Alessio Cavallaro
Current position
Senior Curator at ACMI - Australian Centre for the Moving Image since 2000 (Full-time)
Previous positions »
Short bio:
ALESSIO CAVALLARO has been a leading figure in the development of electronic arts in Australia for over twenty-five years, primarily as a curator, producer, and publications editor in film, video, media, and sound arts.
Since 2000, Alessio has been Senior Curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne – an internationally leading organisation dedicated to moving image art in all its forms – where he has produced commissioned works and curated exhibitions and touring programs of media art, including the compilation programs Swerve, Plasmatic, Time-Light-Motion, and Periscope.
Major exhibitions as curator at ACMI include Transfigure (2003, www.acmi.net.au/transfigure , ‘one of the most ambitious and successful new media exhibitions Australia has ever hosted’ -The Age), and SenseSurround (2004); and, as co-curator, World Without End (2005), 2006 Contemporary Commonwealth (2006), Setting the Scene: Film Design from Metropolis to Australia (2008); and Len Lye (2009). He was producing curator for Stanley Kubrick: Inside the Mind of a Visionary Filmmaker (2005), Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965–2005 (2007), and Pixar: 20 Years of Animation (2007).
Alessio was guest curator of oZone (2003, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Barbican Gallery, London), and Unnatural Selection, the first group exhibition of Australian media art at Ars Electronica (2004, Linz, Austria); and principal consulting curator of Under_score: Net Art, Sound and Essays from Australia (2001, BAM, New York City).
Alessio was founding Director (1997–2000) of dLux media arts, Sydney, where he initiated, produced and curated a range of innovative programs, including the international annual events d>art and futureScreen, and Synthetics: the electronically generated image in Australia. Other influential projects as producer / co-curator include: ISEA 92 (Sydney, 1992); the Australian Film Commission's (now Screen Australia) seminal Filmmaker and Multimedia events (1993 and 1995); and An Eccentric Orbit: video art in Australia (1994). He was an inaugural member of the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts (1997–2000); Board Director of the Sydney Film Festival (1997–2000) and Electronic Media Arts Australia (1988–1991); manager of the Australian International Video Festival (1990–91); and manager and co-programmer of the Australian Film Institute’s Chauvel Cinema, Sydney (1984–1990).
Alessio has edited numerous exhibition catalogues including Peter Callas: Initialising History (dLuxeditions, 1999), and Transfigure (ACMI 2003). He is a co-editor of other publications, including Impossible Nature: The Art of Jon McCormack (ACMI, 2004), Unnatural Selection (Novamedia, 2004), Prefiguring Cyberculture (MIT Press / Power Publications, 2002), OnScreen/RealTime (1996–2000), and the international critical sound art journal Essays in Sound (1994–1998).
He was producer / presenter of 3.9.1.cannibale (aka cntmprr-ydtns), a weekly program of experimental music and sound art on public radio 2MBS-FM, Sydney (1979–1989), widely regarded as ‘pioneering’, ‘landmark’ and ‘inspired’. He has (co-*) curated numerous sound art exhibitions including, unsound (1991), Australian Sound Art MERIDIAN, Japan (1993), SoundCulture * (1991), Sound in Space * (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1995), and Sound States: Uncertain Destinations * (Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 1997).
Alessio has served on jury, assessment and advisory panels for film and media art festivals and awards, including the Australian government’s Department of Information, Technology and the Arts (DCITA); the Australia Council’s Inter-Arts Office; Arts Victoria’s Arts Innovation Panel; City of Melbourne’s Public Art Program; and the International Jury of the 54th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2008. He has presented widely on media and sound arts, including the Millennium Dialogue Keynote Address at the Second Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium (2005), and is currently on the Advisory Committee of re: live 2009, the Third International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology.