Artists from Wilurarra Creative (Credit: Wilurarra Creative)
During the initial briefing sessions for Regional Arts Australia’s Summit: Arts & Edges at Kalgoorlie-Boulder the team discussed ideas of what it is to be a regional artist, and the creation of art in the cities (mainstream) and regional art.
Owen Hinton, Creative Producer for the youth program of the Summit, CreateTank says, ‘There is a notion that art only comes from the centre and gets distributed outwards to regional areas and we take what we can get from the main cities.
‘This is something that we’d like to start changing, by showing that art and creativity can come from regional areas. We are artists here as well, even though we live in small towns.’
The Summit’s Artistic Director Ben Fox, who was previously the Artistic Director at Wilurarra Creative, a project in the remote community of the Ngaanyatjarra people in Warburton Western Australia, celebrating their music, culture and creativity, feels the same way.
‘Wilurarra is managed by Silvano Giordano at the moment. Three years ago I handed over the artistic direction to him. There is some fantastic work coming out from there.
‘I understand that they are making a recreation of their music studio and it is a really very exciting music development program where young emerging creative producers can work entirely independently,’ he said.
CreateTank is driven by the Young Reference Group and led by Creative Producer Owen Hinton who hopes to encourage young artists to participate in the Summit. This project is a forum and artistic collective for regional artists who are young (aged 18-26) and based across regional Western Australia. It has three projects in it which will then be showcased at the Summit.
‘Film Tank is a short film platform which young regional artists can contribute to. So, they can make a short film on their smartphone and send it in and this will then be displayed online and at the Summit. I got the idea for this when I was in Leonora.
‘The second project is called the Humans of the Summit. We are in talks with the person who runs the Humans of WA Facebook page, and he is really keen to come to the Summit. We will do workshop training with him to do our own ‘Humans of the Summit’ posts. The photographs will be taken during the Summit and displayed using projectors by young artists.
‘Our third project will also be using projectors. We’re going to build a space and then we are going to do what’s called projection mapping, where projectors are used to transform a space. So people will come inside it and the projectors will be changing the look of the space inside,’ said Hinton.
The ethos behind the youth program at the Summit is to build a platform which makes it easier for young artists in regional areas to share their work and have their work be seen and shared across Australia, and the world.
‘The main hope for me is that, after the Summit is over and the excitement has died down that something will remain, the enthusiasm will remain to keep creating art works.
‘With the Film Tank platform, I hope it will be the start for some young artists in regional areas who feel that they can make short films and distribute them via the internet. I hope to plant a seed of interest in them, I guess,’ said Hinton.
That art comes from the centre to the edges, and from traditional structures, is something that the Summit is trying to alter slightly.
If you want to be part of the Summit, register here and you can avail an early bird discount before 18 August.
