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

Celebrate and explore the home of the Rapid Creek Markets through the eyes of local creatives. Experimental artists, curators, thinkers and foodies come together in this program of community gatherings and shared artistic experiences.

Alongside this, a national artist-led lab kicks off with a curated program of discussions, meals and workshops to learn, interrogate and foster new collaborations between local, and visiting artists.

Instigated by ACCOMPLICE and Next Wave as part of Darwin Festival.

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MarketMarket 2023 Program

Image by Duane Preston

If this flesh could....
Kelly Beneforti

Kelly Beneforti is an independent dance artist and long-term dance animateur at Tracks Dance Company who is privileged to be living and working on Larrakia country. Kelly works within an inclusive, movement-based practice led by the curiosity and history of the body, and that of the individuals she is working with. She is passionate about collaborative making, cultural and social exchange, and empowering participatory processes.

If this flesh could... is a durational dance film shot in one sitting, exploring human flesh and the flesh of fruit in slowly shifting conversation. Touching on concepts of human and environmental fertility, nourishment, loss, and sustainability. This experiment draws from questions of the relationship between our inner and outer, private and public spaces.

This work will run between 2-3 hours and will be displayed on a monitor constantly on loop. Feel free to pop in and enjoy a moment, or take it in over an extended lunch or dinner.

As part of Radical Hospitality: MarketMarket Feed
Saturday 26th August 2023 6pm - 9pm
PART OF TICKETED EVENT

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Artwork by Mikaela Lee

Dalirra ( Light in Larrakia)
Mikaela Lee 

Mikaela Lee is a multi-disciplinary artist, working predominantly in painting, digital drawing and large-scale mural work. She is currently exploring the place of craft in her practice with the introduction of beading and sculptural ceramics.

Dalirra experiments with moving liquid light in the Lab and projection design in collaboration with the walls of the Rapid Creek Markets. Interested in the fusion of Larrakia's history and culture and the mixing of colours and light at the Rapid Creek market or originally Gurambai (Rapid Creek) to the Larrakia people.

Mikaela is excited about exploring a different medium and experimenting with colours and the opportunity to bridge colour, and light projection with her Larrakia culture and stories.

As part of Radical Hospitality: MarketMarket Feed
Saturday 26th August 2023 6pm - 9pm
PART OF TICKETED EVENT

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Image by Jett Street

Radical Hospitality: MarketMarket Feed

Radical Hospitality invites you to converge, connect and spark new encounters with artists, thinkers, innovators, friends and neighbours through the radical power of sharing.

Founder of local experimental group the Sweat Collective and producing company ACCOMPLICE Britt Guy collaborates with the visible and sometimes less visible tangles of place and people at the Rapid Creek Shops on Larrakia Country.

Inviting you to heighten your senses as you move through a transitory program of discussion, new media and audio works while feasting on a three course meal prepared by locals whose businesses call Rapid Creek Shops home.

This is an opportunity to take some time to generously connect and listen to our everyday entangled collaborators.

Rapid Creek Shops

Saturday 26th of August 2023 6pm - 9pm

$55

Ticket includes the creative program entry and three course meal.

MarketMarket DJ
Kuya James

Artist and music producer Kuya James (aka James Mangohig) grew up in the tropical and multicultural city of Darwin; the capital of the Northern Territory on Larrakia land. Kuya James is both an ARIA nominated producer and artist. In 2016 he started CLUB AWI as part of the Darwin Festival and it continues to be the festival's late night party spot. With a twenty year career behind him, in the past five years, James has been committed to projects and new performance work which centres around Asian/Australian stories and which are collaborations with Asian/Australian artists. This has been hugely important to him and has included a strong emphasis on partnering and advocating for Filipino artists.

The Rapid Creek Markets are a regular part of his life. Through a friend he has been getting to know the store holders and asking them about their favourite music, what they loved before they migrated (or their parents migrated) and what they continue to enjoy now. These conversations will produce a DJ set including everything from Thai disco to Indonesian psych rock music and everything in between including a healthy dose of pop music from the last 5 decades.

As part of Radical Hospitality: MarketMarket Feed
Saturday 26th August 2023 6pm - 9pm
PART OF TICKETED EVENT

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Image by Migoy Photos

Fruit 
Matthew van Roden 

Matthew’s work explores spaces between apparent binaries as locations for queer creative praxis. Working primarily with wax, text, and digital video, van Roden is interested in ideas about the body, text, language and subjectivity. 

