about 300 Dollar Day
23 MAY 2012 BY LAUREN MURADA
DURING tough financial times the art world is often the first to suffer, and Leichhardt Aboriginal art institution Boomalli is holding a $300 day to support of the ongoing programs at the gallery.
They’re asking for donations from artists, both indigenous and non-indigenous, worth $300 to sell at the event.
Boomalli board member and artist Graham Toomey said the gallery was struggling.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for people not only to pick up a piece worth a lot more than $300 but also that feeling of helping out and walk away knowing that even a donation of a few dollars is going to a good cause and keeping the doors open,” he said.
SUPPORT
■ Where: Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, 55 Flood St, Leichhardt
■ When: 11am - 4pm, May 26
http://www.boomalli.com.au/in-the-news.html
DURING tough financial times the art world is often the first to suffer, and Leichhardt Aboriginal art institution Boomalli is holding a $300 day to support of the ongoing programs at the gallery.
They’re asking for donations from artists, both indigenous and non-indigenous, worth $300 to sell at the event.
Boomalli board member and artist Graham Toomey said the gallery was struggling.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for people not only to pick up a piece worth a lot more than $300 but also that feeling of helping out and walk away knowing that even a donation of a few dollars is going to a good cause and keeping the doors open,” he said.
SUPPORT
■ Where: Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, 55 Flood St, Leichhardt
■ When: 11am - 4pm, May 26
http://www.boomalli.com.au/in-the-news.html
about RITES HERE, RITES NOW
Activism and art from behind the lens
Author:Kristie Beattie
Posted:Wednesday, 1 February 2012
A photographic exhibition depicting the extremes of human emotion will take centre stage at a Leichhardt gallery this month.
Photographer and activist documenter, Barbara McGrady, will fill the rooms of the Boomali Aboriginal Arts Cooperative at Leichhardt with her Protest and Performance exhibition until February 22.
The exhibition curator and fellow photographer Teena McCarthy said the collection’s two themes are fuelled by human emotion. Ms McGrady’s Protestphotos witness activists at rallies.
“In Protest where she is covering so many rallies, it’s all about the emotion of the people in the shot who are trying to say something. And in the Performance, she captures the emotion of the artists in the moment.”
As activists themselves, Ms McGrady and Ms McCarthy met at an anti-intervention rally three years ago. Ms McGrady said that while she stands back to capture protests like Occupy Sydney, she cannot help but get involved.
“I look at things sociologically for that’s how I see my world,” she said. “I was [at Occupy Sydney] to document it with my photographs.
“Of course I was all for the 99 per cent and of course that’s how I saw it, and I think my photographs reflect that.”
As a sociology student at Sydney University, Ms McGrady said she studies people and has always been involved in activist movements, making her mark in Aboriginal land rights movements from the “early years”.
Yet when asked about her upbringing, Ms McGrady sees her identity as multilayered as her photographs.
“I call myself Kamilaroi and Murri is the area and I am a Yina,which in my language means woman.
“I say that I come from three places. As a child I spent alot of time in my father’s country, Toomelah, and I went to school at Mungindion, the Queensland border.
[Toomelah] is an unusual town made up of three quarters NSW and one quarter QLD. The hospital where I was born is on the Queensland side, so technically I was born in Queensland.”
After school, Ms McGrady went on to study nursing. However, she said she had always been passionate about photography.
“I just always loved images. I was the official photographer in my family and at about 14 or 15 I would take family portraits.”
From family portraits in the sixties, Ms McGrady went on to capture intense moments of competitive sports such as Indigenous Rugby League.
“I realised the power in images a long time ago and I am absolutely trying to achieve the storytelling and the communication of those intense moments I capture.”
Ms McCarthy said Barbara McGrady has an unending source of energy and her photographs are a medium through which she communicates her study of people.
“Let’s show the world the world as her study about people has now come through the lens.”
By Kristie Beattie
http://www.altmedia.net.au/activism-and-art-from-behind-the-lens
Author:Kristie Beattie
Posted:Wednesday, 1 February 2012
A photographic exhibition depicting the extremes of human emotion will take centre stage at a Leichhardt gallery this month.
Photographer and activist documenter, Barbara McGrady, will fill the rooms of the Boomali Aboriginal Arts Cooperative at Leichhardt with her Protest and Performance exhibition until February 22.
The exhibition curator and fellow photographer Teena McCarthy said the collection’s two themes are fuelled by human emotion. Ms McGrady’s Protestphotos witness activists at rallies.
“In Protest where she is covering so many rallies, it’s all about the emotion of the people in the shot who are trying to say something. And in the Performance, she captures the emotion of the artists in the moment.”
As activists themselves, Ms McGrady and Ms McCarthy met at an anti-intervention rally three years ago. Ms McGrady said that while she stands back to capture protests like Occupy Sydney, she cannot help but get involved.
“I look at things sociologically for that’s how I see my world,” she said. “I was [at Occupy Sydney] to document it with my photographs.
