Tess Allas
Tess Allas is a researcher, curator, and Indigenous Editor with the DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online) and is currently employed as an Associate Lecturer in the School of Art History & Art Education at COFA. Allas has a Bachelor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and a Masters in Curatorship and Modern Art from the University of Sydney. She has worked in the field of Aboriginal arts since the early 1990s, including working as the Aboriginal Arts Development Officer for the Illawarra, Regional Arts Cultural Officer for NSW, Assistant curator at the Art Gallery of NSW and as a tutor in Art History and Theory for the University of Sydney’s Power Institute.
Allas has also curated a number of exhibitions around Wollongong and Sydney including Looking into Aftertime at the Project Centre For Contemporary Art, Djalarinji: Something that Belongs to Us at Manly Regional Art Gallery and Museum, In The Interest Of Bennelong (co-curated with Aaron Ross), at Government House (Sydney) and Access All Areas at Customs House (Circular Quay).
In mid-2006 Allas secured employment with the University of New South Wales working as a researcher for the Storylines project which researches Aboriginal artists from across the nation. In this role she interviews and writes biographies of these artists for inclusion in the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. More than 500 biographies of Aboriginal artists have been included in this project. In 2010, Tess Allas participated in the panel discussion The View of Self: Blak on Blak on 30 May, realized in cooperation with Australian art magazine Artlink, Framer Framed, the National Museum of Australia and AAMU – Museum for Contemporary Aboriginal Art.
Allas is also known as one half of the comedy duo The Ladies of Bigotbri Concerned Women’s Association and as such has performed at The Dreaming Festival, The Deadly’s, Campbelltown Arts Centre and various conferences and gatherings around the country.
