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Spanning art, technology and science, Victoria Pham is an Australian artist, evolutionary biologist, writer and composer. She is based between Paris and Sydney. Originally trained as an archaeologist, she is a current PhD candidate in Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, St John's College.
Victoria is represented by the Australian Music Centre as an Associate Artist where a collection of her scores are available. She is the Artistic Director of FABLE ARTS, lead artist in the RE:SOUNDING project with James Nguyen, co-lead artist in the collective SONANT BODIES with James Hazel, and host and producer of podcast series DECLASSIFY.
Her works have been performed, exhibited and commissioned across Australia, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France. She has been commissioned by and exhibited in a number of galleries and ensembles such as the TATE Britain, the Sydney Opera House, Australian Contemporary Centre for Art (ACCA), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Arts House Melbourne, the Anna Schwartz Gallery, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Campbelltown Arts Centre, amongst others. She has featured as a lead artist in international art festivals, including VIVID (2015-16), TINA (2018), Tilde: New Sounds (2019), BLEED (2020) and ANTIDOTE (2022), amongst others.
As an evolutionary biologist and archaeologist, her specialisation is in bioacoustics, the evolution of sound-signalling and acoustic mapping technologies. Victoria has worked with several international museums and institutions such as the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and has conducted solo fieldwork around the world.
Her artistic practice is driven by explorations into the sonic connections across nature; practices of decolonisation and listening deeply. The hallmark of her interdisciplinary practice is her belief that a partnership with Nature is fundamental, and that Nature is a collaborator to her design, research and sound-based work. Victoria continues to pursue her work in biodesign through research into bioacoustics and mycology which inform the cross-form approaches that structure her creative process.
AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS, FUNDING + GRANTS
Finalist for Wyndham Art Prize (2022)
Research Fund, Department of Archaeology (University of Cambridge) (2022)
SSHB Grant for Research, University of Loughborough (2022)
Arts Council of England: Developing Your Creative Practice (2021)
Maureen A Byrne Memorial Prize for Best Thesis in Archaeology IV (Prehistoric and Historical) (2020)
Finalist NSW Young Achiever's Award and Finalist NSW Young Achiever's Award for Academic Achievement (2019)
Create NSW Quickstart Artists' Grant (2018 and 2019)
Create NSW Young Leaders' Fellowship (2018/19)
Semi-finalist NSW Young Achiever's Award, and NSW Coffee Club Fashion and Arts Award (2018)
John Scaheffer Fund for Nineteenth-Century Art (2018)
Olwen Tudor Jones Scholarship for Archaeological Fieldwork (2018)
Henry Lawson Prize for Prose (2018)
Graduates Prize for Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology (2017)
Frank Albert Prize in Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology (2017)
Kathleen Garnham Laurence Prize for Fine Arts (2016)
University of Sydney Scholar (2014)
HIGHLIGHT COMMISSIONS, RESIDENCIES and FESTIVALS
2024
CULTURE LAB 2023-24 cohort: Development of experimental opera 'The Songs of Mycelia'
2023
Exhibition at Seventh Gallery - beneath water's skin, future drowns memory
Inaugural composer-in-residence at European-Australian Chamber Music Festival
2022
RE:TUNING Major Commission for ANTIDOTE FESTIVAL. Commissioned by the Sydney Opera House and ARROW Collective
Anna Schwartz Gallery Commission, ‘A Drumstick is a Hammer,’ in collaboration with James Nguyen
Artistic Residency at Metal Culture UK (Peterborough)
TERRA: Memory + Soil, West Space Gallery x Liquid Architecture x Centre for Projection Art
2021
Group Exhibition for STIGMA x LOCAL COLLECTION, Islington London: Video work – CO GAI MAU DO
Solo exhibition, IF YOU TURN YOU CAN SEE ME, at Gallerie V, Cambridge UK
2020
Podcast series DECLASSIFY launched
RE:SOUNDING ,in collaboration with artist James Nguyen commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre, Art Gallery of New South Wales and ArtsHouse Melbourne for BLEED Festival, with support from Create NSW and Australian Arts Council (2019-2020)
2019
Featured Artist at Tilde New Music and Arts Festival, Melbourne.
Co-producer x Spineless Wonders for Newcastle Writers Festival
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 21st Century Cybec Composers Program
2018
SONANT BODIES Exhibition at Maitland Regional Art Gallery