“Of course I was all for the 99 per cent and of course that’s how I saw it, and I think my photographs reflect that.”
As a sociology student at Sydney University, Ms McGrady said she studies people and has always been involved in activist movements, making her mark in Aboriginal land rights movements from the “early years”.
Yet when asked about her upbringing, Ms McGrady sees her identity as multilayered as her photographs.
“I call myself Kamilaroi and Murri is the area and I am a Yina,which in my language means woman.
“I say that I come from three places. As a child I spent alot of time in my father’s country, Toomelah, and I went to school at Mungindion, the Queensland border.
[Toomelah] is an unusual town made up of three quarters NSW and one quarter QLD. The hospital where I was born is on the Queensland side, so technically I was born in Queensland.”
After school, Ms McGrady went on to study nursing. However, she said she had always been passionate about photography.
“I just always loved images. I was the official photographer in my family and at about 14 or 15 I would take family portraits.”
From family portraits in the sixties, Ms McGrady went on to capture intense moments of competitive sports such as Indigenous Rugby League.
“I realised the power in images a long time ago and I am absolutely trying to achieve the storytelling and the communication of those intense moments I capture.”
Ms McCarthy said Barbara McGrady has an unending source of energy and her photographs are a medium through which she communicates her study of people.
“Let’s show the world the world as her study about people has now come through the lens.”
By Kristie Beattie
http://www.altmedia.net.au/activism-and-art-from-behind-the-lens
in the Sydney Morning Herald February 2012
Art imitates strife as designer documents indigenous struggle
Wendy Frew February 1, 2012
IT SHOULD come as no surprise that a new exhibition of Bronwyn Bancroft's work is titled Passion, Power, Politics. The NSW artist's passion for life and art - whether it be her vibrant textile designs, colourful paintings or highly praised children's books - is evident from the moment she starts talking about the exhibition. The power and politics of indigenous Australian art, and in particular how indigenous artists are represented, also permeate Bancroft's career.
All those issues came together for Bancroft in a PhD she is undertaking at the University of Western Sydney, from which the Carriageworks exhibition takes its name. Her research examines the inadequacy in the representation of Aboriginal women artists in Australian galleries, especially in NSW.
Do these issues drive her art, affect her style or the mediums she uses? ''Sometimes you do get frustrated, so you have a sense of urgency to create … that is a driver,'' Bancroft says.
In 1987, when traditional bark paintings from Arnhem Land and new styles of indigenous art such as the Papunya dot paintings were attracting attention here and overseas, a lack of recognition for NSW indigenous artists, especially urban artists, prompted a group of indigenous artists including Bancroft to form the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative.
They wanted to challenge the mainstream view of Aboriginal art, Bancroft says, and Boomalli was pivotal in shifting that view and raising the profiles of NSW indigenous artists. Yet not a lot has changed, she says.
''I think people just don't know what is out there, which is why Boomalli is important … there are unsung heroes in NSW Aboriginal art circles, people working against the odds.''
The Carriageworks exhibition is a comprehensive survey of Bancroft's career, with the exception of her children's books. It covers her fashion and textile design for her company, Designer Aboriginals, and her painting and photography. Examples of textile work include an opera cape, ''Cycle of Life'', on loan from the Powerhouse Museum, which was showcased alongside designs by Euphemia Bostock and Mini Heath in a fashion parade at the Au Printemps department store in Paris in 1987. The Australian Museum has lent a pair of hand-painted shoes and earrings from Bancroft's Designer Aboriginal days.
It also includes new work, in which Bancroft draws on photographs of family and her country in Lionsville, northern NSW. Bancroft repositions the photographs on canvas to ''reinvigorate them''.
At 54, having worked across many media and spent much energy promoting the cause of Aboriginal art, not to mention taking on a PhD (''I will never study again!''), Bancroft says she is still having ''a lot of fun''.
''The older I get, the younger I act,'' she says.
Passion, Power, Politics is at Carriageworks from tomorrow until March 7.
Read: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/art-imitates-strife-as-designer-documents-indigenous-struggle-20120131-1qr8b.html#ixzz1nBS2lVcf
Wendy Frew February 1, 2012
IT SHOULD come as no surprise that a new exhibition of Bronwyn Bancroft's work is titled Passion, Power, Politics. The NSW artist's passion for life and art - whether it be her vibrant textile designs, colourful paintings or highly praised children's books - is evident from the moment she starts talking about the exhibition. The power and politics of indigenous Australian art, and in particular how indigenous artists are represented, also permeate Bancroft's career.
All those issues came together for Bancroft in a PhD she is undertaking at the University of Western Sydney, from which the Carriageworks exhibition takes its name. Her research examines the inadequacy in the representation of Aboriginal women artists in Australian galleries, especially in NSW.
Do these issues drive her art, affect her style or the mediums she uses? ''Sometimes you do get frustrated, so you have a sense of urgency to create … that is a driver,'' Bancroft says.
