Gillian Armstrong Photo: Tim Baure

Finding a voice : Gillian Armstrong

With the help of inspiring teachers, filmmaker and VCA alumna Gillian Armstrong built the foundations of her cinematic career in the classroom.

When director Gillian Armstrong began her first year at Swinburne Technical College in 1968, the world was changing. She saw her classmates defer to fight in the Vietnam War, protests ignited in the streets and Swinburne (later to become the VCA) was breeding a new, fiercely independent and innovative generation of art students. When we asked Gillian what it was like to be studying during this time she put it simply: ‘It was amazing.’

Since graduating in 1971, Gillian has directed countless films including High Tide (1987), Little Women (1994), Oscar and Lucinda (1997), and Charlotte Gray (2001) and earned awards and nominations along the way. As she looks back to where it all began, she can see that an important idea hasn’t changed. ‘What makes VCA unique is that it has the philosophy of an art school,’ she explains. ‘We were encouraged to find our own unique voice and to find ways of expressing ourselves creatively.’

Gillian and her classmates weren’t actually allowed to make a film until third year – the university didn’t have enough equipment at the time to provide first and second year students with the opportunity. However one lecturer took a shine to her during her second year.

‘We had a wonderful history of film lecturer, Jim Harris. He was passionate about films from all over the world.’ Harris saw Gillian’s hunger to get out of the classroom and shoot on film, so he took the risk of sneaking a camera out of the university for her. ‘I really wanted to make something.’ Her four-minute short Four Walls allowed her the opportunity to test out basic cinematic theories she was learning in class. The belief the lecturer had in his students, paired with Gillian’s fast-growing passion and understanding of cinema, provided her with the confidence to tackle her third year and continue on to the newly established Australian Film and Television School (now the prestigious AFTRs).

She remembers her years at Swinburne as a time when lecturers shook up her preconceptions and encouraged her think for herself. Her classmates, too, offered endless inspiration – she studied with other film greats including Danish-Australian filmmaker Esben Storm (Round The Twist) and cinematographer Malcolm Richardson who shot both Gillian and Esben’s work. ‘We were pushed to find our own personal strengths and weaknesses. We were encouraged to find a fresh way to tell stories and it was all done in a nurturing environment.’

In terms, of what’s next for filmaker, she doesn’t like talking about projects she’s currently working on; she’s concerned she’ll curse them if she does. But we can confirm that her film making days are far from over. She’s currently in pre-production for a film about the Australian-born Oscar-winning costume designer Orry-Kelly. She has set out to put the spotlight on the designer, who has a low profile in Australia, despite designing for blockbuster films Casablanca, Oklahoma! and The Maltese Falcon.
Since sparking her career with a simple short student film, and becoming an internationally respected director, Gillian is still finding fresh ways to tell stories.

Photo: Justin Olstein

Alumni post: Film and Television graduate Justin Olstein

In our guest post series, we invite alumni, staff and current students to reflect on their VCA experience. This week, Film and Television graduate Justin Olstein tells us about his experience at the Berlin Talent Campus.

I recently returned from the Berlin Talent Campus (run as part of the Berlin International Film Festival), where I had the opportunity to participate in master classes, panel discussions, screenings and networking events with emerging filmmakers from all over the world.

I’d spend the morning listening to a Jane Campion lecture and participating in a DSLR class run by Canon, the afternoon at a panel discussion on the changing landscape of film distribution, and the evening watching films. Sleep never really came into the equation.

Being able to see a major film market operate from the inside out was a real eye-opener. I developed a new understanding about international audiences, what kinds of films each find popular and how important it is to keep an audience in mind during each step of the creative process, from screenwriting to marketing. I came to view all the distributors, sales agents and consultants busy making deals as representatives of different kinds of audiences from all over the world.

Photo: Justin Olstein

In this constantly changing digital environment, it was also useful to chat to other filmmakers about how new technologies are not only influencing the way we make films, but how they are influencing the subject matter. Hearing experts on transmedia speak about the innovative ways creators can attract audiences using multiple media platforms was inspiring, and I hope to apply some of this knowledge to my own projects in the future.

