Fiona Rafferty

NANCY FAIRFAX STUDIO RESIDENCY - Tweed River Art Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre - September 2017

In September 2017, Rafferty spent two weeks as Artist in Residence in the Nancy Fairfax Studio attached to the Tweed River Art Gallery, Murwillumbah, NSW.

Through the Margaret Olley Art Centre, the Tweed Regional Gallery offers a unique experience of Margaret Olley’s home studio, provide insight into Australian art history and practice, and honours the artist’s legacy of mentorship and patronage. The Nancy Fairfax Artist-In-Residence (AIR) studio program encourages arts practice and creative engagement between artist, community and place. The AIR studio extends and completes the re-creation of Margaret Olley’s home studio at Tweed Regional Gallery. Throughout her professional life, Margaret Olley supported many artists through mentorship and financial assistance. To Margaret, the most productive ways of supporting artists were to encourage the public exhibition of an artist’s practice and to encourage sales and during her lifetime, she mentored a number of younger artists and encouraged their representation in public and private collections. She actively supported artists and advanced their careers through purchasing works for collections or offering artists the opportunity to further their development through fellowship programs. The AIR studio program offers artists an opportunity to stimulate their practice in a creative environment.

www.artgallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au

2016 WATERHOUSE NATURAL SCIENCE PRIZE "SHELLACKED" - FINALIST

The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize was launched in 2002 and commemorates the birth of the South Australian Museum’s first curator, Frederick George Waterhouse. The prize is an opportunity for artists to investigate the world around them, and present their perspectives on natural science. It encourages artists to make a statement about the scientific issues facing our planet, and offers a valuable platform for them to contribute to the environmental debate. Over the years the competition has become a much loved fixture on the arts calendar, allowing artists and audiences to explore natural science through a range of creative outlets. The Waterhouse Prize is held bi-annually at the South Australian Museum.

www.waterhouse.samuseum.sa.gov.au

Shellacked was selected as a finalist in the Emerging Artist Category.

2016 ADELAIDE PERRY DRAWING PRIZE  "SALINITY"  FINALIST

"Salinity" has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize for 2016.

 The Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing is a $25,000 acquisitive art award among the most significant of its kind in the country. Inaugurated in 2006, the Prize is generously supported by the Parents and Friends’ Association of PLC Sydney. Named in honour of respected painter, printmaker and draughtswoman, Miss Adelaide Elizabeth Perry who taught Art at PLC Sydney from 1930 to 1962, the Prize attracts submissions from around the country.

ADELAIDE PERRY PRIZE FOR DRAWING 2016 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED In its eleventh year, PLC Sydney’s Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing received a record amount of entries. Judge for 2016, Independent curator and writer Ms Julie Ewington visited the Gallery in January to select the short-list of this year’s finalists from over 600 entries.

In a statement about the process Ms Ewington wrote:

"Drawing, in all its various forms, is one of the foundations of working as an artist. But more than a skill, today drawing is the home of the unexpected, and the provisional: it is a sprawling set of working methods, as well as a destination. In 1991 the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, now a Nobel-prize winning novelist but once an aspiring artist, evoked something of the immediacy and excitement of drawing when he wrote 'My mind was at the tip of my pen, acting before I could think; at the same time it could survey what I had already done.' In selecting just a fraction of the over 600 entries for the 2016 Adelaide Perry finalists' exhibition, I wanted to reveal some of the many different ways that contemporary artists use drawing to explore their world, and the life of the imagination. Works in the exhibition are variously rough or refined, fully finished or working studies; some are still and precise, others frenzied with movement or colour and, in one case, the drawing is animated. Taken together, they show that drawing is alive and well in Australia today. Congratulations to this year’s finalists."

Prior to the finalists’ exhibition event, Ms Ewington returns to Adelaide Perry Gallery to decide upon the winner of the $25,000 acquisitive award.

