On behalf of Nextwave Festival I participated in one of their regional projects Sweet Work in Bendigo this last weekend. It was a mentoring program designed to give regional artists tools with which to make cross disciplinary art works.
The mentors were myself, Liv Barrett and Trevor Flinn. I was really taken with an editorial that Liv had written for one of her publications Hao Guo.
Underneath this picture she talked about connectivity and about the need to belong. These piglets had lost their mother, the tigress had lost her children. Both were doomed to death until they came together – no longer as prey and hunter but now as mother and children.
“It doesn’t matter where you come from, it only matters where you are.”
Olivia Barrett.
Also of interest was Liv’s connection to performance duo A Constructed World whose work mashes video, installation and performance art into one messy de-constructed world.
A Constructed World – Truck Dance 2007, ACCA Melbourne.
The rest of the day was spent with local Bendigo artists making small works, which they will now work on over the next two weeks before the mentors return. Again what was confirmed for me is when you are put under pressure, when you are forced to go with your first instinct that is when the best work happens. The idea for Wayfarer was forged under such circumstances at Time_Place_Space_3 in Adelaide in 2004.
