Into the Light

artistic director & installation artist - exhibition & community event, Cattle Shed, Showgrounds, Whittlesea, Victoria - VBRRA and City of Whittlesea

INTO THE LIGHT exhibition was launched on dusk Saturday September 10th, 2011 in the Cattle Shed - part exhibition, part community gathering...all Spring!

As Artistic Director, I worked collaboratively with Stefanie Robinson Project Co-ordinator and director of the shadow puppets and lantern procession, and with Mahony Kiely as Project Manager from City of Whittlesea.

The exhibition was designed as a walk through three separate but related environments - The Bush As Home (created by Elisabeth Bromley); The Fractured Heart (created by Leanne Mooney) and Pathways (created by Meme McDonald). The journey from one to the other of these installations reflected the journey of change that many within the surrounding communities had experienced over the past 2 and a half years since the bushfires of February 7th 2009 in which 173 people died.

Spring was the unifying theme of INTO THE LIGHT. The final image in the exhibition was a woven willow nest created by Michele Fifer Spooner which held a delicate work by Mahony Kiely - a small gum growing within a bowl made from the topsoil that had washed down off the mountain in the rains following the bushfires. Many people had brought objects from the fires and placed them under the nest - a melted metal motor engine, a gardening fork, a glass flow, spectacle frames, even wire that was all that remained from a drawer of bras.

INTO THE LIGHT was a collaborative effort between many artists and community members. It grew out of small moments, conversations, drawing together many people's thoughts and dreams. It built on the success of a series of community workshops - Express Yourself Workshops - and artmaking in schools, and from the laughter and tears within regular community gatherings like the Conversations Group, the Soup Group and the Memorial Group. Much of the artwork that was displayed in the Pathways section of the exhibition was not intended for public viewing when it was made but stood as testament to people daring to express themselves in new ways.

It seems to me that art has no answers but offers a way of being that is not unlike the seasons, and in this moment, was like the blossoms of spring. The exhibition carried with it traces of all that had gone before. Over 300 people came to the opening as a result of the strength of purpose and spirit within this community.

It was a profoundly moving experience to work alongside all those who gathered in the Cattle Shed for the making of this exhibition and community celebration. To watch the lantern procession coming through the gentle rain of a cold spring evening; to watch the shadow puppets determined to be seen in a downpour; to see an intricately made golden heart with wings emerge from the nest and to listen to the voices of those who carry deep sorrow in their hearts; and to celebrate with those whose lives are growing new shoots; to witness the moving forward, sometimes painful and sometimes precarious, but inevitable; to hear the poetry and see the artworks of those who had never seen their own creative selves take shape...to be there...all this and much more was a great privilege.