Snap, Snap The Poet is Back

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19 March, 2017

            The It’s a Wrap/Slam in Shepp was INSPIRATIONAL!! I did not go in expecting much because I cast aside poetry in high school due to the tedious analyses in English class. The workshop held by Joel McKerrow was amazing. I was hanging on his every word. This was by far the best day of my entire Shepp Fest experience. It made me fall even deeper in love with writing. The first piece that Joel performed for us was so incredibly powerful and emotional. It was about the life of “the artist” and I think everyone in the room could relate. I was engaged in every activity that he set for us. It reminded me of a writing style I used to be very interested in. I used writing as a therapeutic method to think things through and I feel it produced very beautiful prose that was rich with imagery.

            The first poets to perform in the final session were, of course, Joel McKerrow, Rikki Livermore, Abe Nouk and Soreti Kadir. I loved listening to these beautiful pieces. It really managed to wiggle it’s way past my ignorant societal implemented judgment of a slam poetry session and pull forth my creative appreciation and admiration.

            If there is one thing I will take away from everything that day it would be to write daily. It’s not all going to be magnificent, most probably not and will need to be dumped, but at least I will be writing.

(Image 1 - It's a Wrap with Shepparton class and Joel McKerrow)

Merge, Surge and ready to Converge

18 March, 2017

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A very fitting event for the festival was Converge on the Goulburn, appropriately suiting Shepp Fest’s theme of multi-culturalism. This event was like a festival within a festival. First stall I went to was the Henna stand. I got a cute $2 henna, not the best I’ve gotten, but I guess what can you expect for $2. It is still a great way to spread another culture’s artistic practice. Personally, I love getting henna and it usually lasts a little longer than this one has. Not the highest quality, but again great way to spread another culture. On the opposite side of the event were stalls lined up with food from different nations. It smelled good and a lot of it definitely looked homemade. Everything was nice and cheap, which is a bonus for a uni student especially! I got to try Kangaroo for the first time from the Aboriginal stand. It was only a bite of someone else’s kangaroo burger (again, I’m not crazy, I knew the person whose burger it was) but it was fairly interesting. Maybe I should have got a whole one, but apparently they were overpowered by the taste of grilled onions. Honestly, I probably would not have minded that, onions are amazing!

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            There were a lot of performers on this very, very hot day. Good on them for staying in the blazing sun while everyone scampered to find shade. Around 5pm the performers became more engaging and lured the audience out of their shady oasis to surround the stage. They had music from different cultures like Aboriginal, African, and Brazilian just to name a few. Performances ranged from clowning with music, Asian fighting form, to a diverse clash of bands and instruments. As the music played on, kids began to dance and soon the adults too. I wish I danced with them, but I was not feeling too well. This was an adorable way to spread culture in this little town.


(Image 1 - Converge on the Goulburn)
(Image 2 - Henna from Converge Fest)

I’m Not Having a Good Day

18 March, 2017

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I was not in the mood for Shepp today. In the weeks previous to this weekend it sounded like some very interesting events were on. Unfortunately, living down in Melbourne, it is difficult to just jump up to Shepparton for these events I imagine they would have been fun and interesting. Today’s events started with heading over to Kaiela Arts for Dunatpan. Just to clarify, I visited here on a Saturday. To my surprise Kaiela Arts is closed on Saturdays, something I wish I would have known. From the window it looked like there were some nice artworks, but I guess I won’t be able to see the collection.

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Time to move forward and not dwell on what I cannot see. Next we drove up to find Soul Deep in Nature, and then drove back down the street, and then back up again. Don’t fret, I’m not crazy, the back and forth was because we could not find it right away. Not being local to Shepp, I used the Shepp Fest website to find the Billabong Garden Complex. The Google maps link provided lead me to a church down the road, but I found it when I put the venue directly into my maps app.

