Flow

Zia Atahi is a former refugee and accomplished photographer, a National Portrait Prize 2018 finalist and earning the Browness Photography Prize 2019 Honourable Mention.
With community as one of his key concerns, he has worked with Connection Arts Space since 2016 and has run photography workshops in Indonesia and Melbourne.

Aida Azin is a multidisciplinary artist living in Naarm/Melbourne. She uses her painting practice as a platform to promote the importance of self-representation on cultural perspectives within the visual arts. The themes represented in Aida’s art practice reflect her experience as a Filipinx-Iranian first-generation born Australian. Her critiques on the effects of White Imperialism allow for collective discussion with a community who are in the process of strengthening connections with cultural heritage.
In 2019 Aida exhibited two solo shows; Lonely God at Seventh Gallery and Brown Pillars at Firstdraft. She recently worked with seven artists in the project Eight Fingers Crossed. The project involved several workshops with an exhibition result, and an artist book by Have You Seen Him publishing. In 2019 Aida joined the youth-focused project Living and Breathing (‘the LAB’) based in Melbourne’s westside where she runs regular art workshops. The process of engaging with communities has taken more focus in her practice. In 2019 Aida initiated an ongoing project; Saluhan: a Community Arts Project touring Adelaide, Melbourne, and Manila (the Philippines). Upcoming gallery exhibitions include ACE Open’s 2020 South Australian Artist Survey in September 2020, a collaboration with curator Nanette Orly at Murray Art Museum Albury in November, and a solo exhibition in 2021 with Yavuz Gallery, NSW.
Aida has a Bachelors Degree in Visual Art from the Adelaide College of the Arts, 2015. In 2017 she completed her honours year in painting at the University of South Australia where she studied the topic of institutional racism in the visual arts.

Tessa-May Chung is a photographer, videographer and emerging artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). She has completed a Bachelor of Media and Communications degree specialising in cinema studies and photography, and later finished her Honours degree focusing on experimental art and culture studies.
Establishing herself in the industry as a photographer and videographer, Tessa is now exploring new methods of immersing with visual storytelling, especially the combination and blending of different disciplines, including visual arts, sound design, digital media and performance art.
Most of her projects have been inspired by personal events and experiences in hopes to unpack what it means to be a woman of colour growing up in Australia. Now researching ways in which to discover new spaces and platforms for other voices to be heard, she approaches her research and experiments with curiosity, and a necessity for collaboration with other artists and people of colour.

Leonie Leivenzon is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her background and experience as a GP and hypnotherapist led her to reject dualisms imposed by Western society and medicine, such as the separation of mind and body. Using discarded and second-hand materials as inspiration and in the making of her work, Leonie explores a wide range of different materials, themes, and concepts. She is currently working on The Future Histories Project, a generative art making process which uses collecting as a methodology for creating moments of questioning while exploring the nature of objects and their ability to embody memory and history. The project involves visiting second-hand bookstores and searching for books where something was forgotten inside by the donor. Using a combination of chance and structure, Leonie seeks to work in collaboration and give agency to what is usually seen as inanimate. She aims to generate new networks of understanding and provoke new meanings by embracing a state of uncertainty, multiplicity, and complexity.

Michael Tuhanuku is a proud Tongaba man of Sa’a Kaitu’u on Mungiki island in the Solomon Islands.
Living and working on the unceded sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, I pay my deepest respects to their elders and leaders past, present and emerging. My work delves into the confusing but fascinating observations of a Tongaba man situated in Australia. This work attempts to map out and express my political, social, spiritual, artistic learnings and stories through lived experience.

Maya Hodge is a proud Lardil & Yangkaal woman, raised on Latje Latje Country (Mildura). Currently based on the lands of the Kulin Nation (Melbourne), Maya is an emerging writer, curator and creative whose work explores the power of healing in the arts through uplifting First Nations creativity and storytelling. Maya is currently the Assistant Curator – Exhibitions & Programs at Blak Dot Gallery.
Her writing is featured in the recent publication Black Wattle, the Emerging Writers Festival, Cordite Poetry Review and Overland Literary Magazine. Maya is a president artist in this mob collective’s studio based at Collingwood Yards and a founding member of Ensemble Dutala; Australia's first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander chamber ensemble. This year, Maya was awarded joint Runner Up of the SBS Emerging Writers Competition.

