Our Team | Liquid Architecture

Our Team

Staff

JOEL STERN (Artistic Director) is a curator and artist based in Melbourne, Australia.

With Danni Zuvela, Joel is Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture an organisation that presents projects, festivals, performances and situations of the worlds leading artists working with sound. He is cofounder of OtherFilm and The Instrument Builders Project. As a curator, Joel has been responsible for festivals, publications, exhibitions, screenings and concerts in Australia and internationally for over ten years.

His musical performances use analogue electronics, lights and various found sounds and are often improvisation. He is part of the groups Soft Power and Sky Needle, an ensemble described by The Wire’s David Keenan as ‘one of the most radically original and self-sufficient performance units in the world.’

DANNI ZUVELA (Artistic Director) is a curator and writer based in Melbourne and Queensland’s Gold Coast.

With Joel Stern (Melbourne), Danni is Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture. Since Danielle has co-directed the artists’ collective OtherFilm she co-founded with Joel Stern and Sally Golding (London). In 2013 she joined forces with the Gold Coast-based artist-run gallery The Walls, moving from board member to Secretary in 2014. Danni has an academic background, completing her research PhD on experimental film and art history in 2008, teaching into her field and publishing critical writing across a range of academic and art publications. Her academic research practice informs her curatorial work today, where she has abiding interests in contemporary feminist thought, political economy and materialism.

BYRON SCULLIN (National Production Manager) has worked with Liquid Architecture for 12 years as national production manager.

Byron is responsible for technical and production liaison with producers, venues and artists to ensure consistent excellence in presentation. Byron has performed the live mix for numerous groups in many of Australia’s hallmark venues as well as extensive national and international touring for music, theatre and dance performances.

ANABELLE LACROIX (Program Manager) joined the organisation in 2014 and comes to Liquid Architecture with several years’ curatorial and arts management experience at RMIT University, Asialink, Arc One Gallery and working as an independent curator. Anabelle has a background in artist-run initiatives including working extensively with both emerging and senior artists across all levels of arts activity in Australia and internationally, and is currently an associate Member at RMIT’s Centre for Art, Society and Transformation, and an associate curator at Blindside. Before moving to Melbourne she studied Art History in Paris and graduated from the International Program in Curating Art at Stockholm University.

Board Members

DR MICHAEL GRAEVE (CHAIR) is a sound and visual artist and educator.

Michael joined the Liquid Architecture board 8 years ago at the time of incorporation in 2007 and has been Chair for four years. Michael has been committed to artist-run culture, developing small arts organisation expertise first as a founding committee member of Grey Area Art Space Inc (1996 -1999) and then as board member and program manager at West Space Inc (2000 – 2004). He exhibits, performs, curates and teaches internationally and teaches in the Sculpture, Sound and Spatial Practices Department and the MFA Program at RMIT University, and has previously taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Monash University, The Victorian College of the Arts and Victoria University.

PHIP MURRAY is an independent writer and curator, and a part-time academic in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT where she lectures in the history/theory of art, design and architecture.

Phip was Director of West Space from 2008–2012 and, prior to that, an Associate Producer for the Next Wave Festival. Phip has a particular interest in interdisciplinary art practice, and has curated projects such as Time Has Come Today, a program exploring sound, moving image and performance projects (West Space, 2012) and Tyger, Tyger, a new commissions series including projects by Philip Brophy, Constanze Zikos, David Chesworth, and Juan Davila (West Space, 2011-2012).

EMMA TELFER is the Creative Director of Open House Melbourne, an organisation that provides unique opportunities for people to better understand the legacy and future impact of good design and architecture in the city.

Along with her Liquid Architecture board position (since 2012), Emma is a board member of NETS (National Exhibitions Touring Support) and a member of the Arts Centre, Melbourne’s Australian Performing Arts Collection Steering Committee. Emma is a founding partner of the Office For Good Design, a unique curatorial group that works with private organisations and major cultural institutions to realise their interest in design, architecture, and the broader creative industries. Office for Good Design recently curated and produced the MMeets public program for MPavilion, the new summer architecture pavilion presented by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and the City of Melbourne.

ANNABEL ALLEN is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has been a Liquid Architecture Board member and Treasurer since 2012, and is also on the Governance Committee.

She has extensive experience in financial management, risk and compliance management, external and internal audit, business process improvement and strategic planning, across Government, arts industry, private sector and ASX listed entities.

She is passionate about the arts and how they contribute to society and is also treasurer and board member at unMagazine.

BIANCA DURRANT has extensive experience in arts management and project management with 12 years experience in the arts and cultural sector in both programming and strategic roles.

Bianca holds a Master of Fine Arts (by research) and is currently undertaking a Leadership and Managers Program with the LH Martin Institute, University of Melbourne on scholarship. Currently Research Coordinator at the VCA, University of Melbourne, she joined Liquid Architecture Sound Inc. in 2006, initially as Assistant to the Director, then Producer and General Manager until late 2013, contributing to the long term sustainability of the organisation through working with the Board to secure competitive triennial funding and developing a new organisational structure, which is now in place.

KELLI ALRED is a curator, program manager and consultant, specialising in spatial and temporal art practices.

Career highlights include presenting large-scale works by Ryoji Ikeda and Mathieu Briand in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall; being curatorial advisor to the exhibition Synthetic Times at the National Art Museum of China; working in dialogue with curator Nicolas Bourriaud to commission new work for the 2008 Triennial at Tate Britain; co-presenting an interactive public art work by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in Trafalgar Square, in collaboration with The National Gallery, the ICA and London’s Science Museum.

DAVID CHESWORTH is a musician, composer and artist, known for his experimental, and at times minimalist music, he has worked in rock groups, contemporary ensembles, theatre and experimental opera.

Together with Sonia Leber, Chesworth has created a series of large-scale installation artworks using sound, video, architecture and public participation. His compositions and sound art installations have been featured in festivals including Ars Electronica, Festival D’Automne de Paris, Edinburgh Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival in New York, Bang on a Can Marathon New York, Sydney Biennale and Adelaide Festival. Early in his career, for five years he was co-ordinator of the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre in Melbourne – an independent centre for experimental music, performance and film. David Chesworth joined the Liquid Architecture Board in 2015.

JAKE GOLDENFEIN is a lawyer and scholar with a focus on socio-legal research on the intersection of surveillance and privacy law. He has been a researcher at Melbourne Law School, the Swinburne Institute of Social Research, and New York Law School.

Associates

LOUIS MALLOZZI is executive Director of Experimental Sound Studio, and Adjunct Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator for the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

DAVID KIPP is a haematologist and a Liquid Architecture patron.

DAVID GRUBBS is Associate Professor of Music at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, where he also teaches in the MFA programs in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) and Creative Writing. He is the author of Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording (Duke University Press). Grubbs has released twelve solo albums and is known for his cross-disciplinary collaborations with poet Susan Howe and visual artists Anthony McCall and Angela Bulloch.

MARK BOOTH is a Chicago artist working across writing, sound and painting, and is Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.