Desart has recently held artists’ camps at Ikuntji and Blackstone. At both camps artists met to talk about current events and issues facing Art Centres, artists and their families in this time of the Global Financial Crisis.
Desart’s Executive Officer John Oster explained to artists that as people have less disposable income, there will be a greater search for ˜true paintings, true culture, true business’. Many artists spoke up at these meetings about the integrity of their practice and later shared good stories about developments in their Art Centres. The discussion about the recently released Code of Conduct (draft for review) also generated a lot of interest from artists who asked to go through the code in more detail.
In April about forty people from Ikuntji, Papunya and Alice Springs came and went to Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) over the three days of Desart’s North West Region camp which was hosted by Ikuntji Artists in the grounds of the Art Centre.
Andrzej Janczewski’s workshops at Ikuntji were particularly appreciated by the Art Centre managers and art workers at the camp who enjoyed Andrzej’s hands-on demonstrations of different techniques and processes of material preparation and conservation. Andrzej also ran workshops for artists using gouache on paper. While the artists were reluctant to move away from canvas at first, encouraged by senior artist Anmanari Napanangka, they soon became immersed in the workshops and produced some striking images over the two days.
Sculptor J9 Stanton’s workshops were also very popular at the camp, with participants arriving who had never before come to the Art Centre. The 3-D workshops, using found objects, plaster and bandages, drew a younger crowd, who produced everything from plaster birds to aeroplanes over the camp days.