They will experiment with Risographic animations, QR coded to fruits + vegetables at the Sunday Rapid Creek Markets.

Rapid Creek Markets

Sunday 27th August 2023 7am - 2pm

FREE

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Rapid Creek Radio 
Carlo Ansaldo

Carlo Ansaldo is an artist, project manager and community facilitator working across the visual arts and music industries in Gulumerrgin/Darwin. When they are not pursuing their own creative projects, they collaborate to support and showcase Northern Territorian creatives of all persuasions. 

Carlo is primarily interested in developing creative possibilities for how we will move together through this late capitalist world-in-crisis and cultivate a communist horizon. They are currently channelling this ambition into cosmic DJ sets, community radio projects and writing a speculative science fiction novel exploring the commercial industrialisation of asteroid mining from a NT perspective.

Carlo is looking forward to collecting audio material on-site at Rapid Creek and during the labs to develop the beginnings of an audio sound track that has the potential to be broadcast locally. Their hope is that this broadcast will plant the seed for a local community radio project to grow. They are looking forward to collaborating with musicians and sound-based artists locally and nationally to test and develop this idea.

Samples from recordings will feature along side Matthew van Roden’s animations.

Rapid Creek Markets

Sunday 27th August 2023 7am - 2pm

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MarketMarket 2023 LAB ARTISTS

Listed as pictured from top to bottom, left to right.

Nathan Stoneham,
Kristi Monfires,
Kuya James (James Mangohig), Jocelyn Tribe,
Rhanjell Villanueva,
Kelly Beneforti,
Matthew van Roden,
Mikaela Lee,
Britt Guy,
Carlo Ansaldo,
Naina Sen.

A meeting and sharing of artists from across the regions in 2021

Darwin is a city surrounded by ocean and desert, producing art that is on the precipice geographically and culturally. Precipice Arts Lab, produced by local independent company ACCOMPLICE invites artists from across Australia “on the precipice” of artforms, ideas, methodologies and identities. Independent artists will come together online and where possible on Larrakia country for a curated program to learn, interrogate and connect. This arts lab will occur prior to and during the Australian Performing Arts Market (APAM) in August 2021.

Precipice is born out of a desire to foster genuine artist to artist links. Precipice artists will be interested in:

• Bolstering the voices of First Nations and regional artists

• Learning, sharing and interrogating practice with a group of diverse peers

• Creating and investigating new ways of working in collaboration with people and place

• Fostering networks of peers across geographic divides.

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Meet the Precipice Artists

Jessica Devereux

Jessica Devereux is a passionate dance artist, choreographer and performer born in Kalgoorlie, WA and now resides in Darwin on Larrakia land. Known for her warmth, skill and reflexivity when it comes to collaborative learning and working, Jess nely traverses between small-scale intimate create processes to large-scale community and participatory works. She is drawn to projects that are inclusive, joyous and seek to make a lasting social impact. Currently a Dance Animateur for Tracks Dance Company, Jess is greatly experienced in working across cultures, art forms and worlds; regional, remote and metropolitan. Floating seamlessly between Tracks and her independent practice, Jess is adept at inviting dance lovers of all experiences and abilities to participate in the arts.

Caiti Baker

Multifaceted musician and artist Caiti Baker sings because she needs to, dances because she has to and does everything else because she wants to. Song writing, recording, producing, vocal engineering, dancing, graphic designing, video producing, editing, touring, performing, collaborating, mentoring, networking and bad-joke-telling all make up the “ings” Caiti feels she is “born to do”. From winning an ARIA Award for graphic design; a couple of National Live Music Awards and multiple genre AIR Awards – it would seem that the industry acknowledges this birthright. Signed to independent record label Settle Down Records in Darwin, NT, Caiti continues to create music with long-time collaborator James Mangohig aka Kuya James and collaborates with a collective of local artists to expand her artistic visions. After releasing the concept album “Mary of the North” mid 2020, Caiti is gearing up to press go on her next single “Mellow” on September 3, 2021. The end

Liesel Zink

Liesel Zink is an award-winning, socially-engaged choreographer who creates large-scale contemporary performance works in public-space and uses her creative process as an opportunity for artistic, cultural and intergenerational exchange. Liesel has developed and presented independent work around Australia, Asia and Eastern Europe. She received the 2017 Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance for her public space project ‘The Stance’ which has been presented in eleven cities around Australia and overseas engaging over 80 performers between the ages of 8 and 72 years of age. Further independent projects include ‘Granite’ (Australia/Hong Kong) ‘We and the Uncertain’ (Ukraine 2019), ‘ Awesome; a state of wonder and fear’ (World Science Festival 2021), ‘Our New’ (IMA Gallery 2020), ‘Inter’ (Flowstate 2018), ‘fifteen’ (Next Wave 2012, Brisbane Festival 2012). Liesel is currently an Associate Artist with Force Majeure. She also engages with others in her capacity as a producer, provocateur and dramaturge.

