Learn a bit,
teach a bit
Julalikari Arts and Crafts
invited Alison Clouston to become
artist-in-residence at the Pink Palace
Alison Clouston is a sculptor who lives both in Sydney and on her property in the Burragorang Valley, south west of Sydney. She has had eleven solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. Alison has also been awarded several public commissions and is recognised as being a leader in her field.
Julalikari Arts and Crafts at the Pink Palace has been fortunate to have Alison working with them over the past six weeks, as artist-in -residence, sharing her expertise and showing the women how a professional artist approaches her work.
They have been working in a variety of techniques including carving and making objects out of spinifex and telephone wire.
As Alison Clouston says:
I first came to Australia from New Zealand at the beginning of 1981, it was actually art that brought me here because I came here for a sculpture triennial, but before then I had a solo show in Wellington before I left New Zealand, my first show out of art school. I was quite serious about my work but I wasn't thinking down the track, I wasn't thinking about where it would take me. I was really passionate about it at the time.
I went to Sydney and got involved with the Sydney underground and all the different artists from different fields like theatre and performance art and things like that. There was this energy there of trying to do something separate from the art world. People were trying to make culture for each other and for their peer group and that was a really exciting thing to be part of. It did influence the way I thought about art.
Up until last year I'd had very little to do with indigenous Australia, as you can by being a white Australian. New Zealand's not like that, the two cultures are much more integrated. Here it's a much smaller percentage of the population that's indigenous, so that makes a big difference.
When I went to the Kimberley Artist camp, I was sitting down making art side by side with these really amazing artists, like Jimmy Pike and others from Turkey Creek. That felt like a great privilege. I found it exciting to sit down and talk to someone who spoke English in a way that was so different. Everything was so new, it brought me face to face with my ignorance. That encouraged me to come to Central Australia and to see all these other cultures at work here.
I didn't know what to expect before I came to Tennant Creek. I had an impression of it being a small town and I'd read "Grog War" so that gave me a bit of background. It sort of prepared me for the worst in a way, I found it much less a war zone, than what the book had led me to believe. I found it a pretty well quiet and peaceful country town.
The things I've made since I've been here are unlike anything I've made anywhere else. I'm an artist who responds very much to my environment and that's why I've been able to do residencies from time to time. I respond really strongly to a place and get a real energy from that, being in a place that's really exciting.
We've been making baskets but it was only this year that I first got into basketry. I was a bit worried about that and thought well I'm not an expert.
As it turned out, there was something really condusive to sitting down with a group of women. You can sit around and chat while you're doing it and you can do it slowly, even if a kid's sitting on your knee you can still do it. There's no noisy, dangerous and isolating processes like welding or chainsawing. They are some of the other things that I do and which involve a real aloneness and also a lot of technology as well. The other thing that appealed to me was that if you're on a low income, it's great to be able to go and get the materials such as spinifex, for nothing.
I have really fond memories of the Pink Palace, those verandahs and conversations going on all the time, people coming and going. Also cycling through town, I think if I had a car I would have felt more alienated from the town in a way. Riding down the street puts you more in the street life, I'd ride down the street and someone would say "Hello", and I loved picking the spinifex. I used to go out and pick it on the edge of town at sunset and it was an incredibly beautiful landscape. I thought it would be more about relating to nature here but in fact it was more to do with relating to people.