Next Wave Festival opens Thursday 5 May and for the next 17 days, expect intelligent, powerful and thought provoking work as these highly talented emerging artists from across Australia amplify quiet voices through performance, dance, visual art, video, sound art and more.

Next Wave is the most comprehensive platform in Australia for a new generation of artists taking creative risks, with a commitment to social and cultural diversity, environmental sustainability and inclusion.  75% of all projects will be led by women. Strong representation of First Nations artistic voices will also continue, with 20% of projects led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.

The opening weekend showcases the best in new art:

Angkot Alien by Rafaella McDonald and Natasha Gabriella Tontey SOLD OUT

Unique Indonesian-style ‘Angkot’ van lands in Melbourne in a new international collaboration A hotted-up van with a colourful and visual customized body will be parked in a secret location in Melbourne.  Angkot Alien is an exciting combination of the practices of McDonald and Tontey, where costume, painting, video and performance overlap to create a textured live art experience.

Decolonist by Katie West, 6 May – 4 June, West Space

Emerging Indigenous artist asks, ‘can the damage done by colonialism be undone?’  Reflecting on the impact of colonisation upon her sense of self as an Aboriginal woman, Perth artist Katie West has developed her own method of decolonisation: a personal meditation practice and art exhibition that invites audiences to reflect on Australia’s history and identity.

Ecosexual bathhouse by Pony Express, 6-14 May, Domain House, Royal Botanic Gardens

Ecosexual Bathhouse invites audiences to explore the social and psychological boundaries between ecology, evolution and sexuality.  Set in the verdant beauty of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, WA-based collective Pony Express will transform a garden chalet into an immersive, interactive performance labyrinth.

The Fraud Complex curated by Johnson+Thwaites, 6 May – 4 June, West Space

The Fraud Complex questions the value of authenticity, as it has been socially and historically assumed. Eleven Australian and international artists approach notions of authentic and fake as they play out in everyday life. Suspicions of duplicity and doubt are incited through an unusual co-presentation of artworks— across performance, painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation—with objects of uncertain provenance, including unauthorized fakes and counterfeits.

Shadows on the hill by Dan McCabe, 5 – 22 May, various venues

Making an artist-designed tent his home in Melbourne during the Festival, Perth-based artist Dan McCabe seeks to question how we might disrupt and mitigate suburban aspiration and gentrification, offering a humble and conscious way to view the world. Living in the mobile shelter McCabe will use his temporary engagements with various urban locations, including Southbank’s Testing Grounds, Footscray Community Arts Centre, ACCA and Northcote Town Hall, as an opportunity for spontaneous and informal discussion with the passers-by.

Sisters Akousmatica by Julia Drouhin and Pip Stafford, 8 May various locations

Over seven hours, radio queens and sound curators Julia Drouhin and Pip Stafford will take over the 3CR airwaves transmitting live performances by seven acclaimed female sound artists on Sunday 8 May 2016.  The duo will create a city-scale radio acousmonium exploring the concept of akousma— sound removed from its source—by broadcasting a series of live performances to audiences in different CBD locations.

Mummy Dearest by Annaliese Constable, 5-21 May, Arts House, North Melbourne

In a hilariously awkward account of parenting and its pitfalls, Sydney-based writer, performer and queer-rights activist Annaliese Constable premieres her new performance work Mummy Dearest.   Holding a magnifying glass up to families, addiction, mental illness and magpie attacks, Constable draws on deeply personal experiences of childhood and family, to present a brutally honest performance work topped off with an unforgettable bar fight, set to pokies music.

One Million Views by Xanthe Dobbie & Tiyan Baker, 5-21 May, North Melbourne shopfronts

Australian video artists Xanthe Dobbie and Tiyan Baker have launched themselves into the cyber-galaxy of YouTube to reveal the on-and offline lives of six of the country’s biggest YouTube celebrities.  Baker and Dobbie look closer at the people on-screen, using their unique styles to create 2-channel video portraits displayed in shopfronts, restaurants and civic spaces on North Melbourne’s quaint Errol Street.

Sedih // Sunno by Rani P Collaborations, 5-15 May, Arts House, North Melbourne

The world premiere of Sedih // Sunno is an intimate and immersive performance by award-winning artist Rani Pramesti and the first work for company Rani P Collaborations. Four artists invite audience members into intimate spaces to listen and reflect on the personal histories and hidden legacies of their families. Confronting at times in theme, Sedih // Sunno(‘sadness’ in Bahasa Indonesia and ‘to listen’ in Fijian Hindi) is ultimately contemplative and uplifting. Lead artist, Rani Pramesti draws on her background as a social worker and performing artist, to create a poetically driven production.

