The Sweat Collective are artists living on Larrakia Country utilising and investigating new ways of being and creating alongside each other in the environmental, cultural, and community melting pot of Darwin.

Collective members Creates a biannual program of participatory, experimental, durational, cross artform and site specific works that celebrate and interrogate the rituals of the Build Up - new, old, and impossible. 

2023: MarketMarket

2020-2021: Sweat Season: an immersive experience embracing natural cycles in a year of disruption

2019: Sweat Season: a celebration of sweaty durational rituals celebrating the build up

Sweat Season Zine created as a part of 2020-2021 program - please click through to check it out.

Sweat collective artists

Current

• Matthew Van Roden

• James Mangohig

• Jenelle Saunders

• Tarzan JungleQueen

• Jessica Devereux 

• Lee Harrop

• Kelly Beneforti

• Tony Lee

• Naina Sen

• Sarah Pirrie

• Britt Guy

Past

• Shaun Lee (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)

• Haneen Martin (2019, 2020, 2021)

• Amina McConvell (2019, 2020, 2021)

• Gary Lang (2019)

• Tamara Howie (2019)

• Ciella Williams (2019)

• Alicia Scobie (2019)

• Cj Fraser Bell (2019, 2020)

Celebrating the multiplicity of our city.

Diverse intersectional practices that span multiple artforms.

The space between artistic expression and multicultural celebrations.

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Images - Left to right and top to bottom: Grevillea by Matthew Van Roden. Image of Haneen Martin. Beautiful Noise by Jess Devereux. Image of Jess Devereux. Work by Cj Fraser-Bell. Work by Shaun Lee. A Combinatorial Explosion by Amina McConvell. Kelly Beneforti in Landed by Tracks Dance Company. Image of James Mangohig. Kelly Benforti and Cj Fraser-Bell in Queer Territory. Work by Cj Fraser-Bell. Jenelle Saunders and Jess Devereux in Global Positioning by Tracks Dance Company. Tarzan Mcdonald at Octopus Story Studio by StoryProjects. Image of Gary Lang. A Selection from the series '36' at SHEILAS group exhibition by Alicia Scobie. Rock Star by Lee Harrop. Ciella Williams in You Dance Funny by Tracks Dance Company. Image of Matthew Van Roden. Image of Tamara Howie. Work by Tarzan McDonald as apart of ‘Asia in Darwin’ at Survive Garage in Jogjakarta.

Supported by

Hail Moon is an evolving body of work exploring projection works of scale across the Darwin Skyline.

BOTANICALs - DARWIN FESTIVAL 2020

Botanicals careful choreographed movements map out the porous embodiments of human and more-than-humankind. Head, shoulders, knees, toes, petal, sepal, receptacle, stamen. Bodily boundaries, skins and textures are traded, shaped and switched in a curious dance of multi-species exchange. Matthew van Roden’s trans-disciplinary practice revels in exploring enmeshed possibilities and indeterminacy of being.

ACCOMPLICE takes this skin-dance to everyday sites across Darwin in a series of surprising projections where surface, skin, boundary, texture become sites for re-entanglement between the urban and natural world as part of Darwin Festival 2020.

Hail Moon - Sweat Season 2019

As part of Sweat Season in 2019 Matthew Van Roden in collaboration with Tarzan JungleQueen created a moving image work titled Hail Moon. This work was presented at Lake Alexander projected into the foliage of a tree.

Hail Moon is a projection of their collective love for a future earth that can sustain temporary bodies. Cutting up/together the speech of Aristophanes on the origin of love in Plato’s Symposium, and Adam Vaughan’s 2018 article, Fracking – the reality, the risks and what the future holds published in the Guardian online. Van Roden and JungleQueen embrace the spirit of the cut-up method King, author William S. Burroughs. Bringing these two texts together, queering both and liberating a narrative they collectively share: Don’t frack the Territory, don’t frack the planet. Be like the moon and fall in love with the waters of the earth.

Capturing the stories, culture and landscape of our iconic region and the people that call it home.

ACCOMPLICE is the producer of the Northern Territory Travelling Film Festival (NTTFF) which celebrates and showcases the outstanding short film, television and video productions from the NT, capturing the stories, culture and landscape of our iconic region and the people that call it home. This project is delivered in partnership with Darwin Film Society.

Each year the festival screens in dozens of locations across the NT, providing opportunities for remote audiences to share in their communities’ stories and for tourism operators to showcase a film experience to national and international audiences that provides insight into our unique place, the Northern Territory.

The ACCOMPLICE residency program undertakes a reflective, challenging and exploratory framework for artists, community and audience to come together to explore work in development.

Our residency program grew in 2018, with funding through Australia Council, into a program of local and visiting residencies researched and developed projects over two to three week periods. The program focuses on artists committed to regional engagement and exploration of the culture and landscape of the Top End.

In 2019 and 2020 we continued to build depth into our established residency program and produced work by creating uniquely Garrmalang/Darwin opportunities to share research, development and outcomes with our audiences.