In 1987, when traditional bark paintings from Arnhem Land and new styles of indigenous art such as the Papunya dot paintings were attracting attention here and overseas, a lack of recognition for NSW indigenous artists, especially urban artists, prompted a group of indigenous artists including Bancroft to form the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative.
They wanted to challenge the mainstream view of Aboriginal art, Bancroft says, and Boomalli was pivotal in shifting that view and raising the profiles of NSW indigenous artists. Yet not a lot has changed, she says.
''I think people just don't know what is out there, which is why Boomalli is important … there are unsung heroes in NSW Aboriginal art circles, people working against the odds.''
The Carriageworks exhibition is a comprehensive survey of Bancroft's career, with the exception of her children's books. It covers her fashion and textile design for her company, Designer Aboriginals, and her painting and photography. Examples of textile work include an opera cape, ''Cycle of Life'', on loan from the Powerhouse Museum, which was showcased alongside designs by Euphemia Bostock and Mini Heath in a fashion parade at the Au Printemps department store in Paris in 1987. The Australian Museum has lent a pair of hand-painted shoes and earrings from Bancroft's Designer Aboriginal days.
It also includes new work, in which Bancroft draws on photographs of family and her country in Lionsville, northern NSW. Bancroft repositions the photographs on canvas to ''reinvigorate them''.
At 54, having worked across many media and spent much energy promoting the cause of Aboriginal art, not to mention taking on a PhD (''I will never study again!''), Bancroft says she is still having ''a lot of fun''.
''The older I get, the younger I act,'' she says.
Passion, Power, Politics is at Carriageworks from tomorrow until March 7.
Read: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/art-imitates-strife-as-designer-documents-indigenous-struggle-20120131-1qr8b.html#ixzz1nBS2lVcf
about 'Strength to Strength'
Strength in versatility of aboriginal art
Blue rib cages form a circle on an orange-brown backdrop. The artwork, entitled Bones of My People, is one of several striking pieces in From Strength to Strength, held from November 26 to January 22 at Leichhardt’s Boomalli gallery.
The showcase is a celebration of Aboriginal unity, urban expression and triumph over adversity.
One of Boomalli’s directors, Bronwyn Bancroft said: “It’s about us all coming together to celebrate our achievements for the year and enjoying each other’s work.” This includes celebrating recovery from financial difficulties.
“Last year, because we didn’t have any government funding, we did an exhibition called A Show of Strength. This year we’re doing From Strength to Strength, because we’re going pretty well so we’re just trying to indicate to the general public that we are going from strength to strength.”
The exhibition is an extension of Boomalli’s philosophy towards Indigenous Australian art. First set up in 1987, Boomalli has sought to focus on Indigenous Australian urban art. It is part of expressing, as Bronwyn said, “the fact that Aboriginal people live in cities”.
Boomalli’s chairperson Euphemia Bostock said the exhibition is about showing “the versatility of the work. It’s not one particular style. It’s not dot paintings. You can see dot paintings, but you can see other things too.”
Ms Bancroft reckons people gain greater insight into Indigenous Australian art if they realise it is not simply Papanya Tula or Utopia art (a style commonly understood as dot paintings). “They’re all very different”, she said. “We applaud all of those artists in what they do. We’re not here to take away from Aboriginal artists, but we would like people to accept the fact that anything done by an Aboriginal artist is Aboriginal art.”
Nicole Renee Phillips, who produced Bones of my People, is onesuch urban Aboriginal artist. Her art revolves around the human anatomy. “I do a lot of landscapes in human anatomy. Mainly the ribcages, backbones”, she said. She said Bones of my People is “a meeting place that my mother had taught me. I reproduced the meeting place in bones to symbolise unity of Aboriginal people. It symbolises us getting together as a race.”
By Dominic Dietrich
http://www.altmedia.net.au/strength-in-versatility/45123
Boomalli at Art Atrium
by ArtAtrium
18/10/2011
Sydney gallery Art Atrium today announced the launch of Boomalli at Art Atrium, a group exhibition of artists from Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative featuring Bronwyn Bancroft, Euphemia Bostock, Milton Budge, Adam Hill, Burri Jerome, Arone Meeks, Carmel Richardson, Jeffrey Samuels, Graham Toomey and Jason Wing.Bronwyn Bancroft of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative said: “Boomalli is about engaging with NSW Aboriginal Artists, promoting their work, nurturing their professionalism and providing a cultural connect to our communities through art.”
Art Atrium director Simon Chan said: “It is a great opportunity for Art Atrium to cooperate with Boomalli and to hold an exhibition showcasing the diverse and interesting work of some of the top NSW Aboriginal artists who are represented in various major public galleries and institutions.
The Board members and all the volunteers of Boomali Aboriginal Artists Co-operative should be congratulated on the wonderful job they have done over the last few years in supporting Boomalli. Art Atrium is also proud to play our part in promoting Boomalli’s artists by holding this exhibition of their work for the audience and collectors in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.”
