Seances, sentinels and a musical: 2024 State Library Victoria Fellows
State Library Victoria has awarded fellowships to 16 creatives and scholars today, each receiving a share of $195,000 to support in-depth inquiry into the State Collection.
As one of Australia's most substantial programs, the Library's fellowships support Victorian creative and academic communities to generate new, career-defining work.
The 2024 fellows include an award-winning writer's new work of fiction about female convicts, a digital e-graphic novel to teach teenagers about AI and deep fakes, and plans to reenact a séance at the Library, evoking the Victorian-era obsession with the afterlife.
Author Christie Nieman from the Shire of Mount Alexander in Central Victoria has been awarded the Marion Orme Regional Creative Fellowship worth $15,000. She plans to research and write the first draft of her second adult literary novel, researching the lives and experiences of women transported as convicts to British Colonial Australia.
Ms Nieman said, "I feel so thrilled that this project has been given a chance to exist.; that I have the chance to take time with these women, discover them properly, and create something from their traces. I don't know if writing this book would even be possible without this fellowship.
"I am really excited by the breadth of the Library's collection. Female convicts, pioneer women, Victorian-era medicine and seacraft, early pulp literature: there is so much in the Library to inform and further inspire my idea. But perhaps I am most looking forward to spending time with the manuscript, letters, diaries, personal papers collection, for the glimpses of the real women they can afford."
Writer and comedian Lawrence Leung has been awarded a $15,000 Creative Fellowship for his project Melbourne Gothic: A séance at State Library Victoria.
Mr Leung said, "I will be researching our city's Victorian-era fascination with spirit communication and the afterlife, the forgotten figures, the believers and tricksters who were part of the Spiritualism craze of 19th century Melbourne. My project will culminate in an immersive lecture and a live re-enactment of a séance delivered late at night in one of the stately rooms of the Library.
"The State Library is a repository of cultural knowledge, and Spiritualism is about holding onto significant people and memories that have passed. I am honoured to join the ranks of previous Creative Fellows and can't wait to work with the Library to conjure up some metaphorical and historical 'ghosts' of Melbourne's past."
Each of the year-long fellowships comes with funding, a dedicated office in the Library's Dome Annulus, and a personal librarian to assist with the fellow's specific research and to help unearth treasures in the collection.
State Library Victoria CEO Paul Duldig said the Library welcomes such a diverse cross-section of talent from across the country.
"Our 2024 fellows stood out from a competitive field of 289 quality applicants. Over the next 12 months, the Library will support them as they delve deep into our collection and produce fresh perspectives on Victoria's history and culture.
"For the past 22 years, the Library's Fellowship program has delivered more than $2.9 million in funding, supporting more than 300 writers, creatives and scholars. We look forward to seeing what our 2024 fellows discover."
Colin Brooks, Minister for Creative Industries said:
"State Library Victoria is the custodian of a rich and vast collection that belongs to the people of Victoria and is a vital source of inspiration and knowledge for all Victorians. The State Library Fellowships program brings our state collection to life in new and imaginative ways while supporting the careers of Victorian creatives and academics."
To find out more, visit fellowships.
Amor Residency at Baldessin Studio
Two fellowships ($5000 in kind and $5000 funding) that allow a visual artist to explore works on paper, in particular printmaking, using research material from the Library and the facilities at Baldessin Studio.
Tom Sevil – Bird's Eye View – Red Line Through
Tom is an artist, muralist, community art facilitator and printmaker. He will use the collection to research the symbols and iconography of Australian colonialism, as well as the historical printmaking techniques used in these designs. This research will inform a series of prints that rework the colonial imagery and explore the aesthetics of different printing techniques.
Children's Storytelling and Literature Fellowship
The fellowship ($15,000) supports a project celebrating children's storytelling through writing, illustration, music, oral storytelling or a physical experience.
Anthony and Declan Crowley – Doc Provok's Lair of Lies
Anthony is a storyteller, theatremaker, composer and arts educator, and his son Declan is an emerging illustrator and animator. Their project will use the Library's zine, comic and graphic novel collections to research and create an interactive digital graphic novel and accompanying resources.
They aim to help young people aged 10 to 14 to develop critical thinking in an age of deepfakes, AI, product placement, algorithmic bias and truth self-selection.
Climate Futures Artist Fellowship
This new fellowship allows 2 artists ($15,000 each) to imagine a future where art and climate intersect in profound and meaningful ways.
Michael Dulaney – Sentinels: dispatches from the human-animal interface in the age of climate change
Michael is a writer and journalist whose work focuses on animals and humans in the climate crisis. He will use the collection to finish researching and writing a book called Sentinels, which Scribe will publish.
Sentinels explores how human impacts on the environment are driving more infectious diseases to jump from animals to humans.
Dr Ana Lara Heyns and Professor N'arwee't Carolyn Briggs AM – Weegabeel Warreeny Maar: Reclaiming Water Country
Carolyn is a Senior Boonwurrung Elder and Elder in Research at RMIT's College of Design and Social Context. She is working with Ana, a geo-anthropologist and her former PhD student, on a project exploring coastal communities' geological and cultural histories regarding rising sea levels.
