How I got my start

Successful creatives illuminate their career trajectories to reveal insights into starting out in the arts industry and keeping up momentum.

Learn while you study and be audacious…

I always had a job in the arts sector while completing my degree, no matter how menial or junior.

While I was studying at Monash University, I worked in a small commercial gallery in Richmond. Fortunately, the Director Michael Wardell had previously worked at National Gallery of Australia, so he taught me basic cataloguing skills and art handling techniques. I worked for $7 per hour and hand wrote the entire mailing list. Soon after, I worked part-time as Research Assistant at MUMA (formerly Monash University Gallery) and was briefed to research an exhibition on ‘suburbia’. Somehow I had the audacity to argue that it would be prescient if I curated my own exhibition that was titled The Subversive Stitch in 1991 including Kathy Temin, Andrew Taylor, Rose Nolan and Narelle Jubelin.