Our artist-in-residence in November 2020 is Albertina Viegas from East Timor living in Poland. Her residency proposal seeks to address current cultural ideas and aesthetic interests in her art practice that has arisen from residing in Poland over the last decade. The residency a tour gallery is an opportunity to cast a wide net and collect bundles of creative material that have been developed over this period, where possible, and look closely at the layers of personal and artistic engagement. The residency will allow for the various perspectives in artistic communities of interest from near and afar (Bydgoszcz-Kozielec, Poland/ Warburton-Central Desert of Australia; Dili-Laleia, Timor-Leste/ Lisboa, Portugal) that has been her milieu. Ongoing themes of homeland, identity, individuality, relocation, regeneration will be germane to the residency. She plans to create an installation of objects, audio-visual and performative in nature that we can present within her exhibition in December 2020. More details soon.

Summary biography of artistic practice: Albertina Viegas
A long engagement in arts, cultural and education projects and a leading role in pioneering ventures for over 35 years; contributions to methodology and policy in the most painstaking and complex areas of Australian community-based arts and culture. An extensive involvement with indigenous cultures, with significant contributions to community cultural development towards the quality of life in the Aboriginal community of Warburton and Ngaanyatjarra homelands, Gibson Desert, Western Australia (1989 – 2008); as well as the East Timorese communities in Australia (1990 – 2000), and the arts community of emergent artists in the Western suburbs of Sydney (1985 – 1991); Co-founder/Co-ordinator, Public Programme, Street Level Artists’ Run Initiative, Penrith NSW, Australia, 1988-1991).
An installation-performance artist-curator practising since the mid-1980s; participant in international residencies, collaborations, public talks, exhibitions and other events.
An educator and facilitator in community-based learning within formal and non-formal educational structures, with priorities to indigenous knowledge systems, languages and ways of knowing in the cross-cultural encounter (2000-present).
Residing in Poland since late 2010: undertaking educational, cultural research and engagement with parents and school-children of NATO families stationed in Bydgoszcz, Poland (2012-2018); arts consultant, various activities in collaboration with the artists’ community of Bydgoszcz, Mózg Association and Mózg Foundation www.mozg.art.pl (2011- ongoing), and Farbiarnia Gallery, Bydgoszcz, Poland (2014-2018).
Recent research interests include: The sociology of knowledge; Local knowledges; Art and culture in times of conflict; Global migration and social change; Land tenure – security and conflicts in Timor-Leste; East Timorese living in the diaspora.
A selected list of exhibitions, publications, and other works can be provided upon request.

Residency is curating by Danka Milewska