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Sculpture in the park 2006
Brown’s Mart Trustees in conjunction with 24HR Art: The Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art invite
Northern Territory artists to submit proposals for 2006 Sculpture in the park.
In its third time running, this popular biannual event is one of the highlights of the Darwin Fringe Festival and Darwin
Festival, and is proudly supported by Darwin City Council and Arts NT, Department of Natural Resources,
Environment and the Arts.
Held in Civic Park, this is a great opportunity for visual artists to present work in an outdoor public form with great
exposure to wide audiences.
Project Officer Talitha Kennedy can help you with any queries on: sip@brownsmart.com.au or 24hrart@24hrart.org.au
Director Steve Eland:
"24HR Art has received funding from the Australia Council to hold
an artist camp in Western Arnhem Land in July 2006.
We have invite six interstate contemporary artists to join with
six principal indigenous artists, represented by Injalak Arts and
Crafts. The visiting artists will be taken by road to Gunbalanya
(Oenpelli), all twelve artists camping out in the most beautiful
escarpment country imaginable. The artists will give presentations
of their work and discuss their individual art practices, simply
'sit down', 'talk' and 'learn'. The project will cross cultural
boundaries leading to a better understanding of artistic merit and
methodologies. In 2005 I held talks with a number of traditional
landowners and artists of the region. We discussed the possibility
of inviting visiting artists to outstation communities as part of
a 24HR Art residency program. It was expressed to me during these
talks that there were little or no opportunities for remote community
indigenous artists to see contemporary Balanda (outsider) art practices
and no situations whereby they could form relationships between
themselves and non-indigenous artists to facilitate an understanding
of each other's methodology and to test their own understandings
of contemporary art. The indigenous artists commented that they
would prefer to invite artists who would work on a collaborative
'two-way' project rather than a visiting artist simply undertaking
workshops or doing their own work. They have in the past, had visiting
artists whose role it was to teach particular artistic skills such
as printmaking, however what they were asking now is to 'sit down'
with Balanda artists and 'talk' about each other's art. As a result
of these discussions, 24HR Art and Injalak Arts and Crafts formed
a new partnership to develop projects which address these concerns.
Gunbalanya acts as an interface, a point at which two systems act
on each other. In this case a long standing indigenous cultural
tradition of relationship to the land and spiritual world and very
strict defined laws concerning artistic depictions of this relationship.
By way of an expurgation process the indigenous artists have opened
up these artistic depictions to the 'outside' world because they
believe we Balanda's need to learn, that 'it will grow us up'. The
other is an 'outside' contemporary art movement, which operates
in an atmosphere of total artistic and expressionistic freedom.
Both systems sometimes speak similar visual language, the same dialogue
with their cultural and spiritual connections but they are operating
in vastly opposing systems. This interface point will enable and
nurture notions of understanding these system boundaries. This project
will develop existing partnerships between 24HR Art and indigenous
arts organisations. It affords a very high level of collaboration
between the six indigenous artists from Injalak Arts and Crafts
and the six visiting artists, an engagement of artistic viewpoints,
artistic systems of recording, artist's relationship to the landscape
and cultural dissection. It will act as a conduit, a two-way knowledge
transfer and an intersection of wide ranging artistic practices.
The participating artists are: Thompson Yulidjirri,
Linde Ivimey, Lofty Nadjamerrek, Guan Wei, Bruce Nabegeyo, Kate
Rohde, Lawrence Nganjmirra, Nick Mangan, Gabriel Maralngurra, Peter
Walsh, Graham Badari"
Writers
Ashley Crawford, Elina Spilia
Photographer
Hari Ho
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