From Sharne Wolff…
“Louise, no matter what happens, I’m glad I came with you.” – Thelma.
A road trip is on the cards this week for the second biennial Cementa Festival of Contemporary Art. Held over 4 days in the small ‘post-industrial’ town of Kandos (located between the towns of Lithgow and Mudgee) around three hours drive from Sydney. With nearly 70 artists spread over 20-plus venues, Cementa promises a cutting-edge lineup of events. According to the organisers, there will be “robots and sound art, mushrooms, poetry and music. Artists will perform with shadows and drums; they will make art out of earth and recall the past through the sounds of birds. There will be boxing, pirate wifi, dancing monkeys, fields of pom poms, billboards and post cards and many other things besides these.”
This year’s Festival expands its focus to include many artists from the surrounding region and highlights the contribution of Indigenous artists. In company with Disambiguation, a major ‘tennis court installation’ by local Wiradjuri woman Aleisha Lonsdale, will be work from Adam Hill, Karla Dickens and Jason Wing. A downloadable Festival program is available on the Cementa website.
The full roll call of Cementa 2015 artists is: Robyn Backen, Nicole Barakat, Mark Booth, Jenny Brown, Mark Brown and Dave Standfield, MR & MRS Brown, Sam Bruce, Genevieve Carroll, John Conomos, Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Fiona Davies, Elizabeth Day, Karla Dickens, Nola Farman, Beata Geyer, Sarah Goffman, Kim V Goldsmith, Karen Golland, Daniel Green, Yvette Hamilton, Josh Harle, Adam Hill, Alana Hunt , Lucas Ihlein, Leahlani Johnson, Jumaadi, Melanie E. Khava, Dan Kotja, Heidi Lefebvre, Aleshia Lonsdale, Fleur MacDonald, Fiona MacDonald, Dani Marti, Wade Marynowsky, Christine McMillan, Ian Milliss, Bill Moseley, Djon Mundine, Sean O’Keefe, Michael Petchkovsy, Georgina Pollard, Juilee Pryor, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Renny Kodgers and the Twilight Girls, Alan Schacher, George Shaw, Ken Simpson, Kurt Sorenson, Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski, Tina Havelock Stevens, Karen Therese, Justene Williams, Williams River Valley Artists’ Project (WRVAP), Jason Wing, Alex Wisser, Alexander Jackson Wyatt and Paulina Semkowicz and Yiorgos Zafiriou.
Cementa15 is supported by Arts NSW and the Australia Council for the Arts.
April 9 – 12.
Kandos, NSW
Pic: Mark Brown & David Standfield Utility 2015 [SOUND INSTALLATION]. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Alex Wisser, 2015.
