Shark puppet and otherworldly ‘dinner party' among $3m arts fund winners
Big winners in the inaugural round of the four-year project include Wollongong's Merrigong Theatre Company ($750,000), The Cad Factory, based in Sandigo north-west of Wagga Wagga ($634,000), and Marrickville company Erth ($551,000).
The Creative Futures Fund has handed out nearly $8 million nationwide and will award a further $11 million over the next three years. It follows widespread criticism of the organisation from the arts sector after the sacking and reinstating of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia's representative at the Venice Biennale next year.
Scott Wright, creative director of Erth, which specialises in immersive puppetry-based shows for children said the 'pretty hefty' sum would make a huge difference in how they can present their project, Shark Dive.
'But one of the most amazing things was that it is really more about acknowledgement,' added Wright, who founded the company in 1990. 'We know our peers were on the assessment panel, and it just feels nice to be acknowledged.'
Shark Dive was created for the Sydney Festival two years ago at the Australian Museum.
'We put people in a shark cage and swam a four-metre great white shark puppet around the cage,' said Wright. 'It was sort of tongue in cheek because we were creating the work from a desire for conservation and for better understanding of sharks. We were actually not trying to create fear.'
The cash injection from the Creative Futures Fund will allow Erth to expand the scale of Shark Dive and reach a much larger audience.
'We want to show it to 500 people or a thousand people in an hour as opposed to trying to get 500 people through a day,' said Wright.
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