New Territory: 2025 fellows set to traverse fresh ground at State Library Victoria

From the Bogong High Plains to Yorta Yorta Country – and even as far as Antarctica – State Library Victoria’s 2025 fellows are set to make new discoveries in the Library's collection and produce career-defining work.

18 creatives and scholars have been awarded a share of $195,000 in funding, dedicated office space at the Library for 12 months, and one-on-one support from a specialist librarian. Performing arts, printmaking, poetry and photography are just some of the exciting new projects given the green light by the Library’s 2025 Fellowships Program.

Australian musician Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga, known professionally as Mo’Ju, has been awarded a Creative Fellowship ($15,000) for their project KAPWA. They plan to access books and audio recordings in the State Collection to create a new piece of work celebrating ‘Kapwa’, a philosophy central to Filipino culture and identity.

‘I’m thrilled and excited for this opportunity to deepen my own knowledge of pre-colonial practices and beliefs in the Philippines. The fellowship will benefit not only my own cultural development as a member of the Filipinx diaspora, but also lay the foundations for my next major artistic project – one that explores the themes of mysticism, spirit and gender fluidity, through an indigenous lens in a modern world’ they said.

Other successful recipients include:

• Dr Anna McMichael who has been awarded a Climate Futures Artist Fellowship ($15,000) to draw on the Library’s collection of historic photographs and records of Antarctic exploration, with plans to create an immersive multimedia project that explores the impact of climate change on Antarctica.
• Rebecca and Avni Dauti are teaming up for a Creative Fellowship ($15,000) for their project Faed, which examines how sign language, Deaf-authored knowledge and Deaf perspectives have been collected, recorded and also excluded from the Library’s collections.
• Accomplished poet and Gippsland resident Louise Crisp has been awarded the Marion Orme Page Creative Regional Fellowship ($15,000) to research and write a long-form ecopoetic text, Bogong, based on the archives of ecologist Maisie Carr (nee Fawcett) whose work led to the establishment of the Alpine National Park.

State Library Victoria CEO Paul Duldig said:

‘Our 2025 fellows are an exciting and diverse group, whose ambitious projects will open up the State Collection. There are plans to unearth treasures of Australian poetry from our Rare Books Collection, an art project to connect Yorta Yorta people with the history and culture of their ancestors, and a research project highlighting the legacy of performing artists in regional Victoria. Every fellowship is an opportunity to learn more about Victoria’s culture and history. I’m very excited to see our participants make new discoveries and create career-defining work.’

Colin Brooks, Minister for Creative Industries said:

‘For more than two decades, State Library Victoria’s Fellowships Program has supported more than 300 creative practitioners and scholars to make significant and enduring contributions to Victoria’s culture and history.

‘Congratulations to the 2025 Fellows, whose projects will bring the State Collection to life in new and imaginative ways, bolstering Victoria’s vibrant creative sector and generating new artworks, books, performances and research.’

2025 State Library Victoria Fellows

Amor Residency at Baldessin Studio

$5000 in funding and $5000 in kind

Allows a visual artist to explore works on paper, in particular printmaking, using research material from the Library and the studio facilities at Baldessin Studio.

Dianna Wells – Intertidal

Dianna Wells’ artistic practice explores the tensions which arise from the degradation and destruction of vulnerable plant ecosystems. Dianna’s fellowship will draw on the Library’s botanical and ecological archives. During her residency at Baldessin Studios, Dianna will print photographic imagery and graphic devices through the Photogravure process.

Berry Family Fellowship

$15,000

Awarded to a project exploring an aspect of the social history of Melbourne or Victoria based on the State Collection.

Elyas Alavi – Echoing Shadows

Echoing Shadows is a research-led project that explores the history and legacy of South Asian cameleers in Victoria through an artistic lens. The project will include field research in regional towns across Victoria, such as Mildura and Bendigo, as well as archival work with documents, photographs, books, and artifacts at the Library and Immigration Museum. The outcome will include new poetry, installation, and drawings, alongside a series of art talks and panel discussions.

Children’s Storytelling & Literature Fellowship

$15,000

A specialist fellowship to support a project exploring aspects of children’s book publishing, writing or illustrating for early years, children and young adult fiction (0 – 18 years of age).

Joanne Amarisa & Mei Leong – My Summer in the Library: A guided storytelling adventure for children and teens

Joanne and Mei will create a ‘choose your own adventure’ storybook which will offer a new way for children and teens to explore State Library Victoria. Joanne and Mei will produce a book of modular worksheets that encourage young visitors to the Library to engage more deeply with the spaces and collections and then write letters to the Library. Participants will learn new storytelling techniques and become active contributors to the Library’s rich history and legacy.

Climate Futures Artist Fellowship

Two fellowships, $15,000 each

Aims to empower artists to envision a future where art and climate intersect in profound and meaningful ways. These fellowships invite artists-in-residence to reimagine, reinterpret, and craft innovative responses by drawing inspiration from the State Collection.

Dr Anna McMichael – Sounds of the White Continent: Sounds and sights of Antarctica

Leading violinist and Head of Strings at Monash University, Dr Anna McMichael will create an immersive multimedia project which explores the impact of climate change on Antarctica. Drawing on the Library’s collection of historic photographs and records of Antarctic exploration, Dr McMichael will also commission new works of music and soundscapes.

Vei Tan and Patrick Macasaet – The Great Reclamation: A speculative archive of climate futures

The Great Reclamation reimagines the State Library of Victoria as a wondrous, climate-altered future, no longer a static repository of the past, but an active participant in shaping what comes next. Set within a gaming environment, the Library becomes terrain - alive with ecological memory, transformed artifacts, architectural matter and atmospheric change.

