future in Indigenous arts, culture and histories. She is the curator for Burraja Gallery and has been a practicing artist and educator for the last 20 years.
2022 fellow - Phuong Ngo
Phuong’s project Racist furniture seeks to explore and unpack the history of race and racism in Australia through the history of furniture making and manufacturing. Specifically, it will examine the ‘European Only Labour’ labels which were a legal requirement for furniture produced in Victoria from the late ninteenth century up until 1963.
He will source and dismantle European Labour Only furniture and reconstitute them into new art and design objects, centring his own labour and addressing historical exclusion and othering.
2022 fellow - Brooke Wandin
Brooke’s project Wurrung baggunga ba yiaga, Gather and find language examines materials relating to Woiwurrung language to assist in the continued development and eventual completion of a Woiwurrung language database. This project will transfer records from institutions to the hands of traditional custodians to inform and enhance current cultural knowledge of the Woiwurrung language.
Brooke Wandin is a Wurundjeri educator, language worker and artist. Brooke has developed and facilitated a range of cultural educational programs, providing Wurundjeri cultural and historical education for pre-school to tertiary students.
2022 fellow - Dr Ashleigh Green
Dr Green’s project will investigate the planning and construction of the first purpose-built penal and psychiatric institutions in the Port Phillip District and colony of Victoria during the La Trobe administration (1839-1854).
The project will provide an in-depth history of the construction and early administration of four of these key institutions, and how they set the precedent for the design and construction of gaols, prisons, and asylums in the colony that came after.
Dr Ashleigh Green is a recent doctoral graduate of The University of Melbourne, where she specialised in classics and archaeology. She pursues penal history in Victoria through informal research and by working as a tour guide.
2022 fellow - Dr Fayen Ke-Xiao d'Evie
The project Celestial roots will respond thematically and aesthetically to a handwritten journal from 1866 by Chinese miner Ah Sing Jong, who lived on the Central Victorian goldfields, the original copy of which is in the State Library collection. The project will result in an artist-led book in collaboration with Chinese artist Hu Yun and emerging designer Xinyuan Li, that is innovative in form and content and that will unearth a neglected history.
2022 fellow - Alison Wong
For her project A long walk, Alison plans to travel over 400kms from Robe, South Australia, to the Victorian goldfields. She will write a literary memoir/long-form lyric essay reflecting on her own experience, interwoven with the experience of about 14,000 Chinese who, to avoid the Colonial Government of Victoria’s £10 poll tax, walked the route in the 1850s.
Fayen Ke-Xiao d'Evie is an artist, writer, and publisher of Malaysian, Chinese and Pakehā Aotearoa heritage. She is the founder of 3-ply, an artist-led imprint that approaches publishing as an experimental, critical, and poetic site for the creation, dispersal, and archiving of texts.
2022 fellow - Dr Lorinda Cramer
Searching for insights into men’s and women’s engagement with fashion in times of uncertainty and moments of social change, Dr Cramer will consider how dress and fashion intersect with gender, class and race.
Her project Wearing wool: Foy & Gibson, Fletcher Jones and a new dress history examines the importance of wool in the social, cultural and dress history of twentieth-century Australia. In an academic journal article, she hopes to advance knowledge on historical, everyday dress practices and the dynamics behind how and why Victorians choose to wear wool.
Dr Lorinda Cramer is a postdoctoral researcher in the National School of Arts at the Australian Catholic University. Her research seeks out new perspectives on what worn, everyday clothing might reveal about daily experiences.
2022 fellow - Rhys Ryan
Rhys’s project Na Trí Céilithe, The Three Céilithe will examine original manuscripts documenting the annual céilithe (Gaelic concerts) held in Melbourne in the early twentieth century. By focusing on the specific dances performed at these public gatherings and the context in which they occurred, his research will explore how, in a period of burgeoning Gaelic cultural consciousness, these dances both preserved and promulgated Irish identity throughout the diaspora.
The project will result in a choreographic film that adopts a contemporary lens to imaginatively reinterpret the dances performed at the céilithe, shot in the same locations as the original events – the Royal Exhibition Building and Melbourne Town Hall.
Rhys Ryan is a dance artist working across performance, choreography and critical writing. He trained in contemporary dance at the Victorian College of the Arts, and also in Irish dance for over 15 years with the Watkins Academy of Irish Dance. He is also a lawyer and sessional academic.
2022 fellow - Zo Damage
Zo's project NoteWorthy uses film and cameraless photography to depict Melbourne live music creative hubs impacted by the pandemic. The project contemplates the endurance of live music culture, comparing current events, to a series of past events spanning more than 40 years directly affecting live music culture.
The photography is then reimagined through figuration, representation and reinterpretation, using printmaking to make a limited edition or unique state artist's book.
Previous fellows
Since 2003, the Library’s annual Fellowships Program has nurtured and supported the creative and scholarly ventures of more than 200 authors, musicians, artists and historians.
Project outputs have included play scripts, manuscripts, art installations, exhibitions, digital apps and much more, all inspired by the State Collection.
Learn more about the diverse projects undertaken by past fellows, and the innovative ways they’ve expressed their research.
Donate
The Fellowships Program is funded by State Library Victoria, philanthropists and partners. Donations help us offer more places to scholars and artists to research the State Collection and create inspired works that can be shared with all Victorians.
Support
Contact us
Have questions or feedback about fellowships, or need a hand applying? Contact our friendly staff by email or phone, or talk to us when you visit the Library.
Email: fellows@slv.vic.gov.au
Phone: 03 8664 7000
Banner image credit: Harriet Scott and Helena Scott, Australian Lepidoptera and Their Transformations … with Descriptions by A[lexander] W[alker] Scott (London; Sydney, John van Voorst, 1864–98), Rare Books Collection, State Library Victoria