1001 Nights in Fairfield was announced as the winner of the 2016 Incinerator Art Award: Art For Social Change last night at the opening of the annual exhibition at the Incinerator Gallery, Moonee Ponds, Melbourne. Zanny Begg received $10,000, half of which she will share with the Choir of Love, the subjects of the film. The award was judged by Dr Vincent Alessi, Senior Lecturer of Creative Arts at La Trobe University, Hannah Mathews, Senior Curator at Monash University Museum of Art and Jason Smith, Director at Geelong Gallery.
1001 Nights in Fairfield / الف ليلة وليلة في فيرفيلد was produced in collaboration with the Choir of Love through a residency with Powerhouse Youth Theatre Fairfield and STTARS (Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors). The project engages with the politics of storytelling by loosely referencing Scheherazade’s struggle, in One Thousand and One Nights , to prolong her life by entertaining a murderous King with a series of inventive cliffhangers. The film combines documentary, imaginary sequences and improvised fictions to explore the pressure, and power, of telling a story to survive.
The exhibition included the work of 36 artists: Lachlan Anthony, Zanny Begg, Peter Burke, Peter Cheng & Molly Biddle, Kevin Chin, Catherine Clover, Perran Costi, Adam Cusack, Gabrielle de Vietri, Julia deVille, Lauren Dunn, Kailum Graves, Matthew Greaves, Paul Handley, Deanna Hitti, Dominic Kavanagh, Deborah Kelly, Bridget Kennedy, Laresa Kosloff, Kristian Laemmle-Ruff, Ashlee Laing, Ben Landau, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, Jorge Mansilla, Elyss McCleary, Sarah McEwan, Shane McGrath, Kent Morris, Salar Niknafs, Lani Seligman, Nola Taylor, Frank Veldze, Elvis Richardson & Virginia Fraser, Louisa Wang, Dianna Wells and Bethany Wheeler and will run from 14 October – 3 December.