Last week, 15 students from TAFE Queensland‘s Diploma of Visual Arts Professional Practice, visited the NorthSite gallery for a curators talk with Aven Noah Jr.
Aven Noah Jr. is from the Komet Tribe of Mer, or Murray Island in Eastern islands of the Torres Strait and is the Curator for NorthSite Contemporary Arts. Aven is an alumnus of the National Gallery of Australia’s Indigenous Arts Leadership program and has over 14 year experience working as the Gallery Officer at Gab Titui Cultural Centre, Thursday Island before joining NorthSite Contemporary Arts in 2021.
Aven is the curator of the exhibition Malu Bardthar Dapar | Sea Land Sky presented in Gallery 1 at NorthSite until 19 August 2023. Working with 12 artists from Moa Arts this exhibition shares powerful cultural stories through the eyes of senior and emerging artists.
“Students gain valuable insights from industry professionals like Aven; Having the opportunity to ask questions and create new connections within the arts is important in developing their careers.” – Rose Rigley, Visual Arts Educator at TAFE Queensland.
To book an education tour or talk at NorthSite phone the gallery on 0740509494 or email programs@northsite.org.au
LINKS:
Aven Noah Jr.’s curator talk to TAFE Queensland students, NorthSite Contemporary Arts, August, 2023.
Aven Noah Jr.’s curator talk to TAFE Queensland students, NorthSite Contemporary Arts, August, 2023.
First Nations Printmaking Program in Cairns
SpotFire is a NorthSite program that provides facilities for emerging and established First Nations Artists to plan, develop and produce fine art prints on paper and fabric. Held every Friday at NorthSite Art Studios in Cairns, this program provides access to a professional studio space, equipment, materials and expertise from a range of experienced facilitators.
Participating Artists are encouraged to use the weekly sessions to develop new work, or further develop skills and techniques, supported by the program facilitator. SpotFire is facilitated by master printmaker Theo Tremblay and supported by artists and printmakers Robert Tommy Pau and Hannah Parker.
The program first started in February 2023 and we continue to welcome First Nations printmakers to participate in this year’s program. For more information and to register your interest in joining SpotFire reach out to Katrina Iosia: programs@northsite.org.au or call 0740509494.
Hannah Parker, Ruth Saveka and Paul Bong working at NorthSite Art Studio.
NorthSite Art Studio, 2023. Program talks with Robert Tommy Pau and Theo Tremblay.
Kassandra Savage working at NorthSite Art Studios, 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.
The Ironing Maidens World Premiere in Cairns plus International Recognition at NIME
From December 2023 to January 2024, The Ironing Maidens (Melania Jack and Patty Preece) presented their sound, digital art and projection installation work – Pressing Topics at NorthSite Contemporary Arts. The debut of this work was well received at NorthSite and the workshop presentation explaining the work; Oscillations attracted a huge audience for a Saturday Morning of almost 70 participants. Ironing certainly still resonates with many people, but ironing sound is a unique experience in itself.
The audiovisual installation, Oscillations, turns irons and ironing boards into electronic instruments, in an attempt to deconstruct stereotypical ideas of gender and its assigned roles. The work aims to investigate the relationships we have with domestic objects and ponder their structures and significance through the design and performance of an interactive ecosystem. The project uses a sonic cyberfeminist lens to critically explore aesthetic and relational hierarchies at the intersection of sound, gender and technology.
Three irons and ironing boards have been hacked and retrofitted with embedded electronic instruments that together create a complex feedback network. While the audience is invited to physically interact with the irons instruments and manipulate samples, the sonic state of the installation also changes based on the audio information detected in the environment. Projections onto the surface of the ironing board expose the labor within.
“This opportunity to present the work in Cairns has been so important to the development of the work. Being able to see people interacting and responding to the instruments at NorthSite provided us with an insight into the experience of the audience, and gave us more ideas on how to refine the instruments to improve that audience experience. We are so thankful to NorthSite for this opportunity and support”
– Patty Preece.
The work was then presented at the International Conference of NIME (new instruments for musical expression) in Mexico City in May 2023. Joining hundreds of experimental, digital instrument makers from around the world, Patty and Melania presented their paper – Oscillations: Composing a Performance Ecosystem through a Sonic Cyberfeminist Lens and installed this work in the foyer of the Center for Digital Culture, in La Condessa. The work was recognised through two awards, the paper receiving ‘The Pamela Z award for innovation’, and the installation receiving the ‘best installation award’.
Now the duo bring the ironing instruments back to Cairns in a hybrid band of irons and synthesisers, in the next phase of the project – Hot & Heavy – an immersive experience that is “part gallery, part performance and part banging dance party”. In a World Premiere at The Tanks Art Centre.
