NEWS

Videographer and Photographer Eden Crawford-Harriman recently released a five-part documentary on emerging regional artists of Northern Rivers. We caught up with Eden to discuss concept and future intentions for the series.

Congratulation on releasing the first series of your documentary on Australian Emerging Artists – can you tell us more behind the concept for the project?

The concept came to life through my lived experience within the Northern Rivers. I have grown up with, and met a number of creatives within this regional community throughout my life and in my studies at Southern Cross University. I witnessed around me that there is a number of incredible young and emerging artists within the l community that don’t often have the opportunity to showcase their work because of the hurdles that they experience. As their work doesn’t particularly “fit in” with the traditional ideals of regional community art making, there is a struggle for exposure, employment and stability of income from their artistic practises. I wanted to give the opportunity to showcase each of their different practises throughout the documentary, and help them to tell their own stories, experiences and the reasons to why they continue to create and live within this community.

Series one focuses on the Northern Rivers – what artists have you included?

I have highlighted 5 different artists specifically within Lismore that each have varying creative disciplines. I chose these artists as the nature of their work explores incredibly contemporary and non-traditional art making practices. The artists that I worked with in this series include; Salem Powderly, a Digital and textile mixed media artist that explores the complexities and possibilities of trans-humanism. Jack Hendry, a spray painter that collaborates with regional artists and creates large-scale murals within a dilapidated warehouse in town. Cameron Blanch, a musician and audio artists that experiments with the spiritual nature of performance and sound. Maxine Nimmo, an art theorist who is currently completing her honours thesis on re-contextualising a concept of a premodern universality within a contemporary framework. Holly Ahern, a multidisciplinary artist who explores pattern making and design through a number of mediums that help her to conceptualise a complex personal narrative.

What is the next destination to be featured in the documentary series?

I would like to continue to explore more artists within the Northern Rivers for the moment, as I think there is so many pockets of creatives within this community that really need to have their voices heard. I haven’t decided to where I would like to expand this documentary series next, but I believe that there are so many remote and regional areas within Australia that could benefit from a project like this.

What other projects are you currently working on? Between freelance video work for clients and my own personal projects, I am working towards proposing a dual-honours project with Holly Ahern at Southern Cross University that will hopefully take place next year. We both believe that there is an incredible creative culture within the SCU and Lismore community, and that the university should really reflect that within the campus. With the support of the university and the surrounding community, we hope to give the platform for current students, Alumni and community organisations to create murals and public art within an Arts Trail across the Lismore campus. I hope to extend this Artist Profile series into this project by creating a documentary of the progress we make next year, and each of the artists’ practises within the community.