The networking opportunities were a key attraction for me in applying to the Campus. Being able to meet producers and distributors from all over the world encourages you to keep moving forward with your projects, even if they are in very early stages of development. It was comforting (and somewhat terrifying) to note that everyone faces similar challenges in raising finance for their screen projects, no matter what country they are from. Yet everyone seemed to be united and buoyed by a common desire to persevere and make things happen.

Another good thing about being at a major international festival is that most people you meet want (at the very least) to know why you’re there. And who knows, after a few wines, they might want to know all about the blockbuster you are currently penning.

www.justinolstein.com

'De las Manos', Sissy M. Reyes Photographer, Yunuen Perez Production Designer

Alumni post: Costume and Set Designer Yunuen Pérez

In our guest post series, we invite alumni, staff and current students to reflect on their time with the VCA. A Mexican born Costume and Set Designer, Yunuen Pérez arrived in Australia in 2007 to study a Postgraduate Diploma in Production at the VCA. She was happy to find the college resembled a friendly artists´ community, where creativity was just as important as hard work.

There were only two students in the year I enrolled, so the attention of the teachers was closely focused on our personal and professional development. Their theoretical and practical projects were meticulously researched, and as a result were always rewarding and prepared me for the professional environment. The personalised training was of a high standard, allowing me to develop into a more disciplined and committed professional, and I was encouraged to always present pre-eminent outcomes.

‘A Faraway Shore’, Sissy M. Reyes Photographer, Yunuen Perez Production Designer

I had the opportunity to collaborate with students from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, providing me with a multidisciplinary approach to any performing art practice. After graduation, I worked with many classmates on their own projects allowing me to feel part of the wider artistic community of the VCA and Melbourne. This confidence and training enabled me to start my career as a freelance Costume and Set Designer.

In 2011, I began working with cinematographer Sissy M Reyes, the result of the collaboration being Mex-tli, Mexican Goddesses, an exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs that reflects our own artistic practices, together with an emphasis on cross-cultural aesthetics and the power of the image.

‘The Queen of Maize’, Sissy M. Reyes Photographer, Yunuen Perez Production Designer

This exhibition focuses on the stories, mythologies, work roles and costumes of Mexican indigenous women. We articulated our research in 12 self-portraits that will reveal a wide range of traditions, rituals and ultimately intricate layers of meaning, providing each one of these images with storytelling and cinematic qualities.

I am interested in bringing Costume and Production Design to the forefront of my projects. This collaboration with Sissy is the one of many to follow and the beginning of new artistic projects in Australia, Mexico and Europe.

Theatre collaborations include Laramie Project: Ten Years Later directed by Gary Abrahams for Red Stitch in 2011, and re-mount of the same play at the Arts Centre Melbourne in 2012.

Mex-tli, Mexican Goddesses with be exhibiting at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, May 7-18, 2013

Lewis Fidock with his work 'Thousand Yard Stare', various media, BFA (Sculpture & Spatial Practice), 2012

Watch: Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the VCA

517 works were on display from 20th – 25th November at the Victorian College of the Arts’ School of Art Graduate Exhibition 2012, featuring works by 110 graduating students from each of the School’s studios – Drawing, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture and Spatial Practice – as well as those completing Honours and the Postgraduate Diploma of Visual Art.

Watch the video below where Sculpture and Spatial Practice graduates discuss their work from preparation through to delivery, and how audiences interact with the work. They reveal how the VCA has encouraged them to look deeper into their own creative processes, and how the world around them influences their work and practice.

Elizabeth Debicki

Rising star: the Great Gatsby’s Elizabeth Debicki

Barely a year after graduating from the VCA, Elizabeth Debicki landed a major Hollywood role in Baz Luhrmann’s remake of The Great Gatsby. Dan Rule reports.

Few recent drama graduates could boast receiving an invitation to audition from legendary Australian director Baz Luhrmann. Even fewer could lay claim to being cast for the part. For 21-year-old Melbourne actress and VCA alumna Elizabeth Debicki (BDramArt 2010), it’s an experience that she is unlikely to forget.

Indeed, cast in the role of Jordan Baker for Luhrmann’s Hollywood remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in early 2011 – alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carry Mulligan and fellow Australians Joel Edgerton and Isla Fischer – Debicki’s rise to film’s biggest stage has been more rapid than even she could have imagined.