Hot & Heavy is an aural, visual and sensory experience that invites you to lose your friends, go deep and shake free. Explore this queer new world where domesticity has been made strange, appliances are defamiliarised, and the casual horrors of human production lines and capitalist consumption are vividly transformed. In a landscape of real world glitches, the lines between performer and audience blur and break, bodies move en masse and the unifying power of a dance floor infects the crowd. Hot & Heavy is the search for multiple new futures, yearning to find utopia within the banging beat of a broken down washing machine.
“In previous live shows we [The Ironing Maidens] have explored themes such as planned obsolescence and domestic labour, but in this new work we wanted the opportunity to really expand, to really push ourselves and the work. We wanted to investigate the kind of world we are living in now; within this capitalist system, and explore what kind of alternatives we could imagine for our collective futures, we wanted to explore what this could feel like, what it might sound like.”
– Melania Jack
“We have expanded the creative team and have been working with international choreographic director Leigh-Anne Vizer and a team of dancers to develop the worlds that the audience will explore. We are also working with the Cairns community, through a series of workshops in the lead up to the performance so that we can skill share in music and dance, and invite people to come and create with us and join us in the live performance”.
– Patty Preece
This event is an Auslan Interpreted Performance. There will be a meeting place on entry for Auslan interpretation during the first half of the show. The second half of the show the interpreter will be onstage. Please contact for more details
Show might include atmospheric haze and strobe effects.
Workshops in the lead up to the show are open to the public and start this week (Monday 31 July 2023). Meet the cast, learn some new skills, and join the community ensemble. There is a fundraiser running to make these workshops free and accessible to marginalised groups in the community. Head to The Australian Cultural Fund website and search for The Ironing Maidens – $15 can support a scholarship place in the workshop. Click here to support.
This new work has been developed in Cairns through commissions from the Local Giants Program; a partnership between Regional Arts Australia, PAC and Performing Lines, and the Tanks Arts Centre and Cairns Regional Council. Development funded by the Australia Council for the Arts. Community engagement funded by Cairns Regional Council through the RADF Major Round. The project is funded and managed by Shiny Shiny Productions, a feminist, queer led, regional production company.
SHOW DATES: Friday 25th August 8pm – Cairns Tanks Arts Centre
Sunday 27th August 1pm
Tickets Live Show – $27.50 & $32.50
Support – $15 can support a scholarship place in the workshop
LINKS
- View The Ironing Maidens previous exhibition at NorthSite
- Visit The Ironing Maidens Website
- Follow The Ironing Maidens on Instagram
- Like The Ironing Maidens Official Facebook page
Jamaylya Ballangarry-Kearins takes to the stage
We’re proud to see Jamaylya Ballangarry-Kearins (NorthSite Gallery Officer) take to the stage with JUTE Theatre Company’s First Nations residency program, ‘Dare to Dream’.
The ‘Dare to Dream’ program was established in 2016 by JUTE to tell the stories of First Nations people for First Nations people. ‘I Gut this Feeling’ is the latest initiative to come from the ‘Dare to Dream’ program that aims to educate and entertain audiences through its clever and comical theatre experience.
Over the next 5 weeks, this production will tour to five communities on the Cape York Peninsula: Mossman SHS, Weipa W C C, Mapoon, Lockhart State School and Normanton State School.
Hamish Sawyer attended the premiere performance in Cairns earlier this month. “Wonderful to attend the premiere performance of ‘Dare to Dream’ at JUTE tonight before it goes on tour to Cape communities – Jam, you’re a star”. said Hamish Sawyer, NorthSite Acting Director.
Congratulations Jamaylya!
For more information visit:
JUTE: https://jute.com.au/dare-to-dream/
ArtsHub: https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/good-things-happen-when-the-young-dare-to-dream-2635655
IndigeDesign Labs x MECCA Brands
IndigeDesign Labs recently undertook a design project with Australian cosmetic retailer, MECCA Brands.
This exciting design collaboration for MECCA’s Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan included a skills design workshop with MECCA’s Creative Services team held in Gimuy (Cairns).
MECCA spoke with with Jamaylya Ballangarry-Kearins, IndigeDesign Labs Coordinator, about the collaboration with MECCA and IndigeDesign Labs.
Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/gHFdf-xX
IndigeDesign Labs is a partnership between NorthSite Contemporary Arts and Aboriginal design agency ingeous studios led by Aboriginal graphic designer and digital creative Leigh Harris and assisted by Jamaylya Ballangarry-Kearins.
Image courtesy of IndigeDesign Labs.