Details for the exhibition opening are: Date: Saturday, 22 September 2011 Time: 2.30-pm – 4.30pm Venue: Art Atrium, 181 Old South Head Road, Bondi Junction NSW 2022.
The exhibition is open from 18 October – 5 November 2011. The gallery is open Monday – Saturday, 11-4pm and by appointment. Full catalogue for Boomali at Art Atrium will be available at www.artatrium.com.auhttp://www.streetcorner.com.au/news/showPost.cfm?bid=22496&mycomm=ES
18/10/2011
Sydney gallery Art Atrium today announced the launch of Boomalli at Art Atrium, a group exhibition of artists from Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative featuring Bronwyn Bancroft, Euphemia Bostock, Milton Budge, Adam Hill, Burri Jerome, Arone Meeks, Carmel Richardson, Jeffrey Samuels, Graham Toomey and Jason Wing.Bronwyn Bancroft of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative said: “Boomalli is about engaging with NSW Aboriginal Artists, promoting their work, nurturing their professionalism and providing a cultural connect to our communities through art.”
Art Atrium director Simon Chan said: “It is a great opportunity for Art Atrium to cooperate with Boomalli and to hold an exhibition showcasing the diverse and interesting work of some of the top NSW Aboriginal artists who are represented in various major public galleries and institutions.
The Board members and all the volunteers of Boomali Aboriginal Artists Co-operative should be congratulated on the wonderful job they have done over the last few years in supporting Boomalli. Art Atrium is also proud to play our part in promoting Boomalli’s artists by holding this exhibition of their work for the audience and collectors in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.”
Details for the exhibition opening are: Date: Saturday, 22 September 2011 Time: 2.30-pm – 4.30pm Venue: Art Atrium, 181 Old South Head Road, Bondi Junction NSW 2022.
The exhibition is open from 18 October – 5 November 2011. The gallery is open Monday – Saturday, 11-4pm and by appointment. Full catalogue for Boomali at Art Atrium will be available at www.artatrium.com.auhttp://www.streetcorner.com.au/news/showPost.cfm?bid=22496&mycomm=ES
Gumbayngirr Artists and the Boomalli volunteers party
Koori Mail, August 2011
Boomalli facebook presence
by Sandra Phillips
NIT, August 2011
SMH article: Indigenous gallery can afford to look ahead
from: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/indigenous-gallery-can-afford-to-look-ahead-20110814-1isut.html
by Catherine Keenan; August 15, 2011
After years of uncertainty, the Boomalli co-operative is celebrating a new vitality and a permanent home, writes Catherine Keenan.
When the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative opened its doors nearly 25 years ago, people had narrow views about what constituted indigenous art. It was mostly bark paintings or dot paintings. And it was assumed the best work came from the Northern Territory or the Kimberley. ''We got a bit angry about that,'' an artist, Jeffrey Samuels, says mildly.
Samuels was one of 10 indigenous artists, including Michael Riley, Bronwyn Bancroft, Euphemia Bostock, Fiona Foley and Tracey Moffatt, who wanted to prove there was great art in NSW, much of it urban, exciting and urgent.
The commercial galleries wouldn't touch them, so they established Boomalli in 1987 at a gallery space in Chippendale. It was started with a grant of $2000 from the Aboriginal Arts Board, a branch of the Australia Council, and throughout its sometimes chequered history has been run entirely by volunteers.Boomalli has been integral in bringing urban Aboriginal art to public prominence. ''Prior to 1971, I never saw Aboriginal art in NSW,'' says James Wilson-Miller, a member of the Boomalli board and a curator at the Powerhouse Museum. ''The only place that you would see Aboriginal art in NSW was going up to La Perouse and watching them throw boomerangs and make spears.''
Boomalli receives no government funding, and one of its strengths is that it started as a grassroots gallery, run by artists, for artists. It has always been strong artistically, with Brenda Croft and Tracey Moffatt among those having their early shows there. Work such as Fiona Foley's hooded heads have become accepted as important contributions to Australia's indigenous art scene but it was not always so.
Yet having volunteers and artists in charge also proved a weakness. In early 2009, the gallery faced tax and other debts of $200,000. Wilson-Miller says this was the result of having volunteers with no experience of money in charge of the finances. ''With all good intentions, they tried as much as they could, but because they did not have those economic experiences, it just naturally went down the tubes,'' he says.
Around the time the debt became apparent, the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts threatened to evict the gallery from its space in Flood Street, Leichhardt. Members feared this was the end of Boomalli. The department of Fair Trading indicated it should stop trading because of insolvency. But pro-bono lawyers found, to everyone's surprise, that the Indigenous Land Council had a caveat on the property it had inherited from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The department couldn't evict Boomalli, and it was allowed to trade its way out of debt.