‘I sent in a tape from Australia and, like most auditions, tried not to think about it after that,” she recalls. ‘I received a phone call about a month later, telling me that Baz would like me to test for the part of Jordan. I flew to LA and auditioned in the flesh, and flew home straight after.’

‘It was very, very surreal, and with the amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins I’m surprised I remember any of it at all.’

Currently based in Los Angeles, Debicki describes the experience as a ‘whirlwind’ befitting of an ‘ample’ learning curve. ‘You cannot prepare for the unknown,’ she says. “You can work on technical things as an actor – dialect, research of the period – but that is all sort of textbook stuff in a way. When you get on set, it all sort of flies away and you learn to be in the moment and work with whatever comes your way, whatever is required of you to make the scene work, to tell the story.”

Debicki’s love for acting runs deep. Her enrolment at the VCA in 2008 – where she was awarded the Richard Pratt Bursary for outstanding acting students in the second year of study in 2009 – followed a childhood marked by a love of theatre, dance and music.

Born in Paris, Dubecki’s family moved to Australia when she was five. She learnt to dance from a young age and fell in love with ‘the stories of classical ballet’, which she cites as having a ‘profound effect’ on her ‘as a person and an actor’. She recalls going to see The Australian Ballet’s performance of Giselle, which would become a favourite. ‘I was obsessed with the ballerinas who danced the part of the Willis, the dead lovers who have died from broken hearts. I suppose that’s a little macabre but it’s a brilliant, epic idea made manifest in white tutus.’

Being onstage ‘always felt natural and the most inspiring place’, but as she matured, Debicki’s interest shifted increasingly toward the theatre and ‘the power of the live performance’. ‘There is nothing like the electricity that can be generated in the theatre,’ she says.

She recalls her time at the VCA with great fondness and credits the teaching staff with nurturing and shaping her career in a positive direction. ‘VCA drama was my home for three years,’ she says. ‘I was taught by some incredible teachers, experienced so many varied styles of theatre training. I was surrounded by amazing, interesting people and took in so much new information every day. It was a very solid, diverse training, I am very grateful for my experiences at VCA.’

‘As Tanya Gerstle said to my company early on in our training: everything is information, everything and everyone has an effect on you when you are in a state of learning and training.’

It’s a mantra she has applied to her short but extremely active career since. Whether it was making her filmic debut in the role of Maureen in Australian-British comedy A Few Best Men (2012), or working alongside DiCaprio, Maguire and the like in The Great Gatsby (to be released internationally late this year), it has all been part of a wider education.

‘Of course, I had never worked on anything of that scale before Gatsby,’ she says. ‘It was an incredible learning experience and there was a lot of wisdom to be reaped from everybody I worked with on the film.

‘I was very blessed to work and spend time with such an incredible cast.’

But while acquiring knowledge is fundamental to any field or craft, her advice to fellow VCA students centres on a concept a little closer to home.

‘Nobody can be you, think like you, sound or dance like you,’ she urges. ‘Sometimes I think as students we can get caught up trying to emulate…but the most powerful thing you have to offer your art form is your individual self.’

The ‘Great Gatsby’ starring VCA alumna Elizabeth Dubecki is due for release in cinemas on 25 December, 2012.

Public forum 'Community, Art, Dialogue and Conversation' at the VCA, August 2012

Guest post: Theatre lecturer Theron Schmidt, King’s College London

Last August, respected London theatre lecturer Theron Schmidt visited the VCA. What follows is his response to the public forum titled ‘Community, Art, Dialogue and Conversation’.

Response by Theron Schmidt, Lecturer in Theatre & Liberal Arts, King’s College London.

Because I am a stranger here, I am alert to the details of the room that I enter: its high ceilings and theatre lights, its clusters of round tables with bright floral tablecloths, its team of friendly greeters. I am still finding my way in a new city, and so I am curious about who these people are who have gathered to talk about art and community. I don’t have an organisational structure into which to place these names and the institutions they represent. It is hard to know which details will be important and which are accidental, and so I listen closely. I look around me to gauge the reactions of others. I try to find out what brought other people here. Rajni Shah, guest teacher at VCA and my companion from London on this trip to Melbourne, is the first speaker. In relation to her art practice, she starts by describing ‘how little it takes to make a difference’. We do not know what the repercussions will be of a chance encounter: a casual word, an open invitation, a brief glance. But she also talks about ‘how much it takes to make a difference’: the behind-the-scenes labour that she and her artistic team undertake in order to prepare the ground for new relationships to be formed and new voices to be heard.

