PRESS RELEASE:
Former General Manager and Festival Director of Queer Screen Jain Moralee joins Underbelly Arts as Executive Director, ahead of the upcoming Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival on Cockatoo Island in July and August this year.
“As a long time admirer of the role that Underbelly Arts has played in the Sydney cultural landscape, I am thrilled to be joining the team as Executive Director. Together with Artistic Director Eliza Sarlos, I look forward to continuing the amazing work Clare Holland undertook in steering Underbelly Arts into its bold and bright future.”
The appointment follows previous Executive Director Clare Holland’s move to FBi Radio to become the station’s Managing Director. Clare started with Underbelly Arts as a volunteer and an artist in 2008 and became Executive Director in 2010, working tirelessly to guide Underbelly Arts’ growth and development over the last three years.
Stuart Buchanan, Chair of Underbelly Arts, says: "We're delighted to welcome Jain on board – both her experience and her vision will be a huge asset to Underbelly Arts at this exciting time in our history. With two months to go until the Arts Lab and Festival on Cockatoo Island, we're sure she's going to hit the ground running and help us to deliver our best season yet."
The Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival team is growing quickly ahead of this year’s event, welcoming Festival Manager Michelle O’Brien (Sydney Festival, Vancouver’s New Forms Festival, Edinburgh International Festival), Marketing Coordinator Angela Bennetts (Even Books, Alternative Media Group, National Young Writers’ Festival) and Program Manager Kate Britton (Kaldor Public Art Projects, COFA, DAS Platforms) to the fold.
Underbelly Arts will launch its full program in mid June 2013. The Underbelly Arts Lab will take place on Cockatoo Island from 24-31 July with the two-day ticketed Underbelly Arts Festival showcasing its magic on Saturday 3 & Sunday 4 August.
ABOUT JAIN MORALEE
Jain Moralee has an extensive and diverse range of experience in the Australian screen industry. Educated in South Australia, Jain relocated to Sydney in 2005 to work for the Australian Film Commission (Screen Australia) in Marketing, predominately managing international travel grants for filmmakers. In 2009 she joined community arts organisation Queer Screen, where she was responsible for introducing a small commissioning and finishing grants round, giving Queer identified screen practitioners opportunities to get new work on screen, and more recently she undertook the Festival Director role, producing the Mardi Gras Film Festival and an annual calendar of events. Jain is also a freelance producer, with a long list of short, documentary and commercial credits and is currently in development with a documentary about Sydney’s Force Majeure.
ABOUT UNDERBELLY ARTS
Underbelly Arts started in 2007 as a response to the number of amazing artists working out of bedrooms and warehouses. As a kind of social experiment, it sought to bring all those artists under the one roof and expose them to one another, and to new audiences.
Its flagship event, the Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival, consists of a residency period (The Lab) where work is developed and audiences are given a unique chance to watch art unfold, culminating in The Festival to show off and celebrate what has been created.
Since 2007, the Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival has taken over Carriageworks, created an arts precinct along Chippendale’s Kensington Street, and inhabited Cockatoo Island. Underbelly Arts works in non-traditional or reimagined spaces to see how artists and audiences respond to these environments.
This year marks Underbelly Arts fifth Lab and Festival and its second on Cockatoo Island.
http://underbellyarts.com.au/