University announces arts fellows for next year

The University of Otago has announced five arts fellows for next year.

They are Carol Brown (Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance), Reece King (Frances Hodgkins Fellow), Samantha Montgomerie (Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence), Simon Eastwood (Mozart Fellow) and Octavia Cade (Robert Burns Fellow).

On receiving this fellowship, Mr King, who will build on a decade of development as a painter living and working in Auckland, said "it is an honour, and I am very grateful for this opportunity".

"I look forward to being in Dunedin and making heaps of big paintings. Who knows what will emerge?"

Dr Brown’s six-month residency project Saltlines for Sealion Women is a community dance work centred on recovery, safety and kinship.

The title pays homage to the 1939 recording of Sea Lion Woman sung by the African-American Shipp Sisters from Missouri.

Ms Montgomerie’s proposed project during her fellowship is a middle-grade (ages 8 to 12 years old) novel — Sea and Sky Collide.

Set in the Marlborough Sounds, this story is based around two young people taking a stand to protect the country’s natural taonga, with a focus on the Hector’s dolphin.

Dr Cade will work on two related projects as the Robert Burns Fellow.

The first is a science fiction novel focused on Otago Peninsula, after warming oceans and nitrate run-off result in toxic algal blooms that devastate coastal environments.

Her second intended project is a short monograph on how the theme of ecological invasion has underpinned much of New Zealand’s speculative fiction.

Dr Eastwood, who is the present Mozart Fellow, will continue his fellowship for another year.

With the renewal of his fellowship, he will pursue further collaborative projects and continue to develop his musical relationships in Dunedin.