Jo Higgins

May 18, 2023

Events

Panel talk: Australian Museums & Galleries Association National Conference

Jo Higgins

May 18, 2023

Events

On Tuesday I chaired a panel talk at the annual Australian Museums and Galleries Association national conference, which is being held in Newcastle, on Worimi Country, this year.

The panel talk was a reflection on last year’s pilot Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program, which I developed and ran for the National Gallery of Australia.

I was so grateful to be joined by curator and academic Nur Shkembi, one of the mentors on the program, mentee and emerging curator and arts writer Jade Irvine and the Gallery’s Tim Fairfax Digital Learning Manager, Julia Mendel.

Over the course of an hour we talked about what the project entailed – the inherent risks and rewards in piloting a program designed to support and elevate critical young voices, what it set out to achieve, the challenges, and what participating in it has left us all reflecting on.

You can watch the panel talk here.

Published outcomes - National Gallery of Australia: Digital Young Writers Mentorship

Jo Higgins

December 1, 2022

News

I’m looking forward to sharing some reflections and learnings from this project in the coming months. But in the meantime - some publication highlights from the program’s mentees:

**ASSEMBLY: An annotation**
Hen Vaughan responds to the themes of translation and collectivity in Angelica Mesiti’s three-channel video installation, ASSEMBLY.

**Is social media affecting how we engage with art?**
Aisyah Aaqil Sumito interviews artist Dan Bourke about the impact of Web 2.0 on our cognitive reading of art, pointing to children learning in a new exhibition.
This interview was published by ArtsHub, the publishing partner of the Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program.

**Contemporary Resonances of Art in the Age of AIDS**
Aisyah Aaqil Sumito reflects on the contemporary resonances of the trailblazing 1994 exhibition, ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS.’

**A Modern Approach to Exhibiting Costume**
Michelle Guo explores the challenges that curators encounter when exhibiting costume, and the unique way that they have gone about acquiring Justene Williams’ costumes for ‘Victory Over the Sun’.

**Kara Walker’s Monument**
Jade Irvine reflects on African American artist Kara Walker’s use of scale - from intimate to monumental - and her consideration of the histories that are memorialised and those that remain obscured.

**REVIEW: Deborah Prior - On The Third Day**
Hen Vaughan review's Deborah Prior’s powerful new textile exhibition at JamFactory Seppeltsfield, On The Third Day, for the Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program’s publishing partner, ArtsHub.

**REVIEW: HOME | LAND**
Jade Irvine reviews the group exhibition, HOME | LAND, at Hobart’s Contemporary Art Tasmania for ArtsHub, the publishing partner of the Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program.

The Condensery - Somerset Regional Art Gallery: new youth engagement project - 'Things I Want To Say'

Jo Higgins

August 28, 2022

I’m really excited to be working alongside curator Rachel Arndt to help develop and deliver a pilot youth engagement project for The Condensery - Somerset Regional Art Gallery, in Toogoolawah, Queensland.

Over the next year I’ll be supporting Rachel and several artists to run workshops for local young people, inspired by the ideas and artists involved in the May 2023 exhibition, Things I Want to Say, curated by Rachel and Imogen Dixon-Smith.

'Things I want to say' will bring together six emerging artists from across the country whose practices negotiate identity in contemporary Australia. Focusing on artists with a connection to Queensland, the exhibition will encourage conversation around navigating one’s sense of self within the pressures of broader society.

The first of these workshops was yesterday and we had such a fantastic group of local young people, who worked alongside artist Sid McMahon and myself to start teasing out some of these conversations and experiences for themselves.

I’m looking forward to everything that’s to come.

Panel talk: Australian Museums & Galleries Association National Conference

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Published outcomes - National Gallery of Australia: Digital Young Writers Mentorship

OTHER POSTS

The Condensery - Somerset Regional Art Gallery: new youth engagement project - 'Things I Want To Say'

OTHER POSTS