Building a career in the arts can take multiple trajectories, often beyond the studio and gallery. To support their practice, artists invest labour in alternative practices and commercial ventures. Reflecting on the reality of multi-vocational practice, the conversation series Career Arcs engages art professionals in a demystification of their fields, careers and individual experiences, as their practice intersects with the broader arts ecology. Selected from the fields of curatorship, publishing, festivals and design, this series brings together arts workers in conversation, providing unique insights for artists and audiences to reflect on the challenges and joys of vocational practice in the arts. 

Part One in the series brings together Eugenia Lim and Trent Walter in conversation, exploring the intersections of creative practice and publishing.

Eugenia Lim works across video, performance and installation to explore nationalism and stereotypes with a critical but humorous eye. Lim invents personas to explore alienation and belonging in a globalised world. Her work has been exhibited, screened and performed at TATE Modern, Dark MOFO, Melbourne Festival, Next Wave, GOMA, ACMI, Asia TOPA, firstdraft, Artereal Gallery, FACT Liverpool and EXiS Seoul. She has been artist-in-residence with the Experimental Television Centre NY, Bundanon Trust, 4A Beijing Studio and the Robin Boyd Foundation. In 2018-19, she is a Gertrude Contemporary studio artist. 

In 2013, Lim co-founded Channels Festival. She sits on the board at Next Wave, was founding editor (and current editor-at-large) of Assemble Papers and co-founded temporal art collective Tape Projects (2007–2013).

Trent Walter is an artist and publisher. In his artwork, Walter combines multiple readymade sources (textual, pictorial and/or sculptural) to explore narrative, history and intersecting time. Walter was joint recipient with Brook Andrew of the 2013–14 Georges Mora Fellowship. And in 2016 the duo collaborated on the public artwork Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner for the City of Melbourne – the first commissioned memorial by a local government in a capital city of Australia to acknowledge the frontier wars.

Walter’s imprint, Negative Press, publishes limited edition prints and artists’ books by contemporary Australian artists and also works on projects commissioned by artists and cultural institutions. Recent publications include Rose Nolan’s monumental artists’ book Big Words (Not Mine) Read the words ‘public space’… and a series of screenprints and etchings with John Nixon. Recent commissioned projects include Simryn Gill’s Pressing In, and a soon to be released series of screenprints made with Mumu Mike Williams.

This event is proudly supported by the City of Yarra, through the Small Project Grants program.

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