Teamwork across the Arts

WEATHERING the Future at the Backspace Gallery is a collaboration of multiple layers of media – artworks, written text, digitally produced posters and music.

Artworks from Soldiers Hill Artist Collective inspired local writers to create prose and poetry which then became the basis for final year students at the Arts Academy of Federation University Australia to digitally produce posters of the text.

It is an ekphrastic project – using visual art to inspire written work curated by Jason Nahrung.

Mr Nahrung said, “My first curatorial effort just became a natural progression using artistic images to inspire written word then allow the students to take the text and see what they could do with it.”

“It was a natural evolution of disciplines that has grew very organically.”

Music was thrown into the mix when Ballarat composer Reuben Morgan learnt of the project and volunteered to supply a bespoke composition.

Morgan said his composition, a six-minute piece titled Mother Earth, is, “A solo work for piano – quite slow, moody and dreamlike.”

Former City of Ballarat Arts and Culture Coordinator Deborah Klein said, “Weathering the Future is an unprecedented collaborative effort across creative Ballarat.”

Art Gallery of Ballarat director Louise Tegart will launch the exhibition on Saturday, 8 December at 2.00pm

Mother Earth will be performed at the opening by Morgan then used as a soundtrack.

The exhibition is at Backspace Gallery, 15 Camp Street Ballarat, on Thursdays to Sundays from 12.00pm to 4.00pm from Thursday, 6 December to Sunday, 23 December.