Residency program highlights and reviews

2020 Residency Artists

Matthew Van Roden
(Garrmalang/Darwin)

Cj Fraser-Bell
(Garrmalang/Darwin)

Sweat Collective Lab
Amina McConvell, Tarzan Junglequeen, Tony Lee, Matthew Van Roden, Shaun Lee, James Mangohig, Kelly Beneforti, Jenelle Saunders, Jess Devereux, Gary Lang, Ciella Williams, Haneen Martin, Lee Harrop
(Garrmalang/Darwin)

2019 Residency Artists

Lia Pa’apa’a, Aly de Groot and the Groote Eylandt Weavers
(Cairns, Garrmalang/Darwin and Groote Eylandt)

Ben Graetz, Guy Simon, Joel Bray, Kaine Sultan-Babij, Dale Woodbridge-Brown and Scott Campbell, with Musical Director Michael Tan.
(Garrmalang/Darwin, Cadi/Djubuguli/Sydney, Narrm/Melbourne)

2018 Residency Artists

Jamie Lewis, Sam Chablani, and Lia Pa’apa’a
(Singapore, Naarm/Melbourne and Cairns)

Weniki Hensch
(Garrmalang/Darwin)

Raju Rathi
(Pushkar, India)

Ben Graetz and Shaun Kerinaiua
(Garrmalang/Darwin and Tiwi Islands)

Matthew Day
(Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Holly Macdonald
(Naarm/Melbourne) - Transitory Residency in partnership with Watch this Space and Katherine Regional Arts

2017 Residency Artists

Holly Macdonald
(Naarm/Melbourne)

Anna Van Stralen
(Launceston)

Leah Shelton
(Meanjin/Brisbane)

Nick Power and Erak Mith
(Gadigal/Sydney and Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

Jamie Lewis
(Singapore and Naarm/Melbourne)

Circa Contemporary Circus
(Meanjin/Brisbane) - Transitory Residency in partnership with Tangentyere Council and Katherine Regional Arts

Tropical Kitchen is presented annually and is focused on building and connecting with community through a love of stories, food and cooking. Darwin’s food market game is strong and provides locals and visitors alike with a slice of Southeast Asian food and ambience. Tropical Kitchen draws on these sites, people, smells and stories to build community programming that uniquely creates an intersection between art, food and the environment. With an aim to bring communities together to discuss, shape and build the future of Garrmalang/Darwin’s community cohesiveness and environmental awareness.

2018 Tropical Kitchen

In 2018 a ten-day curated Tropical Kitchen program of events during Darwin Fringe Festival. The program included two residencies with food artists Sam Chablani and Lia Pa’apa’a, presentation of internationally renowned performance work Wank Bank Masterclass by Adam Seymour, international premiere of durational reading of social commentary work Cup of Nun Chai by Alana Hunt plus a program of workshops and talks in partnership with Charles Darwin Universities Science at Sunset program. This event transported Garrmalang/Darwin locals into a casual world of food, drinks and culture throughout the fringe. Creating an ephemeral space for the growing culture and thinking around food and place.

In 2018 a ten-day curated Tropical Kitchen program of events during Darwin Fringe Festival. The program included two residencies with food artists Sam Chablani and Lia Pa’apa’a, presentation of internationally renowned performance work Wank Bank Masterclass by Adam Seymour, international premiere of durational reading of social commentary work Cup of Nun Chai by Alana Hunt plus a program of workshops and talks in partnership with Charles Darwin Universities Science at Sunset program. This event transported Garrmalang/Darwin locals into a casual world of food, drinks and culture throughout the fringe. Creating an ephemeral space for the growing culture and thinking around food and place.

2017 Tropical Kitchen

In 2017 a program of dinners, workshops and audio tours were created in order to explore the rich tapestry of Darwin locals histories and their love of food. Aiming to create new relationships, seed new ideas and provide a reminder of our capacity and strength as individuals when we work together. Facilitated by Singaporean artist Jamie Lewis

This program engaged the home cook, the foodie or the story aficionado, this hands-on program took participants on a journey through tropical flavours. Drawing on eclectic Asian styles, spicy sambal condiments, local fresh seafood and unknown Asian vegetables we find at the markets!

In 2017 an audio tour - 婆婆 (Por-Por) and me was created and available for anyone visiting the Parap markets in Garrmalang/Darwin.

ACCOMPLICE develops distinctive programs of activities and ongoing projects for and by children and young people. Committed to harnessing and nurturing the creativity of young minds ACCOMPLICE has a yearly program of workshops, programs and touring projects that are specifically tailored to the Northern Territory's next generation.

In 2024-25 we are planning a program that celebrates the imagination of young people and the unique outdoor spaces that make up our tropical home in Garramalang/Darwin. A program of residencies will culminate in a program of activities in the October school holidays.

Nona and Me

In 2017 we began the development of a performance work based on award winning young adults book Nona and Me by Clare Atkins.

Nona and Me is set in Yirrkala and is about Nona, an Aboriginal teenager and her childhood friend Rosa, a non Aboriginal teenager growing up with the political backdrop of the intervention, and the personal backdrop of coming of age across two cultures.

This project was grown out of a desire to produce and tour work uniquely created for Northern Territory remote venues and audiences, particular young people. ACCOMPLICE seeks to create high quality work for NT young people that speaks to them, and reflects back their stories, while at the same time creating a magical theatrical experience that develop their relationship with art.

A development will be undertaken in Yirrkala in July 2019 and than a work in progress showing in Garrmalang/Darwin in October 2019. Final developments and rehearsals will be undertaken in 2020, followed by a remote NT tour.