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Stella Day Out 2025
Margaret Whitlam Galleries
14 August
5:00pm-8:45pm
It’s finally here! Stella Day Out 2025 Sydney will be held in Parramatta as a collaborative mini-festival supported by Western Sydney Creative, the Writing and Society Research Centre and the School of HCA (WSU). This thrilling evening is a chance to come together and celebrate our shared love of creative cultures and literary communities across our region. WSC’s popular Supper Club format will meet Stella’s vision in supporting women and non-binary writers via grass-roots literary festivals. The Sydney Stella Day Out 2025 offers guests a chance to share dinner while enjoying a thought-provoking series of conversations about contemporary writing, alongside high-energy creative readings in the stunning Margaret Whitlam Galleries. Come along and celebrate the best in new writing from Western Sydney.
We are fortunate to run the Sydney Stella Day 2025 in partnership with the timely exhibition 'Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land - It's Our Birthright'. Guest Curated by Kyra Kum-Sing, this exhibition explores Aboriginal self-determination through art and activism and features artworks by artists and community members from Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.
The exhibition in the Margaret Whitlam Galleries is on display until 28 August. As a prelude to the festival, eminent novelist Professor Gail Jones will run a creative writing workshop for WSU postgraduate students (3pm-5pm).
ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE ABORIGINAL LAND - IT'S OUR BIRTHRIGHT: STELLA DAY OUT plus SUPPER CLUB – WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY (WSC/WSRC)
- 5:00pm: Drinks/nibbles and chance to view 'Always Was, Always Will Be' exhibition (Margaret Whitlam Galleries)
- 5:30pm: Welcome to Country and event welcome (MC Margaret Hancock) (seminar room)
- 5:45pm: Opening conversation with Dr Mykaela Saunders and Associate Professor Kate Fagan (seminar room)
- 6:30pm: Dinner
- 7:15pm: Creative readings with Dr Mykaela Saunders, Jumaana Abdu, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, and Sara M. Saleh (‘Always Was, Always Will Be’, Margaret Whitlam Gallery)
- 7:45pm: Closing conversation with Jumaana Abdu, Randa Abdel-Fattah; moderated by Sara M. Saleh (seminar room)
- 8.30pm: Closing remarks by Dr Kat Sandbach (Deputy Dean, SoHCA)
An event jointly supported by the Stella Organisation and Western Sydney University (Western Sydney Creative, the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and the Writing and Society Research Centre).
Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, teacher and researcher, and the editor of This All Come Back Now, the Aurealis Award–winning, world-first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP, 2022). Her new book Always Will Be won the 2022 David Unaipon Award and was long-listed for the 2025 Stella Prize. Mykaela’s novel manuscript Last Rites of Spring was also shortlisted for the Unaipon Award in 2020, and received a Next Chapter Fellowship in 2021. Mykaela has won the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, the National Indigenous Story Award, the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize for creative non-fiction and the University of Sydney’s Sister Alison Bush Graduate Medal for Indigenous research. Of Dharug descent, Mykaela belongs to the Tweed Goori community through her Bundjalung and South Sea Islander family. Mykaela has worked in Aboriginal education since 2003, and at the tertiary level since 2012. They are currently an Indigenous postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University, researching First Nations speculative fiction.
Jumaana Abdu is a Dal Stivens Award winner and an alumnus of the Wheeler Centre Next Chapter program. Her work features in Thyme Travellers (Roseway Publishing), an international anthology of Palestinian speculative fiction. She has been published elsewhere in Kill Your Darlings, Westerly, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Liminal, Overland, Debris and New Australian Fiction 2024. During the day, she is a medical doctor. Her debut novel Translations (Penguin) was shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize.
Randa Abdel-Fattah is an ARC Future Fellow at Macquarie University. Her research areas cover Islamophobia, race, Palestine, the war on terror, youth identities and social movement activism. Dr Abdel-Fattah is also a former lawyer and the award-winning author of twelve books for children and young adults, which have been translated into over thirteen languages. She has won and been shortlisted and longlisted for awards including the Australian Book Industry Award, the Australian Book of The Year Award, the Victorian and NSW premiers’ literary awards, the Stella Prize, the Children’s Book Council Award, Middle East Outreach Council USA and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Her bilingual English and Arabic picture story book 11 Words for Love, illustrated by Maxine Beneba Clarke, was shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Award.
