Over the week of Valentine’s Day, 8-14 February, Vessels of Love 2025: love in transmission responds to the adage ‘home is where the heart is’ through the works of seven artists: Natalia Treviño, Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad, Neha Kale, Josh Stenberg, Clarita Derwent, Teena McCarthy and Djon Mundine.
Playing in the folds of poetry, film, music and art, Vessels of Love 2025 maps the complex emotional geography of transnational identity across its shifting modes. Through cross-cultural connections and movements between love and home, our curation charts the lived experiences of our artists, and the ways in which they navigate the worlds through which they move. Within this, the program celebrates the integral role of the artist as keeper, conduit and communicator of cultural and familial memory.
The full collection of poetry films and spoken word recordings is now available to enjoy online.
Throughout February 2025, you can also discover selected works in a range of spaces: visit Knox St Bar, Chippendale for Poetry Sydney’s Exhibition Program (featuring the Poem Phone and Poetry Gallery) and Intelligent Animal’s DIP window gallery in Darlington for our ‘making of the films’ installation.
Special broadcasts will transmit on Eastside Radio’s Arts Friday and Poetry Sydney‘s podcast ORATURE.wav
Djon Mundine
WATCH — BIRD CALL
LISTEN
READ
Djon Mundine OAM is a proud Bandjalung man from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Mundine is a curator, writer, artist and activist and is celebrated as a foundational figure in the criticism and exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal art. In 1993, Mundine received the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal arts, crafts and culture. He won The Australia Council’s 2020 Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement and is currently an independent curator of contemporary Indigenous art and cultural mentor.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
WATCH — SILVER CORD: A ZUIHITSU
LISTEN
READ
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. Her debut collection, Patchwork Fugue, was published by Atomic Bohemian Press, UK, in February 2024, and her micro-chapbook A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys won The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK’s Little Black Book Competition in May 2024. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Dai Fry Memorial Award for Mystical Poetry (Wales), and multiple times for the Best of the Net awards anthology. She lives and works in Sydney on the traditional lands of the Eora Nation.
Clarita Derwent
WATCH — ENTRE DOS LUGARES (BETWEEN TWO PLACES)
LISTEN
READ
When she embarked on a trip to India at 19 to study Indian classical singing, Clarita had no idea that in Latin America she would find a sense of home and a deep connection with the traditional music, dance and culture. For three decades Clarita has immersed herself in the music and traditions of Latin America, particularly with Cuba. She has studied music and dance with Cutumba Folklorico Dance Company, one of Cuba's oldest and most respected ensembles and has a profound understanding of Lucumí (Santería), the Afro-Cuban spiritual practice that involves a connection with the natural elements.
Neha Kale
WATCH — GHOST ROUTE
LISTEN
READ
Neha Kale is a widely-published writer who works in many forms including essays, criticism, journalism, nonfiction and prose poetry. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally in places like The Saturday Paper, ArtReview, The Sydney Morning Herald, Vogue, SBS, Art Guide, The Guardian, Running Dog, Kill Your Darlings, Griffith Review and many more. She was a 2024 Artist in Residence at Bundanon and has been highly commended in the Ann Moyal Fellowship for Nonfiction. She has presented her work at the Melbourne Writers and Emerging Writers Festivals.
Josh Stenberg
WATCH — 遠處的你 遠處的我
LISTEN
READ
Josh Stenberg is a writer and translator who lives in Sydney.
Teena McCarthy
WATCH — THE LAND IS OUR ARCHIVES
LISTEN
READ
Teena McCarthy is a multi-disciplinary artist and poet who works predominantly in painting, photography and performance art. She graduated in 2014 from UNSW Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction. McCarthy is an Italian/Barkindji woman who is a descendant of The Stolen Generations. Her work documents a broad canvas, ranging through early childhood visions, memories, her family’s and the broader Aboriginal communities, displacement and to a large extent, loss of Culture (‘hidden’ history). McCarthy’s poetry is integral to her artworks, an ekphrastic dialogue between the work and poetry, both inform and respond to each other holistically, thus giving the viewer another layer of thoughtfulness and understanding.
Natalia Treviño
WATCH — SACRED HEART: A LOVE STORY
LISTEN
READ
Born in Mexico, Natalia Treviño is the author of Lavando La Dirty Laundry and VirginX. Natalia has won several awards for her work, including the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the 2024 Ambroggio Award for translation from The Academy of American Poets. She has been published in a variety of US journals including POETRY and Plume. Her next collection of poetry, When You Were Human, will be released in fall 2025 from Flowersong Press, and her first novel, La Cruzada, will be published by Arte Público Press in spring 2026.
