LISA HAVILAH

Kylie Kwong celebrates the individuals helping to grow a stronger community. This month, we meet arts administrator and Powerhouse Museum chief executive Lisa Havilah.

- JOANNA HUNKIN (MAIN) & KYLIE KWONG (INTRO)

One of Lisa Havilah's greatest qualities is her humility and joy in celebrating others. Lisa has had a major influence on my career over the last 10 years, inviting me to first curate the Carriageworks Summer Night Markets in 2017. This ignited a passion within me for collaboration and community that I never knew existed. The joy of gathering talented people and organizations in the same space, collaborating on a common, uplifting goal, and sharing stories and experiences with the world through delicious food, drink, music and art is now one of my favourite things to do.

Sometimes in life, you have to make your own opportunities. As young art students in regional New South Wales, Lisa Havilah and her then-boyfriend (now husband and established ceramicist Glenn Barkley) approached their local art gallery to show their work. The gallery said no. So they decided to put on their own exhibition, converting a kitchen warehouse in Wollongong into a gallery space.

"I wanted to be an artist and then all of a sudden we opened this gallery and it was so deeply energizing, I loved it. I just knew what I wanted to do after that. I never even considered anything else."

"If you can find and tell the story of the place, people understand it and engage with it. It had incredible history."