Far north Queensland indigenous artists are taking a new approach to traditional artefacts
THE reaction to the first showing of ceramics by the Girringun artists of Cardwell, in far north Queensland, was overwhelming.
“We were mobbed,” says Valerie Keenan, manager of the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre.
“We didn’t understand what was happening, we’d had no idea what the reception was going to be.
“This was such a new thing for the artists as well as for the art world.”
That first showing was at the inaugural Cairns Indigenous Art Fair in August last year, itself a toe-in-the-water (and ultimately successful) trial that gathered together 11 galleries exhibiting indigenous Queensland artists, along with eight arts centres.
Keenan, who is the centre’s first full-time manager, says the fair prompted long discussions about what kind of work Girringun would show, and from those discussions this new style of ceramics developed.