The land council has since transferred the building to Boomalli, giving it a permanent home. The near-bankruptcy also led to a reorganisation of the gallery, with a focus on good governance and the professionalisation of the board. Di Yerbury, the former head of the Australia Council and owner of one of the country's best collections of urban indigenous art, joined the board. An author, producer and director, Craig Collie, is the second non-indigenous member, overseeing the finances with a more trained eye. ''We were good artists,'' says Wilson-Miller, ''but we had to have good administrators too.''
Nearly all the $200,000 debt has been paid off, and the gallery is stronger than ever. Its most recent exhibition, Fabric of Our Culture, featured textiles from the Northern Rivers, and it was opened by the NSW Governor, Professor Marie Bashir. It sold so well it was extended.
Still, it's a slog. The gallery will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year, and is still run on the same shoe-string model. ''It's really only hard work and a lot of commitment from all our volunteers that keeps it open,'' Bancroft says.
Boomalli has often applied for grants. ''We've repeatedly put in grant applications at a very high standard and we still miss out because we're not classified as an art centre,'' Bancroft said.
''Ultimately I don't think a lot's changed.''
Besides the board, Bancroft estimates a couple of hundred volunteers have helped out over the past couple of years, doing everything from clearing out rubbish to making cakes. There is a roster of nine regular volunteers, including interns from art school, who keep the gallery open to the public six days a week. Attendance rates are up.
This week the gallery will celebrate the fact that it owns the building in which it is housed and that it is here to stay. ''Just keeping the doors open is, to me, the most significant achievement,'' Bancroft says.
Boomalli's celebratory gathering is on Saturday at 2pm, at Boomalli Gallery, 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt. All welcome.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/indigenous-gallery-can-afford-to-look-ahead-20110814-1isut.html#ixzz1VAskI7Ej
by Catherine Keenan; August 15, 2011
After years of uncertainty, the Boomalli co-operative is celebrating a new vitality and a permanent home, writes Catherine Keenan.
When the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative opened its doors nearly 25 years ago, people had narrow views about what constituted indigenous art. It was mostly bark paintings or dot paintings. And it was assumed the best work came from the Northern Territory or the Kimberley. ''We got a bit angry about that,'' an artist, Jeffrey Samuels, says mildly.
Samuels was one of 10 indigenous artists, including Michael Riley, Bronwyn Bancroft, Euphemia Bostock, Fiona Foley and Tracey Moffatt, who wanted to prove there was great art in NSW, much of it urban, exciting and urgent.
The commercial galleries wouldn't touch them, so they established Boomalli in 1987 at a gallery space in Chippendale. It was started with a grant of $2000 from the Aboriginal Arts Board, a branch of the Australia Council, and throughout its sometimes chequered history has been run entirely by volunteers.Boomalli has been integral in bringing urban Aboriginal art to public prominence. ''Prior to 1971, I never saw Aboriginal art in NSW,'' says James Wilson-Miller, a member of the Boomalli board and a curator at the Powerhouse Museum. ''The only place that you would see Aboriginal art in NSW was going up to La Perouse and watching them throw boomerangs and make spears.''
Boomalli receives no government funding, and one of its strengths is that it started as a grassroots gallery, run by artists, for artists. It has always been strong artistically, with Brenda Croft and Tracey Moffatt among those having their early shows there. Work such as Fiona Foley's hooded heads have become accepted as important contributions to Australia's indigenous art scene but it was not always so.
Yet having volunteers and artists in charge also proved a weakness. In early 2009, the gallery faced tax and other debts of $200,000. Wilson-Miller says this was the result of having volunteers with no experience of money in charge of the finances. ''With all good intentions, they tried as much as they could, but because they did not have those economic experiences, it just naturally went down the tubes,'' he says.
Around the time the debt became apparent, the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts threatened to evict the gallery from its space in Flood Street, Leichhardt. Members feared this was the end of Boomalli. The department of Fair Trading indicated it should stop trading because of insolvency. But pro-bono lawyers found, to everyone's surprise, that the Indigenous Land Council had a caveat on the property it had inherited from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The department couldn't evict Boomalli, and it was allowed to trade its way out of debt.
The land council has since transferred the building to Boomalli, giving it a permanent home. The near-bankruptcy also led to a reorganisation of the gallery, with a focus on good governance and the professionalisation of the board. Di Yerbury, the former head of the Australia Council and owner of one of the country's best collections of urban indigenous art, joined the board. An author, producer and director, Craig Collie, is the second non-indigenous member, overseeing the finances with a more trained eye. ''We were good artists,'' says Wilson-Miller, ''but we had to have good administrators too.''
Nearly all the $200,000 debt has been paid off, and the gallery is stronger than ever. Its most recent exhibition, Fabric of Our Culture, featured textiles from the Northern Rivers, and it was opened by the NSW Governor, Professor Marie Bashir. It sold so well it was extended.
Still, it's a slog. The gallery will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year, and is still run on the same shoe-string model. ''It's really only hard work and a lot of commitment from all our volunteers that keeps it open,'' Bancroft says.
