• About Us
  • Courses
    • Children
      • Photography & videography
      • Digital media workshop
      • Behind the art
    • Adult
      • photography
      • Advanced photography courses
  • Instructors
    • Chris Kapa
    • Matt Orr
    • Paul Torcello
    • Robert Nelson
    • Roy Chu
    • Rudi Williams
    • Peichi Wu
  • scholarship
  • contact
ACAI
ACAI
  • About Us
  • Courses
    • Children
      • Photography & videography
      • Digital media workshop
      • Behind the art
    • Adult
      • photography
      • Advanced photography courses
  • Instructors
    • Chris Kapa
    • Matt Orr
    • Paul Torcello
    • Robert Nelson
    • Roy Chu
    • Rudi Williams
    • Peichi Wu
  • scholarship
  • contact

Australia Contemporary Art Institute


The ACAI team is a group of working professionals well established in the Australian creative community. They are a collection of Melbourne-based creative makers and thinkers working in both the commercial and fine art fields.

Individually and as a team they bring a diverse range of talent and experience to draw upon and share.

The ACAI experience not only focusses on the technical side of practice but also has a unique focus on the creative and conceptual side of modern image creation. From studio lighting techniques to a critique of contemporary art, the ACAI student will gain valuable knowledge and experience of the entire image-creation process.

Based in picturesque and safe Melbourne, Victoria, the ACAI course and workshops also offer many opportunities to capture the local and unique look of Melbourne.

Chris Kapa

Chris Kapa

Photography
An avid photographer for more than 30 years, Chris Kapa realised early in his photography career that it is all about the challenge to achieve your greatest work that brings about true pleasure. It’s the challenge to go beyond the square.

His engaging nature and focused energy enables him to work with a variety of clients whilst always staying true to his individual style

He produces images that appear to show a timeless quality. Distinctly elegant, it is both classic and contemporary in style.
Chris is very much a team player and respected by his fellow peers. He meets and usually exceeds his client’s expectations.

‘The Kapa Effect’ describes the je ne sais quoi that comes with every Kapa shoot. Born busy, Kapa is a photographer with an inexhaustible store of energy and enthusiasm. His prolific body of work is a testament to his talent and unstoppable drive. Across a raft of style and subject matter, Kapa’s ability to harness his passion through the lens delivers distinct shots with impact and inspiration. Whatever the brief, once captured by Kapa, you’ll never look back.

  See Chris’s profile

Matt Orr

Matt Orr

Art Direction
Matt Orr is a visual based creative located in Melbourne Australia with over 25 years’ experience in multiple and varied visual disciplines from still imagery through to moving images and from rough sketch through to the finished/final visual solution.

Matt’s work across multiple mediums has a clear focus from the primary and early conceptual stage through to the final image based solution.

Matt graduated with distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology with a degree in Art Direction and Copywriting where his skills have provided him with opportunity to work amongst multiple visual fields and and across various media throughout his career including the international advertising Industry as well as both the music and film worlds.

Matt works in an exclusive digital environment using equipment powered by electricity, light but thankfully not steam. He offers a diverse range of skills in the areas of Art Direction, Illustration, Design, Retouching, Photography, Animation and Film.

When busy working late into the night he often laments the lack of hours in the day… alongside a lack of extra working limbs.

  See Matt’s profile

Paul Torcello

Paul Torcello

Photography
Before embarking on a career in Advertising photography Torcello studied painting, sculpture and photography at the best Fine Art College in Australia. There, under the tutoring of David Wilson, Athol Shmith, John Cato and Paul Cox amongst others, he learnt the craft of how light shapes form, and though upon completion Torcello choses a commercial path, Torcello was forever inspired by the work of Irving Penn, Arnold Newman and the great still life and portrait photographers of the past.
What drives Torcello as a photographer is the previsualisation, composition and the quality of light that he desires. Torcello’s influences weren’t restricted to great photographers they included Rembrandt, Caravaggio and the Great Masters of painting and the way they positioned their subjects in moodily lit studios or candlelit environments in order to convey mystery: soft light and chiaroscuro.
Before the advent of digital photography the majority of his commercial work was shot on medium to large format film which required considerable flash power in order to achieve the depth of field required in a single exposure. But now with high resolution DSLRs we are able to use smaller, portable, battery-powered flash units such as the Profoto B1 and A1, which allows us to shoot on location without the use of petrol-driven generators or lighting trucks.

  See Paul’s profile

Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson

Art theory
Dr Robert Nelson is the author seven books on art, design, architecture and education (the latest being Creativity crisis in 2018) and over 100 articles and chapters. He has been Associate Dean Research & Graduate Studies, Associate Dean Teaching & Learning and Head of Department of Theory in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University, where he also supervised 20 doctoral and research masters candidates to completion. Robert has written over 1,000 newspaper reviews as ongoing art critic for The Age in Melbourne, for which he was awarded the Pascall Prize. Robert was also a scene painter and studio hand for the photographic artist Polixeni Papapetrou.

  See Robert’s profile

Rudi Williams

Rudi Williams

Art theory
Rudi Williams learns and understands through the process of making and rendering images. Born in Milan, Italy in 1993, her family returned to Australia in 1995. The daughter of cinematographer and photographer Michael Williams and fashion and costume designer Annette Soumilas, Rudi was raised assisting and on the sidelines of her parent’s work.

This early exposure to the inner workings of theatre, cinema, art and photography production allowed Rudi to observe the way images are constructed and to understand how performance can create collective desire, fear and nostalgia.

From 2012 – 2015, Rudi completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts specialising in photography. While studying she began to work in the colour darkroom to make large-scale prints of images taken on the street with her 35mm camera and inside neglected cinemas with her 5×4 view camera. She was interested in filtering what she was learning at art school through the darkroom process, each print like an illuminated screen in a dormant cinema.

She started lecturing in the photography department at Monash University in 2017, introducing students to the history, theory and practical foundations of the black and white darkroom. The subject required students to choose their own research topic to explore the potential for 35mm black and white film to aid the exploration of liminal ideas.

  see Rudi’s Profile

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