Ms Ewington will announce this year’s winner at the Gallery during the official opening for the Adelaide Perry Prize Exhibition of Finalists 2016, Friday 26 February at 7 pm. All welcome.

https://www.plc.nsw.edu.au/microsites/adelaide-perry-gallery/adelaide-perry-prize-for-drawing

The Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing continues 27 February – March 24, 8.30 am – 4 pm weekdays and 11 am – 4 pm Saturdays. At the close of the exhibition a people’s choice award of $2,000 will be awarded to the finalist’s work voted favourite by Gallery visitors. Voting slips are available at the Gallery.

MATT FOLEY'S OPENING SPEECH FOR REMINISCENCE - A TRIBUTE TO JUDITH WRIGHT

I acknowledge the Turrbal and Jagera peoples who have celebrated poetry, song, dance and the visual arts on these lands by the running waters of what we call the Brisbane River since time immemorial.

Let me start with the first stanza of Judith Wright’s poem “Reminiscence” published in 1973 in the collection entitled “Alive”.

I was born into a coloured country;

spider-webs in dew on feathered grass,

mountains blue as wrens, valleys cupping sky in like a cradle,

christmas-beetles winged with buzzing opal;

finches, robins, gang-gangs, pardalotes

tossed the blossom in its red-streaked trees.

On the thirty-first of May 1915 Judith Arundell Wright was born in Armidale, the eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife Ethel. Judith died on the twenty-fifth of June 2000 in Canberra. She spent much of her life in Queensland - at Mount Tamborine, at Boreen Point on Lake Catharaba and just down the road in New Farm on the corner of Brunswick Street and Sydney Street. This splendid arts centre is named in her honour. The Queensland Government named the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for poetry with Judith’s permission after her Tamborine home “Calanthe” where she lived with her beloved Jack McKinney and wrote some of the finest love and nature poetry the world has ever seen. Calanthe is a white orchid which blooms on Tamborine at Christmas and was the subject of Judith's magnificent love poem “Nameless Flower”.

Judith became close friends with the great Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal also known as Kath Walker who lived at Moongalba on Stradbroke Island. In the poem “At Cooloolah” Judith wrote:

"Those dark-skinned people who once named Cooloolah

knew that no land is lost or won by wars,

for earth is spirit, the invader’s feet will tangle

in nets there and his blood be thinned by fears."

Judith was a founding member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland in 1962. She campaigned hard to protect the Cooloola coloured sands against mining and to defend the Great Barrier reef and Fraser Island, much to the manifest displeasure of the then reactionary, oppressive Queensland Coalition government.

Judith challenged us not only to see the multi-coloured beauty of our land, its flora and wildlife but also to take political action to preserve this beauty against the mindless ravages of unbridled mining and commerce. She dared us not just to see the scalding truth of the dispossession and exploitation of Aboriginal land and society, but also to take political action to redress this grinding injustice. Judith transcended the arid distinction between art and politics.

This exhibition “Reminiscence” put on by Flying Arts captures that very theme. Artists Fiona Rafferty and Frances Smith have used paper, pen and clay to reflect Judith’s love of country and unsentimental grasping after truth.

Fiona Rafferty’s black lines in the drawing “Salinity” form the shape of a hollow tortoise shell, like those Rafferty found when exploring Lake Cooloongup south of Perth. The learned author Danielle Harvey points out in the catalogue that Cooloongup derives from the word “Koolangka”, meaning “children” in the native language, Noongar.It is thought that Lake Cooloongup traditionally represented youth and new life. Today, Lake Cooloongup is shallow at the best of times and the water has become saline. When the lake is dry it reveals a vast, lifeless landscape made up of salt, animal remains and ancient thrombolites. As Harvey has pointed out, "Salinity" (2015) is a stark reminder of the devastating effects of European colonisation on both Indigenous traditions and the environment, two areas that Judith Wright so passionately fought to protect”.

Frances Smith has made three vessels “The Reef Series”, thrown and carved in Southern Ice Porcelain. As Smith writes in the catalogue, the white bright porcelain mirrors "dead coral, colour bleached out, life extinguished by the very forces that Judith Wright protested against”.

