ACT Natimuk’s board comprises seven members, drawn from the membership of the organisation.
Current Executive positions are Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and three Committee Members.
The strength of ACT Natimuk’s board has been an ability to ‘shapeshift’ and arrange its capacity around the individual projects it chooses to deliver. This model has allowed the organisation to achieve a high level of cultural agency (self-determination and creative independence) over the
past 19 years.
Executive meetings take place every two months, alternating every two months with Committee meetings open to the wider membership of the organisation.
2022 BOARD, COMMITTEE & STAFF
CHAIR – D’ARCY MOLAN
D’Arcy Molan joined as a member of ACT Natimuk in 2019. He came aboard as Vice Chair in 2021 and has now stepped up to the role of Chair.
He is a musician, composer, writer, and research assistant based in Natimuk. His arts practice stems from his grandmother Audrey Huntly, who was a jazz musician and community arts organiser in the Apsley/Edenhope areas of the Wimmera region (north-west Victoria). D’Arcy studied music performance at Box Hill Tafe and Monash University in Melbourne, majoring on saxophone. He has performed solo and with bands (jazz, ska, hip-hop, original explosions) and been involved in multidisciplinary art projects at venues and festivals throughout Australia and New Zealand. Since 2014 he has focussed much of his energy on writing and further university study, and along the way accrued an eye-watering HECS debt.
D’Arcy is a PhD candidate in literary studies and creative writing at Deakin University. His thesis focuses on the Wimmera region through his matrilineal connection to the area and investigates ‘adaptive work’ by settler/non-indigenous artists with Wotjobaluk artists, community arts approaches, and place-based arts. His doctorate is a combination of critical academic writing and poetry, and is partly a case study of Natimuk (and by extension ACT Natimuk).
VICE CHAIR – SUE PAVLOVICH
Sue has been Chair of ACT 2018-22, Secretary 2020 and has now stepped into the role of Vice Chair.
From 2016-2020 Sue also curated the Goat Gallery. She holds a Masters in Visual Art from Monash University and teaches Art at Horsham College. Her art practice investigates the engagement with the audience who are both observer and participant. This places her practice between movement and visual art forms, in community contexts and gallery shows.
SECRETARY – ABBY WATKINS
Abby Watkins joined ACT Natimuk as Secretary in 2021. grew up in Geelong, Victoria where she trained for gymnastics, gaining selection on Victorian and Australian teams and receiving an athletic scholarship to U.C. Berkeley in California in 1988. At Berkeley, she trained in contemporary dance technique and performance and also began rock climbing in nearby Yosemite NP. These two movement inquiries have formed the basis of Abby’s practice and professional life for the past 30 years. The physical and lyrical sensation of climbing is what has held Abby’s attention through a professional climbing and mountain guiding career. There is beauty and power of the way deep time has shaped our natural world. This defines the pathway across rock, ice, glacier and snow brings Abby joy and connection to nature. This connection has informed the way she teaches and leads people through the landscape. As a climber and a dancer, she naturally found her way into vertical dance, using climbing ropes and harnesses to access outrageous spaces to dance. She has worked for three different vertical dance companies in three different countries over the past 25 years.
Abby holds a B.Env.Sc. (Wildlife and Conservation Biology). One of her favourite jobs of all time was as a contract bird survey technician in Canada – surveying birds by ear (she had to learn the songs of 300+ birds) in remote wilderness in British Columbia and Manitoba.
TREASURER – TONY NOLLER
Presently semi-retired and living in town, in Natimuk – the centre of the universe.
For Tony, the world of ACT Natimuk is an all-new adventure. Having just recently experienced the Nati Frinj Festival for the first time in 2022, ‘the centre of the universe’ seems quite appropriate. The buzz and creativity, enthusiasm and excitement, the standard of the event drew him in. Being a part of this living and breathing organisation, as the next Treasurer commencing in 2023, is a way to participate and contribute, continuing the vision that others beforehand have established.
Project management particularly in manufacturing in the automotive industry with Ford Motor Company in Geelong along with various appointments as Treasurer including a community radio station, form the pathway to this role in the office of Treasurer.
GENERAL COMMITTEE MEMBER – GAIL HARRADINE
Gail Harradine is a Wotjobaluk Post-graduate trained curator and arts practitioner from Dimboola, Victoria with 8 years University study. Her focus has always been on South East Australian First Nations and Clans since her thesis on Aboriginal art in the Melbourne area in the 1990s as part of her Postgraduate work at Melbourne University. Gail is a qualified Secondary teacher and studied Indigenous resource management. Gail has lectured at Federation University (Horsham campus) in Aboriginal Health and Aboriginal history and taught VET/Disability. She enjoys being creative with photography, painting, silversmithing and utilising traditional techniques related to women’s adornment, and working with Wergaia language initiatives. Gail works as Curatorial Manager in Melbourne and travels home to family regularly to progress her art practice.