Sara M. Saleh is a writer/poet and human rights lawyer of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage. Her prose, poetry and non-fiction have been widely published in English and Arabic across dozens of literary platforms, and she has shared her work globally on stages from Brooklyn to Bangalore. Sara made history in Australia as the first poet to win both the prestigious Peter Porter and the Judith Wright Poetry Prizes (2020-21). Her debut novel, Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm, 2023), and her poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls (UQP, 2023), have received multiple national and international prizes and shortlistings between them, and won the 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award and 2024 Anne Elder Award respectively. She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, and writers residencies at Varuna, Amant New York and Banff Arts Center, among other honours and accolades.
Kate Fagan is a writer, musician and scholar whose third volume, First Light, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Award. She directs The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and arts workers from Western Sydney, and is a former Editor of How2 magazine (US). Kate is also an internationally esteemed songwriter whose album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive’s Folk Recording Award. She is currently Director of the WSU Writing and Society Research Centre and Chair of the Sydney Review of Books Advisory Board. Her most recent book is Song in the Grass (Giramondo, 2024).
ALLY
14 August
ALLY’s music is drawn from Afro-Peruvian, Cuban and Caribbean traditional rhythms paired with a modern jazz aesthetic. It encapsulates a cross-pollination of cultures, ideas, and sounds grounded by the distinctive resonance of the Peruvian cajón. Whilst inspired by the past this music has vitality, energy and a sense of space. There is an organic balance of air pushed through trombone and saxophones with skin on wood.
Musicians include saxophonist/composer Gai Bryant (Elio Villafranca, Jim McNeely), Peruvian Australian percussionists Giorgio Rojas (Burn the Floor, Ursula Yovich) and Julio Candela (El Orqueston, Felix Valdelomar), sensational trombonist James Greening (Lou Reed, Maria Schneider), pianist Daniel Pliner (Watussi, Monsieur Camembert), bassist Harry Birch (Holopeak) or Cesar Marin (Son Veneno, Sonido) and second-time winner of Australia’s National Grand Poetry Slam, Brazilian Australian poet Dai Moret.
ALLY released their debut album Drum Junk in July 2022 garnering an ARIA World Music nomination.
Daley, Swanton and Greening Trio
7 August
Daley, Swanton and Greening are a super trio of Australian jazz, improv and world beat, bringing together three of the most highly esteemed players working in Australia today.
Accordionist and pianist Gary Daley, trombonist and trumpeter James Greening, and double bassist Lloyd Swanton have all been playing music professionally for nearly five decades, and between them have worked with practically anyone who’s anyone in the Australian music scene. And in between, leading their own projects.
They share deep personal and artistic connections which translate into effortless music making. Be it a jazz standard, an original composition or free improvisation they inhabit a creative space full of freedom and imagination.
Magic happens for musicians and audience in their performances. A Daley, Swanton and Greening performance is about connection and communication on the deepest level.
Always Was Always Will Be Community Day
Whitlam Institute, Margaret Whitlam Galleries
Parramatta NSW, Australia
25 July
Western Sydney Creative and Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative warmly invites you to our Community Day celebration for the Always Was, Always Will Be: It’s Our Birthright exhibition held at the Margaret Whitlam Galleries on 25 July.
Join us in celebrating and honouring First Nations voices and connection to Country through powerful art, storytelling, and community gathering. The day will include insightful artist talks, engaging panel discussions and guided exhibition tours to offer a deeper understanding of the works and the stories behind them.
World Music Concert
26 June
Students of music at WSU learn to contextualise themselves on the global stage by exploring different ways of being, knowing, and doing music from around the world. Facilitated by Wiradjuri ethnomusicologist Lachlan Blackwood, our students practise a wide variety of musical approaches in weekly workshops and choose a focus area for their final performance. We invite you to come and be a part of this journey with us at Art of Sound as our student groups perform music from Indonesia, the Middle East, Creole traditions… and more!
Ancient & Contemporary Strings Sounds of Northern/Southern China
29 May
Chuqiao Zhao (guzheng) and Yuyan (Monica) Tang (guzheng)
Intercultural and lateral thinking is embodied in the vibrating strings research of doctoral candidates Chuqiao Zhao and Yuyan (Monica) Tang.
Both bring a high pedigree of practice as guzheng performers to their studies. Zhao, who holds a Master of Fine Arts from Shenyang Conservatory of Music in Northern China, has achieved international recognition, with the 5th Malaysia International Guzheng Art Festival Individual Gold Award, and her research explores “[guzheng] intangible asset values as a beauty aesthetic to connect cross-culturally to Australian multiculturalism.” She plans to commission composers from China, Japan, and Australia. Tang is also impressively virtuosic as a guzheng performer studying at Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Southern China, and has been recognized internationally with guzheng awards at the Paris Music Competition (2023) and Gold Prize – ASEAN Youth Arts Festival, Guzheng Contest (2009).
