The State Collection will be transformed by Victorian writers, scholars and creatives undertaking a range of exciting projects through the 2023 Fellowships program.
Among these is a performance lecture shining a light on the ethics of magical practice; a docu-series on the stories of local survivors of Malaya in WW2; photographic works based on Indigenous and non-Indigenous flora; a study of gender and power in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso; a series of multimedia stories about the people of regional town Moe; and a look into how human contact has changed the six iconic peaks in southern Dja Dja Wurrung Country.
Working out of offices in the Library’s magnificent dome annulus, the 2023 fellows will reimagine our collections through photography, musical performance, video animation, sculpture and more – enriching Victorians’ understanding of who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Read more about the Library’s 2023 fellows below.
The Kerri Hall Fellowship for Performing Arts
Generously endowed by the estate of Dr Christopher Baker, this annual fellowship gives creatives, artists and writers from the Loddon Mallee region the opportunity to undertake projects exploring theatre and the performing arts in Victoria.
Watch this video to learn more, or read about the fellowship.
Meet the fellows
2023 fellow – Sorcha Mackenzie
Sorcha’s project Site Constellations will research architectural spaces in Melbourne’s CBD that facilitate creative activity to develop a series of print work, aiming to share the rich histories of creative architectural spaces with the community.
Sorcha is a printmaker, artist and musician based in Melbourne whose practice works at the intersection between art and architecture. Her work often involves speculative architectonic assemblages sketched digitally and materialised into the analogue through traditional mediums of production such as printmaking and sculpture.
2023 fellow – Nicholas Hubicki
Nicholas’ project Hybrids will involve developing a suite of analogue and digital photographic works based on Australian Indigenous and Non-Indigenous flora, using digital and pre-twentieth century photography techniques to create imaginative hybrid flora specimens.
Nicholas’ practice is interested in the subtle and overt relationship between object, site and memory. His current work is derived from cultural and historic research and focuses on both the constructed and natural world, drawing on sources such as landscape, entropy, architecture, botany and geology.
2023 fellow – Taysha McFarland
Taysha’s documentary project Unheard: Memoirs from the Japanese Occupation of Malaya will preserve the fading stories of the local survivors of Malaya during World War 2, educating future generations on this hidden period of time and giving Malaysian Australians a new perspective on World War 2.
2023 fellow – Kathy Holowko
Kathy’s project Wild City is an arts-based children’s workshop where wild animals are considered citizens in urban landscapes, inspiring children to transform a miniature sculptural city into a shared habitat. This project will also include development of a Wild City children’s book.
Kathy is a fine artist interested in the effects that urban life has upon our understanding of ecology. With a sculptural practice that includes public art, installation and playful projects, Holowko collaborates with artists, museums, ecologists, scientists, industry and humans of all scales to encourage the use of art to help learn, think and meditate.
2023 fellow – Kaylene Tan
Drawing on the Library’s WG Alma Conjuring Collection, Kaylene’s project White Magic involves the creation of a performance lecture about magicians and magic shows in Melbourne at the turn of the 20th century. It will focus on the Asian personae adopted by Western magicians at the time, and their meaning in the context of White Australia and modern representation.
2023 fellow – Dr Li Zhong Zhang
Dr Li’s project An English-Chinese Collection of Australian Aboriginal Poems aims to translate Australian Aboriginal poems into Chinese, to enhance the mutual understanding of the Australian Aboriginal and Chinese communities through poetry translation and appreciation.
Kaylene writes and directs for theatre, film and audio, working between Melbourne and Singapore. Her work involves making experiences of history on a human scale, working across different media to tell intimate and alternative stories through immersive theatrical and sonic forms.
Dr Zhang is a NAATI certified English-Chinese bilingual translator and has taught courses in English-Chinese translation theory and practice, cross-cultural communications, critical thinking, and international business at several tertiary institutions. He has also published a range of academic papers and books in both Chinese and English.
