Three emerging artists from Western Sydney have been awarded $5000 each to develop new projects that will see them take the next step in their careers. Blush Opera company, playwright and actress Aanisa Vylet, and visual artist Victoria Garcia have been announced as the inaugural recipients of the Southlands Breakthrough Award. Launched by Southlands Shopping Centre and Penrith Performing and Visual Arts, the Award aims to nurture local young creatives who are at the outset of their careers.

“My grandparents arrived in Sydney as migrants in the 1920s and our family later became the owners of Southlands Shopping Centre in Penrith. As a mark of our commitment to the cultural development of the thriving multicultural region which Western Sydney has become, one contribution which we are able to make is to invest in the careers of local artists early in their careers”, said Vivien Encel, representing Southlands Shopping Centre.

Hania Radvan, CEO of Penrith Performing and Visual Arts, said “we are delighted to announce the recipients of this award; the panel was extremely impressed by the calibre of applications – [a] testimony to the talent and artistic practice within our region”.

The Award has allowed Jermaine Chau and Paul Smith of Blush Opera to develop Chop Chef, a satirical chamber opera that explores the manufactured theatrics of Australian reality cooking shows. Helmed by the pair, the company’s goal is to shake up audience expectations of what opera can be by exploring its comedic and parlour possibilities. Chau and Smith will soon workshop the opera with Omega Ensemble, with a staged premiere set for 2018.

“Contemporary opera faces lots of challenges in Australia and receiving the Breakthrough Award means that Blush Opera has a real opportunity to develop and present new works that directly resonate with broad Sydney audiences”, the duo told Limelight.

“Support like this let’s us experiment with our respective forms of art with aesthetic freedom and institutional support, which is very rare in the current arts climate. For Blush, we can play with the medium of opera and show that it isn’t grand and old – it can be sharply current and hilarious”.

The Award has also given recipient Aanisa Vylet the chance to write a new play, entitled The Woman. Based on Vylet’s relationship with her mother, the work explores how they differ on what it means to be a woman today, and how they navigate male communities as feminists. Vylet’s stories draw on her experiences as a young Arab-Australian woman and explore themes of gender, sexuality and ethnicity with humour and warmth.

With the support of the Award, visual artist Victoria Garcia is developing an immersive graphic installation called Nature Palace. Using both hand painted and printed panels, audiences will witness and interact with a dramatic transformation of the environment in real time. Her Filipino-Australian background, her affinity for Indigenous and nomadic cultures and the natural world are all sources of inspiration for Garcia’s eclectic output.