They will examine Boonwurrung narratives through a multidisciplinary approach to the Library's Collection and explore future bodies of work, including ways to share knowledge with children.
Creative Fellowships
Two fellowships ($15,000 each) were offered to Victorians to create new work in any medium in response to material from the Library's Collection.
Lawrence Leung – Melbourne Gothic: A Séance At State Library Victoria
Lawrence is a writer, performer, illusion designer and science communicator. He will use the Library's Collection to research and create an immersive historical lecture or performance that examines the spiritualism craze of 19th-century Melbourne.
Grace Vanilau – O le Toe 'Aumaiga – A Reclamation
Grace is a poet and spoken word performer who previously contributed to the Library exhibition Mirror: New Views on Photography. Her fellowship will explore writings, journals and images in the collection that depict Sāmoan women (Fafine Sāmoa). Grace's research will inform the development of 4 new performance poetry and video works, in collaboration with Samoan women living in Australia and Sāmoa.
Georges Mora Fellowship
A fellowship ($10,000) that allows a contemporary artist to study, experiment and explore fresh thinking in their art.
Olivia Koh – Shining
Olivia is an artist, curator and researcher who works in moving-image production. She will produce an intertextual moving-image work that explores 20th-century diaspora stories in South and Southeast Asian regions.
Based on her family history, the project will draw on a magazine of the same name - Shining 顯影, produced by the community of the Kinmen Islands in the South China Sea.
John Emmerson Research Fellowship
A fellowship ($15,000) to research England in the early modern period using the John Emmerson collection. The collection comprises more than 5,000 books and pamphlets from the 15th to 18th centuries.
Dr Ruby Lowe – The Affects of Democracy: George Wither in Australia
Ruby will use her expertise in book history, bibliography, and palaeography to explore the 17th-century poet George Wither (1588 to 1667). She will examine how he used poetry, prose and emblems to chronicle the effects of the political and media revolutions that swept through Britain during his life.
Her project will focus on academic publication and a series of live events based on 17th-century pamphlets.
La Trobe Society Fellowship
A fellowship ($15,000) to research and explore the period during Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe's administration (1839 to 1854) from new and surprising perspectives.
Dr Andrew Kilsby – La Trobe, Law and Order: Soldiers and Constables 1836 to 1854
Andrew is an independent professional historian and author whose interests span military, business and biographical history. He will research the soldiers and constables responsible for law and order in the colony of Melbourne, about whom very little is known.
Marion Orme Page Regional Creative Fellowships
Two fellowships ($15,000 each) were offered to Victorians living in regional areas. The fellowships will help create new work in any medium in response to material from the Library's Collection.
Christie Nieman – The Margarets
Christie is a novelist and essayist whose work has won the YA Davitt Award and CBCA Honour Book Award. Working on her second adult literary novel, she will use research materials relating to the lives and onboard conditions of female convicts, as well as the pirate-themed pulp literature of 1800s London and British colonial Australia. Christie lives and works in the Shire of Mount Alexander in Central Victoria.
Dr Amaara Raheem – Residency Practices: A Field Guide For Artists In Residence
Amaara is a dancer, researcher, educator and writer whose doctoral research explored 'artist in residence' as a choreographic and design tool. She will research artists' colonies in Melbourne in the 19th century as the precursors to what is now considered artists in residence programs. Amaara will look at how they both challenged and furthered the values and aesthetics of British colonial settlement.
Amaara is based in Northern Grampians in Victoria's west.
Redmond Barry Fellowship
A fellowship ($15,000) that allows creatives and researchers in any discipline to research a project using collections at the Library and the University of Melbourne.
Dr Bridget Vincent – Germaine Greer's Classroom and the Politics of Poetic Form
Bridget will use the Library's Collection to explore Germaine Greer's identity as a teacher of literature and its relationship to her political interventions.
An experienced teacher of poetry analysis, Bridget plans to offer a series of free workshops to public audiences using poems taught by Greer.
Russell Beedles Performing Arts Fellowship
A fellowship ($15,000) that supports a project exploring theatre and the performing arts in Victoria.
Dr Kate Rice – Chasing Rainbows
Kate is a playwright whose PhD research focused on ethical approaches to creating theatre based on real events. She will research the life of May de Sousa, an American light opera singer whose life changed when she visited Melbourne in 1919, and develop a musical in collaboration with songwriter Sally Seltmann.
Tate Adams Memorial Residency at Baldessin Studio
A fellowship ($5,000 in kind and $5,000 funding) that allows an artist to create a limited edition or unique state artist's book using research material from the Library and the facilities at Baldessin Studio.
Dr Perdita Phillips – Anticipatory archive: mapping lithic traces from colonial pasts to spectral or regenerative futures
Perdita is an artist who has worked with environmental issues and social change since 1991. She will explore the cartographic hachures, notations, symbols and stains in the maps of early geologists. Using this research, she will see if connections can be made between historical imagery and present and future environmental issues.