ARTIST
WILLIAM KELLY
He has been called the ‘moral conscience’ of Australian Art and is a rare artist in that for him there is no line between life and art. As such he has been honoured with a Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey, Boston, USA.
DR. RAMA MANI
ACADEMIC & ARTIST
Dr. Rama Mani is an Indian academic and performance artist. She is a Research Fellow at Oxford University and a member of the
World Futures Council and founder of the Theatre of Transformation. She is active in numerous international human rights programs affiliated with the United Nations and other organisations. Her office is in Geneva, Switzerland.
NICK UT
PHOTOGRAPHER
Nick Ut won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for "The Terror of War", depicting children in flight from a napalm bombing. His best-known photo features a naked 9-year-old girl, Kim Phúc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm attack during the Vietnam War.
LUIS IRIONDO
ARTIST & BOMBING SURVIVOR
Luis Iriondo was fourteen years old at the time of the bombing of Guernica (Basque Country, Spain). As an adult he became a graphic designer, artist, spokesperson for the Association of Survivors of the Bombing and a voice of reason in a troubled world: ”We forgive but we will never forget.”
MARTIN SHEEN
ACTOR
"While acting is what I do for a living, activism is what I do to stay alive."
Sheen is known for his outspoken support of liberal political causes, such as opposition to United States military actions. Sheen has resisted calls to run for office, saying: "There's no way that I could be the president. You can't have a pacifist in the White House....."
Sheen is an honorary trustee of the Dayton International Peace Museum.
ZAKIA BASSOU
PEACEMAKER
Lifestyle magazine's Woman of the year, Zakia Bassou started the 1,000 Roses Project in the aftermath of the terrorist attack at London Borough Market on 3 June, Zakia organised for herself and fellow Muslim women to distribute roses carrying messages of peace and love to members of the public on London Bridge, making headlines worldwide.
RAYMOND WATSON
ARTIST
Raymond Watson, born in 1958, is a respected visual artist from Northern Ireland. A former member of the IRA, he was sentenced to the notorious maximum security Maze Prison. Following his release he became a journalist and then an artist whose work has focussed on issues of human rights and social justice in various parts of the world.
GELAREH POUR
MUSICIAN
Gelareh has performed in Iran, Tajikistan, throughout Europe and is now based in Melbourne, Australia. Since arriving in Australia she has collaborated with some of the countries most innovative experimental musicians. She has recently completed her unique academic research on 'The Lives of Iranian Women Singers in Diaspora' at MCM in which she introduces the professional aspects of seven selected Iranian female singers' lives before and after migration.
A C GRAYLING
AUTHOR & PHILOSOPHER
Anthony Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Until 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited over thirty books including his recent book War in which he examines, tests and challenges the concept of war.
JOHN KEANE
ARTIST
John Keane is a painter based in London, whose work deals with political subjects, particularly war and violence and power relations. Having drawn inspiration from trips to Central America, Northern Ireland and the Middle East, including a stint as an official war artist in 1990, his work is a fascinating reflection on current events and the human behaviour behind them.
SASHA GRISHIN
ART HISTORIAN & AUTHOR
Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA, is the author of more than 25 books on art, including "Australian Art: A History", and has served as the art critic for The Canberra Times for forty years. He is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra; Guest Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Honorary Principal Fellow, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne.
RITA DUFFY
ARTIST
Born in Belfast in 1959, Rita Duffy is one of Northern Ireland’s foremost artists. Her work deals with a variety of themes from the domestic and personal to the political. In much of her early work Duffy transmutes the raw material of her experiences growing up as a Catholic woman in the spiteful patriarchy of 1970s Ulster, to advance a feminist, liberal agenda.
ENTANG WIHARSO
ARTIST
Entang Wiharso lives and works in New York and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Entang confronts the universal issues of power, loss and love through investigations of ideology, philosophy and identity. Particularly known for his large scale paintings, wall sculptures and installations, his work heightens our ability to perceive, feel and understand human problems like love, hate, fanaticism, religion, and ideology.
