Jo Higgins

June 8, 2020

Events

SAMAG Talk - Bringing it home: Innovation & Ideas from the Churchill Fellowship

Jo Higgins

June 8, 2020

Events

I’ve been invited by the Sydney Arts Management Advisory Group (SAMAG) to join a panel discussion next week, with my fellow Fellows, Morwenna Collett and Patricia Adjei to reflect on our experiences and learnings undertaking Churchill Fellowships. I can’t believe it’s been 12 months now since I got back and so much has happened in that time - it’s going to be interesting to see how all of our findings and recommendations necessarily recalibrate in response. I’m just so grateful I had the opportunity to go last year…

Tickets are available via the link but the whole discussion should be posted to the website soon after.

Monday 13 June 2020

6.30 - 7.30pm

Zoom

MCA GENEXT Goes Online

Jo Higgins

June 1, 2020

Events

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I can’t imagine that anybody’s 2020 is unfolding in quite the way they had imagined. At some point I hope to have the headspace for reflection and clarity and calls to action (assuming we ever get to a post-COVID world…) but the temporary shuttering of the MCA has meant the cancellation of all my scheduled programs this year, including GENEXT.

Over the last few months I’ve been supporting the MCA Youth Committee and Young Guides, experimenting with new forms of digital communication, art-making, activism, wellbeing and youth-led public programming, to re-imagine GENEXT for an online audience, taking inspiration from the 22nd Biennale of Sydney and this strange, exhausting, uncertain time we’re now living in.

On Sunday 31 May 2020 we launched GENEXT Goes Online, which included live-streamed performances and panel talks, all MC’d by the Youth Committee, as well as a (frankly phenomenal) collection of digital content including zines, quizzes, artist interviews and guided making activities, VR exhibition spotlight talks, an Auslan visual storytelling workshop, interactive creative prompts and a live dance class.

At some stage I will find the time to come back to this post and reflect more thoughtfully on what I’ve learned from this experience but for now, I’d just encourage you to take a digital wander through the program here.

Vale Frank Watters - Artlink magazine

Jo Higgins

May 23, 2020

Writings

Gallerist Frank Watters OAM died this week aged 86. There are others who can better attest to his formidable contribution to the Sydney contemporary art landscape but way back in 2006 I had the opportunity to interview Frank for Artlink magazine’s “Elders: The Old Magic” issue, when Watters was just a sprightly 72. This was one of my first ever artist interviews as a fledgling writer and I remember feeling so nervous. Frank though was so generous and easy and my strongest memories still are of sitting upstairs in his apartment above the gallery in Darlinghurst, amid the books and artworks, just delighted and enraptured with his stories and reflections, not quite believing that someone was paying me for this privilege.

You can read my interview with him here.

SAMAG Talk - Bringing it home: Innovation & Ideas from the Churchill Fellowship

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MCA GENEXT Goes Online

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Vale Frank Watters - Artlink magazine

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