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Bath Festival
The “Tricolor” banners were commissioned by Bath Festival and installed for three weeks in Royal Crescent, Bath. There were sixty banners of each colour — red, white and gold. The colours changed over the three weeks, giving a very different feel to the space each time the banners changed. This idea was taken on to another level at WOMAD in Reading, UK, the following year, when Angus and his crew changed the banners over each night.
Melbourne Museum
“Lines of Place” flag project was commissioned in 2000 to inaugurate the opening of this truly vast Museum in Melbourne. It was a collaborative work, working with indigenous Koori artist Glenn Romanis, and my sister, Shona. I had ruptured some disks in my back at the time so Glenn was flown over to the UK to meet Shona and I. To get things rolling with a deadline looming half the flags were made in my studios in Bristol (the grey ones) and the indigi-style ones were made in Melbourne. Shona went over to Oz to initiate the second phase of banners with Glenn and the Museum, until I was well enough to fly over to complete the project. (ie when all the work was done).
Continue reading Melbourne Museum
WOMAD, Festival of Drumming, Sri Lanka
This project was initiated by the WOMAD foundation in 2005 and supported by the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the French Embassy and Barefoot Gallery, Columbo. Under Angus Watt’s guidance, sixty flags were designed, made and flown in the ten days before the festival, with artists mainly from Columbo, France and Germany. They were installed in the main arena on Galle Face Green, a vast sea front park which attracted over 100,000 spectators on the final night — a unique and wonderful event with master drummers from all over the world.
Aboriginal Workshop Project
The Pitjanjatjara workshops in South Australia
This project was conducted in conjunction with the fantastic artists of the Anangu Pitjanjantjara, APA (Arts Project Australia) and the WOMAD foundation in 2000. The banners design were derived from original drawings made in the 1950’s by Pitjanjatjara children in their mission schools. We discovered the drawings at the Ernabella Art centre, Central Australia, where the director had archived them away in a card board box all these years. The banners were made and flown at WOMADalaide that year. They also went to Germany on exhibition to raise funds for several reconciliation protests in South Australia. The designs or “walkas” were painted onto fabric, enlarged from photos of the originals. The original conté crayon drawings were absolute ‘gold dust’, and went on to be properly archived and presented in a SA museum, I believe.
