From the Director - August 2024

Hello Everyone,

If you haven't visited Contemporary Songlines, do come. It's an extraordinary exhibition. There are amazing works on the floor – 58 totems, 16 made by the First Nations Women's Art Group and 42 made by First Nations students from four of our local schools. These kids are from around 12 to 16 years old and in many ways, they’ve been a bit disconnected from their schools. Maybe they feel a bit removed or culture hasn’t been playing much of a part in their growth and their knowledge. So, Aunty Jude Hammond, the curator of the project, created a holistic program for the kids.

Bangarra Dance Theatre, who are an internationally renowned First Nations dance group based in Sydney, really want to give back to communities. They’ve run a program for about six years, called the Rekindling Youth Program, where they go into communities. They work with youth and help them re-engage with culture, but in a contemporary sense through dance. Aunty Jude invited Bangarra to come in and work with the students, because her child had been involved in the program and she’d seen the value of it.

Contemporary Songlines exhibition | Photo by Eyes Wide Open Images

Part of the program involves cultural camps. And in the making of this exhibition, which took about a year and a half, the kids attended three cultural camps. They worked with Elders who came to the camps and shared their traditional stories. Master weavers from the Top End came in. Traditional Custodian Elder, Uncle Lyndon Davis, who is really well known across the coast, came in and shared various stories and also worked with the kids on traditional dance.

This all created an environment of cultural sharing and from these gatherings, students also started making sculptural elements out of clay. Working with their teachers, they thought about what objects or animals told their stories, and they created their totems. The First Nations Women's Art Group didn't only work on their own totems, they also produced moulds that were used in the schools to help students create various totems – you will definitely see several octopi, mullets and birds, each with the artist's own flair!

So these 58 works in the gallery are extraordinary. Everywhere you look, there’s a new, exciting object. There’s a particular black cockatoo that’s been beautifully captured by a child of 12. To have that really considered thought about how they wanted to represent themselves, and represent the animal they have a connection with, is amazing.

The other really nice part of the exhibition is a wonderful film that documents the camps and also the process of the kids learning to dance. We were really lucky at the opening to have three of the dances performed for us, which was amazing.

We’ve been really blessed to host this exhibition, and so many people have come in and been touched by it, because it’s just so powerful. And it’s been really nice to have the kids come in, because First Nations people often don’t come into institutions, as they may feel removed from them. We’ve had lots of kids bring their parents to show them which work is theirs. So it’s an amazing show, and the final day is Sunday 18 August.

Contemporary Songlines exhibition

Look forward to seeing you in the Gallery…

Jo Duke
Director