Minister visits Exploring Giant Molecules
It was a pleasure to host Queensland’s Minister for the Arts the Hon. Leeanne Enoch MP last week at NorthSite Contemporary Arts. Acting Director, Hamish Sawyer, delivered a curators talk on Sandra Selig’s exhibition ‘Exploring Giant Molecules’. The exhibition is showing in the NorthSite gallery at Bulmba-ja until 17 June 2023.
‘Exploring Giant Molecules’ was developed by University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery in partnership with the UNSW. This project was supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
Media Event
This week we had the Hon. Leeanne Enoch MP, Michael Healy MP and CIAF Artistic Director Francoise Lane at NorthSite to announce the Palaszczuk government is investing an addition $1.6 million over 4 years to Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF). Congratulations CIAF!
NorthSite Acting Director, Hamish Sawyer, spent time with Leeanne Enoch MP, Michael Healy MP and Francoise Lane to talk about the artworks presented in the Bulmba-ja foyer by leading Far North Queensland artists.
We’re excited to once again be showcasing satellite exhibitions of CIAF 2023. Keep an eye out for more information about the exhibitions in the coming months.
New creative space
You may have heard the buzz… NorthSite and our friends at InkMasters are excited to have been through a process of transition recently, with the handing over of the baton!
NorthSite is commencing operations of NorthSite Art Studios, 55 Greenslopes Street, Edge Hill.
This phenomenal workshop space was managed by InkMasters recently and operated as Djumbunji Press KickArts Fine Art Printmaking 2009 – 2012.
We’re aware we have huge shoes to fill in terms of the extraordinary work that the InkMasters committee have achieved for printmaking in the region over the past decade, but we’re also aware of the huge potential of the site for the far north community of artists.
We want to hear from you. Tell us your experiences and aspirations and if you have a burning idea for a creative workshop you’d like to deliver or participate in – let us know by filling in the survey here.
Yours in art – Team NorthSite
Read more in Tropic Magazine: Click here
Illuminate FNQ Indigenous Science Festival
NorthSite recently partnered to support an Art Science Talk event for the inaugural illuminate FNQ Indigenous Science Festival.
The exhibition, Yuk Wuy Min Nguntamp, by Keith Wikmunea and Heather Koowootha produced by NorthSite in collaboration with Wik and Kugu Art Centre was included in the Friday activities of the Illuminate program. Heather Koowootha provided an extremely insightful explanation of her paintings of plants and natural resources that embody deep Wik cultural knowledge.
If you are interested in hearing more about this exciting new festival that drew scientists from across the world to Cairns and celebrated local ancient knowledge systems, check out the link to their wrap-up video, produced by artist and volunteer illuminate FNQ Board Director Dr. Jenny Fraser.
For more information about illuminate FNQ Indigenous Science Festival visit: https://illuminatefnq.org/home/
In other news, Dr Jenny Fraser has recently been awarded the prestigious 2022 Australia Council Award for Emerging and Experimental Arts! Congratulations Jenny!
https://australiacouncil.gov.au/news/biographies/dr-jenny-fraser/
SUPERCUT x Robert Tommy Pau
In July 2022, Robert Tommy Pau’s artwork, titled ‘Time‘, was presented on a billboard along the Bruce Highway as part of NorthSite’s partnership with Outer Space for the SUPERCUT program.
“NorthSite has been delighted to partner with Outer Space for SUPERCUT which has created new opportunities for regional artists to showcase their artwork to a wider audience”, said NorthSite’s Artistic Director/ CEO Ashleigh Campbell.
This artwork tells an important story in past and modern history for the Torres Strait Islanders, reflecting on two different points in time and showcasing the vast contrast between these timelines.
“1871 is a point in time where Islanders refers to Coming of the Light. This is a very profound statement as it is a demarcation between their past history and modern history.” said Robert Tommy Pau
Tommy is a descendant of the Eastern Torres Strait Islands, Australian Aboriginal, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Islander and Asia. He speaks Torres Strait Creole and Australian English. He was taught about the need to keep culture strong through cultural practice by his father. He has a strong commitment to keeping old traditions alive and believes that culture must remain true to the past and move with time to exist in the future. Tommy has considerable experience in the arts and his art forms of choice include printmaking, painting and sculpture.
Billboard location: Bruce Highway, 3.2km west of Bundaberg Airport on Isis Highway
Outbound, Bundaberg, Queensland.
For more information visit: https://www.outerspacebrisbane.org/program/supercut-robert-tommy-pau
Billboard documentation by Sabrina Lauriston
Robert Tommy Pau, Time, 2021, linocut on somerset velvet white 300gsm 100% cotton, 59.5 78.5cm
Billboard documentation by Sabrina Lauriston
SUPERCUT is supported by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government Initiative and is presented in partnership with Artspace Mackay and NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Cairns.