Creative-i_Issue02_Around_the_world

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. DECEMBER 2012

This issue’s theme:

Around the world

Angelina Pwerle Bush plum

Alick Tipoti

Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars

Christopher Green

at the British Library

Korean

International Art Fair

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

The

Survival Issue

Pormpuraaw In Durrell’s footsteps

Shanghai moon city states No room

for me

PREVIOUS ISSUE

New documentaries from Africa, Australia, Europe and the USA Cairn’s launch - Ken Thaiday: The sea, the feather and the dance machine

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

The earth is precious and it needs our guardianship...

Art collecting can be dangerous: In search of Tongan Tapa

CURRENT ISSUE A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

This issue’s theme:

Around the world

Angelina Pwerle Bush plum

Alick Tipoti

Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars

Christopher Green

at the British Library

Korean

International Art Fair

Creative-i is published by Creative Cowboy Pty Ltd, as an e-magazine, and printed on demand. Editorial by Peter and Andrea Hylands. Photography by Andrea and Peter Hylands. Design by Kai Brethouwer.

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In these places we meet Aboriginal and Melanesian Australians as once again we marvel at the great diversity of the art of indigenous Australia.

Back in North Queensland once more we launch Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair.

Our travels also take us to Singapore, China, Korea, England and Greece as we see first-hand just how important art is in defining cultures and ideas internationally.

The rise in the appreciation of contemp­ orary art in Asia is particularly remark­ able and a phenomenon of our age.

This is a resurgence of Asian creativity accompanied by significant investment from the regions governments through the support of major events and construction of major contemporary galleries and museums.

This issue’s theme:

Maasai Francis Nkodidio recipient of the Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. DECEMBER 2012

Creative-i provides news about Creative cowboy film projects around the world. creative-i includes images of the places, of the people and of the art, so important to making our projects a success. creative-i includes articles that relate in some way to Creative cowboy film projects, articles about art and culture, about places, people and nature.

In this issue we travel to Australia, to Badu Island in the Torres Strait, Utopia in Central Australia and to Pormpuraaw on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The road to

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

welcome

UPCOMING ISSUE

Alick Tipoti, Mawa Mask

 2012: The creative cowboy year

Our very special thanks go to our contributors and to our customers, their dedication makes Creative cowboy projects a success around the world.

Gladdy Kemarre, Andrea Hylands and Angelina Pwerle, Janet Pierce (Artlore), Gladdy Kemarre exhibition, Mossenson Galleries, Melbourne February 2012

January to March 2012 Completing Central Australian projects and Bush Plum

View a brief video clip of Bush Plum: creativecowboyfilms.com/documentaries/angelina-pwerle/

April 2012 Far North Queensland including Badu and Moa Islands in the Torres Strait. April is spent with artist Alick Tipoti as we film Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars (see article page 10).

View a brief video clip of an Alick Tipoti performance: www.creativecowboyfilms.com/documentaries/alick-tipoti/

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The creative cowboy year May 2012 England, Singapore and Greece (Corfu and Athens) We join General Manager Colin Goh in the Arts House, Old Parliament Building. Singapore arts are on the move in education and in the development of new gallery spaces.

Athens The Elgin Marbles were purchased by the British Parliament from Lord Elgin in 1816 and presented to the British Museum.

The Elgin British Museum collection includes sculptures from the Parthenon, 247 feet of the original 524 feet of frieze; 15 of 92 metopes; 17 figures from the pediments, and various other pieces of architecture.

The British Museum holds about half of what survives of the Parthenon frieze.

The collection also includes objects from other buildings on the Acropolis: the Erechtheion, the Propylaia, and the Temple of Athena Nike.

The new Acropolis Museum minus its Elgin Marbles reflects the Parthenon

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The British Museum says: “Material from the Parthenon was dispersed both before and after Elgin’s time. The remainder of the surviving sculptures that are not in Athens are in museums in various locations across Europe. The British Museum also has other fragments from the Parthenon acquired from collections that have no connection with Lord Elgin”.

