In discussion with PICA General Manager Jeremy Smith, Perth Festival artist Patrick William Carter and his mentor/collaborator Sam Fox will unpack the works exhibited in YEDI/SONGS from Patrick William Carter. Patrick will also perform a live demonstration of some of his improvisational techniques. The event will conclude with an opportunity to meet the artist in an informal setting with light refreshments and drinks provided.
Due to the limit of seating capacity under WA Government COVID guidelines, registering for this event is essential.
 

SPEAKERS

Patrick William Carter
Patrick William Carter is a Noongar man whose art is centred around his family and his experiences of life. His songs are made from many forms: dance and painting and filmmaking, as well as his tremolo-infused vocals. In the language of contemporary art, Carter’s work is interdisciplinary, hybrid, mixed, but he doesn’t draw lines between media at all. Across the diverse material and shape of his songs, Carter weaves meaning.
Carter’s digital work, Dance, was exhibited in Revealed, Fremantle Arts Centre (2016), and as a re-commission from ANAT for Adelaide’s Tarnanthi Festival’s New Light (2017). This edit was subsequently screened at Enlighten Festival in Canberra (2018).
Carter began his collaboration with Sam Fox on Dance and in 2014 participated in the Australia Council funded projects, Room and Digital Dialogues (2015-16), creating over ten short digital works.
In 2018 and 2019 Carter was a cast member and contributor on You Know We Belong Together, a Perth Festival, Black Swan State Theatre Company and DADAA co-production.
In 2019, he collaborated with Sam Fox and Sam Price creating Fireworks for the Yagan Square tower and continues this collaboration to create his Perth Festival 2021 commissioned work, Wind.
 
Sam Fox
Sam Fox is a director, writer and choreographer working across contemporary performance, literary fiction and community-based collaborations.
Fox is currently working as a creative Ph.D. candidate at the University of Western Australia where he is writing a novel that explores stories of collectivisation and radical alliances.
He has recently worked as artistic director of DADAA and Circus WA’s Experience Collider project bringing young people with high support needs together with their peers in a performance project that premiered at the State Theatre Centre in October 2019; as a peer collaborator with Patrick Carter on his digital artwork, Fireworks for the Yagan Square 360 screen; and as an independent producer with robotic sculpture artists ololo, and choreographer Rachel Arianne Ogle.
As director of interdisciplinary company Hydra Poesis, his performance and media works have been presented in a wide range of national and international contexts. Fox is an alum’ of the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship program, a former artistic director of STEPS Youth Dance Company, a former associate producer of ARTRAGE, and has served as a panellist with the Department of Culture and the Arts, the Australia Council for the Arts, Committee for Perth, and as a board member of Contact Inc (Qld) and Hold Your Horses (WA).
 
Jeremy Smith
In 2016, at the age of 39, Jeremy first chose to identify as a disabled man. Prior to this, many other chose to label him as such on his behalf (mostly without permission or consent). He now wonders why he waited for such a long time to embrace this part of his identity.
His working life has seen him work arts, funding, policy, sponsorship and regional development across government, not for profit and corporate sectors. He’s been part of too many equity, diversity, access and inclusion committees to remember. Highlights include being the cover-star (without permission) of a government submission that won a Premier’s Award for inclusion initiatives and being told his services were not needed for the ‘Project All-Sorts’ steering group – a mining sector initiative for diversity and inclusion – as he didn’t represent a ‘priority’ group.
He enjoys the challenge of influence and persuasion. He has a range of tactics that have often delivered outcomes and results that have been positive, disruptive and awkward all at once. Jeremy is a fierce advocate of celebrating difference and transforming attitudes which ‘other’ people in our community. He is especially inspired by the new genres and aesthetics disabled artists and arts workers bring to their work. Discussions and debates across the sector are always richer when the voice of disabled people is centred.