My Face, Our Place

My Face, Our Place

The “My Face, Our Place” project, coordinated by Katie Breckon and the Mowanjum Art and Culture Centre, takes an expansive and ambitious view of the idea of a community  portrait, inviting the whole of the Derby community to step forward and have their picture taken. These portraits have then formed the basis for large scale, high impact paste ups on a number of stacked up shipping containers on the marsh.

Driftwood Portal

Driftwood Portals

Dinner Tree Driftwood Portal

Derby is surrounded by a vast marsh.  Along the rim of the marsh the land  is fringed by a river of scattered drift wood that has been washed up by successive king tides.  Left drying and bleached under the Kimberley sun, the wood forms one of the many layers that make the Derby landscape.

Artist Catia Dolzadelli gathered these elements to create driftwood portals.  Designed as visual gates  inviting the viewer to re-examine and make a new connection with the landscape, the marsh, the town and their surrounds.

sunset and marsh driftwood portal

Driftwood Sculptures

Shelter

Landscapes can be harsh and difficult to survive.  Shelter can be more important than both food and water  if a person is to exist in their environment.  The Derby marsh on first impression appears to be a hostile and barren landscape.  But you don't have to look too far and nature will provide. 

Artist Catia Dolzadelli has gathered materials found on the marsh to create a physical shelter, inviting people to enter, to feel protected, to take some refuge and feel safe in a enclosing driftwood cocoon in an otherwise harsh and assaulting landscape.                  

Bird's Nest

           

     Nesting

Artist Joanne Hayward began by collecting boab nuts from the local area and painted them with soil and acrylic to create egg like forms and shades. Jo approached people on the street and in their day to day activities and asked their place of origin or where they called home, dedicating each person an 'egg' with their place labelled with a map pin.  The eggs are nestled into a nest feathered with driftwood collected from the marsh and wrapped in maps of the various location.  In this way people in the community, having travelled a variety of paths, are drawn together, nestled in the one place.

Installing vessels

Nicky Vervest is a fibre artist who constructed boats woven from natural materials found in the local area are installed them on the marsh via fishing rod like structures which gave the boats a floating on water like motion.



The project started in response to Nicky discovering that her mothers first port stop when immigrating to Australia from Burma called into Derby and was her first sight of Australian soil, Nicky later researched and found her mothers boat, this being one of the six boats she constructed.  Each vessel is modelled on those found in cultures around the world.  Currents of migration wash boats and peoples together onto one shore as represented by these beautiful works that float suspended above the tidal plains of Derby.

Street paste ups

 Street Paste Ups

Part of this years aims for MarshART was to have art on the marsh but also to creep into the town which the marsh surrounds.  This was driven by a want to reach more than an invited audience, or more than an audience that would seek out art, but for there to be art on the street which people can happen upon in their daily travels.

Katie Breckon of Mowanjum Arts & Cultural Centre worked with young people from Derby and Mowanjum to create some large scale portraits and scenes.  Local photographer Dominic Flutter to was also approached and his nature photo's of often small creatures blown up in scale and turned into paste ups inserted into Derby town streets, walls and power boxes.

Working on projects

Derby Star Walk

Derby walk of fame, is based on the Hollywood boulevard stars but is asking members of the community to nominate someone, indeed anyone who they think is worthy of recognition or has contributed to the town or even the individual themselves.  It could be a local celebrity but it could equally be someone’s Mum or friend, there are no rules.

Mini paste ups at the Derby Youth Centre

DADAA joined Kimberley Mental Health & Drug Service and the Derby Youth Centre to be part of the Community Mental Health Fun Day.  Armed with still camera's, a laptop, a colour printer and some paste up glue we devised a mini paste up workshop.  People involved struck a pose, took photo's, uploaded onto the computer, printed out the image and then arranged and pasted their image onto the pathway, paying attention to perspective and devising a visual relationship with other figures already posted.