REBECCA CONROY
Rebecca is a founding member and director of Bill + George. Her practice is a shifting blend of writing, context building, situation making, interventions and site based actions. Drawing from a background in performance, academia, parenting, community and activism, Rebecca's trans-disciplinary mode prefers the in-between spaces of ideas and actions working in collaborative settings with lofty ideals.
Between 2008 and 2010 Rebecca was the Associate Director at Performance Space based at CarriageWorks Contemporary Arts Centre, in Redfern, Sydney. In 2006 Rebecca completed her PhD (Drama Department, Newcastle University) investigating oppositional performance praxis in contemporary Indonesia. From 1998 to 2006 she taught at the University of Newcastle where she was Lecturer in the Drama Department, School of Drama, Fine Art and Music.
Rebecca initiated The Wedding Circle an artist run space in Chippendale (2004 - 2006); The Screening Room project (2005 – 2006) a presentation space for independent film and video works; Gang Festival an artist run exchange festival with Indonesian and Sydney based ARI’s (2005 – 2008); Articles Exposed a pilot project investigating the presentation of process based works and experimental viewing practices (2006); ArtSlab, a residency program at Bill and George with a preference for collaborative working processes and collectives generating project based outcomes. (2008 – 2009); The Librarium (2010 – Current) a Small Press archive and Publications exchange project, and Yurt Empire (in development) a rogue housing project.
Working with and for others, Rebecca was Coordinating Provocateur for the Splendid Arts Lab, a joint venture of Splendour in the Grass and Australia Council managed through Lismore Regional Art Gallery. Most recently Rebecca collaborated with Well Theatre from Melbourne as dramaturge and researcher on the Great Wall of Books, which toured to Mexico for the 2010 Bicentenary celebrations. Following this she initiated a brief tour of artist run spaces in Chicago and Detroit, where she plans her next lot of adventures.
HOSANNA HEINRICH
www.esoestango.com
Hosanna is a founding member and director of Bill+George. As a visual and performing artist and 2007 Australian Tango champion, Hosanna’s performance work synthesizes the traditional elements of tango with physical theatre, aerial work and martial arts. Such works have been included in The Great Escape (2005/06) and Peats Ridge Festivals (2005/06). With Various partners and collaborators she has performed at The Studio, Opera House in two Global Beats productions, including ‘Waiting For Guinness’, together with their album launch at the Factory theatre April 2007, and on the opening night of Gang Festival (2006), and in a variety of underground venues in Sydney. She has performed with ‘Trente y Quatro Punaladas’ at the Basement and in the tango stage show, ‘One Night in Buenos Aires’, and was recently specialist trainer and choreographer for Dancing With The Stars. Hosanna has also been involved with many video based performance, aerial collaborations and residencies working with Pork Collective, SOMA CG, Underbelly, Queen Street Studios and Performance Space. She is currently interested in fighting and dancing on film.
MARK TAYLOR
Mark Taylor is a founding member of Bill+George and a film maker and video designer with a background in graphic art working freelance for a range of companies in Sydney. His involvement in film making began in 2002 when he produced content for broadcast on for Community Television station Channel 31 with Actively Radical TV. In 2003 Mark produced his first documentary “La Lucienaga” about street kids in Argentina following extended travels through Latin America. Mark has been instrumental to the establishment and running of The Screening Room at its original premises in Chippendale and the development and management of Pabrik Production from its inception in 2005. in 2005 he launched Sydney’s first ever Latin American Film Festival which premiered in February 2006. Mark has designed video content for ‘live performance at the Studio Opera House, Woodford Festival, The Great Escape and Metroscreen. He also edits for a number of community organizations and broadcast including the ABC, SBS, Metroscreen and Redfern Community Centre through its Short Black Films.
Current Bill+George Artists
ALEX DAVIES
Artist, programmer, doll-maker, and weapons-designer: Alex Davies is a maverick by anyone’s definition. He has made his own unique mark on the art-world while never pandering to its politics. More than once he has ruined an occasion by wading through the crowd drunkenly brandishing one of his many sabers or flails. His monthly newsletter “ The Gilded Trough” is a confused and libelous rant based round his rabid right-wing beliefs and warped sexuality. He divides his time between Sydney and Austria for taxation purposes.
DAN MACKINLAY
Dan MacKinlay is a robot in the rice paddies. He masquerades as a sound nerd, writer, recovering web designer and student, passing the time in gamelan-inflected sample-based music and studying generative composition and artificial life-inspired simulation and reactive sound art. He has 2 litres of maple syrup in his studio, which you may share if you'd like.
JORDAN CLARKE
Jordan is an illustrator and visual artist. Jordan completed her Bachelor of Arts at Sydney University and went on to earn a Diploma in Graphic Design at the Enmore Design Centre. She is a self-taught illustrator - working with a variety of materials and techniques (textiles, drawing, painting, embroidery) to create nostalgic digital collages. Jordan has illustrated for Finders Keepers, Yen Magazine, Torpedo quarterly and the City Museum Melbourne. Her work has also been exhibited with La Femme, RedBubble Unleashed (Melbourne), Don't Panic (London), Extra Cheeese 2 & 3 (Sydney) and Once Upon (Sydney).