Boomalli has often applied for grants. ''We've repeatedly put in grant applications at a very high standard and we still miss out because we're not classified as an art centre,'' Bancroft said.
''Ultimately I don't think a lot's changed.''
Besides the board, Bancroft estimates a couple of hundred volunteers have helped out over the past couple of years, doing everything from clearing out rubbish to making cakes. There is a roster of nine regular volunteers, including interns from art school, who keep the gallery open to the public six days a week. Attendance rates are up.
This week the gallery will celebrate the fact that it owns the building in which it is housed and that it is here to stay. ''Just keeping the doors open is, to me, the most significant achievement,'' Bancroft says.
Boomalli's celebratory gathering is on Saturday at 2pm, at Boomalli Gallery, 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt. All welcome.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/indigenous-gallery-can-afford-to-look-ahead-20110814-1isut.html#ixzz1VAskI7Ej
re: Fabric of Our Culture exhibition
Women Show what they know, Koori Mail, July 29, 2011
Aboriginal women weave “Fabric of Our Culture”
The featured artists and the show's curator, Robert Appo, with the NSW Governor. Mural is in background. Photo: Sharon Hickey
Aboriginal women weave “Fabric of Our Culture”Author: Annette MaguirePosted:Thursday, 21 July 2011
A striking array of textile art produced collaboratively by Indigenous women from the Northern Rivers region of NSW is currently gracing the halls of Boomalli Aboriginal Art Gallery in Leichhardt.
Titled “Fabric of Our Culture”, the show presents the work of three groups of women artists: the Wake Up Time Group from Casino, the Saltwater Women of Ballina, and the People of the Reed from Cabbage Tree Island.
Robert Appo, Indigenous Arts Development Officer for Arts Northern Rivers, who curated the exhibition, explains that each of the three groups included in the show also work independently in their communities. Their artworks combine traditional Aboriginal textile craft practices, such as plant dying, with contemporary techniques such as resist dying methods, hand-painting fabrics, screen-printing, and batik.
“The women have woven their stories, both traditional and contemporary into the textile pieces and are excited to have the opportunity to share their unique experiences of Aboriginal life in Northern NSW with the broader community,” Appo says.
The works on show include hand-dyed, overprinted, painted and stitched art quilts; a collection of lamps constructed from natural plant fibres interwoven with silk dyed with Indigenous plant dyes; and a mural mapping the traditional movement of people between the recognised Indigenous sites of Cabbage Tree island, Evans Head and Ballina, made from hand dyed and printed textiles and stretching to five metres in length.
According to Appo, the exhibition reflects the continuation of Bundjalung culture throughout what has been, in part, a painful past. “Alongside recognition of ancestral paths, traditional ceremonies and food gathering are stories of massacres and Aboriginal station life. All of these things happened at one time or another in Bundjalung Country.”
The exhibition continues until August 6. Boomalli Gallery is at 55 Flood St, Leichhardt. www.boomalli.com.au
By Annette Maguire
http://www.altmedia.net.au/aboriginal-women-weave-%E2%80%9Cfabric-of-our-culture%E2%80%9D/38985
Aboriginal women weave “Fabric of Our Culture”Author: Annette MaguirePosted:Thursday, 21 July 2011
A striking array of textile art produced collaboratively by Indigenous women from the Northern Rivers region of NSW is currently gracing the halls of Boomalli Aboriginal Art Gallery in Leichhardt.
Titled “Fabric of Our Culture”, the show presents the work of three groups of women artists: the Wake Up Time Group from Casino, the Saltwater Women of Ballina, and the People of the Reed from Cabbage Tree Island.
Robert Appo, Indigenous Arts Development Officer for Arts Northern Rivers, who curated the exhibition, explains that each of the three groups included in the show also work independently in their communities. Their artworks combine traditional Aboriginal textile craft practices, such as plant dying, with contemporary techniques such as resist dying methods, hand-painting fabrics, screen-printing, and batik.
“The women have woven their stories, both traditional and contemporary into the textile pieces and are excited to have the opportunity to share their unique experiences of Aboriginal life in Northern NSW with the broader community,” Appo says.
The works on show include hand-dyed, overprinted, painted and stitched art quilts; a collection of lamps constructed from natural plant fibres interwoven with silk dyed with Indigenous plant dyes; and a mural mapping the traditional movement of people between the recognised Indigenous sites of Cabbage Tree island, Evans Head and Ballina, made from hand dyed and printed textiles and stretching to five metres in length.
According to Appo, the exhibition reflects the continuation of Bundjalung culture throughout what has been, in part, a painful past. “Alongside recognition of ancestral paths, traditional ceremonies and food gathering are stories of massacres and Aboriginal station life. All of these things happened at one time or another in Bundjalung Country.”
