Jennifer Hickinbotham is a singer, songwriter, video producer, and painter. She is finalising her PhD in Fine Art (Philosophy) at RMIT early next year. Throughout her PhD years, she has been writing and singing songs in both Victoria and Western Australia — including one performance at UNSW in Sydney, accompanied by Laura Altman. Jennifer sings a cappella, but is often accompanied by improvising artists who play guitar, tiny pianos, drums, piano, and other interesting instruments. When writing songs, she doesn’t compose music — she used to play piano but hasn’t taken it up again recently. This year, Jennifer is working on a series of songs to perform at La Trobe Art Institute as part of an exhibition produced by Amelia Wallin and Jacina Leong, both PhD candidates at Monash University. The exhibition explores the Art Access Studio, which opened in Larundle Psychiatric Hospital in the 1980s and closed in 1996. Jennifer is also making a film about Sue, who lived at Larundle for a period of time.

Tell us about your experience with ANAT SPECTRA.
Melissa DeLaney imbued my experience at ANAT SPECTRA 2022 :: Multiplicity with her delightfully friendly and supportive character right from the beginning of discussions till today, she’s so calm, collaborative and supportive.

The space was great, the programming excellent and the chosen program amazing.

What or who inspires you in the realm of interdisciplinary practice, and why?
My collaborator Joel Stern inspires me tremendously, he’s a teacher in the field of Media and Communication at RMIT. Back in 2022 for ANAT SPECTRA Joel supported my singing of a text based song, about our collaboration. Joel played a tiny instrument with mental prongs on it and he plugged it into his PA system which he carried on public transport to the Science Gallery Melbourne from him home in Brunswick. At this time Joel was Creative Manager with Liquid Architecture, which he built into an incredibly successful events initiator.  2023/4 Joel took on a Post Doctoral position at RMIT in the school of Media and Communications, a colleague told me he was the most sought after staff member around.  2025 he has taken on a full time teaching role in the school of Media and Communication at RMIT. Joel is inspiring, collaborative, supportive, inclusive and creative. 

Name a cultural work (film, book, music etc) that inspired or challenged your creative perspective, and tell us why.
Released at SPACED was my album, EAST to West Fight, Flight, Freeze.  The songs on this album were written while I travelled from Melbourne to Fremantle in my car with three small dogs and a tent. The show at SPACED was produced by Darlene Aaron and her friends, SPACED is an accommodating space for artists of all kinds, including disabled performers.  Darlene and team prepared the space with much free movement area so it easily accommodated wheel chairs and others walking with aids, the lights were dim, there was a chill-out space for those who needed a rest from the hub hub of the main room. The album release, supported by three artists, was paced quietly and respectfully, there was plenty of time for pack up and set up between sets.  Two of the performers, as well as myself, were students of Dale Gorfinkel, who records them making their music each week in class and then organises a concert once each term for family and workers to come along and share the musical achievements. Dale, like Darlene, is conscious of the space being kind, friendly and creative to people of all abilities.

Dale inspires me as much as Darlene as a producer.  Dale’s concert, the one I attended and sang at live, was actually his first to support his students to perform and hear themselves in a public space. Dale’s first performer was a woman living in a wheel chair who has no speech, she and Dale chose a song she likes, and she made her ‘song’ to accompany this music in her own vocabulary and sound effects. Each of Dale’s students performed only a couple of us live, most recorded beforehand so there was no anxiety, stress or distress. 

If you could collaborate with any figure from history or contemporary culture, who would it be and why?
If I collaborate with any figure from history or contemporary culture I’d choose Tina Stephanou.  She recently had a show on at ACCA called You Can’t See Speed.  Her show included a film about a blind man riding his dirt bike on the floor of a gravel pit.  The driver had special techniques to avoid boulders and pot holes, by mapping things out with his feet before he rode around the obstacles getting faster each time, and taking more and more risks. 

Another part of Tina’s presentation with a wide angled film she made at Carnamagh in the weat belt of Western Australia north of Perth. Tina won a residency with SPACED in WA and was able to live with the community of Carnamagh while she ran singing workshops which I attended and supported, she gathered wool and with the local ladies made a vest for a tractor, which was later displayed in the Perth Gallery with Tina’s other works from the residency, including a ball, which featured local musicians, school brass bands, footy team, literary group, Perth Opera representatives, who sang at beginning, middle and end and put the feather in the cap of the Carnamagh Ball.  

For ACCA Tina interviewed as many people who had contributed to the Ball, which included me singing songs, and our interviews took the place of written scripts for disabled persons, these spoken or sung scripts were on the humorous side and were intended to entertain all. There were also, fragments of film from these people who had contributed to Tina’s exhibition, they were printed onto material sews into thick streamers and hung from a hoop.

Tina is a real inspiration.

What’s next? Tell us about your next project, collaboration or thinking.
My next project is to make a film for an exhibition being held at La Trobe Art Institute. The project is facilitated by two PhD candidates, Amelia Wallin and Jacina Leong, from Monash University and focusses upon the Art Access productions created at the Larundel Psychiatric Unit over about ten years, 1986 – 1996 in Melbourne. Some inmates took their art with them when they left the asylum, not many, much art was left and his now the subject of this exhibition and has been studied for a PhD. The Arts Access program at Larundle was the first art opportunity in a psychiatric facility to allow participants to work voluntarily painting or creating works of their own choice, the works were not used in medical or psychiatric analysis.

I will be singing six songs which I’ve written about the art works, the participants and the facilities at the opening day, accompanied by Darlene Aaron and Joel Stern on their chosen instruments. I am also making a film about one of the songs called Song to Sue, which was written in 2021 and sung at Blindside Gallery, then Incinerator Gallery as a runner up to the Art for Social Change Prize. The film will be produced by Joel Stern, filmed by Amiel Courtin-Wilson and his accomplice, sound work by Joel and his chosen accomplice, I will sing acapella, and we’ll be supported by Jacina, Amelia and Sue whose support person is Rosemary the student who completed a PhD about the Arts Access Art Collection.

I wrote the song about Sue after I called out on social media for a collaborator to work with me in writing my songs and making my videos. Sue answered and in answering she emailed to me that she had just been walking through the Larundle site and remembered the people who died there, reminded by the bars, and the graffiti and the distressed by the destruction of the psychiatric facility where she and others had been incarcerated in dire conditions for many many years.