CHRIS WILSON and SOMA_CG
Chris is founder and director of Soma-CG, a Sydney based film, motion graphics and visual effects company started in 1999. He studied Design at UNSW, Digital Cinematography at AFTRS & Advanced Character Animation with Disney Feature Animator Murray Debus.
From his first film 'SOMA', shown at the Sydney Film Festival in 2005, he began directing and animating video clips for bands such as The Vines, Evermore, the Howling Bells, Operator Please and Sparkadia, incorporating visual effects, animation and live footage to create a unique style. He has Directed and led visual effects teams on countless television commercials and broadcast projects since founding Soma-CG.
His last two film projects have been 'Tortuga' that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2009 and 'The Conquest' which premiered at Sundance film festival in 2010 and is Australia's first stereoscopic 3D film. Both films were included in the 2010 Sydney Film Festival Program.
2010 has seen Chris involved increasingly in live projects, integrating his knowledge of visual effects and the sophisticated technology associated with the process, to the rigours of live performance. He has participated in 2010 residencies at Fraser's Studios, Performance Space, The Centre of Performance Studies at The University of Sydney and Legs on the Wall, developing works that incorporate film and visual effects with dance and aerial performance. He also participated in the 2010 ArtsNSW Artists in Schools program, working with children in Bidwill to devise and film a documentary and develop a play about their lives.
His latest live projects have been a six week development at the the RedBox, with aerial company Strings Attached and co-devising, 'The Comfort Zone', with Karen Therese, that was included in Performance Space' 2010 Program, Liveworks.
CATHERINE CONNOLLY
www.catherineconnollyartwork.blogspot.com
Catherine is a video installation artist. Her work examines representation in and the hyperbolic language of popular culture, particularly in cinema and music, and the ways in which this enforces, subverts or complicates ideas of gender, performativity and space. Her practice also includes drawing, painting and curating. Catherine is also a director of First Draft artist run initiative in Surry Hills.
PIA VAN GELDER
www.piavangelder.com
Pia is a Sydney based electronic media artist and teacher of Time Based Art at the College of Fine Arts. Her current practice is centered around audio and video performance machines. Pia is also the Overlord for the Sydney faction of Dorkbot, a regular event for “people doing strange things with electricity”. Pia also makes electronic music with Eden Falk in the duo They Live. And like a regular upstanding artist led citizen, she is also on the board of directors at the artist run initiative Serial Space.
TESSA ZETTEL and KARL KHOE (MAKESHIFT)
www.makeshift.com.au
Sydney-based Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe (makeshift) collaborate together on a wide range of projects spanning sculpture and installation, drawing, printmaking, writing, performance and design. Their interdisciplinary works are characterised by mobility and making-do, often appearing as temporary, site-responsive interventions that activate public spaces and provoke new ways of interacting with urban and ‘natural’ environments. Tessa and Karl also write for various journals, curate exhibitions, and teach at the College of Fine Arts (UNSW) and UTS.
In all their guises they are concerned with enabling sustainable futures through redirective practice and unpacking the various ways landscapes are contested and reshaped. Latest concoctions to emerge from their studio include a mobile food cart/native beehive for In the Balance: Art for a Changing World at the Museum of Contemporary Art, an indoor market garden at 4A Centre for Contemporary Art (Make-do Garden City) and an experimental preservation kitchen at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (Making Time). They are currently artists-in-residence at The Cannery in Esperance, on the south coast of Western Australia, as part of IASKA SPACED; but will soon be back in the big smoke to produce new work for The Right to the City at Sydney’s Tin Sheds and Sister City Biennial: Urbanition at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.
TODD FULLER (June - July)
Allumni of Bill+George 2007 - 2010
Adam Norton
Alejandra Canales
Alice Fenton
Alli Sebastian Wolf
Ally Bishop
Angela Bennets
Ben Riding
Caitlin Newton Broad (Director 2007-2008)
Catherine Rendell
Claire Perkins (Director 2007-2009)
Dario Vacirca
Holly Chalmers (Director 2008-2010)
Katrina Lezaic
Katie Ross
Mark Longley
Michelle McCosker
Melletios Kyrikydas
Nell Pearson
Paulo Alberton
Rhoda Lazo (Director 2009)
Rully Zakaria
Tania Leimbach
Tarron Ruiz
Tim Wallace
Tony Curran
Groups and projects supported at Bill+George
Sydney Latin American Film Festival
Gang Festival
Well Theatre
Imperial Panda
Centre for Policy Development
Community Land Trust Australia
Ivan Andrade (Barrista and Sons)
ARTSLAB (2008) supported by City of Sydney
Gang Festival
Patrick Abboud
Ben Riding
Lizzie Thomson
Karen Therese
Claire Conroy
Skype Gibson
Spat+Loogie
