ABOUT – Artology

WHAT WE DO!
Artology inspires and awakens creativity through the practice of making art that is authentic, courageous and life-changing.

OUR VALUES

Curiosity : Exploring opportunities
Creativity : Encouraging discovery
Courageous : Daring to challenge the status quo
Connect : Uniting people and ideas through the arts

WE BELIEVE

Creativity is our most valuable human resource.
Creative thinking is under-valued.
Fostering creativity enriches live’s and society.

HOW WE DO IT

Artology connects people and ideas through the arts. We believe that creativity is our most valuable human resource, and creative thinking, more than ever in today’s political and social climate, is under-valued and by fostering creativity, more people are inspired and involved in enriching our society. Artology promotes creativity by developing and implementing creative projects for writers, composers, producers and directors. Projects (past & present) are Fanfare, the Very Short Film Festival, RAW, WotOpera, Artology Remix, Passion Films, The Drovers Wife, Requiem and Rouser.

THE DROVER’S WIFE THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSTON film was supported by Artology managing the administration of the fundraising campaign on behalf of Oombarra Productions. See the offical trailer.

FANFARE develops the creative potential of young people through experiential learning in the arts. The program is the winner of the 2016 APRA and Australian Music Centre ‘Art Music Award’ for Excellence in Music Education, ‘This outstanding program offered its young participants a unique opportunity that includes composition, mentoring and terrific exposure.’

THE PASSION FILMS is a series of intimate short films, capturing some of Australia’s most exciting actors in exclusive, commissioned performances, exploring and re-imagining key texts and modes of performance in contemporary settings.

RAW Indigenous Filmmakers, following a national call for applications, Artology facilitated the mentoring and writers workshops with leading industry professionals. The successful applicant Enoch Mailangi went on to create a 5-part series of ‘All My Friends Are Racist’, starring Leah Purcell and was broadcast on ABC IVIEW and ABC TV in 2021.

REMIX produced two extraordinary works of performance art created by teenage artists, working alongside a team of professional artists, led by Cathy Milliken (former head of education at the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra). Inspired by masterpieces such as Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon and Shelley’s Frankenstein the young artists translate the work’s radical ideas into visual art, music, literature, film and choreography.

REQUIEM created by artist Janet Lawrence was presented as part of the 2021 Sydney Festival. Artology commissioned William Barton, Veronique Serret and Delmae Barton to create a work to reflect the 2020 NSW bush fires. See the film, here.

ROUSER uses Australian creatives to develop campaigns that take a stance on an urgent, topical, time-sensitive causes that scale awareness widely in popular culture in order to change behaviour in a progressive direction.

VERY SHORT FILM FESTIVAL is a national competition open to everyone to get creative with their storytelling in film. With Junior and Open categories, mentorships, prizes and a premiere event held in Tasmania. Launched in 2020 with the deadline for the first festival in May 2021. Partners are Guardian Australia and Spring Bay Mill, Tas.

WOTOPERA offered over nine years, as an in-school and music camp program for students to collaborate and produce their own story, compose the music and create the stage design in a series of workshops within 21 hours. Which resulted in 20 minute music theatre works presented at a professional venues.

ARTOLOGY BOARD AND MANAGEMENT

ANNA CERNEAZ, DIRECTOR

Anna Cerneaz started her professional life as an oceanographer. However, her lifelong interest in the arts, notably as an oboe player and concertgoer, soon channelled her career in an entirely different direction. Over a number of years, she built up her own artistic management business; among the many positions she held during that time was as general manager of Pinchgut Opera.

In the past decade, Anna has honed her company director skills in a very practical way. She is currently a director of several for-profit and not-for-profit organisations, including the Graeme Wood Foundation, which supports progressive thinking and action, Artology, Spring Bay Mill, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Syrinscape.

Anna’s greatest wish is that by developing the creative development of the young (and not-so-young), the current not-so-rosy prognosis of Homo sapiens can be rescued via deep immersion in the glorious worlds of nature and music.

GRAEME WOOD AM, DIRECTOR

Graeme Wood AM is an entrepreneur, philanthropist and environmentalist who has more wins than failures so far. He believes in investing for positive social impact and changing the world to become a better place through business. He likes businesses that both make money and solve real world problems.

Graeme & his partner Anna Cerneaz are the current custodians of Spring Bay Mill. Once home to the world’s largest wood chip mill and built on the unceded lands of the paredarerme people, this 43-hectare site is now managed by a bunch of provocateurs intent on charting a sustainable path.

