Artist-2-Artist: Temporal Sovereignty

This workshop introduces participants to Time Design, a creative methodology developed by Emele Ugavule that centres Indigenous Oceanic understandings of time, memory, and storytelling. Participants will explore how time can be shaped, stretched, layered, and disrupted within their creative practice and personal life for their wellbeing.

Through guided exercises, discussion, and reflective making, the session invites artists to move beyond linear narratives and engage with embodied and environmental modalities of time. 

The workshop emphasises process over product, encouraging intuitive creation, deep listening, and relational thinking. It is both a practical and conceptual space for artists and arts workers to reimagine how time operates within their work.

The timing of this workshop is intentionally aligned with the July New Moon, and New Year across various Pacific Nations.

About the artist 

Emele Ugavule is a Tokelauan, Uvean, and Fijian storyteller. A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA), and Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa: NZ Drama School she has worked with various artists and organisations across the Pacific including Sydney Opera House, Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies, Netflix and Mad Ones Films, ABC Australia, Creative Australia, Creative New Zealand and Sony Australia.

Her work centres on Indigenous Oceanic storytelling, exploring themes of temporality, memory, kinship, technology and knowledge transmission. She is a founding member of Studio Kiin, an Indigenous-led creative studio and collective, serves as the Creative Director of Talanoa, a platform dedicated to Oceanic digital storytelling, the curator of Tok Talanoa and Tadra Vata, Melanesian and Oceanic event series, and co-founder of the Mataka Foundation, an Indigenous Futures focused social enterprise with her husband.

What will you learn? 

• Develop an understanding of Time Design

• Explore non-linear and Indigenous approaches to time 

• Strengthen ability to work intuitively with bodies and environment

• Undertake a time audit, and gain tools to apply temporal experimentation and boundaries

How to get here

• Train: 2-minute walk from Town Hall Station

• Light rail: 2-5 minute walk from light rail platforms

• Metro: Gadigal Station is a 1 minute walk from the Bathurst Street exit/entrance

• Bus: 5 minute walk from Elizabeth Street, Stand C and D

• Car: Wilson Parking, 14 Wilmot St, Sydney or Meriton Suite Parking, 100 Bathurst St

Accessibility

We welcome all visitors to City of Sydney Creative Studios. If you have access requirements, please add your accessibility requirements during the booking process. If you would like to contact someone about access, please email Dean Nash at access@brandx.org.au.

Community tickets: We offer free tickets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and people experiencing financial hardship. To access these tickets please email marketing@brandx.org.au (unless sold out).

Exchanges & refunds

Want to cancel your ticket? Please email us at programs@brandx.org no less than 24 hours prior to workshop commencement. We can refund your tickets minus transaction fees of 1.75% + 30c.

Header image: Photography by Bryony Jackson. This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW and the City of Sydney Creative Studios.