Jannawi Dance Clan is an Aboriginal dance company that centres on Indigenous storytelling through dance and performance. The name Jannawi means ‘with me, with you’ in Darug language. As a dance collective they celebrate the strength, resilience and stories of Aboriginal people in NSW. Community, identity and culture are strong values in their practice with a larger commitment to revitalise language and heighten the voices of Darug peoples and histories.

Uncle Danny Eastwood is descended from the Ngemba group of Western New South Wales. His mother came from Brewarrina and he was born and grew up in the Eora area of the Gadigal Nation. For the past 43 years, he has been a proud member of the Dharug community of Western Sydney.

As a painter and cartoonist, he has produced numerous works which tell the story of his people and Country, including his contributions to Koori Mail over the last 30 years and his public art which can be found all over Sydney.

In 1992, Uncle Danny won the NSW NAIDOC Award. He shared the National NAIDOC Aboriginal Artist of the Year Award, receiving 1st prize in the NSW Parliament Award and the NAIDOC Poster Award in 1993. Uncle Danny is responsible for building and making the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander War Memorial to honour Aboriginal service people at the Anzac Memorial, Hyde Park, Sydney.

Uncle John Farrington was born in the town of Young, part of the Wiradjuri Nation, the people of the 3 rivers. He was taken to Sydney at the age of 9 along with his siblings and put into the custody of the NSW Government as a Ward of the State. He has lived and worked in Sydney since and connected with the people of the Dharug Nation as he struggled to find family, his roots, his identity and his connection to Country, which is now linked to the Gamilaraay People through his father.

Uncle John has been active in sharing his stories and experience through Dharug community meetings and gatherings. Through this space, he shares his remarkable life and his continual journey to find family and reconnect. He loves to share documents as well as photos that he has discovered on his quest for answers. Uncle John loves to meet people, tell them his stories and share his Culture, while highlighting and encouraging the strength and survival spirit that may help others to overcome the past.

Angela Paikea is an artist of Portuguese and Māori heritage with weaving and Māori culture at the core of her creative process. She makes objects including headpieces, wearable art and sculptures using NZ flax (phormium tenax or harakeke) combined with textiles, feathers, leather and Pāua shell. Angela is a skilled facilitator who has hosted successful workshops with Adorned Collective, Blacktown Arts, Parramatta Artists Studios, and Powerhouse Museum.

Anney Bounpraseuth is an Australian-born artist of Laotian heritage. She attributes her kitsch, vivid and decorative aesthetic to her childhood home decorated by her mother with fake flowers, imitation antiques and mismatched textiles. Anney asserts her self-determined identity by reinterpreting matriarchal traditions through painting, textiles and craft. As a recovering apostate, Anney’s current practice is concerned with the positive visualisation of spiritual identity without god and religion in the setting of the Garden of Eden or earthly Paradise.

An.Other Collective is a community of Muslim female makers, makers, artists, and designers spanning from Sydney to Melbourne.
The collective is an open platform that gathers and weaves the diverse
perspectives of individuals and communities to dissolve colonial barriers
and reductive misconceptions on matters associated with faith, politics,
identity, art and culture.

Bibi Goul Mossavi is an Afghan Australian artist, theatre maker, writer and advocate. Bibi’s bead making practice sees her weaving seed beads in intricate patterns to produce necklaces, bracelets and bookmarks. Bibi trained in Media Culture and Communication at Macquarie University and postgraduate studies in psychology at the University of New South Wales and Masters of Psychotherapy and Counselling at Western Sydney University. She is a passionate advocate of women’s rights and equality and CALD representation in the arts space. As a performer with the PYT Fairfield Ensemble, she made a big splash in Swimming Pool, directed by Tessa Leong. Bibi also co-developed and performed in Dorr’e Dari: A Poetic Crash Course in the Language of Love at the Sydney Festival and PYT Fairfield in 2021. Currently, Bibi works as a Counsellor.

Bonnie Huang is a multi-disciplinary artist playing and creating with dreams and textures on Dharug land. They aim to create intimate yet subversive spaces for reflection on desire and belonging– reflecting on how memory and culture informs the construction of self-identity and communities.

They are the recipient of Parramatta Artists’ Studios 2024 Fellowship, a participant in PAS Open 2023, and were awarded the USU Creative Awards Prize from Verge Gallery in 2021. Recent exhibitions include Pari, Verge Gallery, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Blacktown Arts Centre and Firstdraft.

Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro use their artistic practice as a tool to help locate themselves within the systems employed by our contemporary society. The pair believe that the central motif of our age is the tension created between the Primacy of the Individual and the Social Contract that is subscribed to through our complex, global inter-dependancy with our fellow human beings. The formal and informal systems that our collective society utilises both supports and constricts the individuals that comprise the organisation.

The artistic collaboration reconfigures and juxtaposes elements of the biological, the historic, the cultural and the astronomical to create artworks that help decipher who we are and what we have gained and forfeited in order to realise our present existence.

Claudia Nicholson is an interdisciplinary artist based on Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia). Her practice examines psychic and physical connections to place through multidisciplinary forms of art making including painting, installation, performance and video. She is interested in creating acts of collective remembrance, exploring the ways in which we navigate the complexities of identity in a post-colonial context.

The conceptual enquiries in Nicholson’s practice are driven by her position as a Colombian-born artist living in Australia. Her practice addresses the Diasporic position, specifically in the Asia Pacific region, and in addition, connects with the varied experiences of the Australian Latinx community. Her work blends artistic practices local to Central and South America with her own in an ongoing attempt to situate herself in a history and culture from which she is separate, specifically, silletas and alfombras de aserrín. Nicholson adopts these practices – with their complex imbrication of both colonial and indigenous lineages – as a platform from which to articulate the complexity of identity. These artforms are transient, adaptable, and resilient becoming sites for celebration and resistance.

Ebony Wightman is a multi-disciplinary artist, creative leader, Disability advocate and self-identified spy living and working on Dharug country (Western Sydney).

Ebony’s practice champions disability-led perspectives and explores her lived experience as an Autistic person with complex health needs and chronic illness, as well as the intersectional rights and identities of d/Deaf and Disabled communities.

Ebony is a co-founder of We Are Studios, Australia’s first 100% disability-led studio for Western Sydney artists with disability. Ebony is a 2024 Creative Leadership Program recipient (Creative Australia).

Kalanjay Dhir is an artist and musician based in Sydney on unceded Dharug land. His work draws on popular culture, sci-fi and history, using sculpture and video. Kalanjay likes to make up near-future worlds that imagine hopeful ways humans could relate to their environment. He enjoys thinking about the imprint that terrestrial human consciousness will leave on the earth and surrounding cosmos.

Louise Zhang 张露茜 is a Chinese-Australian multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture and installation. Zhang explores the dynamics of aesthetics, contrasting the attractive and repulsive in order to navigate the senses of fear, anxiety and a sense of otherness reflecting her identity. Her work is inspired by horror cinema, Chinese mythology and botany, adopting and placing symbols and motifs in compositions of harmonic dissonance.

Sam Absurd is a seasoned aerosol artist, born and raised in the vibrant western suburbs of Sydney, has spent the last two decades perfecting his craft. Collaborating with local graffiti and street artists, he has cultivated a distinct and original style that distinguishes him in the world of art. With a rich history of working with diverse clientele, ranging from festivals and corporate offices to government councils and universities, Sam’s extensive experience has honed his meticulous attention to detail.