Michelle Glaser

Michelle Glaser is a Perth-based new media artist, freelance curator, writer, and producer. Her artistic practice consists of video art, interactive narrative, and arts science. 

Michelle currently works as the acting senior project officer, arts development at the Department of Culture and the Arts and is a founding member of PRION.

PRION is a collaboration of three scientists and two artists who create arts science works with future potential for integration into domestic surroundings, rather than works that rely on scientific infrastructure that can be hard to maintain. These works frequently use humour to disturb audience preconceptions about the nature of science, arts, progress, discovery, and even the nature of nature.

Some of Michelle’s previous artistic projects include Juvenate, an interactive narrative created in collaboration with Marie-Louise Xavier and Andrew Hutchison; the Diabolical Doctor Pancoast, an interactive live animated short film; and Snapshot, a 25-minute video capturing performative elements of the everyday. Juvenate has won numerous awards, including the Mayne Award for Multimedia at the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, the John Landsdowne Award at Eurographics, and Grand Prix in the category of new media at the 7^th International Festival of New Film.

Michelle has worked in allied sectors of festival arts development, arts funding agencies, arts management, and film. She has worked as a project officer at ArtsWA, and was the artistic director of AWESOME Arts Australia, presenters of the annual AWESOME Festival. Michelle has previously directed the boards of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), and Imago CMC.

How she did it

Michelle has gained funding from Arts WA, PICA, the Australian Film Commission (AFC), ScreenWest, Asialink, and ANAT. She is also short-listed for the Daniel Langlois Foundation and has received in kind support from Phylogica, and the Bio Chemistry and Molecular Biology sector of the University of Western Australia.

Advice for emerging artists

• Do your research on the funding or sponsorship guidelines as well as what has been supported in the past.  Once you have established that, find someone in the funding agency or sponsoring organisation that you can speak to get whatever insights you can.
• Don’t take rejection personally. There are just too many projects applying for funding rounds for them all to be supported. Listen to the feedback and make an unemotional assessment about what parts of it you want to take on board and how you can address the project’s shortcomings.
• Don’t afraid to cold call potential partners – they are generally very responsive to this approach. Be brave enough to get in touch if you are certain your project fits into whatever projects or interests the potential partner has in play. If you are inexperienced, this can work as advantage as people generally do not see this as an immediate threat and are happy to give you assistance if you are keen and enthusiastic.