Reflecting Country, Recognising Self

CBD NEWS ARTICLE This is a Baluk Arts group exhibition co-curated by Lisa Waup in collaboration with FLG.

This exhibition features the artists Lisa Waup, Gillian Garvie, Cassie Leatham, Beverley Meldrum and Nanette Shaw.

Reflecting Country, Recognising Self

The South Eastern region of Australia is an area rich in traditional expression and the women artists of Baluk Arts are ensuring the perseverance of a distinct, contemporary cultural aesthetic of the south east Victorian coast despite interventions that would strip traditional cultural practices away. These contemporary women are the mothers of a rebirth of cultural making. These are the newest custodians of old crafts and ancient knowledge and they share it with the next generation, visitors, and the world, and often at great personal cost. These are women who have taken control of their destinies, and yet they wander a contested space. This accumulation and metamorphosis of found materials bring Country first and foremost to our attention. Ghost nets and assorted beach refuse, shells discarded from long forgotten tropical holidays, recycled sterling silver, feathers, bones and other discovered contents are a plaintive call for conservation. To rehabilitate the land is to rehabilitate the soul. This is an offered glimpse through the looking glass, as much as these pieces are works about Country they are about the Aboriginal women who have brought them into being. It is through reflecting Country and Ancestral heritage back into the contemporary life that they come to recognise themselves as one more link in a story hundreds of generations long.

Baluk Arts is an urban Aboriginal community arts centre making waves in the art world. Based in Mornington, Victoria. Baluk supports artistic, career and audience development for visual artists of the Bayside, Peninsula and greater Melbourne.

Baluk is a local Boonwurrung word meaning many or group of people and this reflects the diversity of our artists and their work. Our emerging and established artists hail from all over Australia and their art expressed their identity and cultural heritage in a contemporary context.

Through Baluk Arts, family groups and members of the stolen generation have reconnected with their culture and express their histories through strong artistic practice to support their cultural and creative wellbeing. Baluk Arts encourages community development, youth leadership, participation and interaction, and Indigenous governance through innovative arts practice.