Matthew van Roden

Matthew van Roden is an artist of the in-between. Their research involves interrogating the space between apparent binaries as locations for queer creative praxis. Material/discursive; inside/outside; male/female; analogue/digital: van Roden explores the gaps and slippages between these seemingly oppositional points. Their work is made manifest in the overlap of boundaries; on ambiguous surfaces and thresholds of meaning.

Ryan Williams

Ryan Williams is a recorder & ocarina player, improviser, interdisciplinary-performance maker & arts producer based in Naarm/Melbourne. His creative practice focuses on composing and improvising new music, and creating exploratory & transdisciplinary projects through skill-sharing collaborations with artists and communities. Ryan performs and creates within improvisatory & exploratory music, site-specic/installation contexts, traditional music from Eastern Europe, Japan, Ireland and the U.S, western art music & jazz, popular folk music, and video game music. He has performed at major Australian and international festivals including Falls Festival, Setouchi Triennale (Japan), Antwerp Fringe Festival (Belgium), Woodford Folk Festival, and regularly performs with leading arts companies, including Sydney Symphony Orchestra, ELISION Ensemble & Snu Puppets.

David Fischer / Day Knows

Que Film had humble beginnings 5 years ago by videographer David (Day) Fischer as a means to create music video content for a growing music scene in Brisbane, particularly within the Hip Hop landscape. Within those 5 years David has collaborated on all aspects of content creation with some of Australia's biggest staples such as Allday and up and comers such as Camouage Rose, Order Sixty6 and many more. By networking with like-minded creatives in diverse backgrounds Que Film expanded from the music video realm and began working in the corporate and commercial space. This led to an interest in projects based within the community. Whether it be statewide projects such as the 2017 'Stop the Hurting – End Domestic Violence' campaign to more grass roots endeavours with the RADF in the 2021 'Sidetracks' music project, David continues to foster the importance of visual representation for all people in Australia.

Matthew Day

Matthew Day is interested in the potential of choreography to imagine unorthodox relationships and propose new ways of being human. Utilizing a minimalist approach, Day works with duration and repetition, approaching the body as a site of infinite potential and choreography as a field of energetic intensity and exchange. Day's work is invested in the proliferate potential of choreography to contribute unique forms of knowledge to cultural discourse and enable affective experiences. He engages with visual arts practices to challenge traditional notions of image, object and body. Raised in Sydney, Matthew was a teenage ballroom dancing champion. He went on to study Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Western Sydney and at the Victorian College of the Arts. Day has been artist in residence, and presented his work extensively in Australia and Europe. He has just completed a Masters of Choreography at the DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam.

Nick Yates: 

I am a saxophone & clarinet player, improviser, composer and teacher with extensive performance experience across a broad range of musical aesthetics. My primary interests are in contemporary classical music, jazz and improvised art music, and cross-cultural collaborations. I hold a B.Mus (Hons - Performance) & M.Mus (Performance/Teaching) from the University of Melbourne, and a Grad Dip Ed. (Secondary – Classroom & Instrumental Music) from ACU. Since moving from Melbourne to Darwin in 2018, significant projects include forming Whistling Kite New Music, which debuted to sold out audiences at Darwin Festival 2020; performing and recording with The Djäri Project, (Netanela Mizrahi & Jason Guwanbal Gurriwiwi), winner of the 2020 APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Music Education, and nominee for the 2021 NIMA Indigenous Language Award; and forming jazz combo The Changes, who are now one of Darwin's most active and in-demand jazz groups.

During social distancing in 2020, Darwin multi-artist Cj Fraser-Bell undertook a residency in Darwin’s Parks, Laneways and Gardens.