Colin Goh with Andrea and Peter Hylands

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May 2012 Greece

Restoring the Parthenon and surrounding temples

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May 2012

From Athens, and in Gerald Durrell’s footsteps, on to Corfu

May 2012

Arts development, Singapore style

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The creative cowboy year

Shanghai Bund

June 2012 England Back in England we join ‘artist in residence’ Christopher Green in the British Library (see article, An artist in residence, page 20).

July 2012 China and Southern and Northern Australia In China, once more, we visit mega city Shanghai

August 2012

Christopher Green at the British Library;

Northern Australia: Cairns and Cape York And we visit Sid Bruce Short Joe in Pormpuraaw.

Sid Bruce Short Joe in Pormparaaw

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Cairns Indigenous Art Fair: Lockhart River Dancers Phillip Powloo, Elly Macumboy and Steven Bally

Making Kimchi Seoul style

September 2012

2013 Then on to India‌

Seoul and the Korean International Art Fair Korea, this time its Seoul and the Korean International Art Fair (KIAF) and we visit the cultural places of this increasingly cultural city.

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September 2012

Alick Tipoti

Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars

We are in the north of Australia and on a flight from Cairns to Horn Island in the Torres Strait.

Our cameras and other gear safely stashed. Alick Tipoti sits across the aisle from me studying his papers.

We fly low, down below the Great Barrier Reef sparkles in the morning light, the turquoise light as the greens and blues of water, reef and sky come together in this place, small waves cresting and breaking, the sand yellow banks surfacing, all decorated by the small white clouds that drift past my window.

We head inland and across the tip of Cape York as we start our decent to Horn Island. There is always the joy of arriving here, the little terminal with its friendly faces, this is the entry point to the Torres Strait and to Melanesian culture. It is hot, much hotter than Cairns further south, and our cameras shut down as they acclimatise to the conditions. There, parked at the terminal, is our small aircraft, chartered to fly us to Badu Island. Stacking the gear in the small hold of our aircraft, the heat of the sun reflecting off the tarmac in the shimmering light, the last bag now stored, we climb on board.

us, we bank across the hills of Badu and land towards the sea.

Josh, one of the Badu Island art centre directors is there to meet us, he is a warm hearted figure, enthusiastic about his role at the art centre and happy to see Alick once more. There is a great deal of work to do, we have a few days to shoot an important part of a complex film. We start immediately.

There are interviews to conduct, art

Engines on, motors roar, then airborne once more, this time we fly even lower than before as we skim the tropical seas, the Coral Sea below, once the land bridge that joined the Australian mainland to New Guinea.

The islands of the Torres Strait all around us, heavier clouds now as storms are forecast. Then Badu and Moa Islands come in to sight ahead of

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and so to Badu

making and scenery to be filmed, there are boat journeys and a feast with the island elders and a whole island to be explored.

On the back beach on Badu Island the discussion turns to the importance of language in preserving precious indigenous cultures and customs.

Zugubal dancers preparing for dance shoot

Peter Hylands and Rob Pignolet

Heading home

ALICK TIPOTI says:

“Language stands in the middle, art branches off from that, performing art, dance, song, any practice in life from our Melanesian culture branches off of that.

My art is based on legends of the Torres Strait where I depict my interpretations of the land, the sea, the sky, and the many different living creatures and spirits that exist here – as with other artists, I use my art as an educational tool, teaching people about important cultural events, practices and beliefs from the past”.

Central to Alick’s work is the importance of language and how preserving the languages of the Torres Strait will benefit the preservation and revival of culture in these beautiful islands. In all our minds we see language as a container, a vessel that holds culture safe, a protector from the overwhelming influences washing on to these shores.

The recent past has not been easy for Indigenous people in North Queensland (Torres Strait is in North Queensland). The role that art has

Visual art is made powerful when it is combined with music and dance played in reviving and restoring culture in the last 20 years or so is an important one, in one way a kind of healing of the wounds of the past. Alick is one of the leaders of this artistic revival through visual art, music and dance.