            There were a lot of interesting artworks that did not contribute to the Festival piece at all. I was interested to walk around looking at all the weird and cool artistic knickknacks and decorative pieces. I think that may have overwhelmed the actual instalment. However, I do like that the pieces for the instalment were surrounding the little in house café seating area. Given that there were only limited pieces in the instalment, placing them in a place where people frequent anyway is a good way to share the artwork with the community. The artist, Sally Clark, really has eyes for the little things in our world, which showed any passersby the beauty that we may miss from day-to-day.

(Image 1 - Kaiella Arts Studio)
(Image 2 - Kaiella Arts Studio)

Please Have a Face

5 March, 2017

Before making my way up to the Tracey Moffat Exhibition, I walked through the Shepp Art Museum (SAM). It definitely knocked into some childhood fears of mine right when I walked in. The oversized doll heads for their bodies were mounted on horses, lined up in a row. The spikes, screws and strange pieces added on to these dolls created a creepy killer doll vibe. I don’t know a child who hasn’t heard at least a version of a killer doll story. Next, I decided to turn right beyond the corner, only to jump back in shock. I peeked around again and saw what appeared to be an elderly woman turned away from me. It looked so real and life-like! (Don’t worry it wasn’t). My fears did not end there, as I tried to make my way to the front of the sculpture, all I could think was “please don’t be faceless, please, oh please”. This is possibly just me, but again bored into one of my childhood nightmares, I think from a movie I once watched. Instead it was the fully sculpted face of an elderly woman, holding a newborn in its arms. The rest of the pieces spoke to me a lot, leaving me to wonder what they meant. I felt the reuse of images and items we see daily was very thought provoking and would elicit different responses depending on an individual’s association with that item.

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Next I traipsed upstairs to the Tracy Moffat created montages. My favorite film sequence was the one labeled as for an adult audience. It is played on a loop, so it is possible you may walk in at anytime. However, we are first introduced to the caption “Art” followed by very extreme techniques people used to create their art. Despite the naked aspects, it is not sexualized at all. It is an unexpected and wild way to let out one’s creativity. Next the caption “Fame” came on the screen. The clips presented a more socially appealing aspect of art. This type of art Moffat seems to be describing as fame as opposed to art. Lastly it says, “Heat”, which reveals how art can evoke emotions that we personally conceive from a piece. The art can either create a feeling of pain or pleasure within us. In the end, it is not the art that is communicating to us but a meaning that we want it to desperately have.

(Video 1. Woman and Child 2010, by Sam Jinks located in SAM)

(Image 1. Tracy Moffat Exhibition viewing area, equipped with beanbag chairs)

Holy Cow!

5 March, 2017

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One thing you cannot miss when you come to Shepparton, is the vast amount of decorative cows filling the city. It left me wondering, what is this place’s obsession with cow’s? When I entered the Contemporary Textile Art Exhibition the overwhelming use of cows in art finally provoked me to ask, what is with the cows? What I found is that the statuesque ones around Shepparton are from an artist involved in Moovin Art. It is an art form that is apparently done internationally. I guess the city of Shepparton just ran with it and now it is a sort of mascot for them.

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The cows were even in the festival's artwork! The textile art pieces had images of cows or a dress that seemed to be made of cow skin. One of the art pieces in this exhibition was a wool 3D model of buildings, trucks and farm area, created by Jean Miles. This piece is meant to be interactive and visitors are allowed to play and move around the pieces as they would like. The artist would later come back to see how things had been moved. Obviously, I had to take the opportunity to reorder things around. I decided to surround the cows around the knocked over milk truck, I guess you could call it a mootiny. The rest of the artwork was very interesting, incorporating a lot of pieces literally popping out of the art. The craftwork that went into these pieces are visually engaging and allows us to appreciate multiple mediums, both in 2D to 3D.

(Image 1. Jean Miles O.A.M., Shepparton 2017)

(Image 2. just me posing with one of the many cows in Shepparton)