Still I Rise by Hannah Brontë, 6-22 May, Blak Dot Gallery

Hannah Brontë explores a visionary alternate reality where the cabinet of Australia is made up entirely of women – including a female, Indigenous Prime Minister – in her new music video, immersive exhibition and dance party extravaganza, Still I Rise.  Against driving hip-hop beats, a cabinet of women of diverse cultures, sexualities and ages form a new world order: one where oestrogen-laced camouflage patterns dress a fiercely female militia, and articulate language is used as weapon to mobilise the people.

Under My Skin by The Delta Project, 5-8 May, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall

This innovative company – comprised of deaf and hearing dancers – incorporates both Auslan and spoken English into their choreography. Driven by a philosophy of dance as a universal communicator, choreographers Jo Dunbar and Lina Limosanihave created an explosive new work crossing the divide between deaf and hearing cultures. Under My Skin interweaves personal stories that come from the dancers, revealing what it means for them in their interaction with the world around them.

Arrival of the Rajah by Eva Heiky Olga Abbinga, 5-20 May, Abbotsford Convent

More than 60 collaborators from communities across Victoria have come together with Melbourne-based visual artist Eva Heiky Olga Abbinga to create Arrival of the Rajah, a seven-metre wide sculpture paying homage to one of Australia’s most precious textile artworks ‘The Rajah Quilt’.

Blaksland & Lawless by Lorna Munro, Merindah Donnelly & Tjanara Talbot, 5-22 May, various locations

Shining a light on the ludicrous nature of colonialism, patriarchy and the idea of discovery, the series of large-scale photographs will be displayed across Melbourne on pasted-up street posters, representing the multifaceted, complex layers of both the contemporary and traditional Aboriginal female identity.

shadow sites curated by Frances Wilkinson & Samantha McCulloch, 1 April – 22 May, CCP & National Storage Collingwood

What happens to artworks when they are hidden from view, resting in the vaults of an

archive? Curators Frances Wilkinson and Samantha McCulloch will transform a common storage facility into a site for viewing and experiencing contemporary art.

Ua numi le fau curated by Léuli Eshraghi, 6 May – 18 June, Gertrude Contemporary

Ua numi le fau reflects on the heritage and practice of Aboriginal civil rights, union movement and queer rights from Fitzroy, Collingwood and Abbotsford in Wurundjeri country out into the wider world. The exhibition considers what kinds of histories have reached us in the present, and which futures we are constructing in our relationships to each other, to our bodies and to our environments.

GROUND CONTROL by Rachel Perks and Bridget Balodis, 4-14 May, Northcote Town Hall

Writer/performer Rachel Perks and director Bridget Balodis again team up to take cyberfeminism into the 22nd century in the brand new theatre work GROUND CONTROL. Motivated by the under-reported epidemic of violence against women in Australia, the impending mass displacement of millions of people by war and climate change, and exponential evolution of cyborg technology, Perks and Balodis seek to challenge political apathy by taking our world and fast forwarding it 100 years into the future.

microLandscapes by Emma Fishwick, 4-8 May, Northcote Town Hall

Bringing together dancers from some of Australia’s most exciting companies, Chunky Move and CO3, with renowned video artist Kynan Tan, Western Australian choreographer Emma Fishwick’s microLandscapes will transform the Northcote Town Hall into an immersive 360 degree experience.   Allowing audience members to navigate their own way through the giant main hall, microLandscapes creates a shifting landscape of movement, digital projection, sculpture and rippling sound that collapses, folds and expands around the audience.

Telltale curated by Justin Hinder & Anna Louise Richardson, 7 May – 11 June, Arts Project Aust

Ten artists cross paths as guests in a grand story that unfolds between fact and fiction, in this new exhibition.  Curated by Justin Hinder and Anna Louise Richardson, the artists have been working in pairs for almost twelve months to create works that reveal the lost secrets of the scandalous fictional hoteliers the Telltales.

The Voices of Joan of Arc by Janie Gibson, 3-14 May, Northcote Town Hall

In this collaboration with violinist and vocalist Xani Kolac of Melbourne-based duo The Twoks, Gibson weaves together music, song and text, giving voice to Joan’s own words as captured in the detailed transcript of her trial for heresy. Audiences enter Joan’s world through a musical landscape of original compositions and traditional songs, bringing together Gibson’s Polish influenced polyphonic singing methods with Kolac’s contemporary pop-stylings.

Full details:  nextwave.org.au

Next Wave is supported by Creative Victoria, Australia Council for the Arts and City of Melbourne.