Asia TOPA, Arts Centre Melbourne and the MSO present

Milestone

William Yang. Elena Kats-Chernin.
Conductor Ben Northey

Thursday 20 February 2025 at 7:30pm
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall

For one night only, Asia TOPA and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra proudly present the Victorian premiere of William Yang: Milestone – a landmark new work by the iconic Australian artist as he reflects on his extraordinary life, to open the 2025 Asia TOPA Festival.

One of Australia’s most celebrated visual artists, Yang turned 80 last year. This co-commission between Asia TOPA, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Arts Centre Melbourne, Sydney Festival and Contemporary Asian Australian Performance celebrates the acclaimed pioneering photographer’s extraordinary contribution to our cultural life.

Milestone reunites longtime friends and collaborators William Yang and internationally acclaimed composer Elena Kats-Chernin for an epic evening of inspired Australian storytelling as Yang looks back on his vast archive of photography, contemplating five decades of social change and the evolution of Australia’s bohemian artist community.

Kats-Chernin creates a musical response to Yang’s moving photographic montages, underscoring the many layers of narrative, emotion, history, struggle and hope represented through Yang’s work.

Yang and Kats-Chernin first came together to create his performance piece I Am a Camera for Sydney Festival in 2012. Yang’s acclaimed performance works – presented at major Festivals and Arts Centres across Australia and the world – draw together images from his collection to tell powerful stories about immigration, culture, sexuality and creativity.

William Yang is one of Australia’s most celebrated visual artists – a pioneering photographer whose work is held in our nation’s major gallery and museum collections (National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and more). He is hailed as a leading influence on subsequent generations of Australian artists of diverse backgrounds and disciplines. Yang has blazed a trail as a Chinese-Australian artist whose work has championed and expanded the visibility of Asian- Australian culture nationally and internationally. His work has also documented the birth of the LGBTQI+ rights movement in Australia, from the beginnings of Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras to the devastating impact of – and survival through – the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s.

Among Elena Kats-Chernin’s extensive oeuvre are works in nearly all genres of classical composition. The acclaimed Australian composer has received numerous commissions from internationally renowned ensembles and institutions, including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian World Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestras of Adelaide, Tasmania, Melbourne, and Sydney, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, as well as the opera houses of Antwerp, Stuttgart, and Kassel. She has collaborated with well-known artists such as Shobana Jeyasingh, Didy Veldman, Mahan Esfahani, Avi Avital, Richard Tognetti, Michael Collins, Axel Ranisch, Igor Bauersima, Simone Young, Marin Alsop, Peter Rundel, David Porcelijn, and many more.

This celebration of Asia-Pacific performance marks a remarkable collaboration by two of Australia’s most distinguished senior artists in Yang’s most ambitious and personal performance to date.

William Yang: Milestone premieres at Sydney Festival 2025 and will be performed at Seoul Performing Arts Festival in October 2025.