A Blinkered View – High Tea Low Tea by Mella Jaarsma of Cemeti Arthouse
Boasting of an excellent line-up of Australian keynote speakers, the Regional Arts Australia Summit also has a strong international participation.
An Indonesian delegation of artists featuring Papermoon Puppet Theater and Cemeti Arthouse will be delivering keynote addresses at the Summit, along with MONA FOMA curator Brian Ritchie, Artistic Director at Opera Queensland Lindy Hume and Genevieve Grieves, Lead Curator of the First Peoples exhibition at Melbourne Museum’s Bunjilka Aboriginal Cultural Centre.
Fresh off their participation at the Light in Winter celebrations in Melbourne, this would be the debut participation of Papermoon Puppet Theater at the Summit. Maria Tri Sulistyani, Founder & Co- Artistic Director, and Iwan Effendi, Artistic Director, lead Papermoon.
‘We will share about how we live our arts, with the themes that we choose, and with the different conditions that we have here, compared with Australian artists.
‘This will be our first time joining the Summit, and this is very new for us. [We hope to] gather a new experience and meet new people, definitely,’ said Sulistyani.
Combining their love for performing and visual arts, their work stemmed from dissatisfaction around art education for children, and slowly grew into a questioning of the dark political history of Indonesia by tackling topics like otherness, inclusion, conflict and the effect of national regimes on individuals, in their work.
‘Puppetry is the best medium to combine performing and visual arts; it’s the media that’s always full with exploration and never ending experiments, for us.
‘The biggest advantage we see doing puppetry is our ability to surprise the audience. Plays and dance theatres have their own strengths, but one can always assume that the talent will be people, and that already bases the performances on reality,’ she adds.
Mella Jaarsma and Nindityo Adipurnomo, co-founders of Cemeti ArtHouse, are the other Indonesian keynotes at the Summit. In operations for the past 26 years, Cemeti Arthouse organises exhibitions and artists development programs, artists and curators residencies, talks, discussions, and research and exchange programs.
‘We would like to share the developments of the active Indonesian art scene with other communities and exchange knowledge of the recent functions of the arts in specific societies.
‘We are eager to learn about different formats and want to see the importance of the locality in places like Kalgoorlie and the art in rural environments,’ said Jaarsma.
Some of their recent work relates to the colonial past of Indonesia, and with their work they hope that art can reveal the realities of real lived experience.
‘Like in the ‘Beautiful Indie landscape paintings’ under Dutch colonization, where shows how landscapes are romanticized, covering up its real stories of exploitation. In ‘A Blinkered View – High Tea Low Tea’ it looks into the tea culture and it is about to serve and to be served.
‘We hope to get inspired and think about other, different possibilities in which art can function – to show another view and use art as another perception towards different issues,’ she added.
To be able to hear what these wonderful artists have to say, register here, and you might avail the early bird discount before the 18 of August.