This residency considered the many interactions and interventions that can and do take place in these public spaces. Cj questioned what physical evidence of ephemeral moments could look like, how it might accumulate, be manipulated, and in tern, how this could impact our interaction with space and similarly, space’s interraction with us.

As part of their research, Cj collected photos of each site, shown below.

Alf Blasser Park

Anula Greenbelt

Cullen Bay

Easther Park

Wanguri park

Malak Greenbelt

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.

In 2019 Ben Graetz undertook a residency devising his new work, RAIIN, a cabaret about his experience as a Gay Aboriginal man, and the experiences of other Queer Aboriginal Men in Australia. Ben was joined by 6 collaborating artists from across Australia, Guy Simon, Joel Bray, Kaine Sultan-Babij, Dale Woodbridge-Brown, and Scott Campbell, with Musical Director Michael Tan. These artists spent a week exploring the themes of the work and generating ideas, songs, monologues and dances to inform future creative developments. The residency culminated in a showing of the work in progress to invited members of the LGBTQIA+ and Aboriginal communities.

Larrakia Elder Gary Lang supported this project with a welcome to country and as a cultural consultant to Ben, and Crystal Love supported the project as Community Cultural Consultant.

Lia pa’apa’a, aly degroot and the groote eylandt weavers

Artists Lia Pa’apa’a, Aly Degroot, and the Groote Eylandt Weavers undertook residencies in Darwin Schools and on Groote Eylandt in earli 2019 as part of a shared weaving project which eventuated in hundreds of woven fish and otherworldly underwater creatures being made to decorate and celebrate the closing of the 2019 Arafura Games.

During the residencies, Lia and Aly ran workshops with teachers and students in different weaving techniques, as well as working on huge hand woven fibre art sculptures.

Opening Celebration

The star-studded Arafura Opening Celebration includes a special Larrakia Welcome and showcases some of the Northern Territory’s greatest First Nation’s musicians, local artists, community and cultural groups. Closing the evening out with award-winning hip hop artist, the Fresh Prince of Arnhem Land, Baker Boy.

Featuring:

Larrakia Welcome
Larrakia community Elders, Adults and youth, David Kurnoth, Dotti Fejo, Eytahnyia Scott, Gary Lang, Kay Villaflor, Kenbi Dancers, Leah Flanagan, Liam Stansfield, Lorraine Williams, Lynette Fejo, North Wind Didj Orchestra, Mary Williams, Maureen Family, NT Dance Company, O’Laughlin Catholic College Choir (recorded), Patricia Kurnoth, Richard Fejo, Shaun Lee, Shellie Morris, Tibby Quall, Tony Lee, Trent Lee

Arafura Nations Showcase
Chung Wah Society Dragon and Lion Dance Troupe, Passion of the Pacific, Kribati Cultural Group, Kultura Dance Collective, Sri Lankan Multicultural Dance Academy, Tunas Mekar Balinese Cultural Collective, Loto Taha, Moale Dance Group of Papua New Guinea and NT Thai Association Inc

Let’s Celebrate
Baker Boy

General
Stage and Fencing Design – Kay Villaflor, Hair and Make Up - DMKM Beauty Studios, Fireworks – KC’s Fireworks Displays

Closing Celebrations

The Arafura Closing Celebrations is a distinctive tribute to the Arafura Sea and its people. The program platforms schools, local dance companies and some of the Northern Territory’s finest musicians, Shellie Morris, Leah Flanagan, Stevie Jean and Skinnyfish Sound System.

Featuring:

MC
Lisa Pellegrino

Mother Arafura
Shellie Morris, Leah Flanagan, Stevie Jean, Djolpa McKenzie, Michael Tan, Kingsley Oldmeadow and the True Colours Choir

Parade of the Sea
Aly de Groot and the Groote Eylandt Weavers, and participating schools (Darwin Middle School, Nightcliff Primary School, Casuarina Senior College, St John’s Catholic College, Milner Primary, Marrara Christian College, Palmerston College)

We Are One
Rix Kix Arts, Express Studios, Darwin Gymnastics

Let the Party Begin!
Skinnyfish Sound System

General
Stage and Fencing Design – Kay Villaflor, Site Design (Sculptures) – facilitated by Aly de Groot and the Groote Eylandt Weavers, Wardrobe – Provenance with Injalak Arts Fabrics and Tina McCourt from Dance World, Hair and Make Up - DMKM Beauty Studios, Fireworks – KC’s Fireworks Displays

Rehearsal Images