Selling Yarns

Australian Indigenous textiles and good business in the 21st century

 

Makers forum

Saturday 12 August 2006 - Territory Craft, Darwin

Please note: The Makers forum is a pre-conference event (separate). Bookings are essential and you can register your interest in attending by emailing nihca@anu.edu.au

Cost: Free

Indigenous textile practitioners have a long history of making for traditional purposes and new outcomes. In this forum the artists will discuss how they have continued and built on traditional practice and developed new forms with introduced materials and techniques. The areas of body adornment/jewellery, fashion, printed textiles, design, fibre weaving and basketry will be considered. Perspectives from the diverse regions of Australia will be presented, from remote community to urban dwellers.

Non-Indigenous artists have worked with Indigenous artists on communities, in art centres, galleries, museums, in workshops/education and in creating production textiles. The Makers forum will give Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas and offer their insights from their experiences and contribute to discussion and debate about business issues.

How should or can traditional textile arts be presented to the wider community? How can artists earn a living from their practice? What aspects of education must be addressed to inform the public about objects, their meaning and significance? What is the place of new textile forms and their cultural identity? What are the models for success?

The Makers forum program will be subject to change over the following months. It was last updated on: 7 August 2006

Time Presentation
1:00 - 4:00 pm Convener: Valerie Kirk
Artist and Head of Textiles, The Australian National University, School of Art, ACT
Hugging the cloth
Bobbie Ruben, Fabric screen-printer and technical assistant, Charles Darwin Univervity, Northerm Territory
Living culture: art making as a tool for cultural survival and challenging the myth of extinction of Tasmanian Aboriginal people
Vicki West, Artist, Tasmania
The value of funding established makers, from Sydney to Elcho Island
Alice Whish, Jeweller and teacher, New South Wales
Break
'Gunga Dhawu' (Pandanas Story) - film (10 mins)
Louise Partos, Manager, Bula'bula Arts, Northern Territory
Marketing and exhibiting concepts: contemporary urban Indigenous textiles in the ACT
Jennifer Martiniello, Writer, artist and academic, ACT
Lyndy Delian, Artist, writer and musician, ACT
Starting a business
Carol Hanlon, Manager, Belmont BEC Inc. - Small Business Centre Belmont, Western Australia