Her research explores the “‘voice’ of Chinese guzheng performance with calligraphy…integrating the interconnectedness of visual-music practice into Australian music performance.” Here they present an exciting program featuring ancient and contemporary strings sounds of Northern and Southern China with stunning virtuosity born of high-level emersion in their various guzheng traditions—one broad and energetic, the other angular with gestural sharpness.
Chuqiao Zhao (guzheng)
Yuyan (Monica) Tang (guzheng)
Shohrat Tursun Trio
15 May
The Shohrat Tursun Trio is a dynamic combination of ancient Uyghur melodies and African chant and rhythms woven into contemporary compositions.
Shohrat Tursun is a world-renowned vocalist/ musician and Uyghur bard who has traveled the world performing the hidden treasures of his culture. A seventh generation musician, Shohrat's soaring vocals and agile Dutar playing provides a foundation for the Trio to meld their diverse sound.
Yaw Derkyi is a Ghanaian percussionist who brings a sense of the animistic to the collective through his driving tribal rhythms and chants. Richard Petkovic is the trio’s musical director/producer and provides a deftly modern twist by actively inviting the musicians to share their cultures from fresh perspectives.
Live these musicians deliver the thunderous attack of a rock and roll band through to emanating the contemplative vibrations of a Sufi-inspired hymn. A cerebral experience; Shohrat's timeless voice will change your internal chemistry!
Photographer: Stephen Mifsud
Kay Proudlove
8 May
Kay Proudlove is a Wollongong raised musician, writer and creative She is an indie-folk singer-songwriter with a remarkably agile, engaging, honest, soul-bearing voice and a wry, dry-ice sense of humour. With a live performance style that is much like being invited into her lounge room, her songs are truly stories set to melody, by turns relatable, humorous and heartbreaking. Creating an intimacy between audience and performer through vulnerability.
Having worked in the music industry for over fifteen years as a recording and performing artist. She has played Woodford Folk Festival, The National Folk Festival, Illawarra Folk Festival, Nannup Music Festival as well as every bar in Greater Sydney that local emerging artists cut their teeth on.
Having already released two EPs and a live album, 2020 saw Kay release the relatable and wordy single Maybe I'm Not a Grown Up, which documents torturous trips to the supermarket, laundry confusion and underlying social anxiety.
In 2024 Kay completed a national tour of her first one-woman theatrical show Dear Diary, a journey of stories and songs from her early 2000’s teenage memoirs.
Spanning both theatre and composition, Kay’s writing style is observational, witty, hilarious and heartbreaking.
Kay is an alumna of Western Sydney University’s music program.
Saans Lo (take breath)
Shivanjani Lal
Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Whitlam Institute
5 March – 8 May
Shivanjani Lal’s artworks are a form of reclamation. Through the lens of five generation of women in her family, she asks us to engage with hidden or untold histories, especially those associated with colonisation, it’s transfer of people, resources and wealth around the world, and the impact of these entrenched power imbalances, have on the way we view or engage with the world around us.
Family and women’s toil are embedded in the artworks with three generations including Lal’s mother and nieces assisting in the production. The exhibition provides space to engage particularly with the lives of her maternal and paternal grandmothers. Though quite different in temperament these two women shared a birthdate (same day, different year) as well as a shared history of resilience and determination. Both women were widowed at a young age, each having to remake their lives, creating a new future for themselves and their families. As Lal states “I get to live echoes of their strength… and with time there are slippages, slow change in our relationships, a form of gentle disappearance of these women, that has a beauty attached.”
The materials Lal has chosen to use throughout the exhibition have a redemptive quality. They are chosen for their capacity to transform. Haldi (turmeric) plays a pivotal role. Known to possess anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, and healing properties, Haldi is used in Hindi cultural practices, including prewedding rituals or purification or cleansing. When lime (calcium hydroxide) is added to Haldi, alchemical magic occurs with the rich mustard colour transforming into red.
‘Lal’ means red/beloved, and for the artist the duality of red’s representation of both love and anger is significant in reclaiming her families, and those of the extended Girmitiya communities.
Western Sydney Creative Artist Commission
Shivanjani Lal is the inaugural recipient of the Western Sydney Creative Artist Commission.
The Western Sydney Creative Artist Commission is a new award supporting the development and creation of new art by Western Sydney based mid-career artists or artists’ collectives. The Commission is awarded to an artist or artists’ collectives for the purpose of producing an ambitious new work, presented as part of Western Sydney Creative’s cultural programming.
Saans Lo (take breath) by Shivanjani Lal, 2025, Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Rydalmere.
