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LIFE, DEATH & DYING

Kerry Packer Gallery, The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre

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Life, Death and Dying was a cross cultural creative conversation exploring grief, loss and death involving eight individuals (including four artists Mark Valanzuela, Manal Younus, Elyas Alavi and me!) that culminated in an exhibition and short film documentary, "The Things We Leave Behind'.  ground-breaking contemporary art and film project Led by artist Daniel Connell and funded by SA Health and supported by Laurel Palliative Care Foundation.

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We talked, we cried, we laughed laughed over two intense days, and then reconnected again two months later, to share our weaving, words, ceramics, painting, film and friendship.

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THE PAPYROPHILIA PROJECT

Hahndorf Academy, FRINGE 2021 - Best Visual Arts & Design Adelaide Fringe Weekly Award

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This was no ordinary trip to the gallery! For the Fringe 2020, Hahndorf Academy invited The Cucumber Project, paper loving kids and me! to create, collaborate and curate a growing, immersive and interactive exhibition called, The Papyrophilia Project. Over the four weeks of FRINGE the exhibition kids ran along the winding rainbow road growing paper trees, giant cardboard characters and chameleon creatures while the ever changing paper world exploded all around them. 

Curated by Tony Kearney - The Packing Shed,  Hart's Mill, FRINGE 2018-2023

Best Visual Arts & Design Adelaide Fringe Weekly Award 2020

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A bi-annual gathering of artists by photographer Tony Kearney. For "Vessel" (centre), I wove for three months across the kitchen floor...

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Why is your Mum making a boat?

 

She has a hole in her heart ...you know it’s just the same when your dog dies... her Mum died and then her Granny...that’s why she’s weaving a boat.

 

Sometimes we don’t realise we are grieving. I wake up, I pack the lunches, I send them off to school, I go to work, I make pie, I sleep….I make pie, we sleep,  we weave. I make pie, the way my mum taught me and it is almost as good as talking to her. It is the same with weaving. 

 

In the late desert afternoon, the minyma pampa call, kungka, can you finish my tjanpi? My mara are sore. We work side-by-side. We tell each other stories without speaking the words. 

 

This is my story, my grandmothers and my great grandmothers. It is a gift from my uncles and aunties. It is the memories and unspoken folklore of family strength and melancholia.     (photo: Tony Kearney)

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Adelaide City Library, SALA 2020 (artwork - Tommy Mutter)

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In 2020 I was the recipient of the Adelaide City Library Emerging Curator Grant to produce “I am Awe-tistic” for SALA 2020, a collaborative exhibition giving young emerging artists on the autism spectrum a voice, celebrating their hearts and minds in a safe place and exploring subjects they were passionate about.

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There are no real rules when it comes to art and that freedom is what I love. With freedom comes self-expression and when you can be yourself, amazing things can happen. - Eliza, artist

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In 2014-15 I project managed and curated Kapi Ungkapyi, a multimedia, multi-sensory exhibition for Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art.

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…an exhibition with special magic

Stephanie Raddock, Artlink Magazine (Issue 35:4 December 2015)

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This two-year project involved five principal artists and over 100 supporting artists. It began after five women elders became stranded in the desert in the height of Summer for five days after their vehicle broke down. The ladies used their traditional knowledge to survive and were reluctant to return home again when they were found, describing their experience as a new tjukurrpa or sacred Dreaming story.

 

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