Vic McEwan is a contemporary artist whose practice aims to contribute to and enrich broader conversations about the role that the arts can play within our communities. As the Artistic Director and co-founder of the Cad Factory, an artist-led organisation creating an international program of new, immersive and experimental work guided by authentic exchange, ethical principles, people and place, Vic has led this regionally based arts organisation to work with over 500 artists, to engage an in-person audience of over 150,000 people, while delivering more than 75 artistic outcomes and over 160 workshops.

 

Vic’s artistic practice involves working with sound, video, installation, performance and site-specific locations. He is interested in creating new dynamics by working with diverse partners in areas such as health, business, the environment and education to explore difficult themes within the lived experience of communities.

 

Vic was the 2015 Artist in Residence at the National Museum of Australia and the recipient of the inaugural Arts NSW Regional Fellowship. Between 2015 and 2018, he created ‘The Harmonic Oscillator’, which explored the effects of noise within hospital spaces and received the Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) 2019 Award for Distinctive Australian Work. He has shared the outcomes of ‘The Harmonic Oscillator’ at Tate Liverpool, the National Gallery of Lithuania and the Big Anxiety Festival, with the Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts, Jill Bennet, declaring it as ‘field defining work’ and ‘arguably one of the most adventurous and profound arts-health interventions to date, both intensely moving and inspirational’.

 

Vic’s prolific output spans areas of socially engaged art and site-specific art, with a deep interest in the creation of cross sector partnerships and the ethics involved in making artistic work in relationship with the lives of other people.

 

Vic sits on the Arts and Health Network NSW/ACT and is a board member of MusicNSW. He holds a first-class Honours of Creative Practice (Fine Arts) for which he received the university medal, and a Master of Arts Practice with High Distinction. He is currently the first artist to be accepted into an arts-practice led PhD in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney working at the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic.

 

As well as being a regular conference speaker and advocate for the role of the arts within our communities, Vic has been invited to participate in numerous high level advocacy programs which aim to understand and enact the arts within the wellbeing of our communities.