AA12 2nd Asian Australian Studies Conference
Rydges Carlton,
701 Swanston St, Melbourne
Registration Now Open
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TONY AYRES is an award winning writer and director in both drama and documentary. In 2002 his first feature film, Walking on Water was received with great critical acclaim, winning the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, 5 AFI Awards, 2 Film Critic's Circle Awards and an IF Award. Previous to this, Tony's documentary Sadness was one of the most successful Australian documentaries of recent years, winning an AFI Award, the Film Critic's Circle Award for Best Documentary, the ATOM Award for Best Documentary, the AWGIE for Best Documentary script, the Erwin Rado Award for Best Australian Short Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Most Popular Film at the Brisbane International Film Festival. Tony has also written extensively for television. His television play, Ghost Story, won the Jury Prize at the 1997 International Cinema and Television Convention in Geneva and his script, The Long Ride won the 1994 AFI Award for Best Telefeature or Miniseries. In theatre, Tony has edited two one-act plays, Thieving Boy and Like Stars In My Hands written by Timothy Conigrave. MICHELLE BAKAR is completing her doctoral dissertation in postcolonial writing at the University of Technology Sydney. Her work centres on Asian Australian identities in a postcolonial/globalised context. She has been published in the journals: EnterText (Brunel University UK); Graduate Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (Auckland University NZ), Postcolonial Text (University of British Columbia), Antipodes: North American Journal of Australian Literature 2006; the UTS Anthology (University of Technology Sydney) published by ABC Books in 2006, launched at the Sydney Writer's Festival 2006 and been accepted by University of Pennsylvania State Journal of Critical and Creative Writing 2006 and Southerly Literary Journal. She has been the recipient of the Gallery 4A Asian Australian Literature Fellowship 2003 and of an Australia-China Council Hong Kong University Residency (2006). She has written three unpublished novels, two of which received Highly Commended in The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for 2003 and 2004. MERLINDA BOBIS is a Filipino-Australian author who writes poetry, prose and performance pieces. She won the 2000 Steele Rudd Award (for the Best Collection of Australian Short Stories), the 2000 Philippine National Book Award and the 2001 Judges’ Choice Award (Bumbershoot Bookfair, Seattle Arts Festival) for White Turtle (The Kissing [US edition]), the 1998 Prix Italia, the 1998 AWGIE (Australian Writers' Guild Award) and the 1995 Ian Reed Radio Drama Prize for the play Rita's Lullaby, and several Philippine national literary awards for her poetry in English and Filipino. Her first novel, Banana Heart Summer, was published in 2005 and, in August 2006, Merlinda was awarded the national Philippine Balagtas Award (a 'lifetime award') for her fiction and poetry in English, Philipino and Bicol. TOM CHO is writing a collection of short fiction that explores the themes of identity and popular culture. He is developing this collection as part of his PhD in Professional Writing at Deakin University. His short stories have been widely published in Australia and overseas, with more recent publications in The Age, Best Australian Stories 2006 and HEAT magazine. He has also received various grants and awards for his fiction, and is regularly invited to perform his work at festivals and other events in Australia. Tom has worked in artistic roles for a range of organisations, including Melbourne Fringe and the National Young Writers’ Festival. He currently works at Footscray Community Arts Centre. Tom is also a freelance producer of arts events and projects. His projects include the award-winning show "Hello Kitty," which has been staged in Melbourne, Sydney, Lismore and Canberra. His website is at www.tomcho.com CHRISTINE CLARK is a writer, curator and art administrator with many years experience in Asia-Pacific contemporary visual art projects. She was extensively involved in the first three Asia-Pacific Triennial exhibitions in 1993, 1996 and 1999, and has curated a number of exhibitions focusing on the Asian-Pacific region and conducted art management workshops throughout Indonesia. A recent research interest has been the examination of work by Asian Australian visual artists. She was curator of the Museum of Brisbane's Echoes of Home: Memory and mobility in recent Austral-Asian art, 2005, an exhibition which explored the work of 14 Australian-based artists from various Asian backgrounds, and the editor of the associated 98pp catalogue. The exhibition is currently touring to seven major galleries in city and regional centres throughout Australia (2006-2008). Christine currently holds the position of Exhibition Officer at the National Portrait Gallery which involves the management of exhibitions. KHOA DO was born in Vietnam and came to Australia as a refugee when he was two years old. Khoa began working in the performing arts in the late 1990s, developing and producing a number of shows and films. Khoa's first feature film, The Finished People, was a gritty and realistic story about at-risk adolescents on the edge of survival. The film won international acclaim and was nominated for an Australian Film Industry Award for Best Direction, and Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards for Best Film and Best Director. It won the Independent Film Independent Spirit Award in 2003. In 2005, Khoa was named Young Australian of the Year for his services in drama and working with youths in Sydney's south-west. His latest feature film, Footy Legends (starring Claudia Karvan, Anh Do and Peter Phelps) was released in Australia in August 2006. SIMONE LAZAROO emigrated to Perth from Singapore as a child. She has been a teacher of Art and English at various schools and also worked for the WA Ministry of Education. Her first novel, The World Waiting To Be Made, is full of irony and bitter observations about the very white Australia in which the