Driving down the hill into Launceston, strange combination of stunning landscape, fading federation and post industrial bleak hits me intensely for a moment, but passes quickly as the rain closes in around the fluorescence of the park. Its ancient old trees and fanciful iron gates bedecked with a square of fluffy knitting hanging wistfully from the gate - and there on the path a lounge room offers me (a very squelchy) couch of faded velvet on which to sit and contemplate. It seems I’ve arrived. My portal to the world of Junction has opened and I’m off and running.
Down the street dropping into meenah mienne, the tiny gallery space filled with art leads back into a room of friendly children and elders, drawing and playing with clay.
A cup of tea and I’m off across the bridge to Inveresk.
KP11-producting communities at the Academy of Arts
Stories , paintings, videos, sculptures sound bites and objects, from community art projects set across the country– a womens’ prison, an intellectually disabled group, at risk youth, indigenous communities, a neonatal unit…and more.
I could spend hours here, but am immediately grabbed by…Beyond Empathy – postcards from the edge, made with communities from Australia’s most disadvantaged postcodes.
Hand wrought rusted iron post boxes like small cupboards that have just landed, open to reveal drawers, objects and video screens – snippets of projects, of communities, details of lives. A can of spray paint and prints of multi coloured grafittied walls – a video of “The story of how footy started”- a pair of runners sliced in half.
Its endless, it’s beautiful, it’s entrancing. These tiny detailed worlds opening up to me, and just as I feel satiated and about to move on, words of wisdom revolve around, to tumble out to summarize, to root me to the spot. “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home “…
Well that’s got me thinking - Community Art, amazing and yes that’s why we are all here after all.
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