EXPOSURE

Latai Taumoepeau

Born in 1972 in Gadigal Ngura/Sydney, Latai Taumoepeau makes live art as an expanded Indigenous practice merging cultural, political and formal concerns. Grounded in Tongan doctrines of fonua, tauhi fonua, faiva and vā, her practice serves climate justice and its implications on race, class and the Pacific body politic. Working across performance, choreography, film, sound and print, she brings unseen communities to the unromanticised foreground. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Creative Australia Emerging and Experimental Arts Award.

Image credit: Rhett Wyman

Mirabelle Wouters

Mirabelle Wouters is a Belgian/Australian performance maker, set and lighting designer living on Gadigal. She is Co-Artistic Director of Branch Nebula and a co-creator of all its productions, known for bold, physically driven works presented nationally and internationally. Her practice challenges social hierarchies, foregrounding marginal perspectives and grassroots culture through collaborative processes. Focused on bodies, spaces and audience relationships, her work spans stages, streets and public sites. Outside Branch Nebula, she designs for leading artists and companies. With Branch Nebula she is a two-time Helpmann Award winner and Green Room Award recipient, with additional nominations for her design work.

Branch Nebula

Branch Nebula was established in 1999 and led by founding artists Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters, has become a distinct and important voice in Australian performance culture. Branch Nebula’s work resists easy consumption, driven by a deep dissatisfaction with the hierarchies that shape the world, the structures that rank and grade, the barriers that warp and constrain. Branch Nebula values the devalued, spotlights the marginal, and celebrates the clefts in the concrete where the weeds push through. Branch Nebula has developed an astonishing body of work that has toured festivals and presentation houses around Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. In the windy space between the car park and the shopping mall, in the graffitied underpass, and in the piss-stained stairwell built then abandoned, Branch Nebula creates pockets of paradise.