Public forum ‘Community, Art, Dialogue and Conversation’ at the VCA, August 2012

Because I am a guest here, I am grateful for the effort in welcoming me put forward by my hosts, Leisa Shelton and her students on the postgraduate animateuring course. I take pleasure in being randomly given a specific seat at one of the tables, knowing that the people sitting next to me are, like me, sitting next to someone they don’t know. Looking at the food, drink, and flowers at the centre of each table, I think about the role of hospitality, about being open and accommodating and generous to people who may not be like ‘us’. ‘Community is a challenge,’ Rajni says in her presentation. ‘It isn’t always a feel-good experience.’ She finishes by asking, ‘Do we really want to embrace change? What are we prepared to let go of? To let happen?’ Later Kate Sulan talks about her work as director of theatre company Rawcus. Because many in the ensemble have intellectual and development disabilities, they respond unpredictably to tasks and to prompts. Sulan talks about a sense of audacity and possibility, and of anarchy and spontaneity, that characterises the company’s work. She describes theatre as a form that values both the surprising and the inevitable. Yes, I think. Like this room, it is a place where challenge and provocation is possible because there is an infrastructure of trust and pleasure in being with strangers – and in being a stranger myself.

Public forum ‘Community, Art, Dialogue and Conversation’ at the VCA, August 2012

Because I am a scholar here, I am attentive to questions of the wider infrastructure, to the role of academic institutions and specialised discourse. Does formalisation and abstraction help or hinder the delivery of tools for change to the situations and contexts where it is needed? Dean Merlino of the Centre for Cultural Partnerships at VCA wonders openly whether the training of new workers in this field places too much emphasis on best practices from the past. ‘What is required,’ he asks, ‘to create the practice of tomorrow?’ While it’s all well and good to borrow ideas and frameworks from other disciplines in order to think differently about one’s own, he asks, does this not have the result of de-valuing one’s own field? And what about thinking outside these categories altogether? ‘Will someone pay you to work in a field that doesn’t yet exist?’ Drawing on a wide range of practices as researcher, writer, and evaluator, Pia Smith asks similar questions about knowledge that emerges from a specific context rather than being inherited from pre-formulated ways of thinking. As an evaluator, she sees herself as a ‘critical friend’ to the projects with which she works. The production of a detailed written evaluation may seem as if it imposes a complex vocabulary on the process, but ‘the work contains that complexity,’ Pia insists. ‘Research can be a way of describing that complexity – but it’s inherent in the work.’

Public forum ‘Community, Art, Dialogue and Conversation’ at the VCA, August 2012

Because I am a foreigner here, I’m not always familiar with the specific examples, terminology, and categories that are discussed. I arrive in this country, with its troubled history, knowing that language, familiarity, and custom are charged topics. The forum is opened by an Acknowledgement of Country from Deborah Cheetham, Head of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development at VCA. She reminds us that this land holds the world’s longest continuous culture, and that tonight’s act of gathering might be considered in relation to a much longer history of coming together. Looking out at the various perspectives and disciplines that are assembled, she reflects on this heterogeneous assembly as the potential of an institution like the VCA. Later, James Oliver from the Centre for Cultural Partnerships asks, ‘What does the social production of space look like?’ He reflects on a more modest example of the occupation of another’s space: a man on a train carriage who tries to sit in the place where his daughter already is, pushing her body out of the way with his own. What James finds more perplexing than this bullishness is the discussion that erupts within the train carriage, each person loudly offering his or her opinion about the situation and the man’s wrongdoing. What is it, James wonders, that gives these onlookers a sense of entitlement to interfere with other people’s space?