un-named narrator grew up. The historical backdrop for World is 1960s-1980s Australia during, and just after, the White Australia policy. The book won the TAG Hungerford Award for Fiction in 1993. Simone's second novel, The Australian Fiance, was published by Picador (Pan Macmillan) in 2000. Also in 2000, she won the prestigious David T.K. Wong Fellowship (UK). Simone has a Doctorate in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University, and teaches creative writing at Murdoch University. Her third novel, The Travel Writer, was published in 2006. GREG LEONG was Director of Tasmanian Regional Arts 1982-88 before re-training in visual art. He was the head of the Textile Studio at the Art School in Launceston, 1996 – 2001. Working in textiles installation and digital imaging, his work and writings have examined the position of the Chinese in the construction of an Australian national identity. Exhibitions outside Australia include a three-person show with William Yang and Lindy Lee, 2004 Hong Kong Arts Festival and “Boys Who Sew”, a British Crafts Council touring exhibition throughout Britain. In 2003, he created the ‘karaoke cabaret’ – “JIA” – performed all over Australia (including the MCA in Sydney) and in London (Goldsmiths College’s International Research Forum program). His more recent commissions/residencies explore local communities, including in 2005 for the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, creating an artwork commemorating the arrival of the Chinese in Australia. OWEN LEONG is a visual artist embellishing aesthetics of race, liminal states, abjection and transformation in contemporary art. His work has been exhibited widely in Australia and overseas including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore and Hong Kong. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, where he was the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. His research explored representations of Asian masculinities in contemporary art. In 2005 Leong was awarded an Australia Council New Work Grant. He recently completed a three-month artist residency at Chinese Arts Centre Manchester, United Kingdom. In 2008 he will be artist-in-residence at the Moya Dyring Studio, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Leong has worked as Assistant Curator for the Asia-Australia Arts Centre, and currently works for the National Association for the Visual Arts. DON NAKANISHI is the Director and a Professor of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. His teaching and research interests include the access, representation, and influence of Asian Pacific Americans and other racial, ethnic, and immigrant groups in American political, educational, and social institutions and sectors; the international political dimensions of minority group experiences; and public policy research focusing on poverty, race relations, and social justice. Don has published over 80 books, articles, and reports on the political participation of Asian Pacific Americans and other ethnic and racial groups in American politics. A former national president of the Association of Asian American Studies, he also co-founded and served as publisher of Amerasia Journal, the top scholarly journal in the field of Asian American Studies. SUVENDI PERERA is a Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University of Technology. She completed her BA at the University of Sri Lanka and her PhD at Colombia University, New York. She has published widely on topics relating to race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and refugees and is currently working on a project, funded by the Australian Research Council, on borders and junctions in the Asia-Pacific region. Her most recent book is the edited volume, Our Patch: Enactments of Australian Sovereignty Post-2001 (Network Books, 2007). SAVANHDARY VONGPOOTHORN has been painting for thirteen years. She lives and works in Canberra. Lao cultural references have always been there in her work, interwoven with Australian and other cultural influences. This includes her use of motifs and symbols from Lao textiles; and the use of perforation as a reference to the physical practice of weaving. It also refers to the use of words, texts and concepts from Theravada Buddhism. This includes her recent use of Khaathaa, incantation or spells, which are references to a Lao spiritual tradition. She was in the Biennale of Sydney 2006 and included an installation wall piece Floating Words 2005-06 made up Braille pages written in Vietnamese. She annotated the Braille pages with quotes by two revolutionary leaders Ho Chi Minh and Kaysone Phomvihane. She is continuing to explore the idea of language. PENNY WONG is the first Asian-born woman to enter federal parliament. She is the Labor Senator for South Australia and Shadow Minister for Employment and Workforce Participation and Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility. In her first two years in the Senate, Penny was active both in the parliament and in the community on critical issues for South Australia including the River Murray and the proposed nuclear waste repository. In addition, her Senate committee work focused on corporate governance, superannuation, workplace relations and the environment. She was the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. Before entering parliament, Penny was a barrister and solicitor in Adelaide and also worked as an adviser to the Carr Government in New South Wales. WILLIAM YANG is a third-generation Chinese Australian artist, who was born and raised in Queensland. He is best known for his documentary photographs and his narrative monologues with slide projections. Many of William's works examine his Chinese family history, gay identity or themes such as AIDS. He was awarded International Photographer of the Year at the prestigious Higashigawa-cho International Photographic Festival (Japan) in 1993 and has presented photographic exhibitions across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. His famed monologues with slides have made William one of the most internationally toured Australian performance artists.
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