His philanthropic interests include environmental sustainability, the Arts and public interest journalism through Guardian Australia.

COLIN CORNISH, DIRECTOR

Colin Cornish joins the Artology Board in 2021. Colin is the Chief Executive Officer at the Australian Youth Orchestra (AYO). The AYO is a key partner for Artology through the Fanfare Competition and the Momentum Ensemble and we see this partnership as integral to Artology’s core business.

TERESE CASU, GENERAL MANAGER

Terese is an accomplished leader in the arts and cultural sector with a passion for social justice and human rights, and has an extensive career as an artist and manager spanning over 30 years.

She has worked with leading Australian arts and cultural organisations such as: Executive Director of Performance Space, CEO of Sydney Mardi Gras, Director Arts Organisations at the Australia Council, Executive Producer at the National Art School, and has held senior leadership positions at La Boite Theatre Company, Bundanon Trust, Australian Theatre for Young People, Belvoir Street Theatre, Circa Ensemble, Sydney Film Festival and the Australian Film Commission.

With a diverse background as a performing artist, dancer and musician, Terese joined Circus Oz as a company member, representing Australia at the LA Olympic Arts Festival in 1984. Terese has worked as an artist with leading performance companies such as Sydney’s Legs on the Wall, Circus OZ, DAH Teatre, Tandarcia Puppet Theatre, Stalker, Sidetrack Theatre and created numerous independent multidisciplinary performance works to support positive social change.

LILIANA MUNOZ, RAW MANAGER

Liliana Munoz loves to keep busy sharing good stories with the world. In 2019, she produced the comedy series ‘The Unboxing’, for Facebook Watch. In the same year, she was Associate Producer on Seven’s primetime comedy series, ‘Fam Time’. Liliana turned her attention to Scripted content after serving as a Development and Series Producer of Reality Entertainment for over 15 years with industry heavyweights Fremantle and MTV. Today her focus is on championing diverse voices of all cultures, sexuality and age. In 2016, Liliana was selected as a Screen Producers Australia OnesToWatch and in 2019 was awarded Screen Australia’s Enterprise People grant. In 2017, together with Artology, RAW was produced, a First Nations New Writers Initiative executive produced by Leah Purcell and Wayne Blair, the work ‘All My Friends Are Racist’ by Enoch Mailangi and Kodie Bedford’s will be produced for ABC in 2020.

NICHOLAS VINES, MENTOR COMPOSER, FANFARE

The works of Nicholas Vines have been performed by the likes of Alarm Will Sound, BMOP, Ensemble Offspring, the Schola Cantorum Gedanesis Chamber Choir, the BT Scottish Ensemble and the Australian Piano Quartet. He has been commissioned by organisations around the world, such as Acacia Quartet, Callithumpian Consort, Firebird Ensemble, mmm…, Guerilla Opera, ChamberMade Opera, Ensemble Apex, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and various Sydney schools. Recognition for Vines’s work includes APRA AMCOS Art Music, Helpmann and Green Room Awards, runner-up in the 2010 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, an honourable mention in the 2006 Salvatore Martirano Competition (USA), and 2nd Prize in the ‘Musica Sacra 2005’ Competition (Poland). Published by Wirripang, Faber Music, the Australian Composers Online Project and Alexander Street Press, the bulk of his work is available through the Australian Music Centre. Navona Records has released albums of Vines’s compositions featuring the Callithumpian Consort (Torrid Nature Scenes), Guerilla Opera (Loose, Wet, Perforated) and Ryan MacEvoy McCullough (Hipster Zombies from Mars). Graduating in 2007 with a PhD from Harvard University, Vines taught theory and composition there and at Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before taking up a position at Sydney Grammar School. He is also a composition tutor at the UNSW, and mentor for the Artology Fanfare Competition.

LYLE CHAN, MENTOR COMPOSER, FANFARE

Lyle Chan’s compositions are known for their combination of intellectual rigor and powerful emotional impact, even for audiences unaccustomed to classical music. He is best known for three works: his most notorious composition is Wind Farm Music, dedicated to Australia’s unpopular then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott in protest against the government’s anti-renewable energy stance. The work that first brought him widespread recognition was Rendezvous With Destiny for narrator and musicians – based on US political history – and performed by Bob Carr, a former Foreign Minister of Australia. His most personal and confronting work is his 90-minute String Quartet, a memoir of his years as an AIDS activist in the 1990s. It was hailed by American composer John Corigliano as “a serious and deeply felt work of art born out of a seemingly endless plague.” He was awarded the 2017 Art Music Awards’ Orchestral Work of the Year prize for his acclaimed 40-min orchestral song cycle called My Dear Benjamin, based on the wartime letters between a young Benjamin Britten and his first love, Wulff Scherchen. For the Debussy centenary of 2018, he was commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music to compose the remaining 3 Sonatas of Debussy’s unfinished final project.

