NorthSite at CIAF 2024 Women’s Business – Booth 1, Cairns Convention Centre.
During the annual Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (Thursday 25 July – Sunday 28 July), NorthSite presents an exhibition of new prints and weaving by artist Ivy Minniecon (Kuku Yalanji, Kabi Kabi, Gooreng Gooreng and Vanuatu) developed with Dian Darmansjah at NorthSite Art Studios, alongside paintings by her Aunty and mentor, Karen Gibson. The display at CIAF STALL 1 titled ‘Women’s Business’ reflects the importance of women staying strong and connected to Country, family, and community.
A number of other artworks by female Aboriginal artists from Western Cape York have been selected in response to the concept of women’s business, put forward by Ivy Minniecon and Karen Gibson. Additional independent artists showing paintings and weavings on the NorthSite Booth at CIAF 2024 include Heather Koowootha, Rhonda Woolla, Jean Wallembeng & Daphne De Jersey.
Check out NorthSite at CIAF 2024 Women’s Business exhibition and the full Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, CIAF 2024 Program.
Buy artworks
Text by Nicola Hooper
“Women’s Business” is a collaboration between two formidable First Nations artists, Karen Gibson and Ivy Minniecon. Their works combine their artistic voices, steeped in cultural heritage, and incorporate narratives that echo through generations. Presented at CIAF by NorthSite, this exhibition invites viewers on a journey where traditional and personal stories are interwoven with their exceptional skills.
The title “Women’s Business” reflects on ceremonial Indigenous traditional practices. It refers to the sacred knowledge and obligations that First Nations women typically hold within their communities.
Karen Gibson is from the Kuku Yalanji and Kuku Nyungkul tribe. She brings a captivating approach to “Women’s Business”. Her vibrant and evocative acrylic paintings capture the essence of traditional practices and her family’s stories. Her whimsical paintings such as Mukirr Dance, were inspired by memories of her mum and aunties, swimming in the Daintree River, feeling the bottom with their feet, and gathering mussels into their brilliantly coloured dresses. Wait for Tide explores the ebb and flow of tidal changes and the vital role of water in her Community. These narratives resonate with joy and reflect a deep respect for her family and Country.
“I believe God has given me this gift to transform art into a story that only comes from the mind, heart, and life experiences.”
Fellow Kuku Yalanji artist Ivy Minniecon is also a descendant of Kabi Kabi, Gooreng Gooreng and South Sea Islander peoples and anchors her artistic practice in a deep reverence for her ancestral lands. Born in Lowmead, Queensland, and later drawn to her Mother’s Country at Mossman. Ivy’s journey is reflected in her mastery of the Kuku Yalanji weave. Her traditional skirts were created under the guidance of knowledge keeper Romona Baird, using fibres from Country in a plaited weave. Ivy has taken these skirts through a complex process of indexically mono-printing onto paper, in each unique print the skirt dances on the paper. The grass mirrors that of vessels and veins running through the work as if they were touched by her ancestors who would have worn them. These skirts and accompanying prints act as a conduit that speaks to their ceremonial applications and the wearer’s role as a knowledge keeper within their community.
“The heart of my practice looks at holistic ideas of art and culture being intrinsically linked to our identity. Creating the skirt and then experimenting in the print studio with differing techniques has invigorated and extended my studio practice, and it is an honour to have relocated home and to be mentored by a key Yalanji knowledge keeper. Aunty Karen was my inspiration as a young artist. Her extensive studio diversity inspired my practice. I am also grateful to collaborative printmaker Dian Darmansjah, who graciously shared his expertise and knowledge in the print studio.”
Gibson and Minniecon preserve and revitalise cultural practices and stories to ensure they are never lost. “Women’s business” reiterates what women’s business is all about, the sharing of knowledge and skills. Their collaboration is not only a tribute to their heritage but also a powerful testament to the resilience and creativity of Indigenous art and traditional cultural practices today. Visitors are encouraged to reflect on how contemporary First Nations artists navigate the complexities of balancing the preservation of traditional practices. Karen and Ivy demonstrate how art can act as a bridge between the past, present, and future and the sharing of knowledge and collaboration is central to their views on reciprocation. Their works invite us to appreciate the enduring significance of ‘Women’s Business’ in today’s world.