Because I am a writer here, I have been asked to contribute my reflections as an outsider, an onlooker, an eavesdropper. In doing so, I am aware that my observations are partial, filtered by my interests and shaped by the way that I remember things happening. In the final presentation, Angharad Wynne-Jones from ArtsHouse recalls her own involvement in the development of participatory practices as a student at Dartington in the UK, when anything went and many things went differently from their plans. As Creative Producer at ArtsHouse, she is aware of her role in fostering a professional arts infrastructure. But she closes by thinking about the value of personal experience and exchanges between people who know each other well. Too much professionalism, she remarks, can mean not being connected to your community. Not acknowledging friendships can ignore the strength of such relationships. I leave thinking about how to achieve a balance between familiarity and encounter, between connection to those around me and openness to those whom I fail to see. During the course of the event, participants are asked to leave any questions or comments on cards pinned to a board on our way out. To a ‘you’ whom I do not know, I write: I trust you enough to be challenged by you.

'Fur' by Jayden Stevens, 2012

Watch: VCA students graduate to big screen

Film buffs can catch a glimpse of Australia’s best up and coming filmmakers when graduating students from the VCA’s School of Film and Television showcase their works on the big screens at ACMI from today until 16 December.

You can watch the 2012 VCA Film and Television trailer below. Screening details here.

Our Top 10: Melbourne Music Week (16-24 Nov)

Returning in 2012 with a carefully curated program of events, Melbourne Music Week (16-24 November) will bring together over 200 local and international artists. The nine-day MMW 2012 program is epic so to help you on your way, we’ve chosen our Top 10 picks.

1 (CONCERT & DJS) Where?House Open Fri 16 Nov

The official launch of Melbourne Music Week 2012 and the opening night of Where?House the pop-up flagship venue for Melbourne Music Week takes off with internationals Housse de Racket and Pillowtalk making their debut Australian performances joined by local heroes New War, Melbourne’s humble bionic man Harris Robotis and party people Bamboo Musik rocking the house.

Bamboo Musik

2 (PERFORMANCE) Dance Battle: Sat 17 Nov

In a special one-off event for Melbourne Music Week, No Lights No Lycra invites you to join them for the ultimate dance battle. Bright lights v’s no lights – bring either your baggy cotton trackies or your sexy Lycra gear and take a side.

3 (CONCERTS & DJS) Cutters Records And Two Bright Lakes: Fri 23 Nov

In the first event of its kind ever held there, independent heroes Cut Copy’s Cutters Records and the ever creating Two Bright Lakes will be taking control of the NGV’s majestic Great Hall and turning it into an all-in, kaleidoscopic, space disco.

Floating Points

4 (PERFORMANCE) Decentralised Dance Party (Thur, Fri & Sat 16-24 Nov)

This Portable Dance Party roams the night, generating complete liberating joy, street-by-street and block-by-block, onto buses and subways, into public fountains and beyond. Inevitably interfacing with the public, together creating an infectious epidemic of fun. A roaming party adventure that lasts all night long!

5 (CONCERTS&DJS) Siberian Nights: Sat 24 Nov

For the Labels Series, electro-indie titans Siberia Records will be transforming the iconic Melbourne University car park into their own private vision of a post-apocalyptic, subterranean world, a place where sound, vision and architecture meld together into one unforgettable neo-futuristic night.

Mike Huckaby

6 (PERFORMANCE) Classical Revolutions: 19-23 Nov

Classical Revolutions presents a series of five intimate pop-up performances in unusual public locations. Featuring both canonical and lesser known works; be prepared for a beautiful, exciting and memorable encounter. Featuring artists from VCA, ANAM, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and Monash School of Music students and graduates.

7 (PERFORMANCE) Decentralized Dance Party (Thur, Fri & Sat 16-24 Nov)

8 (GIG) Live Music Safari: 22 Nov

The Live Music Safari will offer a snapshot of the diversity of Melbourne’s thriving music
scene. In venues large and small, new and old, grungy and chic, jazz, hip-hop, rock, techno and every genre in between play side-by-side-by-side. Ten of Melbourne’s most famed music venues will host 40 bands and DJs for one day and night. All for free. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Frowning Clouds, Grey Ghost, Millions, Lowtide, Bennetts Lane Big Band, Eagle and the Worm, Barbariön, Able and more will take the floor at 1000 £ Bend, Bennett’s Lane, Revolt Melbourne, Pony, Cherry Bar, John Curtin Hotel, Section 8, The Toff in Town, Mercat and the Town Hall Hotel North Melbourne.

