Celebrating the relationship between Japan and Australia, through the lens of the Osaka 1970 & Brisbane 1988 World Expositions | 1970年の万国博覧会と1988年のブリスベン国際レジャー博覧会を通じ、日本とオーストラリアの友好的な関係についての講演会です。

A Special Relationship is a long-term research project to explore how artists, designers and other creatives have forged the bilateral relationship between Australia and Japan.

On 16 December 2022, free lecture were delivered in Osaka, Japan by Professor Linda Dennis, with guest artist Noriaki Okubo and an introduction via Zoom by Belloo Creative's Caroline Dunphy; while free lecture were delivered in Brisbane, Australia by Dr Jackie Ryan and Dr Kathryn Kelly.

The lecture content was delivered consecutively Japanese and English.

Click HERE to view lecture by Dr Kathryn Kelly and click HERE to view lecture by Dr Jackie Ryan.

Project Team

Dr Kathryn Kelly is a theatre historian and a Senior Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research interests include dramaturgy and feminist and transcultural performance, particularly the special relationship between Japan and Australia. She is company dramaturg with Belloo Creative; an award winning, all-female company, based in Meanjin/Brisbane.

Dr Levi Swann  is a Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design at Queensland University of Technology. He applies design-led approaches to understand and explore the interactions among humans, technology, and their broader environments.

Icaro Ibanez-Arricivita is a Lecturer in Fashion and Trans-Disciplinary Design at Queensland University of Technology. His research revolves around the human dimension of aesthetics in diverse social and cultural contexts.

Tessa Rixon is a practitioner-researcher in intermedial performance, digital scenography & Australian performance design. As Lecturer in Scenography at Queensland University of Technology, Tessa’s work promotes new modes of integrating established and emergent technologies into live performance; exploring the potentiality of authenticity within digital scenography.

Dr Jackie Ryan is a multi-award-winning Australian artist. She has an abiding interest in culture that connects her work across forms and genres, from writing and research to performance, arts administration, film work and visual design. She holds a PhD in History and Political Science from The University of Queensland.

Professor Linda Dennis is an Australian artist based in Tokyo and Mie Prefecture. For over a decade she has focused on ‘touch’ as a way of apprehending and understanding the world we live in. Her research interests include collaboration and international exchange. She completed a Doctorate of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts. Established Touch Base Creative Network (2014). Solo exhibitions at Mie Prefectural Art Museum and Toba Sea-Folk Museum (2016). Linda is a professor at Joshibi University of Art & Design.

Caroline Dunphy is the Co-Artistic Director of Belloo Creative and has worked over the past 25 years as an actor, director, theatre maker and trainer/educator. She holds a repertoire of original theatre works dedicated to interdisciplinary and transcultural performance, and worked in avant-garde theatre for 15 years both in Australia and Japan as a senior company member of Frank Theatre (Ozfrank) until 2010. Her specialised area is predominately in the Suzuki-inspired method Frank Suzuki Performance Aesthetics based on the theatrical discipline of the classic Suzuki Actor Training Method.

Noriaki Okubo has a long history as a performer and director in Japan. Highlights include directing Hamlet (2012) and Macbeth (2010) for Gento Theater Project in Dejong City, Korea and performing in Voyzeck at the 2010 Theatre Olympics in Seoul. Okubo was a Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre member with Tadashi Suzuki’s physical theatre company from 1998 to 2001. From 1989 to 1997 he worked with Shingeki theatre in Japan under director Yosuke Sawai. He studied at Kazuo Ohno Butoh Dance Studio from 1996 to1997 and in 2002 began his own theatre, Gento Theatre Project, in Kyoto.

Video by Tessa Rixon.

SUPPORTERS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Proudly supported by the Japanese World Exposition Commemoration Fund 2021, Design Lab, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Belloo Creative and Joshibi University of Art and Design.