Judith Wright’s spirit lives on. It blossoms in the hearts of new generations and stirs their imaginations. Up on Mount Tamborine now white Calanthe orchids are coming into bloom. I conclude with Judith’s poem “Nameless Flower".

Three white petals float

above the green.

You cannot think they spring from it

till the fine stem’s seen.

So separated each from each,

and each so pure,

yet at the centre here they touch

and form a flower.

Flakes that drop at the flight of a bird

and have no name,

I’ll set a word upon a word

to be your home.

Up from the dark and jungle floor

you have looked long

Now I come to lock you here

in a white song.

Word and word are chosen and met.

Flower, come in.

But before the trap is set,

the prey is gone.

The words are white as a stone is white

carved for a grave,

but the flower blooms in immortal light,

Being now; being love."

Matt Foley - Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts - 6 December 2015

MEDIA RELEASE - REMINISCENCE - A TRIBUTE TO JUDITH WRIGHT

MEDIA RELEASE

Wed 11 November 2015

For immediate release

Celebrating 100 years of Australian visionary Judith Wright.

Reminiscence – A Festival of Judith Wright comes to the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 420 Brunswick St., Fortitude Valley, on Saturday 5 December, starting at 1pm.

Reminiscence is a one day festival of ideas celebrating the centenary of Wright’s birth, and launches a month long exhibition of the same name. Presented by Flying Arts Alliance, the festival showcases visual art, performance and discussion in a series of free events at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts.

The day kicks off with a performance of Hearts Ablaze, a play inspired by Wright’s time living at her home ‘Calanthe’ in Mt Tamborine. Award-winning Brisbane based actor and director Jennifer Flowers will perform alongside a small cast. The play is followed by a panel discussion where visitors will have the opportunity to discover more about Wright’s significance as an artist, activist and visionary thinker. Moderated by Dr. Janet McDonald, the expert panel speakers include art historian and academic Dr. Sally Butler; writer and academic Dr. Bronwyn Lea; environmental campaigner Gemma Plesman; and artist Judy Watson.

The day program culminates with the launch of the exhibition, Reminiscence, featuring paintings, works on paper and ceramics.

The exhibition will be officially opened by The Hon. Matt Foley, former Minister for the Arts.

The exhibition unveils a significant new body of work created by artists Fiona Rafferty and Frances Smith, inspired by Judith Wright’s life. Rafferty says, “The issues that Judith fought for—such as indigenous land rights and protecting the Great Barrier Reef—are issues that are still relevant today; through this exhibition we celebrate and continue her work in an effort to inspire the generations that proceed her.” “When I resided at ‘Calanthe’ I felt Judith Wright’s presence everywhere, and after further researching her work I was instantly inspired by her intelligence, compassion and strength” Rafferty says.

Reminiscence is part of the Flying Arts Alliance Inc. Curator Development Program, in which five emerging curators are selected to work under the banner of ‘Curators in Space’ to produce an exhibition and public program at the Judith Wright Centre.

The Judith Wright Centre is a fitting venue to celebrate the life of its visionary namesake where the exhibition will run from 5 December 2015 to 15 January 2016.

The exhibition will also tour regional galleries throughout Queensland. For more details about the festival program visit curatorsinspace.com ---ENDS---

For further information contact: Kerryanne Farrer T. 07 3216 1322 [email protected].au

Web-ready images available at curatorsinspace.com.

Print-ready images available by request.

Flying Arts Alliance Inc. 420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia P: 07 3216 1322 E: [email protected] W: flyingarts.org.au Flying Arts is a not-for-profit organisation providing arts and cultural development projects and services throughout regional and remote Queensland, with the assistance of the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, and with the generous support of the University of Southern Queensland as well as other partners and benefactors.