With thanks to Regional Arts Fund through Flying Arts Alliance that supported Ivy to produce new monotypes for CIAF 2024, working at NorthSite studios with collaborative printmaker Dian Darmansjah.
This project was made possible by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, , provided through Regional Arts Australia, administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance.
ALL COME UNDER – CIAF Satellite Exhibition at Cairns Court House Gallery
A CIAF satellite Independent Exhibition at Cairns Court House Gallery
Exhibition: Thursday 18 July – Saturday 17 August
Launch: 2pm, Wednesday 24 July
Performance: 3.30pm, Wednesday 24 July
All Come Under is an exhibition by a collaboration of artists. Their friendship and respect for each other are collegial and affirm the power of creative expression to communicate.
When listening to Country, we all come under the relevance and currency of Indigenous cultural authority. Deep-seated governance systems established by Aboriginal people allow the respectful inhabitation of environments, land, water, and sky. It is essential that an ongoing connection and relationship to the Country, as experienced by the ancestors of this land, is again allowed to flourish. It is an opportunity to allow Country to speak to us.
Zane Saunders lives in Kuranda, Far North Queensland and is an Indigenous visual artist and performer, a descendant of Butchulla, Gunggari and Jarrowia People. Darren Blackman is an Gureng Gureng/Gangalu visual and sound artist. Bonemap’s Rebecca Youdell and Russell Milledge are partners who collaborate in producing dance, visual arts, and media arts.
The artists acknowledge the support of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, Cairns Regional Council and NorthSite Contemporary Arts. This project was made possible by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, provided through Regional Arts Australia, administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance
Vernon Ah Kee : way to be
In July 2022, Vernon Ah Kee was invited by Deadly Innovation (part of Queensland Government’s Advance Queensland) to develop a proposal for a project that could be an exhibition outcome featuring the Rock Art of Magnificent Gallery. The initial activity Vernon participated in was a ‘tech tour’ facilitated by KJR Enterprises and Jarramali Rock Art Tours. This involved spending 4 days traveling through Western Yalanji country alongside rangers and technologists. This year, Vernon further participated in a full-day Intellectual Property Workshop in Cairns with the Western Yalanji Corporation and stakeholders.
way to be explores the way in which we view and interact with cultural heritage sites such as the Western Yalanji galleries, using various technologies.
Growing up in Far North Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s, artist Vernon Ah Kee recalls the figures of the Magnificent Gallery were ever-present to the cultural backdrop of the day:
“I remember Cairns transformed itself from a sugar and fishing town in the 1970s into a tourism destination in the 1980s. The iconography of Western Yalanji Rock Art, in particular the images of Magnificent Gallery became an underpinning to that transformation. It was found on everything you could think of – tea towels, fridge magnets, postcards, t-shirts.”
The overexposure of Magnificent Gallery during that early tourism boom in Far North Queensland, led to a desensitisation of audiences to its scale and significant cultural heritage value. way to be seeks to provide an opportunity for audiences to think about rock art in new ways. Within an art context, way to be explores the way in which art and technology can intersect. The exhibition posits the potential of data-sets being created over coming decades as technologies grow in complexity.
way to be provides an opportunity to demonstrate to different audiences, new ideas and fresh conversations about the way to think about rock art. Ideas of rock art exist generally through the lens of tourism and ‘the colonial’. For many audiences, rock art is an abstract to a perceived ‘ancient’ society.
way to be seeks to provide a new lens and new way of engaging with data-sets through various technology lenses. These new ways of seeing and being include seeing data through multi-spectral colour analysis. Ground-penetrating lasers provide new ways of looking at the surrounding terrain to see what impact ochre has, and an examination to identify traces of biological matter and DNA.
