Judges 2012
Mark Bergin - A Thinking Company
Art Bitch - Social media platform dedicated to supporting artists
Emma Crichton - SKYS
Andy Dinan - Mars Gallery
Chris Ellard - Strategic Adviser
Mario Fisher - Rematic
Stephen Haley - VCA
Charles Hardman - one hundredth gallery
Just Another Agency - Melika and Toby
Al Mehicevic - Director and Producer
Bill Sampson - Visual Artist and Lawyer
Martin Shub - Australian Art Prizes Planner
Sebastian Strakowicz - Digital Marketing Co-ordinator - Hopscotch Films
Robyn Szechtman - Co-Writer, Co-Artistic Director
Adam Whitbread - Writer, Director, Producer, Composer and Teacher
Juliet Wilson - Curator design100
Mark Bergin
Mark is Managing Director and Creative Director of design100. Mark has been the driving force behind Thinking Pty Ltd and has spent over the last 17 years dealing in the area of online publishing and e-business. Mark also is the creator and brain behind the Melbourne Design Awards which have successfully been launched in 2010.
Art Bitch
Art Bitch is a social media platform dedicated to supporting artists from all over the world - in any discipline.
Interacting and engaging with an international audience of up to, and over, 6000 people daily (and growing), Art Bitch broadcasts arts and cultural content, shares artists projects and ideas, and generates discussion giving something back to the arts.
Art Bitch encourages open dialogue and cross-collaboration between artists and fellow creatives, and is a place for artists to share, share, share and get involved, no matter who you are, where you are from, or what experience level you have.
Art Bitch is for everyone.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Art-Bitch
Emma Crichton
In 2007 Emma became the CEO of SKYS after having worked in the agency for three years. Emma is entrepreneurial; her expertise lies in developing and establishing engaging youth programs, particularly education and training programs that are an alternative to mainstream. Emma is a graduate of Deakin University with majors in Social Work and Sociology. She is in her second term as Board member of the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria.
Andy Dinan
Andy Dinan created Melbourne Art Rooms (MARS Gallery) in 2004 after a long-term, deep-held belief that art should be for everyone and that the gallery scene in Melbourne was missing a commercial gallery that supported mid-career artists in a no- elitist manner.
Dinan had a previous life as a well-regarded public relations specialist.
She began her career in 1980 with one of Melbourne’s top pr consultancy’s Professional Public Relations, which later merged to Rowland Neilson Mc Carthy, and then merged to The Rowland Company for which Dinan worked for some ten years. She then transferred to the company’s Los Angeles office, where she worked for a year. On return in 1991, she struck out and formed her own consultancy called P.R Works which she built up over the next ten years before selling to Clemenger BBDO , retiring then to have children and study art.
Over the next five years, Dinan was kept busy in the community serving on boards including the Salvation Army, the Malthouse and TLC for Kids as well as being a loving mother to her three children. Importantly, she discovered she was a bad sculptor. She filled her days volunteering for the National Gallery of Victoria and starting the Artbeat club for the young NGV members. She also created Off your Back - a winter coat collection. It was during this time that she started to research and develop the concept of MARS gallery.
In an old derelict dairy, down the wrong end of Bay Street Port Melbourne, Dinan began radical renovations on the building that would become her dream gallery. Now a steady and consistent visual arts venue that hosts monthly exhibitions, Dinan has built the gallery up , continually streamlining and improving it and continues to speak at art events, take part in Art Fairs and run an extensive intern program for young aspiring arts management workers.
Dinan started a country retreat in NSW at the home of artist Anne Judell for young artists to study with a master and funds all of the arts activities privately. She is a sponsor of many charity events and arts events and remains committed to fighting arts elitism and using visual arts to educate as well as excite as well as being an arts human activist.
Most days when she is not fighting for the arts, Dinan can be found hanging out with her three children, studying sculpture, in her vegie patch, cooking or writing a novel she never quite finishes. She continues to go out too many nights to art openings around town.
Dinan’s latest co- creation is her alter ego Gallery Girl a 6 part series TV show on Channel 31 titled This week with Gallery Girl. Gallery Girl is a heady, extremely opinionated character. Some say almost like Dinan herself.
Chris Ellard
Strategic Adviser. During the 25 years he spent in the commercial sector, Chris was the founder and owner of a successful clothing manufacturing and wholesale company. He managed a complex, labour intensive enterprise that dealt with major national and international textile suppliers and retail outlets.Since that time he has been able to successfully transfer his business skills to working in local government, the community sector and managing community organisations and programs.
Chris has over 20 years of experience in the community sector including volunteer work with various community organisations; Chief Executive;Officer of ECY Streetwear Pty. Ltd.; Chairman, Board of Management, TaskForce Community Agency Inc., Regional Support Officer and later Co-ordinator of the Positive Living Centre with the Victorian AIDS ;Council, Community Development and Health Officer with the City ofBusiness and Relationship Manager and now Board member of St KildaYouth Service (SKYS).
