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Restart 2021: Outback Residencies Announcement

Restart 2021: Outback Residencies Announcement
Throughout May this year, West Darling Arts will be hosting three contemporary artists in our outback communities as part of the Restart 2021: Outback Residencies program. We are pleased to announce the recipients as:
Menindee: Dale Collier
Wilcannia: Janet Meaney
White Cliffs: Kathie Najar
Through the Restart 2021: Outback Residencies we hope to begin the process of re-engaging, reconnecting and enlivening our communities following the isolating effects of 2020. The artists will stay in the nominated community, using this time to research and produce new artworks. During their residencies, the artists will engage local community members through workshops and/or involvement in the production of their artwork.
This program is made possible with the support of the NSW Government through Arts Restart - Create NSW.
Meet the Artist: Janet Meaney
Janet Meaney is a performance artist with a background in sculpture who draws inspiration from the environment and her life experience. By incorporating hand made objects into her performances, her works become multifaceted, subtle commentaries on contemporary life. Her performances are socio-political in nature with the intent to raise awareness of a particular issue, to spark debate and ultimately to affect change.
Supported by numerous grants, scholarships and residencies, Meaney has lived, travelled and exhibited widely throughout the USA, Canada, Europe Asia and Australia, building a succession of multi-layered responses to her experiences of different cultures and states of being.
A recent return to ‘making’ has placed basket making at the fore of Meaney’s practice. She uses coiling, a technique not unlike that used in her early hand built pots, and through which she references the ancient.
A keen researcher, Meaney attained a BFA Sculpture (CCS Detroit USA), and has pursued research interests through a Grad. Dip. Art History/Curatorship (ANU) and a PhD in Performance Art (ANU)
Meet the Artist: Kathie Najar
Kathie Najar is an artist and visual arts facilitator who creates immersive site-specific visual experiences. Referencing histories, patterns in nature and in particular Islamic geometry, her visual language can attract, repel and challenge spatial and relational perceptions.
Her site-specific practice is informed by her studio explorations. Drawing, watercolour painting, paper folding, tile painting, construction, digital imagery, stitching and collage, are all processes she utilises in her Sydney studio.
Kathie considers community engagement and facilitating workshops as key extensions to arts practice, as they foster inclusion and connection.
She attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the 1980’s and a Master of Art Administration 2012, both at College of Fine Arts, University of NSW. She has won awards and commissions nationally for collage, hand painted tile, sculptural and paper artworks. Most recently she won the Painting Award at the North Sydney Art Prize 2019, and was selected to exhibit in Sculptures at Scenic World 2020 – postponed until 2021.
Meet the Artist: Dale Collier
Dale Collier is an anti-disciplinary artist and writer of Wiradjuri and Northern European heritage. Collier's work fuses sculptural noise making, video-painting and contemporary performance in order to challenge live spaces and places of key cultural, geo-political and ecological concern.
Collier has previously exhibited within the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Ramsay Art Prize, 2019, and the Parliament of New South Wales’ King & Wood Malleson Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, 2018. His current projects are published with Runway Experimental Art Journal, SEVENTH gallery, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Kings ARI, UNprojects, Cementa21 Contemporary Art Festival and more. Collier is an early career artist and an aspiring curator whose works are beginning to emerge within public and private collections across the country.

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