GENERAL COMMITTEE MEMBER – ALISON EGGLETON
Alison is a professional art curator and visual artist.
While at RMIT Art School in Melbourne, she developed an interest in contemporary art curation which led to further study in gallery and museum curation at Deakin University. She moved to the Wimmera to become the Curator at Horsham Regional Art Gallery (2011-2022). Since then she has developed an extensive knowledge of Australian photography as part of her curatorial practice. Alison has curated over 80 art exhibitions for local, state-wide and international artists, and presented numerous artist and curatorial talks, and events.
Living in Natimuk since 2012 has offered her the opportunity to engaged with a love of bush walking and explore different types of body movement through rock climbing, circus practice and Japanese Butoh dance/movement. Alison’s visual art practice centres on drawing and sculptural installations which is currently project driven. She has developed artwork for Natimuk Open Studio Artist Trail and Nati Frinj Festival in Natimuk, Lost in Sculpture, in Dunkeld, Victoria, and collaborated with local artist Anthony Pelchen at the Melaka Arts and Performance Festival (MAP fest) in Malaysia.
Currently, she is undertaking a Masters by Research at RMIT, Melbourne, investigating curatorial practice in Australian galleries, specific to mapping
GENERAL COMMITTEE MEMBER – MARTIN PERKINS
STAFF
GENERAL MANAGER – TRACEY SKINNER
Tracey Skinner, originally from Melbourne, has a background in multiple arts disciplines. Performing arts featured strongly in earlier years both studying and working in Melbourne, London and Japan as a vocalist and dancer. Her interest in fashion and visual arts led her on a long journey of study and self employment as a textile artist with a strong leaning towards screenprint, also working as a costume creator for many years. She is an Alumni of RMIT and operates a small creative studio space in her current hometown. Her love of movement saw her gain qualifications in Pilates, Barre and Yoga and she teaches classes at her movement studio in Natimuk. She has worked for a number of NFP organisations and through this has grown her experience of project management and community work. After serving on the ACT Natimuk committee for a number of years, she recently joined the organisation as an employee in 2020 and loves the multi pronged approach she needs to apply to the role of General Manager. Alongside the arts administration aspect of the role, she has produced a number of projects – Grist, Natimuk Open Studios Art Trail and was recently the Program Producer for the Gatherings event in the Northern Grampians Shire.
She was also successful in gaining a place on the Local Giants Regional Producer Program
and loves the direction in her career to produce more work.
MADE IN NATIMUK PRODUCER – VERITY HIGGINS
Since graduating from the VCA, Verity has worked as a director, actor, project co-coordinator, and lecturer in performing arts.
In 2005 Verity worked in the UK as Assistant Director and actor for North Country Theatre. On returning to Australia she took up a position of Regional Arts Development Officer with Regional Arts Victoria, based in Ballarat. During her time as a RADO Verity coordinated a wide range of regional projects. Her independently produced documentary about a community choir The Big Sing, was acquired and broadcast on the ABC in 2010.
Since returning to freelance work at the end of 2013 Verity has worked as a freelance director, actor & producer. Her most recent theatre work The Freda Experience, about pioneering Australian mountaineer Freda du Faur, had sell out seasons at both the Castlemaine State Festival and NatiFrinj in 2015. Verity coordinated the large-scale environmental knitting project, WARM for SEAM in 2016.
Verity started working for ACT Natimuk on Made in Natimuk from late 2014.
NATI FRINJ DIRECTOR – GREG PRITCHARD
Dr Greg Pritchard has had a long association with ACT Natimuk and the Frinj festival and was Festival Director in 2022.
Greg is a multi-disciplinary artist with a long history as performance artist, writer (in many genres), digital media artist, installation artist, and conceptual artist. He has worked independently and as part of various collectives and partnerships, to produce works that range from large community spectacles to site specific solo work. He is an experienced teacher and arts administrator, and has a Doctorate in Literature and a Masters in Visual Art.
Among Greg’s projects have been Artistic Director of the Regional Arts Australia festival Artlands in Dubbo in 2016, Producer of The Poppet with ACT Natimuk as part of Creative Victoria’s Regional Centre for Culture set in Bendigo in 2018, Artistic Director of Artstate Tamworth 2019, and Program Manager for Platform disability arts space in Wagga. He is currently the Office manager for Booranga Writer’s Centre in Wagga Wagga.
WANT MORE DETAILS ON ACT NATIMUK?
If you would like to learn more about what we do and what we have done, our Annual Reports and Strategic Plans can be viewed here RESOURCES