Visual art is made powerful when it is combined with music and dance. That is of course the way it has always been in Aboriginal and Melanesian culture since deep time.

In Queensland, the place in Australia where Aboriginal and Torres Strait cultures come together, there has been a remarkable resurgence and a growing international interest in the art and culture of this place.

The region’s art centres have played their part in this bounce back of culture, and their meeting place with the world, the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, has become their stage.

“All the winds do belong to them”.

You can watch the clip by following the link creativecowboyfilms.com/documentaries/alick-tipoti/ he DVD of the film Alick Tipoti: Zugub, the mask, T the spirits and the stars can be purchased from creativecowboyfilms.com/products-page

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A portrait in Barcelona

Creative cowboy’s first film about the work of PETER CHURCHER was called The master at work and was filmed in Australia. PETER and his family then moved to Barcelona where he now lives and works.

PETER CHURCHER

We join PETER CHURCHER in Spain. In the studio there is a sense of stillness. In the narrow streets below, the shops, restaurants and markets of Barcelona are as busy as they have always been.

In the Creative cowboy film A portrait in Barcelona Peter Churcher paints a portrait of ANDREA and PETER HYLANDS. What is it like to have your portrait painted and why do people commission these paintings? How is the portrait constructed and how does the artist capture a likeness? How does history influence the art of portraiture?

By way of introduction, PETER CHURCHER’s paintings deal primarily with the human subject in portraiture and group figure narrative subjects.

“I have been primarily concerned with the painting of the human figure in a

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established tradition which began during the First World War, and continued through the Second World War and conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and East Timor. PETER’s work provides a valuable and unique insight into the role of Australia’s forces in this very important commitment”.

narrative context and the depiction of the human presence - that is the portrait”.

PETER CHURCHER was selected by the Australian War Memorial to be the official Australian war artist for the War on Terrorism in 2002 and he sketched and painted the operations of the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force at that time. A selection of these paintings is held by the Australian War Memorial STEVE GOWER, then Director, Australian War Memorial said: “PETER spent time with the Royal Australian Navy in the Persian Gulf and the Royal Australian Air Force on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. His responses to the people, events and environments have resulted in an impressive body of work. The technological and mechanical aspects of modern warfare are captured in his works, as well as the human.

PETER was chosen for the diversity, range and directness of his painting.

His appointment continues a long

A portrait in Barcelona was filmed during the early Spanish summer.

These were days of golden sunlight, of food, of wine and conversation. The only interruption to our tranquillity, the spontaneous protests from the balconies and streets of Barcelona......

And we visit the National Portrait Gallery in London to find out more about the art of portraiture.

In the film PETER CHURCHER and PETER HYLANDS discuss the idea of capturing a likeness and we come to understand how intangible this process can be. There is a sense that there is more to capturing a likeness in an oil painting than meets the eye, there seems to be something more than the image itself.

I just want to come back to this issue of likeness…

PETER HYLANDS: I just want to come back to this issue of likeness because that is what I find so fascinating, how that occurs, how somebody’s face on canvas looks like a real face, looks like their face. There is obviously a great skill in doing that. How do you sense that works in the way that you paint?

PETER CHURCHER: The whole concept of getting a likeness is very peculiar because, in a sense probably some of the greatest likenesses I have ever captured are when I was not even trying to get a likeness, or not even thinking about it. In other words I was just sketching a person in a room and I was not trying to portray their likeness.

What I am trying to say is sometimes the more you think about getting a likeness the further you get away from it.

complex, far more about the moment in the room, the light hitting the face, something like that, I don’t know.

PETER HYLANDS: It’s beyond the image itself?

PETER CHURCHER: It is beyond the image, yes and capturing likeness from a photograph, providing you have got the basic skills, is an easy task because you have got it all there in front of you

and it is just a matter of transferring it on to the canvas really.

What is difficult is getting a likeness where someone walks in and goes oh yes that is him or that is her, meaning yes it looks like him but it is not just that.