Mario Fisher
Mario started his career as production assistant manager with Universal Music Austria. He later founded and fronted the rap group “Das Prinzip”. Under contract with EMI in 2002 the band published one album with 5 singles. In 2003 Mario founded Rematic Media Gmbh specialising in cross media communication specialising in web, mobile and social network solutions. Some of Rematic’s core clients are international Music Production Companies and Bands.
Mario wurde 1975 geboren und startete seine berufliche Laufbahn als Assistant Product Manager bei Universal Music Austria (damals PolyGram). Als Frontman der deutschsprachigen Rap-Gruppe „Das Prinzip“ war er bei EMI Austria unter Vertrag und veröffentlichte nach 5 Single-Auskopplungen 2002 das Album „rüttmisch*“. 2003 gründete er „rematic media“, ein Unternehmen, das sich auf die cross-media communication spezialisiert hat. rematic arbeitet unter anderem auf für die internationalen Music Industry und erstellt für Kunden im In- und Ausland Applications für web, mobile und social networks.
Stephen Haley
Dr Stephen Haley is a visual artist, a writer and the Graduate Coordinator of Research (MFA program) in the School of Art.
Stephen came late to art first completing a BA in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne and then bummed about travelling widely and working in a variety of appalling jobs until 28 years of age. Since then he has completed a BFA (RMIT), a Postgraduate Diploma (Victorian College of the Arts), a Master of Fine Art (Victorian College of the Arts) and a PhD (Faculty of the VCA and Music, University of Melbourne). He has been a lecturer and tutor in Visual Art History and Theory and in Painting Studio at Monash University, RMIT and the Victorian College of the Arts/Faculty of the VCA and Music where he has taught in various capacities since 2000. Stephen also has an extensive writing record, publishing a large number of critical essays, reviews and catalogue essays.
Working primarily with painting and digital media, Haley has produced sixteen solo exhibitions and participated in over one hundred curated group exhibitions, many internationally. His work features in wide number of collections and has won several awards including the ANZ Visual Arts Fellowship Award in 2004 and the Deacon, Graham and James/Arts 21 Residency Award in 1998 that funded a four month studio in Tokyo. His recent work is concerned with Western space - both real and virtual - and how the real is increasingly supplanted and preceded by the virtual forms of the digital and the model. The iconography is often drawn from the localized landscape of the suburbs and the poetics of the mirror. In 2006 Haley received the Australia Council for the Arts Overseas Studio Residency Award and spent three months in Los Angeles researching the city's many thematic spaces. In 2006 he also won the prestigious R M McGivern Acquisitive Prize for painting. He is represented in Melbourne by Nellie Castan Gallery and internationally by Lumas Gallery, Berlin.
Charles Hardman
Charles is the owner Creative Director of one hundredth gallery.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria, Charles Hardman has always had a passion for the arts and for creativity in all of its forms. Ever since he was able to hold a pencil he has drawn. Charles spent many years devoting himself to realism before discovering expressionism, impressionism, cubism, and surrealism in high school. Charles put away the quest for perfect realism and ventured into cubism. He also put away his pencils and started painting and print making. It was whilst learning the art of etching that Charles also started meshing cubism with surrealism and found a style that truly worked for him. A visiting Japanese delegation requested two of Charles’ prints and both are on permanent display somewhere in Japan.
Charles spent very little time on his art between 2002 and 2010 as he made his way through the corporate and academic ranks. During this period, Charles spent three years in Bristol, UK. It was whilst here that Charles took the opportunity to travel to the world’s best galleries, reigniting his passion for the arts. In late 2010, Charles resigned from his General Manager role to pursue his artistic passions. Whilst painting and exhibiting is on his agenda, Charles has turned his focus to opening a gallery to exhibit aspiring and emerging artists. He believes that every artist should have the opportunity to exhibit their work; to express, impress, and inspire. And so one hundredth gallery was born.
Just Another Agency
MELIKA is a textbook creative, with experience in Interior Design, Visual Art & Retail Display. Art and curation is in her blood. With never ending ideas and enthusiasm, Melika’s energy and encouragement aids in inspiring and motivating their artists.
TOBY brings a much needed sensibility to the partnership, acting as the anchor to Melika’s balloons. With a background in Sales, Training and Assessing, Event Management & Small Business Management her hands on approach brings much needed balance and direction to the agency. She is vital to bringing an objective opinion and often one of the everyday consumer. A strong leader she obtains the best from their artists.
Just Another Agency is a creative management agency like no other. Developed as an avenue to support, encourage, nurture and provide opportunities for some of the industry's best creative talent. Just Another Agency internationally represents a select group of illustrators, designers, street and fine artists perfect for any commercial or non-commercial creative project.
