My work is grounded by where I’m from and the communities I’ve lived in. Regional NSW is an exciting place to create work about, much of it hasn’t been explored and the stories and ways of telling them are endless. However, my vision is bigger. We’re part of a global conversation and I want to be part of that.
Kim V. Goldsmith
For a concise CV please contact Kim
Media file (from ecoPULSE.art)
Kim V. Goldsmith has lived in Regional NSW all her life aside from time in Sydney for education. Following her studies in Systems Agriculture at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, Richmond NSW, followed by Journalism at Macleay College (Sydney), and a short stint in Armidale NSW working at the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI), she returned to her home region to take up a job as the first Rural Reporter with ABC Western Plains radio in Dubbo. This included on-air stints at other ABC regional stations and on the NSW Country Hour. In her post-radio days, Kim freelanced for a couple of regional newspaper publishers as well as establishing a media and marketing communications consulting and training agency (1996-2020). She worked across several regional sectors including rural industry, natural resource management, regional development, tourism, education, health and the arts.
For many years she ran her communications business alongside the art practice that became active in 2000. Since then, Kim’s had multiple solo shows, 40+ group shows, and participated in various festivals including the National Regional Arts festival, Artlands Dubbo (2016), Vivid Sydney (2016) and Cementa (2015 and 2019). She’s contributed to many international collaborations, and since 2018 has undertaken artist residencies at Nes Artist Residency (Iceland) and the CORRIDOR project (Cowra NSW). In 2023, she’s undertaking a residency on the Isle of Skye (Scotland). In 2022, Kim was commissioned by Orana Arts and Dubbo Regional Council to be part of the Regional Arts Network project, Regional Futures, undertaking short residencies at various locations across NSW to develop ideas and new work. These works are being exhibited in 2023, at Manning Regional Art Gallery and Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
Over the past two decades, Kim has been heavily involved in the region’s arts communities, co-founding and running the Fresh Arts collective she was active in until 2012; working as the first Project/Publicity Officer with regional arts development organisation, Orana Arts (2004/05); writing as the first dedicated arts editor with Dubbo-based publisher, Panscott Media (2003/04); founding and administrating an online Regional NSW arts directory and blog, Where is the Art (2011-13); and initiating a professional development program for artists in partnership with Orana Arts and the Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC). Kim was also a board member of the Western Plains Cultural Centre Advisory Board for seven years (2008-2014) – including two years as chair. She managed the philanthropic public art project BOOMDubbo in 2015/16, overseeing a series of murals around Dubbo City created by professional street artists including Adnate, Poncho Army and HaHa. She is currently a member of Dubbo Regional Council’s cultural planning committee (2022/23).
Working as a communications consultant and trainer since 1996, Kim has often shared her knowledge of marketing communications as it relates to arts practices with organisations such as TAFE Western, Orana Arts, Outback Arts, Arts OutWest, Arts North West, Regional Arts NSW and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). In late 2020, Kim participated in a panel discussion as part of Regional Arts Australia’s Artlands Conversation series on connections in times of isolation. She has worked with Orana Arts since 2020 on developing strategic resources and professional development support for regionally-based artists across NSW, through their member-based Studio Co!Lab platform. In this role, she regularly facilities online (Zoom) roundtable discussions between artists for the Studio Co!Lab Talks program. She also undertakes contract work creating environmental or cultural content videos and geo-locative sound walks for clients across Regional NSW.
Stepping back from executive and community arts roles in recent years, Kim’s been pursuing to develop her practice further, working on bigger environmental art projects and collaborations, undertaking more artist residencies, and further developing her digital media and writing practice. She spends a lot of time grant writing and contributing to eco-art networks within Australia and internationally. In 2020, Kim founded ecoPULSE as an online platform to bring together many of the collaborative eco-arts and social ecology projects she’s worked on. The scale and scope of these projects has seen Kim’s work span years and countries since 2017. She’s a member of international networks, (Arts) Territory Exchange, ecoartspace, Walk. Listen. Create., ClimateCultures and the Australian Forum for Acoustic Ecology.
Kim’s hybrid, interdisciplinary practice is as much about process as it is the creation of work. Many of her works are underpinned by research, facilitation, community engagement and cross-sector consultation, and the exploration ideas. Her creative output tends to take the form of multi-layered, constructed soundscapes and video works that look for alternative perspectives and layers of meaning, along with writing in the form of blog posts, prose, essays and short publications. Living in a passive solar house nestled amongst native gardens and bushland on the western edge of Dubbo City, she is immersed in the environment that fuels her work, as well as making frequent excursions across Regional NSW to places such as the Wambuul/Macquarie River, Castlereagh River, the Macquarie Marshes, The Drip and forests of the region. Kim uses a range of specialist microphones and cameras to document the environments in which she works. Her ‘happy place’ is in a natural environment with headphones on and a microphone in hand, captivated by sub-surface sonic worlds.
Growing up on a farm on the Western Plains north of Coonamble, west of the Pilliga Forest, her childhood playgrounds were open paddocks and shady laneways, following the tracks of birds and lizards, catching tadpoles, climbing trees, collecting fallen bird nests and amber resin from trees—watching and reading the landscape for changes that came with the seasons. Formative years with a paternal grandfather who was a bush storyteller and a grandmother who loved books and poetry, lay the foundations for the artist she is today.
Art has the ability to open minds to experiencing things in new ways, breaking down barriers and transcending the politics of the day, enabling us to feel more connected to the world. Regional Australia is on the frontline of change and I feel compelled to not only creatively document, explore and dig into those existential issues impacting our future, but to find ways that invite us to reconsider the way we think, feel and act within the world we inhabit. If I can go even part of the way to achieving that, then my job is done.
Kim V. Goldsmith
kvgoldsmithart.com 