Ephemera brought together five artists in residency on and around Black Gully, Armidale, in weeks leading up to the Black Gully Music Festival on 12 November 2016. The project explores the site and engages the community through extending their experience and understanding of the concept of ephemeral art as a response to the environment.

Artworks were created and placed in the Black Gully site. Over time the works will decompose into the landscape. The project includes artist talks, workshops and community collaborations.

The artists

Andrew Parker is a well-known ceramic artist and local community cultural development practitioner. He will work with clay extracted from the site, then process and refine the clay to allow for greater workability. He plans to build a series of sculptural forms based on the die-back landscape of the region in the 1980 and 90s prior to active revegetation programs. He will work with local ecologists to identify and gather suitable seed varieties to impregnate the clay with seed prior to construction. The finished unfired work will be placed in the landscape of Black Gully where the works will breakdown overtime releasing and germinating the seeds, which will assist the site revegetation process.

Tanja Beer is an ecoscenographer (ecological stage design practice). She will work with emerging artists, community members and theatre practitioners in the months leading up to the festival to design and construct a “living stage” for the Black Gully Festival.

The living stage will combine found and up-cycled household items, recycled timber and orchard fruit bins and other items to create containers for plant life to form an integrated performance space for the Black Gully Festival. Tanja’s residency will be with the Armidale Community Garden from where much of the living materials for the stage will be derived and to where the design framework and plant materials will return.

Gabi Briggs is an Anaiwan woman from Armidale and Amy Hammond is a Gomeroi woman from Tamworth. They are artists and weavers who will work together and with community using traditional techniques to create a large ‘eel’ which will be installed as an ephemeral public art work in Black Gully.

Greer Taylor’s ephemeral sculpture and poetry is deeply inspired by the natural world. Greer will draw her inspiration and derive her materials from the Black Gully site to construct works within the landscape and in works for display in the New England Regional Arts Museum, who will host her residency. Find out more about Greer Taylor.

The process of the project has been video recorded by Social Ventures Media (SVM) producer, Laszlo Szabo. SVM is a community-based arts, media and communications enterprise with a strong foundation in Community Arts and Cultural Development practice.

For more information on this project, please contact us.

Acknowledgements

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Ministry for the Arts’ Festivals Australia program.

Our project partners include:

• Armidale Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping Place (ACCKP)
• Armidale City Bowling Club
• Armidale Community Garden
• Armidale Regional Council
• Armidale Tree Group
• New England Conservatorium of Music (NECOM)
• New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM)
• Social Ventures Media
• Southern New England Landcare (SNELC)
• Sustainable Living Armidale
• University of New England.