Yes it is him.

You have to trust your initial instincts in what you observe. The other curious thing about likeness, and I always have this sensation when I am painting portraits, and I often do take some photographs because they can be useful after sessions are over and the sitters have gone. I can use the photographs to refer to for little details in the portrait like the clothing or a hand or something that still needs some finishing. So they are useful for that.

The funny thing that I always find is that I have observed the sitter, say at the first sitting, I then take the photographs and I go and get them developed and look at those photographs and they look nothing like what I was seeing that morning or the day before. We all regard the photograph as a true perfect likeness, curiously I find that they are not and I find them quite useless in a sense, in terms of capturing a person’s likeness.

So clearly there is something going on about a likeness that does not go on in a photograph even though one looks at a photograph and recognises it as the person. There is something that goes on in a painting that I think is far more

You can watch the clip by following the link creativecowboyfilms.com/the-likeness-in-us/ he DVD of the film A portrait in Barcelona and The T master at work can be purchased from the Creative cowboy shop creativecowboyfilms.com/products-page

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Bush plum: culture and nature

Tracking north to Alice Springs, metapatterns below

The metapatterns of nature, of science, of art and everything are down below. We are flying over Lake Eyre and then tracking north to Alice Springs, the final destination on this trip.

The patterns that emerge could be an image from an electron microscope or a view of distant galaxies through the eye of the Hubble Space Telescope. The repeated patterns of nature are all clear in the dry air, a microorganism, a leaf, in a galaxy, all in art and design.

It is not surprising that the art of Central Australia has become one of the world’s most significant contemporary art movements with its startling explosions of colour and form.

The track, overgrown with Buffel Grass

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Angelina and Gladdy walking in the dry river bed, Utopia

Rock Wallaby; Central Bearded Dragon

Down below are the ancient trading routes of Australia’s Aboriginal people. These ancient pathways of trade following the rivers and waterholes, routes that were also the paths of dreaming ancestors.

wetter period have kicked started the nature of Australia. In these precious places nature responds to water in the most extraordinary ways allowing many species to breed and to increase dwindling numbers once more.

Down below are the ancient rivers of sand of the Lake Eyre Basin. Their names resonate in the European history of Australia, the rivers that flow when Queensland floods, the Georgina, Diamantina, Thomson and Barcoo Rivers, and Cooper Creek. Then there are the rivers of central Australia such as the Finke, all flowing into Lake Eyre where the water remains until once again it evaporates in the shimmering heat to reveal the dazzling salt pans once more.

We are working down there in a place we have always loved.

So what is it like? It is both a harsh land and a delicate land.

To walk on the pristine untrodden river beds of sand seems a desecration of the patterns of nature, a hundred different impressions in the miniature sand dunes left there by the birds, marsupials and reptiles that inhabit this land.

The rivers have flowed for consecutive seasons in Central Australia after years of drought and during a much needed

In the previous issue of Creative-i we write about the impact of our actions on the traditional lives of indigenous peoples.

Even the remotest parts of Central Australia are not immune from our actions.

For now freshwater ecosystems may not be as damaged as those elsewhere in Australia but they are under threat from introduced species, from domestic herds destroying precious waterholes and riverside vegetation and the thoughtless actions of introducing plant species into the delicate and arid environment.  These ancient and arid landscapes provide us with a sensitive record of environmental change. The Centre’s transverse and longitudinal dunes sensitive to small changes in both climate and hydrology.

The recent great wets of Northern Australia have further distributed the introduced African species Buffel Grass. The Buffel Grass now covers large areas of the country around Alice Springs displacing native grasses. After the wet period, the now dry Buffel Grass stands waste high covering the desert floor. When it burns it burns much hotter than the more delicate native grasses and when it burns the intense heat kills the native animals who cannot escape from it and the desert trees and shrubs adapted to lower intensity fire.

