Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Sunday 19 October
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
We’ll talk about visual work created for young audiences. With Martyn Coutts, Paola Balla, Yumi Umiumare and Andy Packer.
Eavesdropping on Artists
A series of interactive talks, presented by the Wheeler Centre, in which prominent artists discuss shows presented as part of Melbourne Festival.
The catch? The artists must talk about artworks from outside their own practice.
Come and find out what artists really think about each other’s work, in this fascinating, cross-disciplinary discussion on the practice and presentation of art.
Featuring
Paola Balla
Paola Balla is a Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara woman of Italian and Chinese heritage. She is an artist, curator, speaker, educator and cultural producer – having developed Footscray Community Arts Centre’s first Indigenous Arts and Cultural program, and as a Senior Curator in First Peoples exhibition, Melbourne Museum.
Recently winning the Three Dimensional Award at the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2014, her work is driven by social justice, addressing impacts of colonial trauma (particularly on women and children), and creating spaces of ownership and listening through creative practice.
Paola’s visual art is intimate; through familial and individual exploration, she turns her lens upon her immediate world and personal history. By examining the very definitions of what it is to be Aboriginal in an urban setting, Paola’s work challenges us to rethink preconceived attitudes and assumptions.
Andy Packer
Andy is an Adelaide-based director of theatre, musical theatre and opera productions. He has worked as a creative producer of multidisciplinary arts programs, producer of large-scale outdoor events, and festival director.
Yumi Umiumare
Born in Hyogo, Japan, Yumi is an established Butoh dancer/choreographer in Australia. She is the creator of Butoh Cabaret and physical theatre works, which are renowned for provoking visceral emotions and cultural identities.
Yumi has been creating and teaching her distinctive style of works over the last 20 years and her works have been seen in numerous festivals in dance, theatre and film productions throughout Australia, Japan, East and West Europe, New Zealand and South East Asia.
Her works have received critical acclaim and garnered her and her collaborators several Australian Green Room awards. Her own production’s credits include Tokyo DasSHOKU Girl (1999-2003), DasSHOKU Cultivations!! (Osaka2003), and most recently DasSHOKU SHAKE! (2012), which won Melbourne Fringe Festival Awards and Innovation in Green Room Awards.
Her solo dance works, Sakasama, Dis-Oriental and duo works with Tony Yap, How could you even begin to understand? and ZeroZero, have toured Japan, Hongkong, Malaysia, Indoneisa and most recently Columbia.
As a choreographer, Yumi has worked with BighART, Asylum Seekers Resource Center, ESL community groups, Japanese/Australian rock ‘n’ roll musicals. She has recently worked with women from the sex industry and people who has recovered from gambling.