Executive Director
Tamara Winikoff is the Executive Director of NAVA and is well known in Australia as an arts advocate, cultural commentator and senior arts manager. She has spoken, written and published extensively about cultural and design issues. Involved in arts management for over twenty years.
Tamara has worked at the Australia Council developing the Community, Environment, Art and Design (CEAD) program, been Director of the Australian Centre for Photography founding the journal Photofile, and worked at the Power Institute of Art and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney. She also has served on many boards and committees.
Tamara has interspersed these roles with work as an academic, teaching at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Sydney and the Oxford Polytechnic in the UK. She has been a chief investigator in three major research projects funded by the Australian Research Council and the Australia Council analysing the industry and making recommendations for change.
She originally trained and worked as an architect, spending some time as a dig architect on archaeological excavations around the Middle East. She has sustained a lifelong love of the arts, in her earlier years working as a graphic and theatre designer, printmaker, photographer and film-maker. In 2004 she was awarded the Australia Council's Visual Arts/Craft Emeritus Medal for "outstanding achievement and contribution to the visual arts and craft in Australia".
General Manager
Sam Wild is the General Manager at NAVA. She has previously worked at the Australian Copyright Council, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and the South Coast Writers' Centre. She is currently studying for a graduate diploma in Management (Arts) at the University of SA on-line. Sam resides in Thirroul.
Projects Manager
With Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS) funding, Merrilee Kessler is employed as NAVA’s Projects Manager. Her job is to conceive, develop, manage and sometimes carry out a range of projects.
Current projects include:
• researching the payment of artists’ fees by publicly funded galleries and developing strategies to make these payments transparent.
• extending NAVA's presence at state and territory level through workshops, forums etc.
• as part of the development of the Visual Arts Training Centre, updating and extending NAVA's resources including the Professional Practice Manual, the Art Business Skills Workshops and further work on the professional practice curriculum for tertiary art schools.
This is Merrilee's 3rd period of work at NAVA, which began in 1988-1990, was taken up again from 1996-2002 and was recommenced in May 2004. In between, she has worked for Sydney University Department of Art History and Theory, Artbank, Electronic Media Arts, the (then) Crafts Council of NSW, contract work for the Australia Council, a brief stint with a commercial gallery and voluntary work with the Biennale of Sydney.
In a past life she was also a performer of somewhat dubious quality and prior to that studied at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, and Canberra School of Art.
Artist Career Project Coordinator
www.artistcareer.com.au
Erica Molesworth is NAVA's Artist Career Project Coordinator. This role involves acting as moderator and content producer for the website www.artistcareer.com.au, which is a hub for professional development resources and business training for visual arts, craft and design practitioners. Erica is also a visual artist and has a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons I) from Sydney College of the Arts and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney. Her previous work experience includes art administration, tutoring, copywriting, editing and web content production for a range of commercial websites.
Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Lara Summers is NAVA's Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator. Lara has a Bachelor of Design with first class honours from the College of Fine Arts(COFA) at the University of NSW, and recently completed a Master of Arts in Visual Culture from Northumbria University in the UK. Prior to commencing work at NAVA Lara worked with one of Australia's leading independent film distribution companies Hopscotch Films in a marketing and sales role. Combined with this experience Lara has worked in theatre production design, exhibition management, and has completed an internship at The Centre for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles.
Administration and Membership Officer
Edith Moss is NAVA’s Administration and Membership Officer. Edith is also a freelance curator and writer and has been working in the visual arts sector since completing a Bachelor of Design in Architecture (Allieds Arts in Architecture) from the University of Sydney in 2006 and undertaking a Master of Art Administration from the College of Fine Arts, UNSW in 2008. She has undertaken internships at OBJECT: Centre for Craft and Design and the Biennale of Sydney before working at NAVA.