2023 fellow – Professor Barry Golding AM
Barry’s project Six Peaks Speak seeks to give voice to the perspectives of six iconic peaks in southern Dja Dja Wurrung Country in central Victoria, throwing a new light on how they were shaped, and how human contact has continued to define their destinies after two centuries of mapping, exploitation, public management, visitation and use.
2023 fellow – Rachel Mounsey
Rachel's project MOE will generate a series of multimedia stories about the town of Moe, including the town’s social and industrial history intertwined with personal stories, to be published across ABC platforms including Conversation Hour on ABC Radio. The project will also include an original photo book and exhibition.
Rachel will work in collaboration with ABC radio journalist Richelle Hunt.
Barry is an Honorary Professor at Federation University, whose academic work includes geology, environmental science, arts and philosophy, adult education, and older men’s learning and wellbeing. He has worked in music, wildlife research, teaching, lecturing and researching and is committed to community advocacy and activism.
Rachel has worked consistently as a journalist and photojournalist on regional papers as well as international and national mastheads. Her work creates compelling vignettes of life and times in small town Australia through historical and digital photography and personal audio interviews.
2023 fellow – Rosie Isaac
In her project A Stored Change: A Material Study of Electrical Technologies, Nervous Systems and Waste Rosie will develop a body of sculptural work and an artist book that explore the materiality of electricity and how electrification, and more recently battery technology, shapes social and political imagination.
Rosie is an artist, writer and teacher specialising in sculpture, writing and performance. She is interested in the act of reading in a social context, and artmaking as a form which may imagine different material and social futures.
2023 fellow – Dr Pia Johnson
In Still: Women Photographing Performance Pia will engage with and make visible the contribution of female photographers within the performing arts, considering how the ephemeral nature of performance is held and represented through the intersection of the archive, the material object and the artistic voice of the photographer.
Pia is a photographer, visual artist, teacher and curator, who has exhibited across Australia and internationally, and has been a finalist in various photography awards. Pia works collaboratively with performing arts organisations and artists to make new artistic works for the public that engage with photography as a making tool.
2023 fellow – Paul Fletcher
In The Industry and Art of Manufacturing and Packaging Food Culture – Tales from a Humble Patty Pan, Paul will research and develop material for an audio-visual art exhibition and website that comments on and responds to the thousands of decorative patty pans in the Library’s Barker Cakoes Collection.
2023 fellow – Leisa Shelton and Marisa Sporsaro
The project (IN)visible Library will develop public programs of engagement that enable a 'lived' experience of Braille for both the sight impaired and sighted community, creating shared knowledge and advocacy for the disappearing language of Braille. It is an extension of an upcoming summer Library program which involves members of the public sitting with Marisa to create a publicly curated book of poetry in Braille, which will become part of the State Collection.
Paul is an investigator who enjoys synthesizing seemingly disparate fields of research and ideas using sound, animation, video and objects to create meaningful experiences for audiences. He has created many short films, audiovisual installations and music performance works that have been exhibited locally and internationally.
Leisa is a performance artist, teacher, mentor, curator and intercultural facilitator with a practice that focuses on collaboration and advocacy for resilient communities of practice. Her recent projects have focused on social and participatory public works that reveal and offer diverse experiences of the world and ways to be within it.
2023 fellow – Dr Julie Robarts
In the project Gender and Intermediality in the Corpus of Editions, Translations, and Adaptations of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Dr Julie will focus on the 14th century epic romance poem Orlando Furioso and works inspired by or adapted from the poem.
Using State Library Victoria and University of Melbourne’s rare books and special collections, Julie will study the ways in which the ideas about gender found in the poem change across time, languages and adaptions to different media.
Dr Julie has a Bachelor of Arts in Italian language and early modern history, and a Master’s Degree and PhD in Italian Studies. Her research focusses on the ways in which gender and power intersect in the production, reception, and transmission of literature, poetry and music by women and men in Renaissance and Baroque Italy.
Current 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.
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Contact us
Have questions or feedback about fellowships, or need a hand applying? Read our frequently asked questions, contact our friendly staff by email or talk to us when you visit the Library.
Email: [email protected] (response within five working days)
Tile image credit
2023 Fellows, image by Jarrod Barnes Photography