The Big Picture Fest
Port Pirie 29 Oct – 4 Nov 2018

Georgia Hill is an Australian artist and muralist, specialising in type based artworks and installations.

Hill’s constant pursuit of unique structures, new environments and emotive language is demonstrated further in her focus to deliver high impact works of art. Her clear and poetic take on phrasing, combined with our physical spaces, serves to highlight our dialogue with ourselves and nature, in order to celebrate the cycles that exist around us each day.

Hill has proved herself to be one of Australia’s leading street artists with a contemporary and conscious touch to her materials, surrounds and conceptual approaches. Her works have spanned galleries and inner-city walls to 400ft abandoned buildings, painted across Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, Jordan, India, The United States, Japan and Indonesia, as well as working prolifically across Australia’s states.

Jimmy Dodd has a visual arts practice that oscillates between galleries, public space, conceptual and community driven outcomes. He has a strong interest in suburbia and the kind of creativity often found in people’s sheds. In many instances he is chopping up and re-assembling bikes as parts of larger contraptions and art-making machines. He has a strong history as part of the Melbourne Stencil and Street Art movement and mostly pursues wall painting as a component of youth and community art workshops. James Dodd is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide and Backwoods Gallery, Melbourne.

Elizabeth Close is an Anangu woman from the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language groups. She was born in Adelaide but calls the APY lands home. Her Grandmother was born in Ernabella but was forcibly removed from her family when she was 4, and eventually ended up in a home for Aboriginal children in Adelaide, though many of the records were destroyed. Because of this, Elizabeth’s family lost much of their connection to family and culture, and for much of her Grandmother’s adulthood, she was disconnected from her culture and was unable to pass cultural knowledge on to her children and grandchildren. Despite this, Elizabeth feels she got much of her creativity from her Grandmother, who taught her to paint and sew – some of the few memories she had from her own mother. Elizabeth grew up in remote communities across South Australia, but returned to Adelaide to complete her schooling, and went to University to complete a Bachelor of Nursing and a Graduate Certificate in Emergency Nursing. After the birth of her second child, Elizabeth and her husband decided to move home to the APY so that they could immerse their children in their culture and language. Upon moving back to the APY, Elizabeth was finally able to reconnect with her Grandmothers family, learn her language and get the cultural education she desperately sought, and this was reflected in her artwork. Elizabeth started painting professionally in 2007 and her work has evolved considerably over this time. This evolution reflects Elizabeth’s personal growth and her journey of discovery of her Aboriginality. Her work is a fusion of contemporary and traditional work, using vivid warmth to convey the landscape of the place she calls home. While living in the APY, Elizabeth was fortunate enough to work with artists at the world renowned Anangu art centre, Tjala Arts, where she learned from world famous artists. Elizabeth recently returned to Adelaide and has been creating large scale street works and has over 20 large scale murals across the Adelaide CBD. Elizabeth feels strongly about the importance of making art accessible through public art, and has channelled much of her current practice into public art in a number of mediums. Elizabeth is married to a Pirinpa (non-Indigenous) man and has three children, Isaiah, Emmeline and Bentji; and a dingo with no tail.

Sam Songailoʼs work takes form in painting, installation, video, sound and sculpture. He is deeply influenced by digital technology and electronic music adopting algorithms and concepts from these disciplines that shape his approach to both physical and pictorial space.

Often highly immersive and realised on a monumental scale, his work accentuates the compositional elements of line and space in a form that recalls both the modernist grid and digital networks.

Joel Van Moore is an Australian contemporary artist based in Adelaide, South Australia.

A creative spirit by nature, he has pursued his love of letterforms and abstraction under pseudonym Vans the Omega for almost three decades.

Joel’s work is heavily influenced by ancient scripts, architecture, engineering and pattern making. His works pays homage to the natural world through his use of dynamic body movement, gesture and colour derived by observing the immediate environment.

Moving beyond the spectrum of graffiti, Joel’s current work is a collision of geometric patterns translated into vibrant figurative pieces. These works aim to create inner movement, reflection and the overwhelming sense of beauty when viewed at street level.

Joel’s colourful creations can be found all over the globe and continue to tell local stories which highlight individuals and their stories.