Creative Fellowships

Two fellowships, $15,000 each

Recipients are invited to be inspired by, repurpose, transform or imaginatively respond to published or original sources, including manuscripts, maps, music, newspapers, oral histories and rare printed material, in any way they choose.

Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga – KAPWA

At the heart of Mojo’s fellowship project is ‘KAPWA’: a philosophy of special importance to Filipino culture and psychology. Mojo’s research will focus on pre-colonial Filipino beliefs and traditions, particularly 'Batok’ or tattooing, shamanism, creation mythologies and the roles of gender non-conforming people within the culture. The fellowship will inspire a new piece of work combining photography and new, instrumental compositions.

Rebecca Dauti & Avni Dauti – Faed

Faed is a research project engaging with Deaf history from the mid-19th to early 20th century. It will focus on how Deaf lives and Deaf-authored knowledge appear - or not - within the State Collection. The project takes its name from Arthur James Wilson - pseudonym ‘Faed’ - a deaf writer, cyclist and inventor credited with inventing the wing mirror. His invention serves as inspiration for the project’s aim to look forward and backward simultaneously.

Georges Mora Fellowship

$10,000 each

Awarded to a contemporary artist to study, experiment and explore fresh thinking in their art, using the State Collection.

Hayley Millar Baker – Blak Hauntology

Lens-based artist Haley Millar Baker will focus on Indigenous hauntology – how the past, present and future are impacted by the spectral presence of culture, memory and spirituality. Haley will delve into the Library’s archives to engage with the collections through an Indigenous lens, to uncover what is recorded and omitted. The research will inform a major cinematic piece of work, where horror can be a vehicle for Indigenous storytelling, and where Indigenous women are not victims or ghosts of the past, but active agents of balance and transformation.

John Emmerson Research Fellowship

$15,000

Awarded to writers and researchers to use the John Emmerson Collection, one of the world’s largest collections of rare British printed works, comprising more than 5000 books and pamphlets from the 15th to 18th century.

Professor Danielle Clarke – Constructing an alternative history of reading

Prof. Danielle Clarke will use the extensive early modern holdings of the Emmerson Collection to construct an alternative history of reading, focused on the popular texts which were widely read by women and non-elite men from 1550 to 1700. An experienced scholar of early modern women’s reading, Prof. Clarke aims to challenge accepted narratives about women, women’s spaces and their intellectual contributions.

Kerri Hall Fellowship for the Performing Arts

$15,000

Awarded to a creative, artist or writer from regional Victoria in the field of performing arts.

Adam Fawcett – Just An Artist: Lost stories from regional stages that helped shape Victoria’s cultural landscape

Playwright, producer and screenwriter Adam Fawcett will delve into the Library’s Performing Arts Collection, to uncover the history and impact of performing artists in regional Victoria. The intended outcome of the fellowship is a series of audio drama scripts that bring these moments to life. Adam, who lives and works in Hepburn Springs on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, aims to highlight the importance of community spaces and performing artists in shaping regional contemporary life.

Marion Orme Page Creative Regional Fellowships

Two fellowships available, $15,000 each

In association with Regional Arts Victoria, these fellowships are awarded to regional Victorian creatives to create new works which are inspired by, repurpose, transform or imaginatively respond to the State Collection.

Louise Crisp - Bogong

Gippsland resident and accomplished poet Louise Crisp plans to research and write a long form ecopoetic text, Bogong, based on the archives of ecologist Maisie Fawcett (S. G. M. Carr,1912-1988), whose work led to the establishment of the Alpine National Park. Using Fawcett's diaries, field notes and papers all held at the Library, as well as field trips to the Bogong High Plains, Louise aims to highlight the social, historical and scientific impact of Fawcett’s research.

Lorraine Brigdale and Dr Peta Clancy - wala woka

Lorraine Brigdale (Yorta Yorta) and Peta Clancy (Yorta Yorta) will work in parallel to create new artwork in response to photographs by Nicholas Caire featuring Maloga Mission held in the Library’s collection. Both artists have familial ancestral connections to Maloga Mission, which was established in 1870 in NSW along the Murray River in Yorta Yorta/Bangerang. Their new artwork will be informed through research into Maloga Mission and the cultural and environmental significance of the Dhungala, via archives held at the Library. Their research will situate their family stories within the broader history of dispossession from Country and subsequent return.

Redmond Barry Fellowship

$15,000

Offers writers and scholars the opportunity to use collections at the Library and the University of Melbourne, to research a project in any discipline. This includes early career researchers and graduates.

Brendan Casey – Magascenes: A guidebook to Australian Little Magazines

Writer, editor and researcher Brendan Casey will explore the vital role of little magazines – small, independently edited and printed poetry journals – in shaping Australia’s literary culture. Brendan will draw on the archives of little magazines held in the rare book collections at both the Library and the University of Melbourne and produce an accessible guidebook of Australian little magazines with the aim of making them available to a wider audience.

Tate Adams Residency at Baldessin Studio

$5000 in funding and $5000 in kind

Awarded to an artist to create a limited edition or unique state artist’s book using research material from the State Collection and facilities at Baldessin Studio.

Ella Mittas – Artist’s book featuring original prints, essays and Greek Australian recipes

Greek Australian writer, artist and chef, Ella Mittas plans to create her second cookbook, featuring wood-cut prints, recipes and essays that celebrates Greek migrant culture. Working across multiple disciplines, Ella’s fellowship will examine the history and culture of Greek Australians in the Library’s archives, and explore the migrant experience of home, belonging and community.

For more information visit slv.vic.gov.au/fellowships.