Speakers

MA and the MA17 conference committee are pleased to introduce our Keynotes:

Glenn Iseger-Pilkington

Glenn Iseger-Pilkington is a Wadjarri, Nhanda and Nyoongar man and a member of a Dutch and Scottish migrant family. He spent the first half of his life living in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and has since 1994 lived on Nyoongar Country in the South West corner of Western Australia and currently resides in Perth. Glenn undertook his formal art training at the School of Contemporary Art, Edith Cowan University, majoring in Printmaking. He has worked within the visual arts sector over the last decade as an arts development officer, curator, advisor and advocate for Indigenous Australian artists. Glenn is passionate about writing on subject matters which include contemporary Indigenous identity, syncretisation, colonisation, Indigenous history and lived experience.

In 2016 Glenn was appointed William and Margaret Geary Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and Material Culture, South Australian Museum. Glenn's focus in this newly established position is bringing the South Australian Museum’s vast Australian Aboriginal collections to life, showing how they reinforce the stories of the present. His current project is a major collaboration with Ngaanyatjarra communities in Western Australia which will result in a significant exhibition project scheduled to open at the South Australian Museum in October 2017.

Glenn was formerly the Curator Content Development, New Museum Project, Western Australian Museum after a short period of time as Project Officer Indigenous Arts at the Department of Culture and the Arts. Prior to this he held the position of Associate Curator of Indigenous Objects and Photography at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (2007-2014). In his role at the Western Australian Museum, Glenn was responsible for initiating new models of story-sharing, and curatorial frameworks that will be foundational to the presentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the museum, set to open in 2020.

Photo credit: Mark Gambino

Stella Duffy

Stella Duffy is an award-winning writer with over sixty short stories, eleven plays, and fifteen novels published in sixteen languages. She adapted her novel State of Happiness for feature film with Zentropa/Fiesta, and HBO have optioned her Theodora novels for TV. She has twice won the CWA Short Story Dagger and twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year. She has worked in theatre for thirty-five years as an actor, director, playwright, and facilitator.

Her latest novel The Hidden Room is just published by Virago.

Stella was born in the UK, grew up in Tokoroa, and went to university in Wellington. She has lived in London for the past thirty years where is an active campaigner for LGBTQ rights, working with Stonewall and Diversity Role Models, and is on the steering committee of the UK Women’s Equality Party. Having had breast cancer twice, she also works with several cancer charities.

She is the co-founder and co-director of Fun Palaces. Fun Palaces is an ongoing campaign supporting culture at the heart of every community, with an annual weekend of action at the beginning of October every year. Fun Palaces believes in everyone an artist, everyone a scientist, and the genius in everyone and every community. They are locally-led and community-driven, with an emphasis on lifelong learning and active participation. In 2016 there were 292 Fun Palaces across the world, in the UK, Ireland, Norway, France, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, led by 4800 local people of all abilities and ages, from every demographic, with 124,000 people taking part.

Find out more about Fun Palaces http://funpalaces.co.uk/
Follow Stella on Twitter https://twitter.com/stellduffy