Heading to Melbourne for its second year, the Semi-Permanent creative conference will showcase presentations from a dozen highly talented artists from around the world.

Covering a diverse range of genres, the speakers confirmed so far include legendary UK visual effects agency Framestore, Perth based photojournalist Claire Martin, American graphic designer Andy Jenkins, UK agency Big Active and local Melbourne illustrator Leif Podhajsky [above]. More speakers will be confirmed soon, so check the website for updates. The event is on 17 and 18 September at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

SPONSOR

Our friends over at Semi-Permanent, which is the biggest annual design conference in Australia, have given us five double passes to give away to the Perth leg of the event on April 8. So if you’re a Lost At E Minor subscriber, and you want to attend, or if you’re not yet a subscriber but sign up now, leave a message under this post with why you want to go along and we’ll randomly select five lucky winners of the passes, which are valued at $300 each, on April 1st. [read an interview with Amy Sol, one of the guest speakers at Semi-Permanent Perth this year]

We’re big fans of the work of American illustrator, Amy Sol. So we were excited to hear that she’s winging over to Australia as a guest speaker at this year’s Perth Semi-Permanent, which is taking place on April 8. We asked her what she was expecting to find on her first visit to the country: ‘I’ve always wanted to visit. I loved to look at National Geographic articles about Australia when I was growing up and always hoped to actually visit someday. I don’t have any expectations at this point. I’m just looking forward to seeing the cities, maybe some wildlife, and perhaps meeting some cool people’. Can you give us a sneaky window into what you’ll be talking about at Semi-Permanent? ‘Well, you’ll have to actually be there to find out because I’m no good at curriculums! I’m really excited and nervous but that is obsolete in comparison to how grateful I am for even being invited. I just want to share what I can with the audience and hopefully offer some insight to the artists or interested people attending’. You are exhibiting pretty regularly. And you draw a lot of girls. What is it about the female form that you particularly like capturing? ‘Yeah. I like to draw girls. I often attach personal metaphors to my characters, but they will vary greatly with each work’. Who are the artists that are inspiring you at the moment? ‘Range Murata, Kay Nielsen, and other “golden age” illustrators’.