Michael Graeve (President) is a sound and visual artist and educator based in Melbourne. He exhibits, performs, curates and teaches internationally. Michael joined Liquid Architecture at the time of incorporation in 2007 and is currently the Chair of the Board. He has consistently contributed to small arts organisations, first as a founding committee member of Grey Area Arts Space Inc from 1996 to 1999 and then as board member and program manager at West Space Inc from 2000 to 2004. He teaches in the Sculpture, Sound and Spatial Practices Department and the MFA Program at RMIT University, and has previously taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Monash University, The Victorian College of the Arts and Victoria University. He is undertaking a practice-led PhD researching crossovers between sonic and visual arts. As an artist he works across sound, painting and installation in gallery and concert contexts. His sound art has been investigated in books by Caleb Kelly, Nicolas Collins and Ros Bandt, as well as through articles in Artforum International, Art and Text, Eyeline and RealTime.
Dr Philip Samartzis (Vice President) is a Melbourne based sound artist who has performed and exhibited widely including at The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris in 2001, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh in 2002, The Mori Arts Centre, Tokyo in 2003, The National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow in 2009 and The South African National Museum, Cape Town in 2010. He has curated five Immersion festivals between 1999 and 2008, Variable Resistance 2001 to 2003, and a series of international sound art presentations for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Podewil Art Center, Berlin. In 2010 the Australia Council for the Arts, and the Australian Antarctic Division awarded Philip fellowships to document the effects of extreme climate and weather events at Davis Station and Macquarie Island. In 2011 he co-curated Magnetic Traces: A Survey of French and Australian Sound Art for the Parisonic Festival, Paris. In 2012 he was awarded an independent curators grant from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts to research and develop Bogong ELECTRIC, a site specific festival dispersed through the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme in the Australian Alps. Philip is a Chief Investigator on two Australia Research Council funded projects, Designing Sound for Health and Wellbeing (2009-12), and Spatial Dialogues: Public Art and Climate Change (2010-13).
Annabel Allen (Treasurer) is a qualified Chartered Accountant with extensive experience in financial management, risk and compliance management, external and internal audit, business continuity management, business process improvement and strategic planning, across Government, arts industry, private sector and ASX listed entities. Annabel is currently Group Risk & Compliance Manager at JB Hi-Fi Ltd where she has worked for the last 12 months, and previously held the role of Assurance & Compliance Manager for 4 years at Arts Centre Melbourne, gaining extensive experience of both the arts industry as well as Arts Victoria and State Government financial reporting processes. Prior to this she spent 6 years working in external audit at Deloitte in both their Melbourne and Manchester (UK) practices, working on wide range of public and private sector clients. Annabel also consults part time to local arts organisations and is currently working on a business process improvement at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Nat Bates (Secretary) is a composer, sound artist, musician, curator, and teacher. He has produced and performed experimental music, and has composed sound design and music for short films, videos and animations since 1998. He has produced interactive sound works for the web, CD-Rom and installation and has curated and coordinated group shows of interactive installation, music video and sound art. His on going projects include the experimental rock outfit MxR, and Film§coria; a series of soundtracks for appropriated video pieces. Nat held the position of Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture, Australia's premiere annual festival of sound arts, for 12 years, after co-founding the festival in 2000. He currently holds the board position of Treasurer with Liquid Architecture Sound Inc. He has lectured in sound art from the National Gallery in Canberra to Melbourne’s RMIT University, and currently teaches studio recording, studio production and sound design for multimedia at RMIT. Nat is currently undertaking a PhD in sound art also at RMIT.
Phip Murray is a Melbourne based artist and writer, and the Director of West Space contemporary art gallery. Her previous employment includes lecturing in contemporary art history and theory, and working for the Next Wave Festival for which she helped create the artist run initiative exhibition Containers Village in 2006 as well as the interdisciplinary Nightclub projects in 2008. Phip has completed a Masters degree through RMIT’s Media Arts department and also studied Arts/Law at the University of Melbourne. She is also a Board member of the independent contemporary art journal unMagazine. Phip writes often about art, with recent projects including texts to accompany exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria and a series of articles for Photofile.
Benjamin Strong is a Senior Associate with GI & Sanicki Lawyers, a boutique legal practice specializing in the fields of commercial law, intellectual property, music and the creative arts. Ben's main areas of practice are commercial litigation, intellectual property and music law. Ben completed a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Laws (Hons) at Deakin University 2002. Between 2003 and 2006 he worked with employment/ personal injury firm Ryan Carlisle Thomas, having been admitted to practice in 2004. In 2006 Ben completed a Graduate Diploma in Communications Law at the University of Melbourne, the focus of which was Intellectual Property and Media Law. Ben subsequently joined the Communications Law Centre, a specialist organisation providing free advice to the community in the areas of Internet law, defamation, telecommunications law and intellectual property. In late 2008 Ben co-authored and edited the ‘Internet Law’ Chapter of the 2009 Redfern Community Legal Handbook, published by UNSW Press. From 2008 to 2010 Ben worked as a full time academic with Victoria University in the fields of media law, intellectual property law, communications law, and internet and telecommunications law. Ben continues to teach Intellectual Property Law and Media Law at VU. He also provides ongoing legal training sessions to community radio broadcaster 3RRR.
Emma Telfer is the director at Emma Telfer & Associates, marketing communications consultants and strategic alliance advisors to the creative industries. Motivated by projects that assist in creating a culturally rich and sustainable society, Emma works together, and alongside a trusted network of collaborators, directing and managing marketing communications for major not-for-profit, government policy and commercial projects within the creative industries, including Open House Melbourne, Pin-up Architecture & Design Project Space, Broached Commissions and Geyer. Emma Telfer is on the Board of Open House Melbourne and is a member of the DesignEx Advisory Group and is also a founding partner, with Dan Honey and Kate Rhodes, of the Office For Good Design. The Office for Good Design promotes the value of design & creativity in shaping a positive future. The Office creates physical and virtual platforms to stimulate creative thinking and interdisciplinary exchange. Through exhibitions, public conversations, installations, strategies and activities, both self-initiated and commissioned, the Office for Good Design’s mission is to advance excellence in the creative industries, support innovation and advocate the value of design, architecture and the arts. Recent projects include Annual Manual: A Guide to Design Now, 7 Kinds of Happiness: Conversations on Design and Emotion, Sound of Buildings and Audio Architecture, a program that launched the Arts Centre Hamer Hall redevelopment.
