Raku Pitt (b1980) is a multi-arts practitioner bringing with him the outsider’s perspective of a life lived mostly on the fringes.
Gifted with a red accordion and under the tutelage of avant-guard composer and improviser Ross Bolleter, Raku embarked on his adult life studying art and architecture in Perth. Moonlighting as musical accompanist for Sandpiper Productions, Playback Theatre and Bizerkus, at 20 he ran away with the Lunar Circus to tour the NT.
Graduating with a Print major from UTAS, Raku left Hobart for Melbourne. Highlights included Festival Art Coordination for SoS, Emergency Puppetmaker for TZU video-clip ‘In Front’, and childrens’ art facilitation for Melbourne Fringe and the Victorian Arts Centre. Raku performed on stage at Carlton’s famed La Mama Theatre in ‘Les Animaux’, and in the Fringe production of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Art Murder’.
In 2006 Raku was co-convenor of illustrated storytelling collective Stories From The Ground, with Stephen Mushin. His design career took him back to WA, and as far afield as Sweden's Icehotel, where he carved ice in perpetual darkness and played accordion under the northern lights.
Returning to Melbourne Raku brought‘Wild Dog’ to life with a sythesis of projected etchings inhabited by live shadow-manipulations and accompanied by live storytelling and improvised music. Raku's skills as producer, set-designer and shadow-puppeteer also featured in the larger-scale ‘The Baron In The Trees’ at the 2007 Darebin Music Feast.
Raku has been Community Garden Artist at Melbourne's Sprout for 3 years. 2008 saw a major joint project with sister Freya and mother Kati Thamo, culminating in Shadow Me Home at Fremantle’s Moores Building. Recent highlights include a large-scale sculpture commission for Merri Community Health; multicultural theatre facilitation for Hookah In A Guesthouse; and the long-awaited embarkation of the pianoBoat project with the support of a City of Melbourne Artplay Grant.
