Accentuate the positives in ambitious show
Rosemary Sorensen; 17/4/08
Five years ago, the ambitious Story Place exhibition, which surveyed art from Cape York and the northern rainforest region of Queensland, made much of the “unique bicornual baskets” called jawun. Unique to the people who live between Cardwell and Cooktown, the jawun is engineered, as curator Julie Ewington tells us, not just shaped. The wide-mouthed basket is made from split cane with a base that curves into points on either side. Those horns have a practical rather than aesthetic function, as they are used to trap fish and plants. Story Place, which ran at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2003, was an enormous show, and the way it displayed woven baskets was so elegant they became more aesthetic objects than practical. The women of the Jumbun community, northwest of Cardwell, were presented as artists working in a rare and difficult medium.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23550442-16947,00.html
Canning Stock Route now reaches Beijing
Victoria Laurie; 17/4/08
The paint is barely dry on dozens of brilliantly hued canvases painted in the dust along the Canning Stock Route, the historic cattle trail that snakes through 1800km of forbidding West Australian desert country. But 20 of the largest will soon be sent to Beijing as the only Australian cultural presence in the Olympic Expo Beijing 2008. The first such event to be held alongside a Games, the expo is intended as a showcase of global culture and is billed as the biggest single event outside Beijing’s Olympic Stadium. News that Canning Stock Route artists have been invited to represent Australia brought smiles to the faces of the three young indigenous curators - Terry Murray, Louise Mengil and Hayley Atkins - who are assembling the art in a three-year project.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23550444-16947,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Art, Australia