Arts Industry Event

Guest speakers:

Nicholas Currie
Nicholas Currie is an emerging artist, curator and descendent of the Mununjali clan of the Yugambeh language group with connection to Kuku Yalanji. Painting, sculpture and performance are the key aspects to Currie’s practice. Humour and kindness are undercurrents to the major themes addressed in his works, which include contemporary Indigenous perspectives, hauntology and exploration of the identity within current Australia.

Panda Wong
Panda Wong is a poet and editor living on unceded Wurundjeri land. Working across sound, performance and the digital, her practice circles around the void. In 2022, her first chapbook angel wings dumpster fire (2022) was published by Puncher & Wattmann, followed shortly by her debut poetry EP, the collaborative project salmon cannon me into the abyss. Wong also co-edited Best of Australian Poems 2023 and was shortlisted for Judith Wright Prize in 2022 and 2023, and won the Local Word Writing Prize in 2024.

Coral Guan
Coral Guan is Curatorial Project Officer, International Exhibition Projects at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Major exhibitions she has worked on include The Picasso Century (2022), Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi (2023), Pharaoh (2024), Yayoi Kusama (2024) and the forthcoming French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2025). Guan was a contributing writer to the exhibition publications for Yayoi Kusama and NGV Triennial 2023, writing on Asian contemporary art. Guan holds a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

Cristea Nian Zhao
Cristea Nian Zhao is a Narrm-based artist, curator and writer whose practice spans live performance, video and text in exploration of melancholia and various forms of loss. She is interested in personal histories and collective memories associated with migration, catastrophe and beyond and the (im)possibility of mourning and reconciliation often lies beneath her works. Language, spoken narratives and shared listening are central to her approach. Zhao is also the co-founder and co-director of HAIR, an artist-run initiative dedicated to research-based projects and sound performance.