Toby and Melika are the founder and art director of Just Another Agency. Their personal and professional partnership make up the heart and soul of the company, focusing on different roles while giving the needed support to one another, thus forming an indestructible team.
http://www.justanotheragency.com.au
Al Mehicevic
Al Mehicevic was born in Bosnia in 1974. He started his acting career in the OKC ABRASEVIC Theatre Group where he performed in four-theatre productions prior the 1992 Balkan war. His forced relocation due to the war gave him the opportunity to travel around the world and gather material for his travel memoirs, which are currently being developed for publication.
From 1992-93 he performed with the ZKM Theatre and the famous Gavela Theatre in Zagreb, Croatia. In that same period he worked for the Croatian national TV documentary program. The ensuing 6 years included extensive travel around the world; Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Jordan, Russia, Egypt, Austria, Serbia and Germany, with this journey concluding in Australia where he worked in the control room for Channel 31 in Melbourne. In 2006 he worked at FTV Sarajevo Bosnia, Directing a weekly show called Fade In.
Al studied at Deakin University, graduating in 2007, with majors in Arabic and Film and Video. Subsequently, Directing and Producing film and video became Al’s specialty. His undergraduate project One More Tonight was received extremely well by Australian audiences. He has recently completed his Masters Degree at Deakin University, in Film and Video Directing. His Masters Degree project, Razor, was selected for the St Kilda Film Festival in 2009. Razor also screened in the Short Film Corner at the CANNES FILM FESTIVAL in May 2009.
From 2009-2011 Al completed another four short films, amongst them short documentary St Kilda Park Saints, which screened at St Kilda film festival in 2011.
Further information on Al Mehicevic can be found at www.mostarvision.com
Bill Sampson
Dr. Bill Sampson is a visual artist with a rigorous contemporary practice. He is also a practising lawyer. Whilst holding degrees in Law and Economics he also gained a Bachelor of Art degree with Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts (Drawing Department). He attained his Doctor of Philosophy at Melbourne University (VCA), the title of which was Prettybad: towards an aesthetics of the expressionless. Dr. Sampson is also a passionate teacher of drawing, and theory. He is a casual lecturer in Critical & Theoretical Studies at the VCA but his studio is now located in beautiful Guildford in central Victoria. As well as other prizes Dr. Sampson was awarded the prestigious Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship that enabled him to study at The Slade, University College London. He exhibits with [MARS] Gallery and other public and artist run spaces. He is on the Programming Committee of Westspace Gallery and holds other volunteer community positions. www.billsampson.net
Martin Shub
Martin co-founded independent art publishing house and digital content consultancy Discovery Media in 1992. In 2010, he launched the Australian Art Prizes website, a one-stop shop for everything you might ever need to know about Australia's lively art awards calendar, and the Australian Art Prizes Planner, which has become an indispensable guide for artists and art prize organisers.
Sebastian Strakowicz
Digital Marketing Co-ordinator - Hopscotch Films
Sebastian has been working in the film industry for the past 13 years. His professional experience spans film production to digital marketing and film distribution both in Canada and Australia. He holds an honours BA in Film Studies from Brock University in Canada and research MA degree from University of NSW. Sebastian’s thesis focused on mobile and cinema narratives and was published in 2008 under thetitle Being Mobile. Currently, Sebastian works at Hopscotch Films and he also teaches part time at University of Technology, Sydney and University of NSW.
Robyn Szechtman
Co-Writer, Co-Artistic Director
City of Port Phillip
Robyn Szechtman is a passionate Community Cultural Development practitioner who has written and produced a number of high profile site-specific promenade theatre works and audiotours in consultation with street sex workers, drug users and people who experience homelessness including Habits of the Heart and the Sex and Drugs Historical Tour. Robyn has had over twenty years of working with people from marginalized backgrounds in a variety of capacities including counselling, training and group work. Robyn is currently the project officer for SIP.
http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.aum
Adam Whitbread
Adam is a Writer, Producer, Director, Composer and Teacher. His broad background in Media and Education includes 25 years teaching experience in Australia, the UK and the USA. Adam has worked widely in the Film, TV, Theatre and Music industries here and abroad and founded Armed and Dangerous in 2005.
Adam's animation Invasion is a category winner in the New Art Awards 2011.
Juliet Wilson
Juliet is a curator with design100, and practicing artist. A graduate of one of Canada’s top fine art schools, Juliet had solo and group exhibitions before embarking on a successful museums career. A book of her photographs was published in Canada in 2010.
Following ten years at Melbourne Museum as an exhibition coordinator and manager of the Victorian Government State of Design Initiative, and a year as Associate Producer of the State of Design Festival, her work now focusses on delivering a platform of programs that will increase design literacy, encourage business outcomes and create legacy. A focal point for her current work is developing mentoring and professional development programs for emerging designers.
