Arrangements are well underway for the two printmaking workshops on Skopelos in June-July this year. Materials have arrived from Holland, airlines and accommodation for over 30 people have been booked, goats are being fattened and fresh whitewash has been applied to village walls. Spring has sprung, the wildflowers are out and Skopelos Foundation staff are ready to welcome a mob of Aussies at a big dinner celebration on June 21. (There will be a farewell dinner for this first group on July 5, followed a few days later by a welcome dinner on July 11 for the second group). Bring your appetites!
One of Nyapurla Morgan’s beautiful new reduction linocuts, produced in small editions of 10 at the April workshop in Wiluna, run by Basil, the Tjukurba Co-ordinator, Heather Charlton and ably assisted by Sue Trevillian.
Wiluna artist, Nyapurla Morgan carving a lino block. Basil has just returned from one of the longest trips we make each year. To get to Wiluna, we have to fly first to Perth for an overnight stop. Then it’s up with the birds to catch a Skipper’s plane the 1000kms north again (in the direction of Darwin, where we started) to this small gold-mining town, east of Meekatharra. This was our third workshop out here and each time Basil (or Mats, in 2010) has concentrated on printing full editions of reduction relief prints during the week with the artists. Tjukurba ends up with one exhausted visitor, one exhausted staff member and around 130 beautiful three or four-colour prints to sell. An example is reproduced above. They are for sale through Tjukurba Art Gallery in Wiluna.
A group of the Ali Curung artists working on their blocks during the March workshop run by Mats and Sara. In the foreground, one artist is using an electric dremel tool (great for drilling dots). It’s got a flexible shaft, so is easy to hold (like a pencil or brush).
Following the Beswick workshop in March, Mats and Sara continued down the Stuart Highway (with the etching press in the back of the car) to Ali Curung, which is not far north of Alice Springs. Here the dynamic duo ran a woodcut workshop in the well-appointed art centre there. Artists worked with cutting tools and dremels (electric engraving tools) and Mats printed these in a variety of ways to show the participants how their carvings could be presented on paper.
Five workshops so far this year (and four artists have also worked with our printers in studio) and it’s only April! Who said the Indigenous art scene was a bit flat?
Senior Printer at BHE, Mats Undén, assisted by former Bula Bula Arts staffer, Sara Higgs (above, cleaning a plate), conducted a workshop recently at Beswick for Djilpin Arts. This is our fourth etching workshop out there and once again the men (and this time the ladies too) worked on intricate line drawings of animals, plants and birds from the region. The new prints have been proofed and will now be launched at Art Melbourne on May 19.
I think I took over 60 pictures like this of the rock art; each one more astounding than the last. I refer to the art here; not my pictures! Each year we are taken to different sites in the Borradaile area, so who knows what the guides will take us to see this year? Can it get any better?
Here’s an example of some of the astounding pre-and post-contact art we’ll be taken to see by the experienced guides at Mount Borradaile, when we aren’t swimming in the pool or creek, tucking into Ray’s 5 star gourmet food or painting and etching the extraordinary landscape.
Not content with making you jealous over the Greek workshops this year, BHE in collaboration with prominent Australian painter and printmaker Mandy Martin, is offering a four day painting and printmaking workshop at Mount Borradaile in May! This place has to be seen to be believed. If you thought Kakadu was good, just venture a little further into Arnhem land for sublime escarpments, bird and animal life a-plenty, wetlands to die for and the best rock art you’ll ever see unless George Chaloupka takes you into the stone country!
You can contact Mandy or Basil if you are interested. We could possibly still squeeze someone in!
Papunya artist Narlie working under the watchful eye of Papunya Tjupi Co-ordinator Kasumi Ejiri on a series of acetates which will become a new edition of screenprints. Papunya Tjupi artists have regularly worked on etchings with printmaker, Kasumi, herself and Michael Kempson from Cicada Press in Sydney, but this is the first time for around ten years that Basil has been out to work with Papunya artists. The Cicada Press etchings and BHE silkscreens will be jointly shown at Nomad Art in Darwin in August.
