CEREMONY HOLDER

Victoria Spence has been working as an artist, cultural producer, and Life Rites practitioner since 1988. She has made work in Live Art at the intersections of cultural, contemporary, community and creative arts practice as a performer, dramaturg, curator and producer. In 2010, as part of the Connections’ residency, she established the not-for-profit organisation Living with our Dead, resulting in the project, Picnic Among Friends a yearly event from 2010-2019 in Girrahween Park, Earlwood, which continues to be seeded in communities across NSW and Australia. Alongside her artist at large, mentor and ceremonial practice, she is the founder of Life Rites, Holistic Funeral Directors specialising in bespoke doula-led end-of-life, funeral and ongoing bereavement care in the greater Sydney area.

CREATIVE PRODUCER

Rhae (they/them) is a socially and environmentally engaged artist based on Latji Latji Country (Mildura) and working across regional Victoria and NSW. Their social enterprise Regenerative Communities offers creative and regenerative community development services to regional artists and organisations. Over the past 20 years they have worked as a creative producer, project manager, community planner and independent artist.

Their work as a practicing artist explores the intersections between body and place, grounded in a deep connection to landscape via the methodology of Body Weather, a comprehensive training and performance practice that develops a conscious relation to the state of change inside and outside the body.

ARTIST

Hayley West is a socially engaged artist and independent death care worker living on Djaara country, Castlemaine. For over two decades, her art has explored mortality and memorialisation through exhibitions and projects worldwide, the same themes that shape her death care practice. Through The Departure, she offers values-driven end-of-life care, empowering people to create meaningful, affordable, and environmentally gentle farewells. She also hosts DEAD AIR a weekly radio show on MAINfm and is a member of the Natural Death Advocacy Network and Australian Home Funeral Alliance. 

ARTIST

Tom Isaacs creates sculptures, textile works, and performance art pieces which explore ideas of depression and death, healing and resurrection. His work deals directly with the experience of living with mental illness as well as the desire for healing, including speculative ideas about a cure that could be found in spirituality, philosophy, psychoanalysis, or even in art itself. In his textile practice Isaacs draws on a family history of quilting to create fabric works which embody love, warmth, and care. Isaacs often uses felt and wool material in his textile work, referencing the work of German artist Joseph Beuys who championed the healing power of art.