Once again this damages the traditional food supply of indigenous people who rely on the fruit and roots of native

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After the fire

plants such as the Bush Plum. The situation also represents a danger to people, particularly indigenous people living in remote places. During August much of the area around Alice Springs was on fire, by mid August 2011 more than 650 square kilometres of country surrounding Alice Springs had been burnt, destroying ecosystems and polluting the atmosphere.

And worst to come will be the danger posed to Australia’s Great Artesian Basin and the major river flows into the Lake Eyre Basin from coal seam gas extraction processes occurring in Queensland and the little understood impact of these activities on aquifers and natural water systems. The Lake Eyre Basin covers around 1,170,000 square kilometres of arid and semi-arid Central Australia. There is a lot to lose.

Camel Camp Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since we first crossed the sandy river bed and drove through the ‘front gate’ and into Utopia. Utopia, an area of just under 2,000 square kilometres to the North East of Alice Springs, is semi-arid desert country inhabited by

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Aboriginal people. An art movement has flourished here and from the mid 1970s non traditional media such as acrylic paint and canvas have been used.

their work including batiks, carvings and paintings on canvas. These works are embodied with traditional meaning and are a spiritual and historical record of culture and law.

Aboriginal art of course means a continent of creativity, a vast range of styles and materials, depending on the region and its cultural traditions.

This was to be the second of three journeys over a period of two months filming Bush plum, our film project from the region. Fires still burning around us, as they had done two months earlier, we made the 250 kilometre journey to our destination on Utopia. Along bitumen covered roads at first and then an hour or so to the north of Alice Springs, the turn off and onto the sandy bush roads of the Northern Territory which lead us to Utopia. We rattle our way along the sandy tracks, clouds of dust trailing behind us.

Aboriginal art of course means a continent of creativity, a vast range of styles and materials, depending on the region and its cultural traditions. This is part of why collecting Aboriginal art is such a complex, enthralling and engaging thing to do. It is the great art of survival, the cultural maps of food and water, it is the art of the spiritual, the recognition of connection to place and the land. It represents the constant monitoring of the land, not stilled by time but always contemporary and enquiring.

Utopia has been particularly important in the recent history of Aboriginal art and cultural practice as it was the heart of a womens’ art movement of considerable distinction, producing, now internationally famous women artists,

On this journey we are taking two fourwheel drive vehicles full of supplies, our swags, a great deal of water and of course a lot of technology, cameras, computers, sound recording equipment and lots more. There are eight of us, two our Aboriginal friends, sharing their knowledge of country and culture.

We see more and more wildlife, the Wedge-tailed Eagles and other birds of

Angelina with Bush Plum

Crew, Utopia

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Angelina painting at Camel Camp

prey, and here in the lizard kingdom, it is not hard to spot a large Sand Monitor (Goanna) or a Dragon catching the early morning sun on the sandy roadway, their numbers boosted by the large mouse plague, a great feast, that accompanied the unusually wet seasons in Central Australia.

Angelina painting at Camel Camp

The Bearded Dragons sit dangerously on the road and try to defy any attempts to move them to a safer spot, happily we were more stubborn than they were.

The Bearded Dragons sit dangerously on the road and try to defy any attempts to move them to a safer spot, happily we were more stubborn than they were.

The Central Netted Dragons scurry off the road in front of us, leaving their smaller footprints in the sand. Here the shy Perentie (Australia’s largest monitor) also lives, elusive despite its considerable size. These lizards, part of dreaming, important in Aboriginal culture.

There was a gallery of reptile species, suddenly a King Brown glides its way across the road in front of us, only slightly smaller than the Australia’s Taipan, the King Brown or Mulga Snake can reach three metres in length and because of its size produces large quantities of venom. This is a place where you keep your eyes firmly to the ground and where you avoid walking through clumps of long grass. We tread carefully on country. The King Brown,

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because of its size is easier to spot.

The Desert Death Adder is almost impossible to see with all its camouflage and relatively small size. We stop every few minutes, cameras at the ready, as some of the reptiles obligingly allow us to film them and do so even in macro.

