18 September 2012
Arts education

For all the attractions of the annual Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), its most anticipated is the unveiling of new works from the 15 community art centres around Far North Queensland. As isolated as many of them are, artists rely on advice, guidance and expertise from outside before displaying them during the city's artistic high season.

Arone Meeks is a Kuku Midigi man whose country is around Laura, Cape York, home of the famous Aboriginal dance festival. Prior to this year's CIAF event, he spent several months in two communities offering his expertise as a senior indigenous artist and teacher. In Yarrabah, just east of Cairns, he has relatives so his job was made easier. But at the tip of Cape York, centred on New Mapoon, he entered as an outsider.

"There's a certain amount of time and space and trust that you need to win over when you go into a community," he told Telinga Media during the art fair. "My main tactic is when I go into communities to teach, I'm not there to tell them what to paint. I'm bascially helping them expand on their stories, and show them new techniques and mediums."

During his time at the art centre at New Mapoon, he worked with artists from the five communities of the Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) - Bamaga, New Mapoon, Injinoo, Umagico and Seisia.

He says the first week was very slow. The middle of the second week was a turning point. Meeks uses the imagery of birth to describe what happened.

"This egg exploded. And it was full of colour. And everyone became intoxicated with the paint; they understood the medium, they understood the technique; it all sort of came together."

An exhibition was planned for June so Meeks secured one more week to bring the works together. When he returned to the centre, the number of artists had doubled and the paintings were well on their way.

Eight of Arone's NPA artists were chosen to exhibit at the UMI Arts Gallery in Cairns, opening under the name 'Ngalpa Mura Tjara Tjera Apudthama' or Our Journey Together. It was the first time a showing of works by solely NPA artists had been staged in Cairns.

The artists went through a regular program at UMI Arts introducing them to all the tasks required to prepare for public exhibition.

UMI Arts both services the art centres with resident teachers such as Meeks and develops the artists' awareness of what happens to the artworks once they leave their hands. It also runs its own gallery.

"There's both the technical level of learning new ways of creating art," says Janet Parfenovics, executive officer at UMI Arts which operates under an all-indigenous board. "It's also about the older, more experienced artists reinforcing the importance of getting cultural permissions of what they tell through their art from their elders."

"There's lots of workshops run by mainstream artists (who) go into many of the arts centres in Far North Queensland and that's absolutely valid," she says. "But there's not those protocols that sit behind that."

Arone Meeks believes community artists like his students at New Mapoon still struggle to understand the public and commercial spaces into which their works are placed.

"They're trying to come to terms with what's happening with contemporary indigenous art," he explains. "They don't understand it. They don't understand what constitutes someone like Vernon Ah Kee or Samantha Hobson. And yet they like it, but they don't understand why."

"We talk about stuff like 'why there is a New Mapoon? What happened to the old Mapoon?' Things that are happening in their community...That's their sort of dictionary to refer to or subject matter for their artwork."

"If you listen carefully enough, you can pick out some of these key words and subjects, and help develop them with the artists into a painting."

A sophisticated grasp of the categories (contemporary, traditional) that allow art dealers, collectors and critics to talk to each other may not be so vital to the artists from New Mapoon. Of more consequence, believes UMI Arts's Janet Parfenovics, is how going public with their art strengthens their people back home.

"It brought a real pride from the rest of the community," she says about the first exhibition of NPA artists even shown in Cairns. "When the opening of their exhibition took place, it was community that came because they were there to celebrate the successes of the artists from within their community."

© Telinga Media. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited

17 September 2012
CIAF2012

The crowds who thronged the shipping terminal at last month's Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) were treated to much of what the 15 community art centres across Far North Queensland had to offer.

But the high point of the arts calendar is only three days in the year. Before their exposure in August, artists a long way from Cairns were refining their skills in workshops run by a Cairns-based arts organisation - UMI Arts. Like the ones led by contemporary Aboriginal artist Arone Meeks at the New Mapoon and Yarrabah art centres earlier this year.

