Place-responsive Art and Performance Now: a panel discussion

BodyPlaceProject presents a hybrid panel discussion hosted by Centre for Art and Social Transformation (CAST), RMIT.

Naarm-based artists Dr Mandy Nicholson and Dr Jill Orr will join Indonesian performance artist, Arahmaiani and Professor of Site Dance, Vicky Hunter (UK), to discuss ‘What might place-based performance and art practices offer now?’

These international leaders in the field will reflect on site- and place-responsive art at this critical moment globally for the climate and environment, in light of the revitalisation of Indigenous knowledges, and in an atmosphere of political conflict and tenterhooks.

Panellists:

Arahmaiani (Indonesia)

Professor Vicky Hunter (UK)

Dr Jill Orr (Australia)

Dr Mandy Nicholson (Wurundjeri)

Introduction: Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert (CAST & BodyPlaceProject)

Chair: Dr Gretel Taylor (Curator, BodyPlaceProject)

Light refreshments provided for in-person attendees. 

This event sits alongside BodyPlaceProject’s exhibition ngurrak-al marram-u / body of the mountain at Burrinja Gallery Upwey, Victoria, from Sat 24th May – Sun 13th July, 2025.

ngurrak-al marram-u / body of the mountain is supported by Yarra Ranges Council and ngurrak barring, and assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

PANELLIST BIO’s:

Arahmaiani (b. 1961, Indonesia)

Arahmaiani is an artist, activist (social-political, cultural & environmental) & writer. She has long been internationally recognized for her powerful and provocative commentaries on social, political, and cultural issues. She established herself in the 1980s as a pioneer in the field of performance art in Southeast Asia. Her work since developed into community-based performance & art projects with focus on environmental issues. She started working with the community of an Islamic boarding school in Yogyakarta in 2006. Since 2010 she has been working with Tibetan monks and lay people in Tibet Plateau dealing with environmental issues. She used to teach in Art Academy in Guangzhou, China (2006-2008). Since 2012 she has been teaching in the Department of South East Asia, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Passau University in Germany.

Vicky Hunter is Professor in Site Dance at Bath Spa University UK and Principal Investigator on the AHRC funded Dancing Otherwise: Exploring Pluriversal Practices Network www.dancingotherwise.com . Her research explores site dance and entangled engagements with space and place through corporeal and kinetic engagements with lived environments. Publications include Encountering Environments Through the Arts (ed. 2025), The Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance (ed. 2025) Site, Dance and Body (2021), Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance (ed. 2015), and (Re) Positioning Site-Dance (2019) with Melanie Kloetzel (Canada) and Karen Barbour (Aotearoa).

Jill Orr

Jill Orr’s work centres on the psycho-social and environmental where she draws on land and identities as they are shaped in, on and with the environment, be it country or urban locales. Orr grapples with the balance and discord that exists at the heart of relations between the human spirit, art and nature. Orr is a performance artist crossing between performances for live audiences and performances for the camera. She has produced iconic images reflecting an Australian perspective.

Jill has presented works in Australia and internationally since the late 1970s and is regularly invited to exhibit in international curated exhibitions and events. She was represented in the inaugural Venice International Performance Art Week in 2012. She was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship to produce Antipodean Epic from 2015-7. Recent works include Detritus Springs, Listen, Laundry and Dark Night that have each been commissioned for 2018 and 2019 exhibitions. In 2020-2021, Jill was represented in  Australia: Antipodean Stories at PAC Padiglione d’Art Contemporanea, Milan, curated by Eugenio Viola. This Tree was commissioned for MUMA’s (Monash University Museum of Art) Tree Story, 2021-2. Jill was represented in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now ( 2021-2) at the National Gallery of Australia.

Represented by This is No Fantasy, the Mitre Lake Work was shown at Art Basel, 2022 and in the gallery in Melbourne. Orr exhibited The Promised Land Refigured at Linden New Art for Photo24. Headshot image credit: Andrea Wilson.

Mandy Nicholson

Dr Mandy Nicholson is a Wurundjeri-willam (Wurundjeri-baluk patriline) Traditional Custodian of Melbourne and surrounds. Mandy also has connections to the Dja Dja wurrung and Ngurai illam wurrung language groups of the Central/Eastern Gulinj (Kulin Nation) on her father’s side, and German on her mother’s.

A multidisciplinary artist, Mandy specialises in acrylic works and creates public art relating to her Wurundjeri culture. She is a cultural mentor to young Indigenous girls, educator and advocate for culture, language, dance and ceremony, Woiwurrung language expert and founder and director of Djirri Djirri Cultural Services Pty Ltd which includes Djirri Djirri Dance Group.

Mandy holds an honours degree from Monash University in Indigenous Archaeology, completed in 2011. She has a PhD from Monash University with the theme ‘On Country, Off Country’ around how First Peoples remain connected to Country when off their homelands, completed in 2023. She is a senior lecturer at Melbourne University's School of Design, teaching First Peoples perspectives in architecture and urban design, and has a Fellowship through State Library of Victoria investigating Wurundjeri women’s songs.

www.bunjils-country.com.au