INVITATION - REMINISCENCE - 5 DECEMBER 2015

Flying Arts Alliance warmly invites you to Reminiscence: A Festival of Judith Wright

Reminiscence is a one day festival of ideas celebrating the centenary of Wright’s birth, and launches a month long exhibition of the same name. The festival showcases visual art, performance and discussion in a series of free events at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts.

The exhibition will be officially opened by The Hon. Matt Foley, former Minister for the Arts.

The exhibition unveils a significant new body of work created by artists Fiona Rafferty and Frances Smith, inspired by Judith Wright’s life.

When: Festival Program - Saturday 5 December 2015, from 1:00 pm,

Official exhibition opening - Saturday 5 December 2015, 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm.

Where: Shopfront Gallery, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 420 Brunswick St., Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

Light refreshments provided, cash bar.

RSVP - 07 3216 1322

projects@flying arts.org.au

The exhibition will be open in the Shopfront Gallery from 5 December 2015 to 15 January 2016.

Flying Arts Alliance Inc. 420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia P: 07 3216 1322 E: [email protected] W: flyingarts.org.au Flying Arts is a not-for-profit organisation providing arts and cultural development projects and services throughout regional and remote Queensland, with the assistance of the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, and with the generous support of the University of Southern Queensland as well as other partners and benefactors.

REMINISCENCE - ARTIST STATEMENT

In 2013, I spent five months living in the former home of Judith Wright on Tamborine Mountain. Calanthe was the home she shared with philosopher, Jack McKinney and their daughter Meredith, and Tamborine Mountain is her final resting place. Calanthe gave me the time and the space to get to know Wright and I felt her presence everywhere, particularly in her beloved garden. As a teenager I studied her poetry and many years later, while working in the field of conservation in Western Australia, I learnt more about Wright, the conservationist and advocate for Aboriginal rights. Her poetry, her passion for the environment and her commitment to righting the wrongs facing Australia’s first people, resonated with me.

During my time at Calanthe, I discovered that the year 1915 played a significant part in her life. In 1915 the Anzacs landed at Gallipoli and Judith Wright was born. Her birth, in a time when the world was at war, influenced the way she viewed the environment around her.

There seems to be very little known about a quite remarkable woman, who was a visionary in many ways and achieved enormous success in her lifetime, without the fanfare that the media today would have embraced with vigour. Through the creation of a body of work that celebrates Wright’s life, I hope to bring her to the attention of new audiences and to re-kindle the affection of many who are already familiar with her.

“Reminiscence”, the title of this exhibition, references a poem by Wright of the same name and addresses themes of loss and memory. Through a series of drawings that pay homage to the environment, ever diminishing under the weight of political and corporate greed, I have focused on areas within Australia that are currently causing concern. Over fifty years ago Wright gave the environment a voice through her writing and in “Reminiscence” her voice is re-visited and amplified through my work.

I have chosen to use very fine pens, paper and hand-stitching to represent Wright and her work. The use of pen and the direct contact with my pen to paper is reminiscent of the way that Wright wrote her letters. So many of her daily letters were written by hand and in a world fuelled by screens and technology, the human touch is becoming less. The use of stitching is important in my work, as the themes are stitched together in a metaphoric sense and also in a tactile way, by piercing the paper surface. A tenuous connection occurs that has the ability to tear and thus destroy the very thing that has been created. There is an immediacy conveyed through direct contact with the fragile surface and the marks cannot be erased once they have been made. This also reflects the nature of invasive mining that scars the landscape irreversibly.

“Conscience of My Country” is the work that I feel represents the way Wright felt about our country, the landscape, and the scarring impact of mining on areas of great beauty. It tells a visual story with symbols and words that provide indicators of what is occurring at mine-sites around Australia. At a distance, the work appears to be a landscape, but it tells a quite different story, much in the same way that Wright told her stories through her poetry, about man’s impact on our environment and the lack of thought and care for the future generations of man.

I hope that I have succeeded in some small way in paying homage to Judith Wright, the inspiration for this body of work, in this centenary year of her birth.

Fiona Rafferty – (Spring Creek Station, Narrabri – October 2015)