Through way to be Magnificent Gallery defines and presents itself … a way to be.
For updates on events and performances subscribe to our e-news here.
About the Artist
Vernon Ah Kee is a Brisbane-based artist at the forefront of conceptual art practice in Australia. Vernon Ah Kee is a descendant of the Kuku Yalanji, Yidinyji, and Guugu Yimithirr people of North Queensland. He also has kinship connections to the Waanyi people of North-West Queensland.
Vernon Ah Kee is attuned to the politics of representation, and the social and economic implications of unequal cultural exchange in Australia. He draws on ethnographic archives to challenge colonial legacies and to engage audiences with the strong and continuing presence of Aboriginal Australians, their histories, and their cultures. Ah Kee’s conceptual text pieces reposition the Aboriginal in Australia from an ‘othered thing’, anchored in museum and scientific records to a contemporary people inhabiting real and current spaces and time.
Vernon Ah Kee’s work is held in major art collections within Australia and overseas including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Tate Modern, London.
Meriba Tonar | Ngoelmudh | Our Way
MARYANN SABASIO | NOLA WARD-PAGE | LARA FUJII | JAMES AHMAT SR |HARRY NONA |ALICK PASSI
Presented in partnership by NorthSite Contemporary Arts and Gab Titui Cultural Centre, Thursday Island, Meriba Tonar | Ngoelmudh | Our Way features new and innovative works by six up-and-coming artists from the Torres Strait region. While conveying individual narratives through a range of media, these practices — which have not been shown outside of the Torres Strait before —collectively inspire through stories and imagery relating to the unique culture, history, and identity of the Torres Strait.
Meriba Tonar = Our Way in Meriam Mir language (Eastern Torres Strait language)
Ngoelmudh = Our Way in Kala Lagaw Ya language (Western Torres Strait language)
Curated by Aven Noah Jr and Leitha Assan.
For updates on events and performances subscribe to our e-news here.
SPOTFIRE II
BRIAN ROBINSON | GLEN MACKIE | KASSANDRA SAVAGE | ROBERT TOMMY PAU | RUTH SAVEKA | SHERYL J BURCHILL | TAHEEGA SAVAGE | ZANE SAUNDERS
This exhibition showcases a series of prints created through the NorthSite Print Program, ‘SpotFire’. Facilitated by master printmaker Theo Tremblay,
‘SpotFire’ enabled eight emerging and established First Nations Artists to plan, develop and produce fine art prints on paper and fabric throughout 2023.
For updates on events and performances subscribe to our e-news here.
LAMAR KOP SPIRITUAL CENTRE
The main purpose of the exhibition Lamar Kop Spiritual Centre is to display cultural masks as individual representations characterising original supernatural beings from Mer (Murray Island). In island lore all traditional rituals co-operate with spiritual institutions of the Malo-Bomai cult.
The Malo-Bomai includes the story of two mystical beings who merged to intensify one dominant entity. With jurisdiction through clusters of Islands, the Malo-Bomai lore was enforced north to Papua New Guinea, southwest to Cape York and southeast beyond the Great Barrier Reef.
View all work
Magic Compass
The works in Magical Compass are not only songs of my dreaming and ways of expressing myself, but parts of who I am and what I have experienced on my journey so far. The magic compass of what art leads us to is a mystery which I find fascinating.
The works come in waves of time and spirit , which are conjured into these paintings.
The ‘Emotion paintings’ are heavily influenced by my love of graffiti, and are made using natural pigments to create the mediums, as well as Posca pen to ‘bomb’ my emotions onto the canvas.
The ‘Emotion paintings’ have been a fun experiment for me, because of the amount of energy and feeling I put into these works, the element of water, and how it’s healed me greatly. The works simultaneously reflect my own self-destruction, pain, growth as well healing from trauma. Scars that become permanent, but make us stronger.
