How White is Our Art?

Michael Agar is an arts producer who has worked across all artforms, including film, television, theatre, music, writing, visual arts and even puppetry over the last 30 odd years. He has been on the board of Wantok Musik Foundation since 2006.

Wantok Musik is a charity that promotes indigenous musicians from Melanesia and Australia by helping nurture talent and bring it to the world stage, through recording albums and touring musicians.

Michael was co-founder of year-round film festival Popcorn Taxi Melbourne and curated over 140 programs with films and their makers from 2000–6.

He has also worked on the boards of Gertrude Contemporary Arts Spaces, the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Australian Film Critics Association, Barking Spider Visual Theatre, Gonghouse and Open Channel.

When he’s not working in the arts, Michael teaches qigong and taijiquan and uses his background as a chartered accountant in the finance and investment industry.

Kobya is a versatile multi-instrumentalist, an impassioned vocalist, a poet and a gifted performer. He is from Mozambique, a country that has been torn by civil war for 17 years, after years of Portuguese occupation.

Mozambique’s wealth and high living standard in Southern Africa have been totally destroyed; the country is reduced to poverty and crime.

This situation made Kobya drop photojournalism and pick up a guitar (his ‘weapon of mass satisfaction’), to tell stories about the joy, pride and pain of his fellow man back home.

Coming from the rich and diverse cultures of the Rhonga tribes of Maputo Mozambique, Kobya breaks barriers through his infectious dance music style. He mixes roots rhythms to create unique and memorable sounds, expressing love while celebrating life.

Damian Smith is a curator and art critic with more than 20 years experience in the field of contemporary art. He is the director of Words For Art, an international consultancy specialising in contemporary culture and discourse.

Since 2011, Damian has been curating the Heartlands Refugee Fine Art Prize, a national art award celebrating the work of refugee artists in Australia. Damian is a curator for China Art Projects, a Beijing-based consultancy promoting contemporary Chinese art internationally.

Recent projects have included the exhibition Sifting Time…, at the Chinese Museum, Melbourne, featuring works by contemporary Chinese and Australian artists. As an art critic and writer, Damian has published over 100 articles on contemporary art, including five monographs, peer-reviewed papers for leading international journals and art museums.

He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and his advice is regularly sought for projects in the global arena. He has held numerous positions in both the public and commercial sectors and has curated more than thirty exhibitions. His interests include contemporary Australian, Chinese and Tibetan art, the history of Modernism in the antipodes and hybrid and new-media practice.

Award-winning artist Bindi Cole was born in 1975 in Melbourne, Australia. She studied at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE and the University of Ballarat. Bindi is a resilient and ingenious Melbourne-born photographer, curator and new media artist with Wadawurrung heritage who speaks compellingly about taboo topics through her photographs, videos and installations.

Cole’s early interest in photography was curtailed by the trauma of her mother’s heroin addiction and death from cancer, causing her descent into depression and drugs. During a transformative prison term, Cole found Christianity and recaptured her self-belief. Her deeply personal and powerful artistic practice focuses on identity and the exploration of tensions within.

Cole works to expose the questions most are afraid to ask. Her artworks are at times so personal, cathartically imbuing them with a gritty honesty that the viewer’s experience can verge on voyeurism. Cole’s work exposes the latent and unspoken power dynamics of global culture in the here and now. She subtly but powerfully reveals some uncomfortable truths about the fundamental disconnection between who we are - the communities and identities by which we shape our sense of self - and how the prevailing culture attempts to place and define us.

In 2010, Cole was listed as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Melbourne. Since her first solo show in 2007, Cole’s work has been widely exhibition in solo and group exhibitions including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW, Museum of Contemporary Art, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, National Portrait Gallery, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (Brooklyn, USA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Taiwan). Her work is held in various collections across the world. Cole lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

Lesley Alway is an arts manager with experience in cultural organisations and special expertise in the visual arts (in the government, non-profit and private sectors). Lesley is currently director of Asialink Arts, based at the University of Melbourne.

Between 2008–2010, Lesley was the managing director of Sotheby’s Australia. She was previously director/CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne. She oversaw the major redevelopment of the museum, which re-opened in July 2006.

Lesley has also been director of Arts Victoria, where she managed the introduction of many new policy initiatives, including projects for the major collecting institutions such as Museum Victoria, the National Gallery of Victoria and the State Library. She has also been involved in new professional and artistic development opportunities for contemporary artists and arts organisations, as well as a range of marketing initiatives directed at expanding local, international and tourism audiences.

Lesley has lectured in post-graduate cultural policy and management at both the University of Melbourne and Deakin University.