Join us for the second Collab. in Conversation event on Tuesday 27 August.

Bec Mac hosts Sharon Barry Director, Culture Ireland, who led the recent BIA (Basic Income for Artists) trial in Ireland. Also joined by Richard Bell - Aboriginal Australian artist and political activist and Libby Harward – Ngugi woman, practising artist and co-founder of Blak Laundry.

More panellists to be announced.

Tickets: $20 per person with cash bar available
(arrival 5pm for a 5.30pm start)

OUR PANELISTS

Sharon Barry

Sharon Barry is the Director of Culture Ireland responsible for promoting Irish arts worldwide - creating and supporting opportunities for Irish artists and companies to present and promote their work at strategic international festivals and venues, developing platforms to present outstanding Irish creative work to international audiences through showcases at key global arts events, including the Edinburgh Festival and Venice Biennale.

Sharon is also the project lead for the Basic Income for the Arts project a three-year programme researching the impact of a basic income on artists and creative arts workers. Sharon is also responsible for liaising on and implementing cultural elements of the Irish Government’s Global Ireland strategy.

Richard Bell

Richard is an Aboriginal Australian artist and political activist. He is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective.

Bell works in many media: paintings, video art, installations, text art and performance art. His subjects are largely based on various Indigenous rights issues: the effect of colonialism on Aboriginal people in Australia, which has rendered their history invisible; identity; and the complex issues surrounding the production of Aboriginal art.

Bell came to the attention of the wider community after his 240×540 cm painting Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell’s Theorem) won the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA). It prominently featured the text “Aboriginal art. It’s a white thing”.

He has since been exhibited extensively nationally and globally including the TATE Modern Museum UK, documenta 15 Kassel Germany and Castello di Rivoli Turin Italy.

Libby Harward

ARTIST BIO Libby Harward’s arts practice spans over 20 years, initially as a community, street and graffiti artist. During the past 8 years her focus has been on developing a conceptual arts practice, resulting in regular invitations to exhibit works nationally. As a Ngugi woman whose Ancestral lands and waters are Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka (Moreton Bay Area), her process is one of simultaneously listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding Country. Major recent works include the ALREADY OCCUPIED series on Yugambeh Country (Gold Coast), and DABIL BUNG (Broken Water) with First Nations along the Bidgee and Barka (Murray-Darling River system). These works engage a continual process of re-calling – re-hearing – re-mapping – re-contextualising – to de-colonise cultural landscapes, utilising low and high-tech media with elements of sound, image, installation and performance, to engage directly with politically charged ideas of national and international significance. Libby -founded Munimba-ja culture space in 2021.

Libby is predominantly interested in creating a black space where Aboriginal people can come together to discuss, organise, collaborate, showcase and celebrate on our own terms.