The exhibition continues until August 6. Boomalli Gallery is at 55 Flood St, Leichhardt. www.boomalli.com.au
By Annette Maguire
http://www.altmedia.net.au/aboriginal-women-weave-%E2%80%9Cfabric-of-our-culture%E2%80%9D/38985
Fabric of Our Culture opens in Sydney
Fabric of our Culture is an exhibition of new works from Casino's Wake up Time Women, the Saltwater Women of Ballina, and the People of the Reeds from Cabbage Tree Island. The show opens July 2 at Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery in Sydney and runs until July 29.
Fabric of our Culture is a collaborative showcase of works by Bundjalung women textile artists from the Northern Rivers region of NSW.
Individual pieces for the show have been in development since January, as part of an artisan initiative managed by Arts Northern Rivers' Indigenous Arts Development Officer Robert Appo, with expert input from local fashion and textile consultant, Wendy Powitt.
Each of the three groups of artists work independently in their communities producing traditional weaving, fibre art, silk dying and textile design.
In the lead up to this show they have been encouraged to experiment with new applications of their work, including the development of a range of artisan homeware products incorporating their unique weaving and textile designs.
Fabric of our Culture will be opened at 2.30pm on Saturday July 2 by the Governor of the State of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir, AC, CVO, at Boomalli Aboriginal Art Gallery in Leichardt Sydney.
The show will run for four weeks until July 29.
Fabric of our Culture is an Arts Northern Rivers initiative, supported by Arts NSW and the NSW Department of Trade and Investment.
from: http://artsnorthernrivers.com.au/pages/news-features-news-fabric-of-our-culture-opens-in-sydney
see also, this ABC Open story: http://open.abc.net.au/projects/whadyaknow-73lr8in/posts/whadyaknow-about-the-fabric-of-our-culture-46ky2HC
Fabric of our Culture is a collaborative showcase of works by Bundjalung women textile artists from the Northern Rivers region of NSW.
Individual pieces for the show have been in development since January, as part of an artisan initiative managed by Arts Northern Rivers' Indigenous Arts Development Officer Robert Appo, with expert input from local fashion and textile consultant, Wendy Powitt.
Each of the three groups of artists work independently in their communities producing traditional weaving, fibre art, silk dying and textile design.
In the lead up to this show they have been encouraged to experiment with new applications of their work, including the development of a range of artisan homeware products incorporating their unique weaving and textile designs.
Fabric of our Culture will be opened at 2.30pm on Saturday July 2 by the Governor of the State of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir, AC, CVO, at Boomalli Aboriginal Art Gallery in Leichardt Sydney.
The show will run for four weeks until July 29.
Fabric of our Culture is an Arts Northern Rivers initiative, supported by Arts NSW and the NSW Department of Trade and Investment.
from: http://artsnorthernrivers.com.au/pages/news-features-news-fabric-of-our-culture-opens-in-sydney
see also, this ABC Open story: http://open.abc.net.au/projects/whadyaknow-73lr8in/posts/whadyaknow-about-the-fabric-of-our-culture-46ky2HC
Governor of NSW to open 'Fabric of our Culture' exhibition
A report on the Eora students exhibition
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20110623062
Speakers - Parker Mr Jamie
Business - Private Members Statements, PRIV
BOOMALLI ABORIGINAL ART EXHIBITIONPage: 59
Mr JAMIE PARKER (Balmain) [4.07 p.m.]: On Tuesday evening I attended the opening of a new art exhibition at the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in Leichhardt in my electorate of Balmain. The theme of the exhibition is Home and the Rights of Indigenous People. It is presented by the students of Eora College and the Amnesty International Demand Dignity Action Group. It is an impressive exhibition of works by students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Arts, investigating the understanding of home from their own perspective. The exhibition includes works by a number of students, including Haden Jennings, Graham Toomey, Megan Riley, Adam Bishop, Wanita Lowe, Sharon Smith, Esther Knox, Jeannie Hayes, Clinton Russell, Hazel Robinson, Stella Logan, Coral Dunn and Lynette Pitt, who explained her impressive art work in detail to me on the night.
Eora College is one of seven colleges of the Sydney Institute of TAFE. It is a community-focused education centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Taking its name from the Gadigal language of the Aboriginal nation that originally inhabited the Port Jackson area, the college offers courses in visual arts, music, television and film, theatre, Aboriginal community needs and basic literacy and numeracy. Its courses are aimed at high school leavers, senior school students, workers who want to improve their job skills, job seekers and students seeking to enter university. Eora College has a great record of success. Its graduates have built successful careers in areas as diverse as television production, stage management, television and stage performance, poetry, playwriting, animation and rock music, and are represented in many public and private art collections.
The work on display at this exhibition certainly continues that proud record of achievement. I commend the college, its students and its staff, particularly Chico Monk, teacher of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Arts, for this exhibition. I understand that Chico Monk has been at the college for almost 10 years, which is a wonderful contribution.