Photographer: Sally Tsoutas
Saans Lo (take breath) Supper Club
Thursday, 10 April 5pm-9pm
Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Whitlam Institute
The supper club brings together Western Sydney University’s academics and students, and invited guest speakers alongside Western Sydney Creative’s exhibiting artists for a lively night of discussion centred on the key themes and issue presented in the current exhibition and aligned to research within the school, whilst enjoying a casual meal together.
The first Supper Club will be held on the evening of 10 April at the Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Building EZ, Parramatta South Campus, and aligns to the solo exhibition by Shivanjani Lal, Saans Lo (take breath).
Keep an eye on our website and social media for updates.
Event open to all.The event will be catered by Fijian Indian Caterers Jhatpat Catering.
The supper club is a collaborative project developed by Western Sydney Creative and the School of Humanities and Communication Arts.
@westernsydneyunicreative westernsydney.edu.au/wscreative
Biographies for Supper Club
Dr. S. Janakiraman is a career diplomat, joining the Indian Foreign Service in 2002.
He has served in various capacities in Diplomatic Missions in Brasilia, Lisbon, Yangon and Pretoria: served as Second Secretary Political, Commercial and Administration in Brasilia from 2004-2008; as First Secretary Political, Commercial, Consular and Administration in Lisbon from 2008-2011; and as Counsellor, headed the Commercial Wing in the Embassy of India in Yangon from 2013-2016. He has served as Deputy High Commissioner in Pretoria (South Africa) with concurrent accreditation to Kingdom of Lesotho, from 2016-2019.
Before joining as Consul General of CGI, Sydney he served as Ambassador of India to the Republic of Cuba from July 2021 to November 2023.
Aarti Betigeri is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and former foreign correspondent, born in Melbourne to parents from Maharashtra and Karnataka. After an early career as a radio and television news presenter and producer with SBS and the ABC, she moved to India and lived in New Delhi for almost a decade. During her time in New Delhi, she reported across South Asia for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, the Christian Science Monitor, Public Radio International, and many others. Currently, she works as a journalist and advisor focusing on international relations. In 2024, her first book was published. Growing up Indian in Australia, is an anthology of first-person essays on the lived migrant experiences of Indian-Australians.
Shivanjani Lal
Shivanjani Lal is a Fijian-Australian artist and curator whose work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss. She uses story-telling, objects and video to account for lost stories of Girmitiya (Indenture) from the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Lal grew up in Western Sydney, before study interstate and abroad. Between 2017-18, Lal sought to globalise her practice with a prolonged stay in India, which led to periods of research in Nepal, Bangladesh and Fiji. She was the 2019 Create New South Wales Visual Arts Emerging Fellow, and the 2020 Georges Mora Fellow. In 2021 she graduated with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London with a Masters in Artists Film and Moving Image. In 2023 she received the QAGOMA Vida Lahey Scholarship. Lal’s work has been exhibited across Australia, and internationally most recently in the Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry. Lal currently lives and works in Western Sydney.
Shivanjani Lal is the inaugural recipient of the Western Sydney Creative Artist Commission. The Western Sydney Creative Artist Commission is a new award supporting the development and creation of new art by Western Sydney based mid-career artists or artists’ collectives. The Commission is awarded to an artist or artists’ collectives for the purpose of producing an ambitious new work, presented as part of Western Sydney Creative’s cultural programming.
Manisha Anjali
Manisha Anjali is the author of Naag Mountain (Giramondo, 2024). Naag Mountain has been shortlisted for the Judith Calanthe Award for Poetry, highly commended at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize. Manisha was a recipient of BLINDSIDE’s Regional Arts & Research Residency at Mooramong, a Writer-in-Residence at Incendium Radical Library and a Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre. She is the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations. Manisha is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne.
Moderator: Dr Asha Chand
Dr Asha Chand is Associate Dean International, South Asia, and Senior Lecturer/Convener in Journalism at Western Sydney University. With 40 years of experience in academia, journalism, and newsroom management, she excels in high-level networking across industries and tertiary education. In 2023, she received India’s Nav Rattan (nine jewels) award in Delhi, recognizing her with eight other Non-Resident Indians out of a diaspora of several million NRIs for her work in teaching, research and community engagement. Asha holds a PhD in Media, Culture, Migration, and Marriage and is a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy. Honoured with the Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman (2018) at the House of Commons in London and Hind Rattan (2019), in Delhi, she also won national awards for teaching excellence in Australia.
