Return Flight MEL > CHC

Drew Pettifer is an artist and academic and currently Program Manager of the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours) Program at RMIT University. Drew’s art practice explores themes of intimacy, gender, sexuality, power, the archive and social politics using photography, video, installation and performance. Drew is currently a member of the Shepparton Art Museum Board of Directors. He is also a qualified solicitor and works from time to time as an independent curator and writer. His work is held in various collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Monash Gallery of Art and Shepparton Art Museum, as well as private collections nationally and internationally.

Jade Walsh is an Australian artist who uses fabric, sewing, paint, print and performance and blends social commentary with personal confession. She makes art about the vulnerable, emotional, and comedic in relationships & friendships and believes in Art as a social tool and way to empowerment. She is also a writer and makes zines and has performed in the synth and spoken word duo The Fluffs Electric. She has exhibited nationally and internationally & travelled to USA & Europe for Screen-printing residencies supported by Australia Council Grants.

TextaQueen is known for using the humble fibre-tip marker to articulate complex politics of race, gender, sexuality and identity. Interested in how visual and popular culture inform personal identity, she examines the influence of cultural and colonial legacies on these dynamics, often in relation to her own existence as a person of Indian origin living on others' ancestral lands. Her work has been showcased at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York and Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany and is in collections including National Gallery of Victoria, National Portrait Gallery of Australia, and Heide Museum of Modern Art. A mid-career survey show is currently on tour via Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery. She is a 2017 State Library of Victoria Creative Fellow. TextaQueen is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney.

Mike Eleven is an artist and street artist from Melbourne, Australia who specialises in large-scale murals and visual story-telling.

Khi-lee ThorpeKhi-Lee Thorpe is never more than a hand-span away from art. In addition to her visual art, she has worked in radio as a broadcaster and has previously produced sound montages and video Art. She recently graduated from a Masters of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Art and also holds a Masters of Media and Communication from Swinburne University of Technology. Her recent work includes gestural abstracted paintings on recycled internal doors. She takes inspiration from her Worimi heritage from the Mid North Coast of NSW.

Inge Flinte is a painter and photographer, based in Brisbane, Australia.

Cameron May is a digital artist specialising in time-based media, programming and machines. In 2018 he gained a Master of Fine Arts from Massey University, Wellington. He also has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Arts (Design/Media Studies) from Victoria University of Wellington.

Jeanine LeaneDr. Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet, essayist and academic from southwest New South Wales. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation, The Journal for the Association European Studies of Australia, Australian Poetry Journal, Antipodes, Sydney Review of Books, Best Australian Poems, Overland and the Australian Book Review. Jeanine has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, poetry, writing otherness and creative non-fiction. Her research interests concern the political nature of literary representation, cultural appropriation of minority voices and stories and writing identity and difference.

Didem Caia is an Australian emerging playwright who has had worked produced through NIDA, the Griffin Theatre Company, Theatre 503 and La Mama Theatre. Her plays have been developed in Melbourne and Sydney through playwriting Australia, the RE Ross Trust, and City of Melbourne. In 2014, she travelled to the UK and the U.S. to gain extensive knowledge about Dramaturgy and new writing development; specifically in Edinburgh, London, Chicago and New York. This journey was proudly funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. Didem is also a short fiction writer, having had work published in Voiceworks, Catalyst, Farrago, and Yen. She is currently developing her newest work, ‘The muted melancholy between the lines‘.

Didem has a diploma in Theatre Arts from Victoria University, a Bachelor of Creative Writing from RMIT and a Postgraduate Diploma in Playwriting from NIDA. Didem is currently completing a Masters in Dramaturgy at the Victorian college of the arts.

Andy Jackson has worked in call centres, libraries, and as a creative writing tutor, and lives in Castlemaine, Dja Dja Wurrung country. He has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Ireland, India, the USA and Australia, and co-edited disability-themed issues for both Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. Andy's most recent collection, Music our bodies can't hold (Hunter Publishers, 2017), consists of portrait poems of other people with Marfan Syndrome, and his new collection Human looking is forthcoming. 

Sean M Whelan is a popular poet on the Melbourne spoken word scene. He has authored two books - 'Love is the New Hate' and 'Tattooing the Surface of the Moon'. In 2018 he began a weekly creative writing themed podcast called More Than A Whelan. In 2019 he joined forces with some musician friends to form the Crystal Veins Band, a psychedelic composition of poetry and garage music sounds. They made their debut at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival with their ‘Sad is Rad’ show to rave reviews.

Elizaveta Maltseva is a Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist and curator of Russian heritage. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (honours) from Monash University and a Masters in Arts and Cultural Management from The University of Melbourne.

Maltseva’s practice often, but not exclusively, investigates issues around culture, heritage, identity and otherness. She believes that art is not produced in a vacuum and frequently explores external stimulus on the creative practice.

Maltseva’s most recent achievements include developing the Return Flight series as her first major international curatorial project, 2017-2019. The project was exhibited in Melbourne, Edinburgh, Christchurch and Hong Kong and delivered as a book series.

Maltseva launched and managed Rokeby Gallery. She is the co-founder and co-host of the Drinking with the Artist podcast. She is on the Board of Melbourne literary journal, Going Down Swinging.