The Night Terrors

9 (CONCERT & DJS) The Grand Organ featuring Goblin: 21 Nov

Melbourne Town Hall’s Grand Organ is the most complex, thunderingly loud natural instrument in Melbourne. And for one night only, it will belong to prog-horror legends Goblin. Goblin will be employing the Grand Organ to perform a set of their most famous and revered soundtrack work. Awe-inspiring, overwhelming and chilling, this is how the music of Goblin was meant to be heard. Thematica, feat. members of Midnight Juggernauts plus Timothy J Hoey (Cut Copy), Gus (Architecture in Helsinki), Evelyn Morris (Pikelet), Shags (Lost Animal, Brous) and more guests to be announced, bring to life grand musical interpretations of iconic film and soundtrack works. Traversing Phillip Glass, John Carpenter and beyond, Thematica will re-imagine these artists’ significant film scores on a large scale.

Pikelet

10 (CONCERT & DJS): Signal Presents //This Thing//: 24 Nov

Melbourne Music Week 2012 wraps up for the all ages set with a live, outdoor audio-visual explosion from Melbourne electronica collective //This Thing//.
Bringing together founding members Wooshie, Naps and Electric Sea Spider, the //This Thing// crew will be taking over the entire Signal precinct for a free, late-night dance party right next to the train line. With a combined sound that shifts from Flying Lotus-style post-hip-hop wonky, to Gaslamp Killer-esque sample frenzies and the narcotised beatmaking of Hype Williams, this is set to be the most blazing party the Yarra has ever seen.

Guest blog: Anna Samson (BDrama 2010)

In our guest post series, we invite alumni, staff and current students to reflect on their time with the VCA. This week we catch up with VCA graduate Anna Samson to talk about her memories of the VCA, and appearing in the Malthouse’s production ‘Pompeii L.A.’

About Anna

Anna Samson graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2010. In her third year of study she received the John Tallis Award for excellence in drama. She was selected to be the graduate ensemble member at Red Stitch Actors Theatre after graduation. Here she performed in Ruben Guthrie, written and directed by Brendan Cowell, and in the World Premiere of Joanna Murray-Smith’s Day One. A Hotel. Evening.

She performed in After All This with the ensemble Elbow Room, in 2011, for the Melbourne Fringe. After All This went on to win Best Performance in the 2011 Fringe Awards and also received Best Ensemble Performance in the Melbourne Green Room Awards.

She performed in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s Australian premiere of Richard Bean’s The Heretic, directed by Matt Scholten.

In November 2012 Anna will make her performance debut at the Malthouse Theatre in Pompeii L.A. written by Declan Greene and directed by Matt Lutton.

Anna has also appeared in the television series Conspiracy 365. She has also worked for ABC Radio as a voice artist, reading a selection of short stories for Radio National.

Anna’s reflection:

I recently found my graduating photo, purchased last November at the graduation ceremony of the class of ‘2010’. I stuck it on the fridge with great fondness. I’m not sure anyone enters a ‘Bachelor of Dramatic Arts’ course for that certificate but I think it marks a great achievement and more so, a unique experience.

I am glad I was at VCA when I was. It was tumultuous time politically, as the federal funding cuts meant an imminent curriculum change. This meant that as a body of students we were camping out on the front lawns in tents between eight hour a day rehearsals and rallying together to create a protest march on a level of spectacle that only an ‘art school’ could lay claim. We had a great deal of fun in the process of being political. It also meant that as young artists we had to fight for something we believed in and give voice and value to what we do.

I went from one artistic family to another and after graduation was taken by Red Stitch Theatre as the graduate ensemble member, a beautiful theatre with the idea of empowering actors at its backbone.

Most recently I saw the close of my first Melbourne Theatre Company ‘gig’, The Heretic, a production that raised some politics of its own. Noni Hazlehurst who rallied with us students at the ‘Save the VCA’ protest was playing my mother and VCA graduate director Matt Scholten led the team.

One night when I was feeling particularly nervous before a show, Noni said to me that “You have to imagine that the audience is 560 cabbages, you also have to remember that it’s them we serve, we serve humanity”. It was nice to be reminded that we need to take what we do as artists incredibly seriously but not to take ourselves too seriously within it.

