After beginning his training at Geelong Gallery in 1998, Adam Harding was Assistant Curator at Warrnambool Art Gallery. In 2007 he moved to Horsham Regional Art Gallery (HRAG) as Curator, and was appointed Director in 2009. He has continued Horsham’s commitment to community engagement while reinterpreting the Gallery’s collection to focus on their three main areas of collecting; artworks and images of Horsham and the Wimmera, the Mack Jost Collection of Australian Art, and it’s nationally significant collection of Australian photography. Harding has been focusing on investigating modes of exhibition development and presentation that places the Gallery and the Wimmera as a site of production and collaboration. This is happening through partnerships with the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, which saw contemporary artists work with community organisations such as the Natimuk Brass Band and the Natimuk Bowls Club, and the Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery and their project Life in your hands: the art of solastalgia, which saw works created within each touring venue’s community coming together for a national tour. In 2018, Adam was announced as the incoming director of Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography.
Ben Macauley is the CFO of Baillie Asset Management Limited, a privately owned funds management company that is responsible for the management of targeted investments in a manner that is co-aligned with the interests of the select group of clients it represents. Ben has worked across the banking and finance industry for over 20 years in Sydney, Melbourne and London. He is a CPA qualified accountant and holds a Bachelor of Business in Accounting from the University of Technology, Sydney.
Catherine Pierce has a general commercial practice with a particular focus on banking and finance, bankruptcy, insolvency and corporations and securities matters. Before coming to the Bar, Catherine worked as a solicitor in Hong Kong where she advised in relation to cross border insolvency and corporate and financial restructuring, including the liquidiation of Lehman Brothers companies based in Hong Kong and China. Whilst practising in Hong Kong, Catherine also advised in relation to multi-jurisdictional securities enforcement, trust disputes and shareholder and partnership disputes. Prior to this, Catherine was a Senior Associate at Madgwicks where she practised in commercial litigation, including advising on insolvency and restructuring and instructing in trials in the Federal Court of Australia and in the Victorian Supreme, County and Magistrates’ Courts as well as in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Catherine has also worked for many years as an interpreter in English, French and Mandarin Chinese.
David Hurlston has worked for the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) since 1993 and is currently employed as Curator, Australian Art. He has previously been employed by the NGV as Curator, Australian art exhibitions (2002-2007), Program Coordinator (1999-2002) and Access Gallery Curator (1993-1999). In 1985 Hurlston completed a Bachelor of Art in Fine Art at RMIT, majoring in ceramic sculpture, and in 1991 undertook post-graduate study in art curatorship at the University of Melbourne. He has curated a number of exhibitions for the NGV including, Yikwani: Contemporary Tiwi ceramics (2002-2003), Deborah Halpern: Angel (2006), Geoffrey Bartlett (2007) and Preserving the past, enriching the future: Hugh Williamson’s legacy (2008) and Ron Mueck (2010) Hurlston is Chair of the City of Maribyrnong’s Art Advisory Committee and a member of Arts Project Australia’s Exhibitions Committee.
Penny Teale has worked in museum and gallery positions since 1994 and has over ten years of experience working in commercial galleries. Teale is Curator at Bunjil Place. Prior to this appointment she worked at McClelland Gallery starting in 2003 as the inaugural McClelland Sculpture Survey co-ordinator. From 2004 onwards she has managed the McClelland Gallery permanent collection and has curated over 30 exhibitions including artist surveys of Lisa Roet, Louise Weaver, Augustine Dall’Ava, Geoffrey Bartlett and project exhibitions with Andrew Browne, Janet Laurence and Alex Seton. Teale has also curated the contemporary exhibitions, Double Vision which explored Realism in contemporary art, FX in Contemporary Photography considering the cinematic narrative in contemporary photography and co-curated with Robert Lindsay Spirit in the Land, an exhibition that explored the genre of landscape painting in Australian art. She is a graduate from Deakin University and the University of Southern Queensland.
Jan van Schaik’s work focusses on the cultural and societal underpinnings of architecture, and the complex relationship between human beings and their environments. His collaborative approach to the design of public buildings; mixed use developments; strategic plans; feasibility studies; master-plans; secondary and tertiary education projects; adaptive reuse projects; exhibitions in major art galleries; buildings in sensitive ecological environments; and prototypical residential projects has received awards, and been published, both in Australia and internationally.
Jan has worked on projects on the east coast of China, Kuala Lumpur, and in most states of Australia. In regional Victoria he has specialised in leveraging creative practice to deliver resilience to communities and their economies. His experience includes past appointments as deputy chair of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, chair of the City of Melbourne Creative Spaces working group and adviser to the Regional Arts Victoria’s Small Town Transformation project, and is a patron of West Space and ACCA.
Jan is the producer of the WRITING & CONCEPTS lecture series and publications which reflecting on the role that writing plays in the development of contemporary creative practice.
Clare Leporati has worked in the creative industries in Australia and internationally since 1996. She has been at Nillumbik Shire Council since 2014 working across the public art, literature, programing and local history portfolios. Clare has specialised skills in public art, interdisciplinary projects, community and government relations, strategic planning and programing. Clare holds a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Art History from the University of Melbourne (1995), a Post Graduate Diploma in Arts Management from Deakin University (2000) and a Master in Art in Public Space from RMIT University (2010). Currently working for an interface municipality she is committed to the development and delivery of contemporary art, craft and design opportunities outside of metropolitan centres. Clare also has a particular interest in creative collaborative practices and the convergence of material and virtual public space.
Penny Byrne is a visual artist working across multiple mediums including ceramics, bronze and glass. She is also a specialist ceramics and objects conservator with over twenty years experience working in the Cultural Heritage Sector in Australia and the UK. Her sculptural works are politically charged, highly engaging and often disarmingly humorous, and her work presents an ongoing inquiry into popular culture and international politics. Her background in ceramics conservation and the law informs her practice. In 2015 she exhibited in the Venice Biennale exhibition Glasstress Gotika at Palazzo Franchetti on the Grand Canal. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally and her work is held in numerous national, state and private collections including The National Gallery of Victoria and the Lyon House Museum. Her conservation training was undertaken at West Dean College in the UK, which included an internship at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She also gained broad based experience in built heritage conservation and objects conservation in the UK, before returning to Australia in 1993. She has worked for many of Victoria’s major cultural institutions including The National Gallery of Victoria, ACMI, Museum Victoria, Heritage Victoria and The State Library of Victoria. Penny is a Professional Member of The National Association of Visual Arts, and a member of the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Materials.