Lake Grace - The Reconnaissance

I did a mad day-trip to Lake Grace on Saturday with 4 of the other artists from our East of Us arts project. We're planning to spend a week there in March 2010 as a lead-up to Denmark's annual Brave New Works festival. The idea is that 10 Denmark artists (4 musicians, a sculptor, 2 visual artists, 2 writers and a photographer...me) spend a week collaborating creatively with each other and with the local community, have an exhibition of the results on our last evening and then repeat the exhibition two weeks later in Denmark during Brave New Works.

Saturday's mission was kind of a pre-recce recce (we'll hopefully spend another weekend there over summer to put a few more things in place) to meet some of Lake Grace's artists and to get a feel for the town and its surrounds.

It was a huge day, setting off from Denmark at 6am, returning inspired but weary 16 hours later.

A big, big thank you to the lovely and very talented folk who showed us around - Kerry, Michelle, Tanya, Annie and Phyllis. Lovely to meet you all - see you again next year!

The journey

The largest of the many shallow salt lakes in the area.

We're always strangely drawn to the old rubbish tips in towns - Lake Grace didn't disappoint! An old wicker chair...

Beware...kangaroos crossing :-)

Ravensthorpe

Thought I'd get things moving by including images from a couple of the lovely opportunities, both personally and photographically, I've had this year.

In March I was invited to go and camp in a paddock in Ravensthorpe with 9 other artists for a week. It was for a project called East of Us and was part of Denmark Arts' annual Brave New Works Festival. We spent the week collaborating with each other and with members of the Ravie community, exploring cultural ties and sharing stories. Music, sculpture, painting, printmaking, the written word and photography were all used to explore what makes this area 4 hours to our east unique.

It was a rare chance for each of us to work closely with other creative folk, with ideas coming together around the campfire each evening. And for me it created the time and space to take photos just for me...something I'd been forgetting to do.