Voice of the Artist: Age of the Image

Oliver Watts is an artist, writer and a lecturer in critical theory at the University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts.

He works on the nexus of art and law often using post-modern and psychoanalytical approaches. His PHD thesis was on images of sovereignty in the modern art canon. He currently lectures on Contemporary Art, Street Art and Modern Art. His recent research interest is Indigenous Contemporary Art and the imaging of Indigenous sovereignty. Watts has published widely in academic journals and in the popular media (including cartoons for The Chaser). He was included in the far reaching Treatise, Law Culture and Visual Studies, published by Springer last year.  

Dr Melissa de Zwart is a Professor at Adelaide Law School and Deputy Director of the Research Unit in Military Law and Ethics. She is involved in international projects dealing with surveillance, Big Data, space law, technology and commercialisation.

She teaches in both the undergraduate and postgraduate programs in areas of intellectual property, media, popular culture, surveillance and torts.  She is the Editor of the Media & Arts Law Review and in 2015 she edited a very popular, special edition on 'Law and Law Breaking in Game of Thrones'.

Prior to academia, Melissa specialised in technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property at CSIRO. Here, she became an expert in legal issues arising from use of digital technology, ranging from intellectual property to privacy and surveillance.

Melissa's research interests include: copyright, fair dealing, surveillance, new technologies, content regulation, online games, social networking, governance of online environments, digital identity, new media, convergence and the commercialisation of space.

Christopher Hudson is the publisher of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Museum publishes scholarly texts, exhibition catalogues, and print and digital publications for the general public on modern and contemporary art.  From 1986 to 2005, Mr. Hudson served as publisher for the Getty Museum and Trust, and developed several hundred titles in the fields of archaeology, antiquities, conservation, and the fine arts. 

He is currently chairman of the International Association of Museum Publishers, president of the International Federation of Scholarly Publishers, and a board member of the Motovun Group of international publishers.

Becky Sui Zhen Freeman is the producer for Art Processors, a company that designs and develops visitor centric mobile experiences for cultural institutions including MONA, Museum Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW, State Library of NSW and Melbourne Zoo.

Becky has worked as an independent creative producer throughout the last decade since receiving her BA in Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney. With a passion for storytelling across multiple platforms and mediums, her work has spanned the production of interactive and digital content including exhibition web sites, online documentaries, in-gallery interactive content (apps, touch screens, large scale multi-user video installations), film and sound production.

Throughout these varied projects Becky has worked alongside programmers and designers who strive to seamlessly integrate technology into the core exhibition experience thus allowing visitors to connect more deeply to the stories being told.

Becky is also musician Sui Zhen and is currently completing a Masters in Communication Design at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

Mikala Tai is a Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and a curator, researcher and academic specialising in contemporary Asian art and Australian design.

Over the past decade, she has collaborated with local, national and international organisations to strengthen ties between Australia and Asia. As an academic Mikala has taught at both RMIT and the University of Melbourne in both undergraduate and graduate programs in Contemporary Art, Modernism and Exhibition Management, in addition to having devised and delivered the inaugural Contemporary Asian Art syllabus at RMIT (2012 – ) and the first China Fieldwork Course (2015 – ) with Rebecca Coates and Kate McNeill at the University of Melbourne.

More recently Mikala was the founder and director of Supergraph – Australia’s Contemporary Graphic Art Fair, which has been held twice at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne and exhibited at Somerset House, London (2015). She was also part of the public programs team for Melbourne Now (2013) at the National Gallery of Victoria, and previously the Cultural Program Manager for the Melbourne Fashion Festival (2009-2013).

Mikala currently sits on the board of BUS Projects, Melbourne. In 2006 Mikala completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the University of Melbourne and in early 2015 submitted her PhD at UNSW Art & Design examining the influence of the Global City on China’s local art infrastructure.

Owen Craven is an independent art writer, editor and curator, facilitating platforms and opportunities for artists to create and present their work.

Owen has worked in the visual arts industry for a decade, developing a mixture of curatorial and artist project management experience. Currently, he is a Curator with Urban Art Projects (UAP), and immediately prior to joining, he was the Editor of Artist Profile and Art Almanac magazines. In these roles, Owen led numerous initiatives that created platforms and opportunities for both emerging and established artists to create and present their work.

Craven has organised a number of artist expeditions and curated the resulting exhibitions, including; On This Island, Meeting and Parting (2010), which included artists creating work in response to a tour of New Zealand’s South Island; and Not the Way Home, which saw him lead 13 prominent Australian artists to Fowlers Gap, part of the Arid Desert of north-west New South Wales. The final installment of the project was a national, touring exhibition throughout 2012 and 2013.

Owen was the Project Manager for Your Friend the Enemy (2015), a touring exhibition which featured artwork by 16 leading Australian and New Zealand artists to commemorate the ANZAC legend and the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign. Most recently, Owen curated Antipodean Inquiry: an exhibition providing a snapshot of Australian and New Zealand contemporary art for Yavuz Gallery, Singapore.