Our 2024–25 Kickstart artists have entered the dreaming and developing phase of their projects with a little advice from Next Wave alumni James Nguyen.

The Kickstart program brings early-career artists from across the country together for 18 months of creative development

Our 2024–25 cohort gathered earlier this month for the first of a series of online workshops, facilitated by Lana Nguyen.

This session was fittingly themed ‘Beginning’ and laid the foundation for how the artists will work as a cohort to support the development of their practices and potential projects.

“It’s a moment of understanding what is on offer and how each person will work towards shaping the experience ahead,” Lana said.

Rather than focus on ‘what’ they might make, this session asked each artist ‘why’ they make art – revealing common threads in art as a communicator and a way to understand the world, and themselves.

“We live in this wild world, where everything is chaotic, and there’s moments of joy and moments of grief and everyone is just figuring out to navigate their way around it,” said Boorloo/Perth-based Kickstart artist Jen Datu.

“And I think in a way art is just like that.”

Georgia Lucy, our Kickstart artist from Lutruwita/Tasmania, said she makes art ‘…just to try and make sense of stuff’.

“And it’s usually because it’s about what’s getting up my goat, or something that I’m pretty pissed off about,” Georgia clarified.

Next Wave alumni James Nguyen joined the conversation to share his insights on the art world and how to get the most out of this period of creative development.

James makes videos, installations and actions as an excuse to talk endlessly about art. In his own words, James has “shown both successful and lacklustre exhibitions locally and internationally”.

His advice: “When you’re making art, think of anything beyond art.”

“You spend months and months or even years working on this amazing, incredible thing and people are like ‘hurrayyy’ for a few weeks then it’s over.” James said.

“No matter how much Next Wave cocoons and shapes and spends all this time developing you, just know that this time is going to be over.

James Nguyen shared his work ‘Human Plinth’, 2015 (a durational performance)

“That awareness gives you two things: it means you have to use the time that you have to learn as much as you can and don’t worry too much about what ends up coming out, because that doesn’t really matter – the friends that you have and the things that you learn you keep with you for life, the exhibition that you put up in a space lasts months at most.

“Think about your collaborators, think about how your work is relating to sustainability issues, think about how you might work with an accessibility consultant who you work with beyond this project – because we want you to keep making art and not be completely run down by the arts.

“That’s not what we want, we want more artists in the world.”

The Kickstart cohort will reconvene in September for their next workshop, themed ‘Dreaming’, and will present their work in progress to the group in November.

---

Our 2024/25 Kickstart cohort and their Artistic Directorate mentors

• An.Other Collective, mentored by Marian Abboud (NSW)
• Ellamay Fitzgerald, mentored by Libby Harward (QLD)
• Georgia Lucy, mentored by Lucy Bleach (TAS)
• Jayda Wilson, mentored by Yusuf Ali Hayat (SA)
• Jen Datu, mentored by Bruno Booth (WA)
• Rachel Morley, mentored by Yuhui Ng Rodriguez (VIC)
• Rarriwuy Hick, mentored by Rosealee Pearson (NT)
• Sophie Dumaresq, mentored by Sally Golding (ACT)