Arts

During Jumpers & Jazz, Glengallan is proving popular offering guided tours of one of the region’s finest historic homesteads and oldest sheep stations. Last Saturday saw a special treat with Jazz at the Homestead.

Geoff Helisma. Translated from the Yaygirr dialect (historically spoken near the mouth of the Clarence River) these words are: ‘Hello there, how are you; this is Yaegl country. I remember my Elder men and Elder women.’ On Friday July 22, as part of the NAIDOC Week exhibition of Yaegl Elders portraits at the Yamba Museum, a book was launched, Keeping our Stories - Stories from Yaegl Country.

After taking a Covid-forced hiatus for the past two years, the Laidley Spring Festival is back for 2022, with a raft of new and exciting events set to make their Festival debut. The theme for the 2022 Laidley Spring Festival is ‘Swing into Spring’ and Lockyer Valley Mayor, Cr Tanya Milligan said Council, and the community, were excited to welcome the event back come September.

From live open-mic zine-readings through to learning the basics of zine-making and meeting some of the biggest names in the industry, all this and more is outlined in the official Mildura Zine Fair program, which is now available. Zines – short for magazines or fanzines – are small-circulation, self-published works of text and images, which at times have been hugely popular over many decades.

What the heck is 'placemaking anyway'? - that's the hot topic on the table when Scenic Rim Regional Council hosts its third Arts Dinner of 2022 on Tuesday 2 August. Set against the backdrop of the Life in Focus exhibition, which includes the Scenic Rim Story Marker Trails project, the dinner explores the concept of how public art connects people with places, builds community pride and reflects the space in which it resides.

Wayne Winchester’s love of surfing began in his early teens and he’d live for the weekends when he could head to the coast to spend hours in the surf. He never dreamed that his hobby would lead to a lifetime career and the creation of a world class surfboard gallery. “I started fashioning my own boards when I was a teenager and I then started making them professionally in the mid 1970s,” Wayne says. “It was an exciting time as I shaped all sorts of boards just to see how they performed.”

Tennant Creek kids were lucky enough to be able to participate in dance/hip hop workshops with artists Matty, Franceska and Michael from Indigenous Outreach Projects (IOP) this week. The week was full of workshops, run with assistance from Julalikari, culminated with a dance performance at Nyinkka Nyunyu on Saturday night.

Showcasing the best of the Barkly’s creative talents and providing memorable and exciting experiences for all ages, the Barkly Regional Arts (BRA) 33rd Desert Harmony Festival is set to be as fun and engaging as ever ... BRA will light up for an evening of poetry, music, circus and dance featuring acts by Kasey Chambers, Olive Knight and many more artists.

Chris Oldfield. Alan Phillips remembers highland dancing in public for the first time during a Naracoorte Caledonian Society function at Bool Lagoon when he was four years old. Now he is a 10-year-old State champion highland dancer, eager to compete in as many competitions as he can. But the prizes are not everything. For Alan, his greatest passion is just being able to perform, meet up with “lots of friends” and have fun.

“My father was born in London, he was a pacifist who refused to go to war. Even though he only had one eye, which prevented him from fighting, he was sent to jail for 12 months for his radical views. This totally changed the direction of my parents’ lives ... As a child, I would not stop moving. My mother would play classical music and I would dance around the big wooden table in the kitchen.

There was creativity on display at the CWA Hall recently as two separate groups participated in Resin Pouring workshops led by Craig Eibeck, who came up from Alice Springs to introduce the techniques of resin pouring.

The sixth annual Gomaren & Doctors Creek Catchment Landcare Group ‘Focus on Farms’ photography competition is underway with a wide range of categories for people of all ages. A key component of the competition is that all photos must be taken in the Darling Downs, defined as the Toowoomba, Southern Downs, Western Downs and Goondiwindi regions.

The town came alive during this year's Maldon in Winter Festival. Over the course of 17 days, locals and tourists delighted in art, music, poetry, plays and performances ... EDGE Galleries opening of 'Shroud' by sculptor, photographer, filmmaker and installation artist, Gary Deirmendjian was well-attended. Visitors were treated to a thought-provoking performance by gallery owner Simon Dow as part of the exhibition.

Two women, Alice Halden and Ayla Young, will feature in Narrandera's Artist of the Month in the Wide Open 2022 program, which features a variety of artists' work each month throughout the year ... Ayla will have 10 charcoal drawings on display while Alice has 10 photographic prints, seven water-colours and two oil paintings in the exhibition.

Chris Oldfield. Six pipers, a drummer and dancer recently stirred spirits and awakened the old stone walls and wooden floors of the Naracoorte Hotel – and its patrons. With music almost loud enough to reach the old cemetery, where our Scottish settlers rest, some talented pipers and a drummer had also travelled from Mount Gambier for a Toast to the Tartan.

The online dance project harnesses the creativity of children across regional WA, to celebrate familial relationships. Children aged 4-7 have worked together with adults they love, to create their own dance performance through a series of games masterminded by inspirational choreographer Sandi Woo.

A trail of Stories in Light in Regional South Australia Port Pirie City Park Projection will illuminate with a special feature each night throughout August, as one of the five featured Stories in Light sites on the CONSTELLATION Trail around regional South Australia. The connected trail uses larger than life moving images to explore future themes of science in collaboration with talented artists, animators and innovators across all five regions simultaneously.

Lynne Mowbray. The old concrete pump station in River Street Maclean has been given a facelift over the weekend, with a mural painting depicting one of our prominent Yaegl Elders. Highly respected Yaegl Elder, Uncle Ron Heron of Yamba, has had the artwork created in his honour, to celebrate NAIDOC week.

A new work of history that seeks to unmake mythologies of pioneers, pastoralism and possession in the Northern Territory. 'A rare and wonderful book ... Unmaking Angas Downs is a profound act of listening, and a dazzling piece of historical scholarship.' Billy Griffiths

Samuel Davis. A grandmother's tale has linked past-to-present and revived a traditional weaving practice lost decades ago in western Cape York ... Inspired by their find, Luanna and Daphne are now sharing the practice with other artists in the region as well. The duo’s weavings have culminated with works Woven in Time and They Journey being exhibited at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair last week.

Nancy Whittaker. As the Maldon in Winter 2022 Festival becomes ever colder, another intriguing exhibition will open at the EDGE Galleries on Saturday, 9 July, from 5pm -7pm.  The exhibition entitled Shroud is more than fascinating in itself. However, the opening will be further enhanced by performance artist and EDGE Galleries Director Simon Dow presenting a provocation, which is called ‘the conditioning’.

From postwar Paris to Australia to find love, fashion and freedom. One woman's quest to follow her head, and her heart. Twenty-six-year-old Frenchwoman Avril Montdidier sails from Paris to Australia with a suitcase and a dream: to start her own fashion business.