SJ Norman Masterclass: Fellow Traveller

Join acclaimed inter/national, inter/disciplinary artist and author SJ Norman in a Masterclass aimed at strengthening creative connection and narrative.

Fellow Traveller is a walking meditation and workshop for writers, artists and other wayfarers.

This Masterclass will enable you to actively seek clarity on your narrative and strengthen the storytelling purpose within your practice. SJ Norman will guide you to think deeply about the work you make and how you make it, encouraging you to listen not only to yourself, but harness the voice of place and other important influences.

How do we begin to write and think with place as a collaborator, rather than as an object or setting? And: what story-forms, or other beings, might accompany us, as we move through our places as storytellers? Who are our fellow travellers? 

The shapes of global serpent lore provide an opening into undulating language. How do we move through space as the serpent does- close to the ground, attuned to vibration, and receptive to the subtlest of cues? Through cultivating intuitive, rather than directional, ways of moving, how do we increase our capacity for listening? What other story-forms or beings might be invoked to tend the crossways of language, place, the body, and the spirit? How might their companionship re-shape our thinking, and the stories we seek to tell? 

As described by Aidan Hartshorn for the NGA, SJ Norman is A formidable artist, performer and writer, S.J has gained great recognition for his art practice and thought-provoking junctures of life as a non-binary First Nations person in present-day Australia. S.J describes his art practice as a 'deeply personal and deeply spiritual' experience wherein making work becomes a way of 'connecting with people, with communities and with place'. 

This Masterclass has the potential to unlock new ways and thinking and progresses on creative practice. 

SJ Norman (b. 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and cultural worker. 

His practice is counter-disciplinary and formally promiscuous. His body of work to date has included more than 20 works of long durational performance, and a significant body of other work embracing sculpture, photography, textiles, film and spatial audio. He is also the author of one book of fiction, with a second forthcoming. 

His awards for art include: the 67th Blake Prize (formerly the Blake Prize for Religious Art), a 2018 Sidney Myer Fellowship and a 2019 Australia Council Fellowship. Recent exhibitions include the 22nd Biennale of Sydney and the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial. His acquisition history includes major public collections, such as the National Gallery of Australia. His awards for literature include: the 2017 Kill Your Darlings Prize, the 2022 Peter Blazey Prize for Non-Fiction, as well as many shortlisting, including: Australian Society for Literature Gold Medal, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards in 2 categories, the Stella Prize, the Elizabeth Jolley Prize for Short Story and twice for the Judith Wright Prize for Poetry. 

In 2019, he initiated Knowledge of Wounds, a curatorial project he continues to co-organize with Dr Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation Citizen) since 2019. 

He is a transmasculine Koori, born on Gadigal country. His maternal ties are to north-western Wiradjuri and Ngyiampaa-Wailwan Country (the community of Nyngan, NSW) and his paternal ties are to West Yorkshire, UK. He lives and works in Lenapehoking/New York City. 

Photo by Whit Forrester, 2023