Stephen Copland
Australian artist Stephen Copland studied at the National Art School, has a Masters of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales and a Doctor of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. Since 1986 he has had 35 solo exhibitions, including exhibitions in museums in Cuba, New Zealand, Slovakia, Austria, Italy and Lebanon.
In the 1980’s the artist painted landscapes and figurative themes investigating a variety of pictorial spaces. He was finalist in the, Wynne, Sulman, Blake and Calleen prizes and was awarded the Bicentennial Art Prize (3rd), Transfield Art prize and awarded the Moya Dyring Studio, Cite Internationale Paris AGNSW.
During the 1990’s his art shift direction to more personal dialogue using an interdisciplinary approach to materials and subject matter. This new subject matter, titled Migration as Art, an archive of painting, sculpture drawing, collage and video national and international exhibitions, conferences and workshops developed over three decades that explores forms of identity, place and migration.
Presentations of the Migration as Art Museum project has been accepted and recognised at various international conferences. The most prestigious was in 2016 at the ICOM 24th General Conference / Museums and Cultural Landscapes / Milano, Italy opened by Christo. In 2020 the online conference Embracing Difference-the work of art, Conference on Education, University of Barcelona, Spain. I was guest artist for the Tri-annual magazine Human Rights Defender (2019)In 2017 I was awarded the Juror’s Choice 2017 1V Art Venice Biennale San Marco Salizada Malipiero Venice selection by previous Venice Biennale artists. The video work titled The Artist Studio: Longitude-Latitude was selected for competition in Spazio Creativo and Territorio Da Salvaguardare (Creative Space & Territorial Safeguard) The international jury included Mr. Alessandro Gagliardo, Founder of Malastrada Film, Research and Dissemination; Prof. Giuseppina Radice, Professor of Contemporary Art History and Art Critic, Prof. Daniela Aquilia, Professor of Art History and Chair of the Cultural Ideattiva.
Copland was Guest artist for the Tri-annual magazine Human Rights Defender (2012) and in 2011 was awarded the Moya Dyring Studio, Cite Internationale Paris (AGNSW) to develop artwork inspired by Theodore Gericault’s masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa in the Louvre. A recent award was 1st prize at the video competition, di Notte – SPAZIO, Voci di Notte, Italy (2021) (echorama.it).
Selection for the Biennale of Human Rights -Universal Data, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MACAM Lebanon.(2019) During that year I also to exhibited at the inaugural opening of the Diaspora in Action Museum, Batroun, Lebanon. A major art piece from the Museum archive titled Border Protection where I painted every lighthouse on the Australian coast in miniature was cited in the publication, The Lighthouse: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Light.
Meredith Brice
Meredith Brice is an Australian visual artist and curator whose practice crosses between making and curating. She is interested in projects that bridge and connect worlds through artworks. For the past twenty years she has been exploring the creative potential of nanotechnology via a speculative play in the gap between art and science. A graduate from the University of Newcastle she exhibits locally and internationally and has participated as artist and curator in a number of exhibitions. Solo and group exhibitions, artistic projects, symposia and exchanges include – nationally – Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Victoria, and Internationally – New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Qatar, Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates, Palestine, North America, Canada, Austria, Italy, Turkey, Barcelona and Russia.
She has exhibited and curated nationally and internationally and was finalist in the Blake Prize, Calleen Prize, the inaugural Macquarie University World Year of Physics Art Prize and has been awarded various awards nationally and internationally including the selected Jurers’ Choice ArtVenice Biennale 4, Venice Italy. For her curation of the touring ANZAC Centenary exhibition Contemporary Gallipoli for Macquarie University Sydney she received an Award of Appreciation from Turkey.
Her art has focused on the creative potential of nanotechnology as applied to textiles and wearables via a speculative play in the gap between art and science. Community issues have been explored around social justice and peace, intercultural perspectives and sustainable environment in a local/global context.
She has been a finalist in the Gosford Art Prize and Gosford City Community Awards for CC Contemporary Art Space, she founded at Gosford Anglican [2006-2013], curating a program of local and international exhibition, including extract from the Blake Prize, Garden: sustainable city, Gift from East: artisan silver jewellery from Bethlehem Occupied Palestine, ceramic works by inmates from the George Alexander Walpole School, Kariong Juvenile Justice Centre. She initiated the Peace on a Postcard international art project that has toured to Sydney, Melbourne and the Middle East. An achievement was to create in the historic Edmund Blackett church, Gosford interventions and solo installations that involved for example garden designer Michael Cooke, and an artist from Austria. She also initiated the Hildegard Art Prize for women artists with a two-week Artist in Residence at Gosford Anglican.
As an exhibition maker she has showcased art exhibitions in commercial, non-commercial, public spaces and university art gallery venues with participations from local, national and international emerging and established artists, art makers in prison, artisan makers, jewellers, musician/composers, landscape architects, garden designers, writers, scientists, farmers, poets, theologians, historians, video film makers and sound technicians. With an interest in weaving multi-sensory artistic experiences for audiences through poetic mediums, collaborations reflect 21st century conversations to bring focus to issues around social justice and peace, intercultural perspectives and sustainable environment in a local/global context.