I am thrilled to be working on the Malthouse production of ‘Pompeii L.A’ for many reasons. Declan Greene is such a unique and lyrical playwright and his writing is so brave. It is such a thrill for an actor to come across writing that demands so much. As a fairly recent graduate of the Drama school, I have already worked with some talented artists. It is such a brilliant feeling to share the stage with wonderful actors and the Pompeii L.A team is one I am very proud to be a part of.

Graduating VCA certainly didn’t mark the end of my training as an actor. I’m learning more and more with every show, every audition and every day.

Alumna Anna Samson will be performing in the new Malthouse production, ‘Pompeii L.A.’, which runs from 16 November to 9 December 2012.

‘Galli Pari’ by Susie Vickery

Rich tapestry: The work of textile artist Susie Vickery

In August costumier Susie Vickery delivered an artist lecture at the VCA, as part of the Master Teacher Program. In the free talk, she spoke in detail about her career, art practice and extraordinary development work.

Textile artist Susie Vickery’s core skills were developed over 20 years as a costumier in theatre and film, working for the prestigious likes of the English National Opera and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has since evolved this skill set over the years to include textile art, development work, and graphic animation.

Vickery’s big career change came in 1998 when she moved with her husband to Nepal. Unknown to Vickery at the time, this move would herald the start of over a decade of rural and refugee projects with developing communities.

In Nepal, Vickery’s costume making skills weren’t required — there simply was no film and TV industry to employ her. Resolute to keep her sewing skills, she enrolled in an embroidery course via distance learning and decided to get involved in some local community projects.

While she was studying, she took it upon herself to also train in traditional Tibetan tailoring so that she could volunteer her time to train other women in the local Tibetan refugee camp. Here, began her first foray in development work.

Susie working with Tibetan women in the Shangri La in Yunnan province, China.

Later, she went to work in Janakpur, designing and helping out on women’s empowerment projects. She was fascinated by the role of women in Nepal and wanted to use her sewing and embroidery skills to explore their status in society.

“I’ve became interested in signifiers of marriage status and ethnicity in Nepal,” Vickery explains. “For instance, the lost of those signifiers with widowhood…what happens when a woman becomes a widow?”

These anthropological investigations and many others inspired Vickery to create embroidered textile pieces, which explores issues of iconography, identity, gender and Asian art. These portrait works, rather painterly in style, weave a rich story of each individual and their life as told to Vickery.

Similarly in Mumbai, Vickery was intrigued by India’s caste system. Struck by the staggering divide between the rich and the poor, she wanted to elevate the status of everyday people by holding an exhibition for them, called Everydeities. The work showcased were a series of panels, like a graphic book, which told the stories of these ‘everyday’ lives.

And for the last five years she has been designing and developing toys, dolls and other handicrafts for a Tibetan income generation project in China. She is currently working on a Welcome Trust funded art project on art and health with women in the slums of Mumbai.

Alongside this remarkable development work, Vickery has also achieved much in the academic realm. Her dissertation on the different working practices of tailors in various countries is a comprehensive and engaging history of tailoring. As part of this academic investigation, she interviewed tailors in India, Nepal, Tibet and London, and illustrated these interviews in a book, using embroidery and fabric collage.

In her research, she met the English costume maker Alan Selzer who spoke about the term ‘cabbage’, used to describe the leftover fabric after cutting. The term was first used by Charles Lamb, who wrote a satirical essay called ‘On the Melancholy of Tailors’ who were obsessed with ‘cabbaging.’

Her academic work has culminated into ‘It’s Not the Job, It’s the Cabbage: The Lives of Tailors, a series of works that ‘tells the stories of tailors working in disparate cultures’ and ‘create further links between media — embroidery, ethnography, graphic novels and stop-motion animations.’

Today Vickery continues to centre her work on embroidery and textiles, challenging the perception of costume concept design and making. She currently divides her time between Mumbai, London and China balancing her artistic and academic pursuits with her extraordinary development work.

During her time at the VCA, Susie Vickery was hosted by the Production department in the School of Performing Arts. The VCA Master Teacher Program is made possible with the support of the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria.

www.susievickery.com