Lyle Chan holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He spent over a decade at ABC Classics, where as Artists, Repertoire and Marketing Manager he spearheaded the production of over 200 recordings, including every winner of the Best Classical category of the ARIA Awards between 1998 and 2008. He is co-founder and co-artistic director of Extended Play, a unique festival that is a ‘complete venue take-over’ of Sydney’s famed City Recital Hall.

CHRISTOPHER SAINSBURY, MENTOR COMPOSER, TO COUNTRY

Christopher Sainsbury is an accomplished composer and a highly experienced music educator, and is Associate Professor in Composition at the Australian National University (ANU). He has made a sustained contribution to Australian music as a working composer in regional, community and professional music arenas for over 35 years. As an Indigenous person he maintains a commitment to lifting the profile of Indigenous Australian composers, and is founder and director of the Ngarra-burria First Peoples Composers program (see Ngarra-burria on this site). In 2020 he won the inaugural APRA National Luminary Award – a top tier Australian music award, in acknowledgement of the impact the Ngarra-burria program has had on the classical and new music industry. He writes in various styles and genres, from simple solo instrumental works to large orchestral works, and from surf music to jazz.

JESSICA WELLS, MENTOR COMPOSER, FANFARE

Jessica Wells is a versatile composer, orchestrator, and arranger for concerts, films, theatre, and album recordings.

Since obtaining her Master of Music in Composition (Sydney Conservatorium of Music) and Master of Arts in Screen Composition (AFTRS), her career has gone from strength to strength. Her business of 15 years, Jigsaw Music, provides music preparation services for clients all over the country and overseas.

Jessica has orchestrated over 70 films, and wrote the theme music for ABC TV’s Q&A program – which makes her kids think she’s famous.

She was a 2017 Finalist in the APRA & AMC Art Music Awards, in the category of Instrumental Work of the Year for her piece Moon Fire for the National Carillon and electronic track.

In 2017 -2019 she was the Musical Director of the APRA Screen Music Awards. She is the current Vice President of the Music Arrangers’ Guild of Australia.

NICOLE MURPHY, MENTOR COMPOSER

Nicole Murphy’s music has been described as “exquisite, sensitive and delicate”. She is the recipient of various awards, including the ICEBERG International Call for Scores (2017), Nief Norf International Call for Scores (2016) and the MAFB International Commissioning Prize (2015).

Nicole has been commissioned by eminent arts organisations including the Australian Ballet, the Royal Academy of Dance (London), Experiments in Opera/Symphony Space (New York), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Wild Rumpus (San Francisco), Chamber Sounds (Singapore), and the Definiens Project (Los Angeles). Her music has been performed by ensembles such as the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, NOWensemble (New York), Ars Nova (Dallas), and Halcyon (Sydney). She has received performances at numerous festivals including the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), the Dallas Festival of Modern Music, the Nief Norf Festival (Tennessee) and the Bowdoin International Music Festival (Maine).

Nicole is represented as an Associate Artist by the Australian Music Centre and holds the position of Composer-in-Residence at the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries. She is the inaugural recipient of the Australia Ensemble’s Emerging Composer Fellowship (2018). Her music is published by Wirripang and Nicole holds a PhD from the University of Queensland.

CHRYSOULLA MARKOULLI, MENTOR COMPOSER, FANFARE

Chrysoulla Markoulli is an award-winning composer, sound designer and teacher with a passion for telling stories through music and sound. A 2021 Sydney Theatre Awards Nominee for Best Composition and Sound Design for an Independent Production, Chrysoulla has been creating with theatre and screen makers since 2016, with clients such as Belvoir, Griffin, ATYP and Rogue Projects. Recent credits include: Wil & Grace (2021), Hot Mess (2021), Jali (2021), Mary (2021), Bondi Festival Promo Ad (2021), The Linden Solution (2021), Dead Skin (2021), Barnacle Face (2020), CNUT (2020), My Brilliant Career (2020) and Iphigenia In Splott (2020).