The flowers are out too, framed by their background, the red earth of Central Australia, the Billybutton, Sturt’s Desert Rose, the floral emblem of the Northern Territory of Australia, and the Bush Plum.

Australian Deserts, these semi-arid lands, can have a relatively significant cover of vegetation, species adapted to these harsh conditions with a complex range of mechanisms to ensure their survival. There are deserts or parts of deserts in Australia with a lower density of vegetation, the Stony Desert and in parts the bare windswept crests of the Simpson Desert.

The flourishing native plant life in parts of arid Australia tricking the early settlers into believing these lands could be used for farming. History tells us that there was a mass extinction of native species in Central Australia in the 1930s because of the introduction of feral predators, among them cats

The arid lands of Central Australia, a smoke haze as the fires burn all around us

and foxes, inappropriate land use and increasing non-indigenous settlement of the region.

Recording songs, Camel Camp

Among the animals to become extinct was the Desert Rat-kangaroo, adapted to the harshest conditions in Australia, but sadly, no match for European settlement. By a trick of language the exterminators of this beautiful animal can reassure themselves that nothing of great value has been lost.

These dramatic changes, once again diminishing the traditional food supply for Indigenous Australians.

Through the Utopia front gate and we take the track to the small outstation where we are working. Here there are traditional bush shelters and a largely traditional life of hunting and gathering.

On this occasion the camp food supply is supplemented by the tucker, the fruit and other goodies, that we had taken with us. We pull up at the camp and are greeted by everyone. The place is full of smiling faces and the wagging tails of the camp dogs.

It is great to be back.

You can watch the clip by following the link creativecowboyfilms.com/talking-utopia/ creativecowboyfilms.com/documentaries/angelinapwerle/

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LONDON

An artist in residence

It is a chilly summer in London, as the Gulf Stream wobbles and the Jet Stream heads south, the rain pours down.

CHRISTOPHER is the British Library artist in residence for 2012 and he is the first artist in residence at the library. CHRISTOPHER is a writer and performer and friend.

In a much warmer place, CHRISTOPHER GREEN is in the Scholars Room in the British Library, at the library’s St Pancras London home.

CHRISTOPHER GREEN

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CHRISTOPHER says: “I use comedy, theatre, live art, cabaret and music to make interactive experiential work from intimate gigs to large scale immersive theatrical happenings” Among other things, CHRISTOPHER Green is Tina C, a global music superstar, Ida Barr, rapping pensioner and Dr Jedd O’Sulli­ van, US cultural critic.

The great thing about library residences is that they are an extraordinary moment for research and access to great collections. Access to these collections means creativity and ideas that come from unexpected places.

In exploring these vast collections you never know what you will find and what you do discover is a resource that is likely to last you for a very long time indeed.

The great thing about the British Library is that it is a storehouse of knowledge, a stunning collection of 150 million items, with an additional 3 million items being added each year.

What is here? Well it is hard to start, but the collection includes; Magna Carta, Lindisfarne Gospels, Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook, Beatles manuscripts and the recording of Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia trial speech.

The list of great things goes ever on. The logistics of delivering all this information are also immense.

For CHRISTOPHER the work at hand is to investigate the history of hypnosis in the British Library’s collections and we discuss his work sitting in the warmth of the British Library’s scholars room.

PETER HYLANDS: I was thinking about advice to young people who want to become performers.

How did you get into this?

CHRISTOPHER GREEN: In the last few years I have been asked to go to performing arts places and give advice in an erudite way and I never get asked to go back twice because I always say that if you can do something else do that and really try your best not to do it.

Christopher Green, Mel Rouse and Peter Hylands at the British Library

PETER HYLANDS: But it is not an obvious route to getting into the industry?

CHRISTOPHER GREEN: it is not, I tried my best not to be a performer because I thought it was too scary and risky and it would just not go away as an idea. Well I did a degree and I started a masters and I left that to work in television and I worked in television for a long time during my twenties.

