One of Australia’s leading Green Art projects, Floating Land, is set to launch its 10-day festival with a Welcome to Country at its central site of Boreen Point at 5.30pm Friday May 27. This spectacular start to the festival will involve the Gubbi Gubbi people formally welcoming all participants and visitors with a dance at dusk on the shores of Lake Cootharaba.
The festival will bring people together from across the Asia Pacific region, including visual and performance artists, cultural practitioners, writers and educators along with the local community.
Community Policy and Programs Portfolio Councillor Jenny McKay said Floating Land offers a platform for creative responses, provocations and interactive experiences that can underpin new ways of thinking and inspire change.
“This year, Floating Land will expand from its traditional elements to incorporate ephemeral art, light and sound performances and installations, as well as social media, to engage the digital community,” Cr McKay said.
Floating Land guest curator, Leah Barclay – a multi-award winning Australian artist – said the program’s aim was to inspire solutions to challenge water issues.
“The diverse creative responses are embedded in a program of community workshops, forums and interactive labs designed to confront and challenge a spectrum of water issues across disciplines,” she said.
In addition to Boreen Point in the UNESCO-listed Noosa Biosphere region, satellite locations at the Coolum Boardwalk and the Butter Factory Arts Centre, Cooroy will also hold official openings of exhibitions in the festival’s first week. For full program details please visit council’s website.
Ends.
PUBLIC LAUNCH EVENTS
Friday May 27
Welcome to Country
5.30pm–6.30pm
Boreen Point, Lake Cootharaba
Lyndon Davis, renowned indigenous descendant of the Gubbi Gubbi people, will perform a traditional Welcome to Country with Gubbi Gubbi dance at dusk, on the foreshore of Lake Cootharaba at Boreen Point. Together they will formally welcome all participants and visitors and officially launch Floating Land 2011 with a performance responding to the role of water in First Nation communities.
Sunday May 29
Exhibition openings: GhostNets Australia, My Island Homes and Long a…Long Sugar…Ca…Cane
2.00pm
Butter Factory Arts Centre
10 Maple Street, Cooroy
- GhostNets Australia
The GhostNets Australia art project represents an innovative artistic response to a large-scale environmental problem. Due to the prevailing currents in the Gulf of Carpentaria, lost and discarded fishing nets float through the waters, collecting marine life and washing up on beaches. GhostNets artists use this marine debris to create artworks that are not only beautiful, but serve to raise awareness about this problem.
- My Island Homes
The Sunshine Coast is home to many families of South Sea Islanders who were brought to Queensland from predominantly Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands between 1860 and 1906. The exhibition explores the lives of the South Sea Islander workers who overcame exploitation and discrimination to make their home on the Sunshine Coast. Drawing on oral histories, photographs and objects from local and state collections, this cultural heritage exhibition will inspire a deeper understanding of the local South Sea Islander community. The exhibition is a collaboration of the Sunshine Coast Council and the Queensland Museum.
- Long a…Long Sugar…Ca…Cane
Krishna Nahow-Ryall is a Queensland-based visual artist whose work is inspired by her Vanuatu heritage and the legacy of South Sea Islander slavery in colonial Queensland. In this exhibition Krishna combines the elements of projected recorded voices and sounds from Vanuatu with live singing and still and moving digital imagery. The exhibition is an insightful and immersive experience of culture, heritage and shared understanding of Australian South Sea Islanders and their legacy on the Sunshine Coast. Krishna has been awarded a 2010 Commonwealth Connections international arts residency.
Tuesday May 31
Public Launch: Catchment Collective Installations
4pm–5.30pm
Point Perry Pavilion
David Low Way, Coolum Beach
The Catchment Collective is a group of Sunshine Coast artists who have undertaken a series of Green Art projects across the region, collaborating to engage the local community in environmental issues. During Floating Land the artists will respond to the Water Culture theme, working on site along the boardwalk. Visitors may be surprised to see artists on the boardwalk, but will enjoy witnessing the work develop and may even contribute to the process.
The following artists are involved with the project and will be attending the official opening on May 31.
Corrie Wright’s work Surge considers Water Culture – cultures that are synonymous with our behaviours. The effects of floating landfill and our cultural conditioning to bottled water are tackled in a progressive series of experiences intended to advocate an urge to action. These actions are not fixed, but expand over time and aim to generate community conversations and questions. Visit www.surge2011.blogspot.com to view the process.
Elizabeth Poole’s Warning Bells informs us about the irresponsibility of using vast numbers of plastic bottles to carry around our drinking water. This installation also brings to our attention the situation in Australia and other countries where our precious national water supplies are sold off to big companies and corporations.
Jan Dunlop’s environmental emphasis is a questioning of the upheavals of modernity. Her installation The Edge explores this notion via a series of abstract human forms retreating, in fear, from the water of rising sea levels.
The work Life Line by Richard Newport is a 3.6-metre ‘life boat’ filled with water and made from waste poly pipe. It references the buying and selling of water and water transport.
Wendy McGrath’s Red Shoes – The Next Wave explores the emotive and political issue of refugees, or ‘boat people’ in an arrangement of 1000 shoes made from re-cycled paper and painted red, rising up from the shore in a wave over the embankment. The paper used to create the shoes shows text and plans for housing developments and flood studies, referring to the basic human need for shelter and the right to a safe place to live, as well as to the triggering of global human migration across the planet’s waters as climate changes.
For further information visit www.floatingland.com.au
Media enquiries:
Fresh PR & Marketing, Helen Perry. Ph: 0431 065 964
Media and Public Relations Officer, Gillian Griffiths. Ph: 5420 8996
[nggallery id=39]