Luke Patterson is a Gamilaroi poet, folklorist and musician living on Gadigal lands. Grounded in extensive work with Aboriginal and other community-based organisations across Australia, Luke’s creative pursuits focus on the ways bioregional identities and consciousness are expressed through localised and vernacular forms. He is particularly interested in exploring how notions of ‘on/off Country’ can be articulated across multi-modal poetics involving (computer) screen, stage and page. Luke is currently a Juncture fellow with The Sydney Review of Books and  member of the 2022 Emerging Writers Festival advisory board. Check out his poetry in journals like Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, Rabbit and Running Dog.

John Oh (b. 1995 New York) grew up as a classically trained cellist, but has been captivated by the musicality of the English language since his exposure to rap music in the third grade. A performer at hear, he studied cello at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. He is currently completely his Bachelor of Arts in English at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Bea Rubio-Gabriel (b. 1996, Manila, Philippines) is a performance artist, writer, and curator born in the Philippines, now based in Naarm/Melbourne. Exploring systems of care and Resistance Aesthetics, they challenge current curatorial and euro-centric modes of exhibiting, approaching the curatorial as its own way of making; grounding it in community, and rhizomatic ways of care and collectivisation. Their research focuses on pre-colonial writing systems (namely, Baybayin) and (Ifugao) ways of healing of the Philippines. Approaching writing as artform, they explore the Baybayin script in how it can be activated as a gateway to rebuild cultural connections through performance.
Bea graduated from Monash University with a double Bachelor of Arts/Visual Arts and was awarded the BAHC x MUMA Curatorial Award in MADA19. In 2020 they undertook the Loadnadito’s Curating in Local Contexts, the Eastcall Curatorial Residency and the What Could/Should Curating Do? Curatorial Programme. Former co-director at Intermission Gallery, they also worked as the Associate Editor for WCSCD’s curatorial inquiry with the As You Go Journal and have presented their research as a part of Monash CURIE’s International Centre for Undergraduate Research (ICUR) conference. They are currently a part of SEVENTH Gallery’s Emerging Writer’s Program and sit on the KINGS Artist-Run committee.
Bea’s curatorial projects include RIOT! (Connection Art Space, 2020); /dis/location (Monash MPavillion, 2019); The Art of Consumption and theanswersyouneedarerightwhereyouare (Intermission Gallery, 2019); and Revisiting the Quadriennale (CareOf Facility, Milan, 2018). They have exhibited locally and internationally in Ideas of Resilience (Brunswick Street Gallery, 2021), Rain Dance (Grey Gardens, 2020), SALUHAN: Pearl Diving Report (Project20 Gallery, Manila), and Unpacking Hysteria (Monash University, Prato, 2018). Their writing has been published with UnProjects, The Climatized, Art-Bazhan Journal, and As You Go…roads beneath your feet towards a new future.

Amelia Wallin (b. 1986, Sydney) is a curator, writer and director. With a focus on care, feminisms, and reproductive labour, Amelia is concerned with alternative models for instituting. Since 2019, Amelia has been Director of West Space in Melbourne, where she works collaboratively to commission and facilitate cross-disciplinary artistic programs.
Amelia graduated from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in 2018, where she curated More than mere jelly at the Hessel Museum of Art and co-curated Inside Voices at CCS Bard Galleries. While at CCS Bard Amelia organised programs at The Kitchen in New York City; was commissioning editor of the aCCeSsion journal; and provided curatorial research to the Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator Lauren Cornell as Curatorial Fellow. In The United Kingdom and Europe in 2017, Amelia undertook curatorial residencies at Spike Island, Bristol, and Enough Room For Space, Brussels.
Prior to her graduate studies, Amelia was Curatorial Fellow at Performa in New York and held directorial positions at Firstdraft and Tiny Stadiums Festival in Sydney, and as co-founded the residency and exhibition program Sydney Guild. Amelia has also held curatorial and administrative positions at the Biennale of Sydney, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Vivid Ideas, Performing Lines and Performance Space.
Amelia holds a BA in Theatre & Performance Studies and Art History & Theory from the University of New South Wales. Her writing has been widely published in Running Dog, Memo Review, Runway, un Magazine, Artlink, Art Collector, amongst others.