I think looking back it was the best training, so what I would say to people who want to be performers is that you have got to work hard but also do something else because it will really inform when you start making work.

“Tina C is one of the great comic creations of the age. A genuinely fine country singer, but with a twist of satire and insight which is rare and to be highly prized”

STEPHEN FRY I think it is really hard to start making work if you have not lived very much then your work becomes very parodic of everyone else and everything else you are seeing.

Our thanks to the British Library for their hospitality and kindness.

You can listen to Christopher on : creativecowboyfilms.com/christopher-green/

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E(merge)

Beijing > Canberra

Hu Qinwu in Canberra

Leaving Shanghai for now, ANDREA and I packed our cases for our trip to Australia, a few days earlier and further to the north and in Beijing, HU QINWU was also packing as he prepared to make the long journey south to attend the exhibition E(merge): two spiritualities at the Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra.

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A quick dash via Sydney to Melbourne to drop off some materials, the following morning I was back on the plane and on my way to Canberra.

E(merge): two spiritualities is an exhibition of the work of ANGELINA PWERLE and HU QINWU, previously shown at the Space Station Gallery in Beijing, this was the exhibitions first Australian showing.

ANGELINA was born in 1946 at Utopia, some 250 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, HU QINWU was born in 1969 in Shandong, China, both artists drawn together in one place by their art and the spirituality of their ancient traditions. The works in the exhibition create a space of harmony and reflection, a peaceful place in this world.

Their art shares spiritual sensibilities and indeed connections to ancient lands

Both cultures steeped in wisdoms of the earth.

Part of the exhibition, Creative cowboy films’ Bush Plum: the contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle was shown continually during E(merge): two spiritualities at the Drill Hall Gallery at the ANU. E(merge): two spiritualities was an initiative of China Art Projects and Niagara Galleries / Artlore.

The exhibition was curated by REG NEWITT and the exhibition was opened

by Professor MICK DODSON AM, Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the ANU. MICK, a significant leadership figure in Australia and former Australian of the year, has recently returned to Canberra after a stint as Chair of Australian studies at Harvard University.

“The Drill Hall Gallery is an enthusiastic supporter of indigenous arts and indeed indigenous artists. The National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the ANU is also deeply committed to broadening cross cultural understanding; and seeing the depth of excellence of work

here this evening and acknowledging the initiative and vision of the gallery in bringing together and allowing us to the opportunity of experiencing and celebrating two spiritualities.

2011 and 2012 is a celebratory year for Chinese and Australian cultural interaction and to mark this important relationship this exhibition brings together the work of two painters from two ancient cultures.

I am very happy to open this exhibition.

When I looked at the catalogue I said wow, look at this, thousands of kilometres apart, many cultures separating them, what a wonderful presentation of two ancient cultures.

I can’t help, and I guess everybody else can’t help, seeing the similarities and of course the difference. Their art shares spiritual sensibilities and indeed connections to ancient lands.”

Professor Mick Dodson and gallery director Nancy Sever

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September 2012

Art and Seoul In September 2012 ANDREA and I visited Korea to attend the Korean International Art Fair (KIAF).

As always the numbers of Koreans attending events was huge and again the vast halls at COEX filled rapidly.

Interior, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

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Arte ALLIMITE, Santiago, Chile. Artist Christobal Anwandter and gallery director Ana Maria Matthei

KIAF was first held in 2002. Its chair of the operating committee, PYO, MI-SUN says

“KIAF has been performing as an annual cross venue for art professionals where they share ideas and opinions on Korean and Asian contemporary art.

One of our key objectives includes introducing Korean artists to the global art world”.

Of the 181 galleries exhibiting at KIAF in 2012, 120 were Korean with a further 61 galleries attending from abroad. Happily for us this year’s ‘guest region of honour’ was Latin America. This gave ANDREA and I a chance to catch up with galleries from across South America.

The Creative cowboy crew are planning an extensive trip through South America to begin research for new films on the art, cultures and nature of this region.

