Creativity in the Time of Isolation Past Event
What role does isolation play in the lives of creatives? Is isolation something to yearn for or to circumvent? Is it a necessary tool for creativity? What is the difference between it and solitude? How have artists throughout history grappled with isolation, solitude and quarantine? Is it the lifeblood of creativity and innovation or its death?
Join interior designer Kate Challis, artist Hoda Afshar, Emma Crimmings (Assistant Director, Artbank) and art historian Christopher Marshall (Associate Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne) for a thought-provoking ‘salon’ discussion.
Kate Challis
Founder and principal of Kate Challis Interiors, Kate comes to design from a background in art history, receiving her doctorate from the University of Melbourne. Since establishing Kate Challis Interiors, the studio has become well known for its thought-provoking response to design and beauty.
Hoda Afshar
Hoda Afshar is a celebrated documentary photographer. Born in Tehran, since 2007 she has been living in Australia where she practices as a visual artist and also lectures in photography and fine art. In her art practice, she explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. Her work is also part of numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, UQ Art Museum, MUMA Collection, Murdoch University Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia and Monash Gallery of Art. In 2015 she won Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize and in 2018 won Bowness Photography Prize. Hoda is a member of ‘Eleven’, a new collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators and writers whose aim is to disrupt the current politics of representation and hegemonic discourses.
Emma Crimmings
Emma Crimmings is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Prior to taking up her current role as Assistant Director of Art Bank, she was the Director of Gertrude Contemporary, curator at both the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and the Australian Centre for Photography, and acting director and program manager of cultural affairs at the Embassy of Australia in Washington, DC. In 2015, Emma was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to undertake international research on artists residences programs and creative placemaking.
Christopher Marhsall
Art historian Christopher Marshall has widely publications on museums and curatorship, as well as Neapolitan Baroque art. His research distinctions include the Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship, a Senior Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, a Research Fellowship at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, and Visiting Senior Lecturing Fellowships at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, Wuhan, and the Department of Art and Art History, Duke University, Durham NC.