“The lawless, irrational and ephemeral temperament of dreams corresponds to our true nature, therefore functioning as a form of resistance against colonial exploitation.”
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“Working on the essays in the book revealed to me that each creative work is profoundly associated with the place where it is conceived and produced. Space isn’t merely a container where we and other living and non-living beings exist, but turns into a place by the very act of our living, and that such places have their own deep-time history of which we are a minor but inseparable event.”
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“[…] most of the existing Asian-Australian stories we hear are focused on Asian diaspora in major cities, often overshadowing stories about those from or living in regional towns. “
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“Working with the Vietnamese community in Sunshine and the surrounding suburbs was my way of learning more about the post-war impact that led to the division between communities in Vietnam—especially so considering that the Vietnamese perspective is consistently ignored from the US dominant narrative.”
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“It’s a wilful inscrutability, because I never want to be co-opted.”
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“I like to think that writing creatively within the exacting constraints of form is my way of simultaneously embodying and satirising the experience of being a creative in Singapore.”
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“I define artistic success as creating work that I am personally proud of.”
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“That journey is so endless: seeing the people who raised you as people, [and] realising they existed wholly without you.”
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“The YA genre may seem trite [to some], but even before YA was a category, ‘YA’ books were being used [as teaching aids] in school such as The Outsiders or The Catcher in the Rye, which suggests that YA can rightly be used to convey serious and important issues, especially to a younger audience.”
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“[…] the aim of literature is to provide an elevated and truthful representation of a society through language. So, if any piece of writing doesn’t consider the multiple languages—and the many forms of the same language—of a given society, then its not an effective literary practice.”
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“I don’t have time for history narrated as a sequence of factual events. It’s a view that favours the names of leaders and specific places, and doesn’t convey the reality for ordinary people.”
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“Camp is really something that one cannot pursue as a purpose. It is something that comes naturally as once one wants to be camp, the characteristic of camp is no longer there.”
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“The way refugees are often depicted in news and media don’t usually show the humanity, other than the suffering. So I wanted to show refugees as people like you and I, people who have had to go through a really devastating event.”
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Former Play School presenter and founder of Joy House productions, Joy Hopwood brings us The Gift that Gives, an Asian Australian romantic comedy that begins in a bookshop.
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4A staff and gallery assistants speak with Monique Moate on the importance of accessibility in the arts.
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Fi Peel, Mây Trần, Phoebe Lupton and Eugenie Lee speak with Monique Moate about the intersection of disability and cultural marginalisation, and their endeavours to foster arts accessibility.
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“[…] solidarity and movement-building happens [on many levels]: at a policy level, in academic spaces, in kitchens, over dim sum and kimchi, on the streets and in intimate spaces of care.”
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“I think that people often create works that don't acknowledge the many bodies that have touched a project in smaller or larger ways, art structures and systems push for just one or two names to be acknowledged, and I don't think it's either fair or accurate.”
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“People who are seen as ‘victims’ can often have really disempowering experiences with the media, which is good to keep in mind to avoid replicating that experience. Communication and involvement at all stages, including concept development, felt really important.”
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“Writing fiction takes an extraordinary amount of discipline and focus, but there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a manuscript develop over time.”
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