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JAPANESE FILM SPECIALIST
DON BROWN
New Zealander Don Brown is a longtime resident of Japan who
specializes in creating English subtitles for Japanese films, as well as other cinema-related translation. His knowledge of Japanese film history is extensive and he has written articles and reviews for various news outlets.
COCOVAN
ARTIST & ACTIVIST
Cocovan is a performance artist, singer, and writer who is travelling the globe asking people to contribe to a love letter the to the world.
YANAGI YUKINORI
CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ARTIST
I'm Yukinori Yanagi is a Japanese conceptual artist born in Fukuoka, in 1959. His work explores themes as a Japanese artist living and working in an international context, as well as issues about identity within social or national constructs.
Yanagi has created ART BASE on the island of Momoshima where he aims to develop art tourism and to revitalise Momoshima, utilising art not as a means, to an end, but an end to itself. He has participated in many exhibitions in Japan and internationally.
ALEX CAROSCOSA
ARTIST & EDUCATOR
Alex Carascosa is a Basque art educator who "associates art and the work of artists with slow cooking times and unhurried reflection. But in this project, the 'artivist' (artist and activist) is faced with a demand for speed, with the social emergencies of our time, in three areas that are difficult to define: environmental, civil and human rights."
HALINA WAGOWSKA
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR & AUTHOR
Halina Wagowska survived the Holocaust and horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She lost her family and moved to Melbourne alone at the age of 18, working and studying to support herself. She also found time to help others, from homeless teenagers to asylum seekers, to bushfire victims. her stories have now been published in a book called "The Testimony".
HIBAKUSHA
HIROSHIMA SURVIVORS
Soh Horie, Emiko Okada, and Kiyomi Kohno are survivors of the A bomb attack on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. It is estimated that over 140,00 people died. They want us to remember the tragedy that happened in Hiroshima and ask us to make a personal appeal to all countries and nations to abolish nuclear arms.
PROFESSOR DOUGLAS KELLNER
MEDIA AND CULTURAL CRITIC
Douglas Kellner, a professor who holds the distinguished George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, Kellner, whose work explores the pervasive power of media and popular culture and the relationship among technology, education and society
SARAH SENTILLES
AUTHOR
Sarah Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist and scholar of religion. Author of Draw Your Weapons among other books, she has degrees from Yale and Harvard. She has taught at a number of American colleges and lives in Idaho.
IRATXE MOMIOTIO ASTORKIA
DIRECTOR OF THE GUERNICA PEACE MUSEUM
BEN McKEOWN
ARTIST
ROSE LESTER
ARTIST AND ACTIVIST
PETER SPARLING
DANCER & CHOREOGRAPHER
PROFESSOR IAN MCLEAN
INDIGENOUS ART HISTORIAN
Professor McLean has published extensively on the subject of Australian art, particularly Indigenous and contemporary art. His books include Indigenous Archives: The Making and Unmaking of Aboriginal Art, with Darren Jorgensen (2017) ANDRattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art (2016)
EMMY O'SHAUGHNESSY
ARTIST AND EDUCATOR
Emmy O'Shaughnessy is the daughter of political activist and artist Anna Mendelssohn and works as the CEO of a community arts organisation in Oxford. She has spent 20 years designing local and national programmes of arts interventions for some of the most marginalised young people. She passionately believes creativity belongs to us all and creates the empathy needed to power the social justice movement.
MADELINE KING
ART STUDENT
J.D.MITTMANN
CURATOR
JD Mittmann works as Curator & Manager of Collections at Burrinja Dandenong Ranges Cultural Centre. He is curator of the award-winning exhibition Black Mist Burnt Country: Testing the Bomb - Maralinga and Australian Art which documents the British atomic tests in Australia in 1950s and 1960s through works of art. The exhibition toured nationally from 2016-2019, including the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.