Panellist: Dipak Singh
Dipak Singh is a Sydney-based Indo- Fijian writer. He started his writing journey through a doctoral program in Creative Writing at Deakin University. His research project was Transforming Memory into Art: Stories from Fiji and the Indo-Fijian Diaspora. His creative fiction reconstructs the history of Naleba Village, in the Fiji Islands, from the period of indenture settlement to the military coups of 1987 and beyond.
Dipak Singh published his first book, Revisiting Fijian Memories: Naleba and Beyond in 2022. His second publication, Tilraji’s Life: Biography of a Subaltern Woman, is a research component of a life writing project completed at Western Sydney University towards a Doctor of Creative Arts qualification, and is the story of Dipak’s mother, Tilraji, who spent her childhood in Korovou, Bua, and adult life in Naleba in Vanua Levu.
Panellist: Suzanne Claridge
Suzanne Claridge is a writer and artist based on Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia). She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Art & Design. Her interdisciplinary practice-based research focuses on Girmitiya (indentured Indian labour) history, feminist postcolonial studies, archival poetics and experimental writing practices.
Panellist TBC
Women in the Arts Leadership Forum 2025
Tuesday, 11 March, 9am - 5pm
Female Orphan School, Whitlam Institute
Join us as we explore ideas and foster collaboration for a resilient and inclusive future through the lens of women in the arts in contemporary Australia.
Can we reimagine the system to better reflect our values? What will it take to move from surviving to thriving? Can we turn bold ideas into real impact and create lasting change?
The 2025 Women in the Arts Leadership Forum, presented by Western Sydney University, explores connection, cohesion and leadership in the arts.
This one day event will include keynote presentations, panel discussions and practical exploration of themes including community engagement, wellbeing, technology, social cohesion, and sustainability.
The forum reflects and resonates with the unique perspectives and leadership of women in Western Sydney's arts sector.
Garage Noise
Garage Noise Garage Noise are a Sydney based four-piece Pop-punk, Midwest Emo, up and coming young band who put their hearts on their sleeves in every song they play. With influences such as 5 Seconds of Summer, Blink-182, The Story So Far, and Fontaines D.C., Sam, Zac, Bella, and Flynn combine their eclectic tastes to write songs that connect to their audience and allow them to relate to the music in their own way.
Their whole lives are rooted in the importance and love of music, and Garage Noise aim to share this love with their audience at every show and in every recording.
2024 was a huge year for these young musicians; they have played with established Australian acts such as Down And Out, Soso, Future Static, Ruffians, and many more, at venues all around Sydney. These four musicians have just finished recording their second coming EP titled ‘Daisy-Brain’ at Damien Gerard Studios.
Su Hee Cho
Su Hee Cho is a Sydney-based multi-instrumentalist who has completed her Master of Music Studies (Performance) majoring in collaborative piano. She is a Chapple Bremner Scholarship recipient and has studied with Australia’s leading collaborative pianist David Miller AM at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is currently a 3rd year student at Wonkwang Digital University studying Korean Traditional Performing Arts.
Su Hee is a highly sought-after keyboard player in the musical theatre circuit, having played in world-class musical productions including, Hamilton, 9-5, Moulin Rouge, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast musical. She also performs as a freelance pianist and is well-versed in multiple genres of music.
Besides collaborative piano, Su Hee has produced professional backing tracks for the annual Christmas pantomimes held at the Blackpool Grand Theatre in the UK. She is an educator in the daytime and has had the opportunity to conduct the Symphonia Jubilate Orchestra for two years, providing primary and high school students with engaging orchestral experiences. Su Hee is also a Traditional Korean percussionist who has recently completed professional development in Korea funded by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust fund. With a passionate goal to share the beauty of Traditional Korean music with the world, she has started taking the first step by educating through performances and workshops.
Benjamin Carey
Benjamin Carey is a Sydney-based composer, improviser and educator, and Senior Lecturer in Composition and Music Technology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney.
Ben makes electronic music using the modular synthesiser, develops interactive music software and creates audio-visual works. Ben’s work is concerned with musical interactivity, generativity and the delicate dance between human and machine agencies in composition and performance.
Ben has released ten albums, including METASTABILITY (2023), Hypertelic (2021) and ANTIMATTER (2019), and has collaborated with a variety of artists including Sonya Holowell, JACK Quartet, Sydney Chamber Opera, ELISION ensemble and others. He publishes traditional research outputs on electronic music, modular synthesis and the philosophy of technology in a variety of publications.
His creative work has been performed and exhibited internationally at the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music (UK), Sydney Festival (Australia), IRCAM Live (France), VIVID Sydney (Australia), and elsewhere. In2022/23 Ben was awarded with a Univeristy of Sydney SOAR Prize to support his research and creative work.