His time spent working with artists at new Mapoon at the tip of Cape York helped eight of them from the Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) put on their own exhibition in Cairns. A number of them continued to have their works displayed during the CIAF.

But how did these artists make it from remote art centre to international art fair in the same year?

Arone Meeks spoke to Telinga Media about his visit to New Mapoon and his role as a teacher to the next wave of CIAF exhibiting artists.

Hear Podcast...

11 September 2012
Arts community

"I'm not much of a public speaker," says Justin Majid with a self-deprecating grin. This is no big deal for the young Cairns resident who never fancied nightclub MC or stand-up comedian as career paths. Instead, he is emerging from the city's built-up cultural traffic zone as one of North Queensland's new wave of visual artists.

And he is not alone. Justin's partner, Brooke Foster, is on the same wave. They share an awareness of those guiding lights who make up the artistic tradition of which they are now part. For Justin, awareness came early from direct contact with master carver and printmaker Alick Tipoti whom he used to visited on Badu Island from a young age. Later they attended college together on Thursday Island. Look and learn.

All three presented works at various locations around Cairns during last month's Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), the fourth time the annual event has been staged. The nucleus of 24 art centres exhibiting at Trinity Inlet was ringed by satellite events including daily exhibition launches, sometimes several at once. Prints and paintings by Justin and Brooke were popping up at four or five locations.

The high status of the CIAF event which these young artists now benefit from is a sign of a maturing indigenous arts industry in Queensland. CIAF is also driving buyer recognition of North Queensland as a marketplace distinct from the long established central and western desert art movements.

"There's been a lot of attention to a couple of Torres Strait artists and now it's been spreading a bit more," said local online gallery owner Kane Brown. "So, rather than the focus being on just one or two, now there's focus on quite a variety of people."

"I think there's also more versatility there, more variety. It seems to be that collectors are looking for something different."

And they don't need to visit Queensland to find it. In May, Brown organised an exhibition of prints on paper by Cairns-based artists to be shown in Melbourne, which included works by Justin and Brooke.

Apart from his look-and-learn encounters with Alick Tipoti, Justin has also taken advantage of the infrastructure built in Cairns to support developing artists like himself. He was taken through all facets of exhibition planning and staging in a program run by UMI Arts which resulted in his first solo exhibition at the start of this year.

The current exhibition at UMI Arts Gallery shows two of his works, both linocuts. Of mixed ancestry, Justin's print designs reflect his Torres Strait upbringing on Horn Island. While dominant animal motifs and totems - sharks, crocodiles, dugongs - recur in the work of linocutters, Justin says the background patterning is distinctive for each artist. On large blocks of lino, he is able to create designs where animals are hidden in this background and only under sustained gaze do they emerge, furtively, just as they do in nature.

"I stay off the traditional stories and (confine myself) to mostly what I've experienced growing up on the islands - like cultural practices, hunting and gathering," he says. Even early in his career, he has one eye on his legacy.

"Joey Laifoo [Badu Island artist] actually told me, 'do your stories, because generations from now, we'll be the storytellers and people will look up to us'."

For Brooke, Cairns seems the right place to be for emerging artists. While acknowledging that the hub is central to driving a creative economy for indigenous Queenslanders, she believes the arts community is mainly about personal achievement.

"Indigenous people really want to show their culture to the world - not in negative ways but positive ways.  With artists, I don't really think it's to do with the money."

"So with the art fairs, they really just want to show what they can achieve with their lives."

For Justin, off-shore openings are already appearing with a place in a group exhibition in Seattle in 2010. 

"The only thing holding me back, I think, is talking to a big crowd. If I pass that, I reckon I'll just go from there."

© Telinga Media. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited

11 September 2012
CIAF2012

Emerging from Cairns's built-up cultural traffic zone is a new wave of visual artists. Sliding between painting and printmaking, they are part of the reason why North Queensland is evolving its own specialised indigenous art market, with the city as its centre. 

Telinga Media profiles two Cairns-based artists...

And reports on an exhibition to which they contributed...

Read more...