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State Library Victoria announces 2022 Fellowship recipients

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Friday 12 November 2021


The recipients of the 2022 State Library Victoria Fellowships, worth a total $200,000, were announced last night at an event with Minister for Creative Industries the Hon. Danny Pearson MP.

The Library’s major annual fellowship program invites scholars and creative professionals to draw on the Library’s extensive collection, offering opportunities in areas spanning literature, performance, printmaking, social history, visual arts, Indigenous heritage and family history, theatre, 19th-century Victoria, photography and digital technology.

Over the past 20 years, the Library’s fellowship program has delivered more than $2.6 million in funding, supporting more than 230 artists, playwrights, writers, poets, historians, composers and academics.

Projects supported by the 2022 State Library Victoria Fellowships include retracing the journey from Robe to the Goldfields of Chinese-Australian migrants in the 19th Century, an examination of the history and future of work in Melbourne, an exploration of early contact between Tongans and British missionaries, the legacy of the Mildura sculpture Triennials of the 1960s and 1970s, the languages of Indigenous Victoria, the legacy of racial segregation in Victoria’s furniture manufacturing industries and the influence of Irish Gaelic dance in Victoria.

State Library Victoria Acting CEO Sarah Slade said the expanded 2022 fellowships program reflects the commitment of State Library Victoria to serve the diverse Victorian public.

“The talent, ambition and diversity of the more than 400 applications we received for the 2022 fellowship program was astonishing, and making a final decision was extremely difficult,” Ms Slade said.

“These fellowships will support 15 projects that use State Library Victoria’s collections, expertise and resources to tell new stories about who we are, where we have been and where we are going, from people from all backgrounds working across a range of mediums from research and literature to dance and performance.

“I congratulate all of the fellows and look forward to the Library working with them on their projects.”

- ENDS - 

About State Library Victoria
Established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, State Library Victoria is Australia’s oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. As the custodian of Victoria’s history, each year the library adds more than 70,000 physical and digital items to its rich collection of articles, artworks, photographs, manuscripts, books, journals, artefacts and much more. In 2021, the Library launched a new membership program offering tailored benefits to families, students and culture lovers alongside its flagship free Access membership.

THE 2022 STATE LIBRARY VICTORIA FELLOWS

Amor Residency at Baldessin Press & Studio ($5000) - Available to a visual artist wishing to explore works on paper, in particular printmaking or artists’ books.

  • Dr Ry Haskings: 1960s to 1990s newspaper design, political and cultural histories and narrative – investigates new purposes for seemingly outdated modes of traditional newspaper design to make an edition of prints for a portfolio and exhibition.

Berry Family Fellowship ($15,000) - This fellowship supports a project exploring an aspect of the social history of Melbourne or Victoria, based on the State Collection.

  • Ms Ana Tiquia and Ms Reanna Browne: After work – a five-part audio essay that explores the future of work through voices of workers – past, present, and future.

Children’s Literature Fellowship ($15,000) - A specialist fellowship to support a project exploring aspects of children's book publishing, writing or illustrating for early years, children and young adults.

  • Ms Juliet Miranda Rowe: All will be revealed – a dynamic and interactive series of sculptural illustrations and animations appealing to families with children as well as lovers of magic.

Creative Fellowships ($15,000) - Two fellowships to Victorians responding to published or original source material from the Library's extensive collection to create new work.

  • Dr Sofi Basseghi: The Road to Pairidaeza – will study the gender-less language that is Persian/Farsi to generate a deeper understanding of Persian communities within Melbourne where ultimately new migrants are in search of their own ‘pairidaeza’ (paradise).

  • Ms Veisinia Tonga: The Darkness – will use State Library Victoria collections to cast light on the period of Tongan history prior to contact with European missionaries.

Creative Fellowships – Regional ($15,000) - Two fellowships to Victorians living in regional areas responding to published or original source material from the Library's extensive collection to create new work.

  • Ms Sam Burke: Raised on fertile ground – will research and script an art documentary charting the ground-breaking events of the Mildura Sculpture Triennials of 1961-78.

  • Mrs Glennys Briggs: Women's stories from Aboriginal Missions – will research the stories of the stories of ancestry, spirituality, courage, adversity, commonality, strength and resilience of First Nations women who lived on the NSW/Victoria reserves and Missions set up by the Aboriginal Protectorate.

Georges Mora Foundation Fellowship ($10,000) - A fellowship for a contemporary artist to study, experiment and explore fresh thinking in their art.

  • Mr Phuong Ngo: Racist furniture – will use historic records, advertising and legislation relating to the ‘European Only Labour’ marks that that were mandated in the production of furniture to subvert the aesthetics of prominent design periods such as modernism through photographs and text.

Indigenous Victorian Aboriginal Cultural Research Fellowships ($15,000) - A specialist fellowship available to researchers who identify as an Indigenous Victorian Aboriginal to identify important items and produce research material to be used by the community.

  • Ms Brooke Wandin: wurrung baggunga ba yiaga, To gather and find language – will research materials related to materials relating to the Woiwurrung language to contribute to the mission to ensure Woiwurrung and the cultural knowledge held within it, stays alive.

La Trobe Society Fellowship ($15,000) - For Australian historians, scholars and writers wanting to research Victoria's colonial history during Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe's administration.

  • Dr Ashleigh Green: The Construction of Gaols, Prisons, and Asylums in Port Phillip and the Colony of Victoria during the La Trobe Administration (1839-54) – will research 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).

Redmond Barry Fellowship ($15,000) - For writers and scholars researching a project in any discipline to produce works of literature, using both the State Library Victoria and University of Melbourne collections. 

  • Dr Lorinda Cramer: Wearing Wool: Foy & Gibson, Fletcher Jones and a New Dress History – will combine material relating to Foy & Gibson in the State Library Victoria collection with the extensive records held by the University of Melbourne Archives to explore the significance of Australian wool in dress history.

Marion Orme Page & Regional Arts Victoria Fellowships ($15,000) - Two fellowships for regional Victorians to respond to published or original source material from the Library's extensive collection, in any way they choose, to create new work.

  • Ms Alison Wong: A long walk - travel from Robe to the Victorian goldfields and write a literary memoir/long-form lyric essay reflecting on my own experience interwoven with the experience of over 16,500 Chinese who walked the route between 1857 and 1863.

  • Dr Fayen d'Evie: Celestial Roots (Working title) - research, design and publish a book, in collaboration with Chinese artist Hu Yun and emerging designer Xinyuan Li, that responds thematically and  aesthetically to a handwritten journal from 1866 by Chinese miner Ah Sing Jong, who lived on the Central Victorian goldfields.

Russell Beedles Performing Arts Fellowship ($15,000) - A specialist fellowship to support a project exploring theatre and the performing arts in Victoria.

  • Mr Rhys Ryan: Na Trí Céilithe (The Three Céilithe) - will create a new choreographic film that imaginatively reinterprets the dances performed at the annual céilithe (Gaelic concerts) held in Melbourne in the early Twentieth Century.

Tate Adams Memorial Residency at Baldessin Press & Studio ($5,000) - Available to an artist to wanting to develop a limited edition or unique state artist's book.

  • Ms Zo Damage: Noteworthy - uses film and cameraless photography to depict creative hubs impacted by COVID-19.