I have created ‘Marriage paintings” before, they represent husband and wife. A classical love story. The two lovers are similar but have their own personal differences. They are represented as musicals scores. I am inspired by the sound of classical music and its ability to lead me to wonder. The vibrations I pick up and let go within that time of creation. Vibrations, sounds, alchemy, experience, dreaming and imagination.
‘Vision’ is a misplaced example of the musical scores. The way I have created this work is more natural and less mathematical. This painting reflects a peace of mind that is very much still in the present, how we get there is the journey. All for the sake of balance. How are we to accept and receive the good without the bad?
‘City lights’ was made in response to the many nights I walk the streets, seeing the bold colours that stand out, eyes weary from travel and seeking home. The city lights come from within us, we just need the patience to be mindful of that moment.
Alexander Baird Murphy, 2024.
For updates on events and performances subscribe to our e-news here.
For thy sake I in love am grown
For the past two and a half years, Mossman-based artist Anastasia Klose has assisted Rainforest Reserves Australia’s conservation campaign to protect Queensland’s highly biodiverse coastal ranges from poorly sited industrial wind developments, focusing in particular on the proposed Chalumbin wind development near Ravenshoe.
This exhibition of new drawings, video and performance is a response to the Klose’s “random, exhausting and depressing adventures in conservation” and the artist’s growing awareness of diminishing biodiversity in Queensland and imminent threats to its unique landscapes.
The artist has read many wind farm Public Environment Reports, considered State and Federal legislation, listened to Jirrbal Traditional Custodians speak about the significance of their connection to Country, and community members talk of their love for the land and biodiversity around them; and had the privilege of getting to know inspiring conservationists as well as meet scientists and politicians. But the energy that truly drives her is a love for the beautiful landscapes in Far North Queensland and the creatures that live there.
For updates on events and performances subscribe to our e-news here.
The exhibition and publication Anastasia Klose: For thy sake I in love am grown are presented in partnership with the University of Sunshine Coast Art Gallery, where it will be shown 17 August to 26 October.
About the Artist
Anastasia Klose lives in Mossman, Far North Queensland. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Melbourne University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in Drawing from the Victorian College of the Arts. An exhibiting artist since 2004, she has presented works at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Museum of Contemporary Art, GOMA, Muma, National Gallery of Victoria, University of Queensland, Artspace and Art Basel Hong Kong. She has held solo exhibitions at Spacement, Tolarno Galleries, Gertrude Contemporary and Lilac City Studio. Her work is held in public institutions and private collections. Most recently her work was included in the exhibition “Know my name” at the National Gallery of Australia. She is a conceptual artist known for her videos, drawings and performance-based works.
More Information
I AM
‘I Am’ comprises five, hand sewn textiles, made of at least 80% up-cycled materials, forming a powerful meditation on individual agency in rewriting our narrative.
It’s easy to forget the power words can have, and harnessing the personal mantra of ‘I Am’ may seem like a simple thing to do, yet it can be used as a potent tool to manifest real change in our lives, shaping how we see ourselves, effecting how we behave and be present in the world.
Our minds are not set in stone, they are adaptable and can be rewired, and our subconscious mind can’t discern between what’s real and what’s not, so by using the phrase ‘I Am’ you give your brain the opportunity to reorganise itself by building new neural pathways, which after repetition will strengthen and transform thought patterns, release feel good chemicals, rewrite your narrative, and in turn, reshape your reality.
‘I Am’ mantras blend aspects of neurology, psychology, and resilience with a sprinkle of self belief. I would encourage everyone to deploy their own mantras in daily lives to create their own magic and make their heart happy.
SpotFire
This exhibition showcases a series of prints created through the NorthSite Print Program, ‘SpotFire’. Facilitated by master printmaker Theo Tremblay, ‘SpotFire’ enabled eight emerging and established First Nations Artists to plan, develop and produce fine art prints on paper and fabric throughout 2023.
‘SpotFire’ has received funding through Regional Arts Development Fund, a partnership between the Queensland Government and Cairns Regional Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.