KIAF now stands with the world’s major international art fairs which include the Armory Show in New York, Art Basel in Switzerland, Frieze Art Fair and the Scope London Art Fair, Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, France. In the Asia Pacific region there are emerging international art fairs which include the Hong Kong International Art Fair (Hong Kong is rapidly becoming a major centre for international contemporary art), the Shanghai Art Fair and the Melbourne Art Fair.

Gallery ex machina, London. Right, gallery director Soojin Cheong, centre British artist Adam Green with Jeeho Park

Creative cowboy’s film Bush Plum: the contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle was shown throughout the duration of KIAF. ANGELINA is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne and Niagara Galleries were one of five Australian galleries attending the art fair.

KIAF gave us the opportunity, and we spent the 5 days of the fair looking at the art, to update ourselves on the artists and art of the region.

Korean International Art Fair

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National Museum of Korea

Galaria Del Paseo, Manantiales, Uruguay. Left to right: Silvia Arrozes (director) and Cecilia Stein

There were also days for visiting the galleries of Korea, one such trip to Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, one of the most beautiful small museums of art in the world, this is a day well spent.

imagine the complexity of the museums history and the dedication of its staff that has ensured the safe passage of so many precious items through all the upheavals of Korean history.

The collection includes Korean traditional art, modern, contemporary and experimental art. The museum’s ARTSPECTRUM 2012 show was also open on the day we visited, exhibiting the works of a group of highly skilful Korean artists. Media included photography and moving image and installation works.

Then a visit to SEMA, the Seoul Museum of Modern Art, another contemporary art space with a large number of multimedia works, again this was a very worthwhile experience.

In 2005 the museum moved to its new home in the Yongsan complex in the Central District of Seoul and in scale the National Museum of Korea is one of the six largest museums in the world. The museum’s collection is now being expanded to cover works from Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Western Asia and recent expansion has allowed the museum to build its activities across the museum’s four fields of archaeology, fine art, history and Asian art. This again is an impressive institution housed in an extraordinary building.

We also made two visits to the National Museum of Korea (Seoul) which houses an extensive collection of Korean and Asian art from prehistory on. A sign in the foyer of this very large museum says that it is the ninth most visited museum in the world. It is not hard to

There were visits to historical places including the Jongmyo Shrine, the keeping place for the ancestral tablets of deceased kings and queens. The original shrine was built in 1395. This shrine was destroyed in 1592 during the Japanese invasion of that time.

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What exists today was built in 1608.

Of all the Confucian states in Asia only Korea has preserved its royal shrine where the rites of Jongmyo Jerye and Jongmyo Jeryeak are still performed.

In 1995 Jongmyo was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and in 2001 the royal ancestral rites and music, Jongmyo Jerye and Jongmyo Jeryeak, were given Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity status by UNESCO. Always with an eye out for nature we visited the Natural History Museum so that provided an opportunity to reflect on the natural history of Korea.

Creative cowboy director ANDREA HYLANDS has a number of her artworks in public collections in Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan, so this trip to Korea was a chance to catch up with curators.

Heading out of Seoul one morning we visited the City of Icheon where museum visits had been arranged for us. The three cities of Icheon, Gwangju

Jongmyo Shrine

and Yeoju in Gyeoggi-do province are famous as the centres of Korean ceramic culture. In Icheon we visit the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation (WOCEF) and its museums.

Here we looked at a major collection of contemporary ceramics from around the world and a collection of national treasures of celadon ware.

Back in Seoul there were walks around city street, dinners in great restaurants, a highlight a meal at the Sanchon Restaurant with its Korean temple cooking. Here we sat on the floor at low tables and watched Korean traditional dance.

As with all these trips time passes too quickly and so it was that we found ourselves heading back to the airport.

Lim Inyoung, Andrea Hylands, Kim Gwang-Rae, Korean Ceramic Foundation

Cover image, Alick Tipoti, photo by Andrea Hylands. Back cover image, Zugubal dancers, photo by Peter Hylands

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