Utp Rising 2024

In 2024, we welcomed a new cohort of Utp Rising artists all hailing from Western Sydney.  

This year, young artists participated in a series of workshops led by artists, writers, performers, and arts workers across professional stages. Along with visits to art spaces, Utp Rising’s first year program introduced artists to multiple mediums, including digital art, photography, installation, printmaking, theatre and writing. 

Utp Rising aimed to expand young artists’ horizons on the possibilities of art, encourage critical thinking and experimentation. With a focus to engage young emerging Western Sydney creatives as facilitators, the program enabled knowledge sharing, to equip artists with skills to navigate a career in our unique context. 

Creative Producer: Jane Wade

2024 Program: 

March – Orientation 

This session was a simple introduction to an unconventional pedagogical program; one that encourage participants to leave with more questions than answers... 

To wrap up the day, participants experienced kajoo yannaga (come on let's walk together)––formerly known as Body Place––and attended the Curator’s Reflections panel facilitated by Utp’s co-artistic directors, Hannah Donnelly and Jessica Olivieri.  

April – Photography workshop with Jane Wade 

In their second workshop, participants were critically introduced to foundational photographic learnings surrounding the medium’s relationship to truth, punctum/studium, and sequencing images before embarking on a staple of the genre; a photowalk. 

May – DIY Shrinemaking with emoeba h♡rtbridge 

Exploring the relationship between artmaking and class, emoeba h♡rtbridge utilised DIY praxis, lofi materials and introspective queer shrinemaking to urge participants to give themselves permission; to be curious, to experiment, to desire, to fail, to try again, to trust, to be passionate, to not feel ready, to not share everything, to disagree, to assert yourself. 

Artist Bio: 

atm, emoeba h♡rtbridge is a domestic artisan, unapologetic fangirl, and auntie in-training. they resummon, recycle, and redistribute intergenerational recipes and wisdoms thru body memory for the situation of community and collective healing. external to body memory, their practice plays with the materials of both tactile and digital textures; as a result, a scrapbooked-tumblr-esque landscape is reflexively drawn from and built upon in the work they share. emoeba has a particular interest and will in the act of making labour visible. thru a mixture of performance, video-making, sculptural, found object, and collaborative processes, emoeba passes on stories of healing, queerness, and survivorship that they believe should be and hope to be remembered. 

June – NAVA Workshop with Emma Pham 

Introducing NAVA’s Code of Practice, this workshop gave participants a clear lay of the land and explored how the Code can be used by emerging artists. Facilitators Emma Pham and Jane Wade also shared key learnings from the ‘State of the Arts in Western Sydney’ report, deeply exploring the realities of pursuing a career in the arts and systemic challenges of being from Western Sydney. 

July – Lofi Printmaking by Emily Greenwood 

Inspired by their time in lockdown, Emily Greenwood utilised their background in zine and printmaking to collate a series of lofi techniques––such as kitchen lithography––to democratise the medium.  

Artist bio: 

Emily Greenwood is a mixed-Tongan artist and writer based on the unceded lands of the Darug people. Their work consists of themes involving intergenerational trauma, loss of culture, sexism, racism and classism. Recently they have begun to investigate the intersections of Pasifika & Eurocentric art histories through their conceptual exploration of cultural appropriation and adaption. Their most significant work to date is their self-written and published intersectional feminist zine GRRL ZINE. 

August – A Day at the Theatre – Class Act by Mish Grigor 

In a group excursion to the theatre, participants were exposed to critical dialogue from Dream Sequence artist, Mish Grigor that is relevant to our context in Western Sydney. 

About the work: 

In Class Act, working class unfortunate Mish Grigor tells the story of a grotesque world of class and social mobility straight from her dirty mouth. Created by Melbourne based, experimental art organisation, APHIDS, this work addresses the unspoken rifts of the class system through a bombastic, unexpected deconstruction of My Fair Lady, albeit with fewer bonnets. 

November – “How to tell your story” with Nithya Nagarajan and Olivia Satchell 

How do we transform the personal into the public? How does the journey to universal relatability sanitise and erode? What is the strength in keeping the specifics, the diaristic? In this workshop, Nithya Nagarajan and Olivia Satchell––co-creators/directors of Nakiya: A Dancing Girl––take participants through playful exercises to locate and project their unique voices to share their stories, even when they are difficult to tell. 

About the work 

This is a play about the profound ways indelible trauma shapes you, and the hope and defiance of taking back control. A breathtaking solo performance melding storytelling, live music and Bharatanatyam dance, made for the unique talents of Helpmann Award-winning Vaishnavi Suryaprakash, Nayika is story as survival. It is dance as resistance. It is a new type of heroine: one we have yet to imagine.

Keep an eye out for next year’s program.

Cover image – Photography by Garry Trinh

PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.