Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund announces Create grant recipients for 2019
October 22, 2019
Four authors and two visual artists have been awarded a total of $80,000 from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund through its Create grants program. The grants provide vital support to mid-career writers and visual artists to create and develop new work.
Copyright Agency CEO Adam Suckling says, “Create grants help to keep Australia’s creative industry alive and enriched with new, diverse works. The funding provides authors and artists with a living allowance that enables them critical time and space to create”.
“Utilising the Create grants, the grant recipients plan to challenge and explore a wide range of themes, from the disastrous consequences of climate change, to the multiplicity and fragmentation of feminine identity, to examining the inherent biases that mirror and reinforce traditional modes of othering and marginalisation.”
A panel of three peers has awarded six Create grants:
- Playwright Daniel Keene is a renowned writer whose plays have been brought to life around the globe. Keene will use the grant to develop a play that explores the aftermath of the ecological and social disaster brought about by climate change. Amount awarded: $15,000.
- Author Sulari Gentill will work on her upcoming novel, a post-modern cross-cultural thriller that sets up stories within stories, entwining the narratives in a climax that can be read on many levels. Amount awarded: $15,000.
- Eloise Grills, an award-winning essayist, will use the grant to create a memoir that dissects the multiplicity and fragmentation of feminine identity and how it is constructed through bodily transformation, makeup, beauty, mother-daughter relationships, sexuality, social codes and technology. They will explore how one can make sense of themselves in a culture obsessed with fitting women and non-binary people into boxes. Amount awarded: $10,000.
- Author Tegan Bennett Daylight will write a new work of literary non-fiction. Amount awarded: $20,000.
- Environmental artist Debbie Symons was awarded a grant for the creation and development of her project, ‘Sing’ which will comprise 50 hand-woven pendant nests containing sensor-activated mini speakers playing pre-recorded bird songs, suspended from the gallery ceiling. Amount awarded: $10,000.
- Artist Abdul Abdullah’s grant will allow him to create ‘Hierarchies’, where he will use reprogrammed surveillance technologies to co-opt a gallery into a screening room where audiences will observe their real-time digital profiling on large display monitors in the space. Amount awarded: $10,000
Applications for the 2019 Create grants were assessed by a panel of three peers (pictured from left): author, Amal Awad, artist Baden Pailthorpe and editor of the Sydney Review of Books, Catriona Menzies-Pike. This year’s grant round attracted 178 applications from writers and artists, which is the highest number of applications submitted for Create grants. The panellists believe this year’s successful grant recipients “demonstrated extraordinary artistic endeavour and push the boundaries with their practice”.
Create grants of $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 are available to mid-career writers and visual artists. The next funding round will be open for applications in early 2020.
Media enquiries:
Jane Morey Director, morey media t: 02 9436 2111 m: 0416 097 678 e: jane@moreymedia.com.au
About the Copyright Agency
The not-for-profit Copyright Agency connects users and creators of content, providing licences for the use of copyright material such as text, images, art and survey plans. We manage the educational and government licences for the use of text and images, as well as the resale royalty scheme for artists (by Government appointment). Our members include writers, artists, surveyors and publishers. Membership is free. www.copyright.com.au