Texting Images: BLINDSIDE & EWF Ekphrastic Readings
Autumn Royal, Dorcas Maphakela, Ava Nunan, Natalie Bühler, Angela Crawford
7 Sep 2024
Please join us from 2-4pm on Saturday September 7 for an afternoon of ekphrastic poetry readings from Natalie Bühler, Angela Crawford, Dorcas Maphakela and Ava Nunan. Each writer will perform ekphrastic responses to artworks from Blindside ARI’s 20-year exhibition archive. Hosted by workshop facilitator Autumn Royal.
BLINDSIDE & EWF partner for the very first time, to present the Ekphrastic Writing Program.
The initiative invites four emerging writers to produce an ekphrastic response to an exhibition from Blindside's 20-year exhibition archive, culminating in a night of celebratory readings, where writers will share the works created.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Autumn RoyalBorn 1987, Mildura/on the unceded lands of the Latji Latji and Nyeri Nyeri people
Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne
Autumn Royal creates drama, poetry, and criticism.
Dorcas Maphakela is a multidisciplinary creative combining writing, visual arts and holistic well-being advocacy in her practice. She is a South African-born Mopedi woman. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Johannesburg and holds a Master of Arts in Writing from Swinburne University of Technology. Dorcas is also a TV presenter, public speaker and founder and producer of the Antenna Award-winning OZ AFRICAN TV (OATV). She is the co-founder of Yo CiTY, a platform that champions the culturally diverse experience through Art & music. Her work was acknowledged with a Media Award from the Victorian Multicultural Commission.
Ava Nunan (she/her) lives and writes on unceded Wurundjeri land. She is completing her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, where she double-majors in creative writing and cultural studies. Ava’s previous work can be found in Voiceworks, Born Writers Award, Verve, Demure, and others.
Natalie Bühler is an emerging poet, editor and arts administrator originally from Switzerland. She often incorporates her native Swiss German, which does not have a standardised written form, into her writing. Her work has appeared in Cordite, Tint, Blue Bottle Journal, boats against the current, swim press and the Tinted Trails anthology. She is the Program Administrator for Red Room Poetry, a founding editor of The Marrow poetry journal and is currently studying a Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Melbourne.
Angela CrawfordAnge Crawford is a writer, editor and PhD student in media and communications at RMIT. Her contemporary YA novel, How to Be Normal, won the inaugural Walker Books Manuscript Prize and will be released in early 2025, and she also has an essay in the forthcoming UQP anthology of personal essays by Autistic women, trans and gender-diverse writers. She is the current Emerging Writers’ Program coordinator at Seventh Gallery. Apart from writing, editing, and art, she is a fan of cats and synthesisers, and can often be found with an armful of books in a local independent bookstore.