Biographies of Shadowland creators

Mark 12 June 2007, 03:15AM

Many people were involved in the production of Shadowland, including Viv Mehes and Robin Laurie.

Photographer: Viv Mehes

Viv Mehes has worked as a documentary photographer since the late 1970s. Originally trained as a filmmaker, she uses the camera as a traveller, to learn about people and the forces that shape their lives.

Viv works collaboratively with communities and writers on long-term projects to produce exhibitions and publications, creating cultural narratives to understand place and belonging, the themes of migration, displacement, dignity and resilience.

Advocacy through storytelling remains at the heart of her practice, producing work that contributes to Australian peoplesҒ collective history.

Viv has worked extensively in documentation and promotions in Community Arts and Theatre producing photographic resources and archives. She has contributed photos and photo essays for numerous books and periodicals, and had three one year photographic residencies each producing an exhibition - From Fields to Factories, The Right to Work and In the Picture, along with the book, An Eye, an Ear and a Heart.

Viv has produced both the documentary and the promotional photography for the Women's Circus for 13 years, setting up the Circus Photo Archive.

She has also produced solo exhibitions and shown in group exhibitions, touring Australia-wide and exhibiting in Hungary and China. The most recent documentary exhibitions have been Big River, a peoples history of those living around the Lower Yarra River, exhibited at Scienceworks as part of the Melbourne Festival in 1995. Another major project, The Women's Circus - A Ten Year Retrospective, 1991-2000 was exhibited at the Performing Arts Museum in 2000.

The exhibition/installation Shadowland was first exhibited in 2004 at the Gabriel Gallery in the Footscray Arts Centre, followed by a Victorian Regional Gallery Tour 2005-2007 and the Daylesford Foto Biennale 2007.

Viv is currently working with refugees on the Bridging Visa E Category for an exhibition/installation in 2008. This exhibition builds on the concept of Shadowland, creating a larger body of work about refugees on Temporary Protection Visas in Australia from 2001 - 2008.

Shadowland Artwork Commendations:

• Autumn Salon 2005, CCP - Best Black and White Photo
• Williamstown Art Show 2006
• The Alice Prize 2006 - Highly Commended
• The Alice Prize 2006 - Art Work Acquisition
• Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2007 - Commendation

Major collections include:

• National Gallery of Victoria
• New South Wales Art Gallery
• Australian National Library
• New South Wales State Library
• Victorian State Library
• Victorian Trades Hall Council
• City of Maribyrnong
• CSR Collection

Writer: Robin Laurie

Robin Laurie was an original member of the Pram Factory and a co-founder of Circus Oz. This laid the foundation for her interest in popular performance forms using comedy, music, movement and vernacular languages.

Robin has worked with many contemporary performance companies including Sidetrack Theatre, Melbourne Workers Theatre, Rock n Roll Circus and Flying Fruit Fly Circus.

She has also researched, devised and directed large-scale bilingual performances with many Indigenous and community groups. She facilitated the recording of a CD in East Timor and worked with the Arab community in Sydney on a performance called Cafe Hakawati after the first Gulf War.

Most recently she devised and directed Bugs Backyard Circus for Museum Victoria and NICA which was seen by 30,000 people and Queen of the Snakepit about growing up on Flinders Island for Ten Days on the Island Festival.

Robin was Performance Director for Eating the City where 20 different community groups made a map of the city of Melbourne out of food and then the audience ate it.

Robin has also been the Director/Facilitator of the East Timorese Comedy Skills Development Project, Director/Script Editor of Kan Yama Kan, Once Upon a Time, a large scale performance with asylum seekers, musicians and choir, Co-Writer/Dramaturg of Ballo Liscio, dinner and bi-lingual dancing stories with 23 older Italian Australians, Show Director for Koori kids Circus Tarrangos.

Robin is currently working on a Cultural Development Network Project in Wangaratta which is part of the Generations Project.

Find out more

• Learn more about Shadowland

About the Author

This blog entry was created by Mark and does not necessarily represent the position or opinion of Amnesty International Australia.

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