Workshops

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.

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.

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 201

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 202

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 208

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 234

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 738

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 744

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 187

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  Angus Watt — The Flags — Pit­jan­jat­jara project — WOM­ADe­laide — 195