The exhibition was also presented by the Amnesty International Demand Dignity Action Group, and I thank Ken Walsh and all the Amnesty supporters who were there on the night. Amnesty International's Demand Dignity campaign focuses on the human rights violations caused by poverty. It is based on the premise that every person, wherever they are in the world, has a basic right to an adequate standard of living—the right to food, water, housing, health and education. The Demand Dignity campaign seeks to hold national and international leaders accountable for the human rights violations that drive and deepen poverty, and to defend every person's right to live with dignity. I support Amnesty International's Demand Dignity campaign and call on governments at all levels to address the issues that contribute to ongoing poverty in Australia, particularly in Aboriginal communities.
I also acknowledge the contribution to the event of Bundjalung artist Bronwyn Bancroft, one of Australia's leading artists. I was pleased last weekend to attend the opening of the "Weavings of Light and Life" public art installation, commissioned by Leichhardt Council in collaboration with the Leichhardt Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Committee. The installation has been created by Bronwyn Bancroft and is an outstanding feature of the newly upgraded Leichhardt Park Aquatic Centre. It features seven images that honour the past and show respect to the custodians of the land. The images are encased in glass that captures the changing light of the day. It is a work of great subtlety and beauty, and an outstanding piece of public art. Its presence in this prominent position at such a popular local facility shows respect for our Aboriginal community as well as encouraging non-Aboriginal members of the Leichhardt community to celebrate the extraordinary talent of our Aboriginal artists, and of Bronwyn Bancroft in particular.
Finally, I acknowledge the wonderful contribution of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative to the exhibition. The multi-talented printmaker, designer and sculptor Euphemia Bostock, a founding member of Boomalli and designer of its logo, welcomed us to country. Bronwyn Bancroft, whom I mentioned, was also a key member of the development of Boomalli. Boomalli's gallery and workshop space is located on Flood Street in Leichhardt. It started in 1987 and has continued to provide support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists so that they can exhibit, define and promote Aboriginal art with Aboriginal endorsed guidance. The exhibition runs until Sunday 26 June. It provides a wonderful showcase for the students who have produced the outstanding works on display, which are available for sale. I commend this wonderful exhibition to all members of the House and acknowledge all those who have made a contribution to such a successful exhibition.
Speakers - Parker Mr Jamie
Business - Private Members Statements, PRIV
BOOMALLI ABORIGINAL ART EXHIBITIONPage: 59
Mr JAMIE PARKER (Balmain) [4.07 p.m.]: On Tuesday evening I attended the opening of a new art exhibition at the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in Leichhardt in my electorate of Balmain. The theme of the exhibition is Home and the Rights of Indigenous People. It is presented by the students of Eora College and the Amnesty International Demand Dignity Action Group. It is an impressive exhibition of works by students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Arts, investigating the understanding of home from their own perspective. The exhibition includes works by a number of students, including Haden Jennings, Graham Toomey, Megan Riley, Adam Bishop, Wanita Lowe, Sharon Smith, Esther Knox, Jeannie Hayes, Clinton Russell, Hazel Robinson, Stella Logan, Coral Dunn and Lynette Pitt, who explained her impressive art work in detail to me on the night.
Eora College is one of seven colleges of the Sydney Institute of TAFE. It is a community-focused education centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Taking its name from the Gadigal language of the Aboriginal nation that originally inhabited the Port Jackson area, the college offers courses in visual arts, music, television and film, theatre, Aboriginal community needs and basic literacy and numeracy. Its courses are aimed at high school leavers, senior school students, workers who want to improve their job skills, job seekers and students seeking to enter university. Eora College has a great record of success. Its graduates have built successful careers in areas as diverse as television production, stage management, television and stage performance, poetry, playwriting, animation and rock music, and are represented in many public and private art collections.
The work on display at this exhibition certainly continues that proud record of achievement. I commend the college, its students and its staff, particularly Chico Monk, teacher of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Arts, for this exhibition. I understand that Chico Monk has been at the college for almost 10 years, which is a wonderful contribution.
The exhibition was also presented by the Amnesty International Demand Dignity Action Group, and I thank Ken Walsh and all the Amnesty supporters who were there on the night. Amnesty International's Demand Dignity campaign focuses on the human rights violations caused by poverty. It is based on the premise that every person, wherever they are in the world, has a basic right to an adequate standard of living—the right to food, water, housing, health and education. The Demand Dignity campaign seeks to hold national and international leaders accountable for the human rights violations that drive and deepen poverty, and to defend every person's right to live with dignity. I support Amnesty International's Demand Dignity campaign and call on governments at all levels to address the issues that contribute to ongoing poverty in Australia, particularly in Aboriginal communities.
I also acknowledge the contribution to the event of Bundjalung artist Bronwyn Bancroft, one of Australia's leading artists. I was pleased last weekend to attend the opening of the "Weavings of Light and Life" public art installation, commissioned by Leichhardt Council in collaboration with the Leichhardt Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Committee. The installation has been created by Bronwyn Bancroft and is an outstanding feature of the newly upgraded Leichhardt Park Aquatic Centre. It features seven images that honour the past and show respect to the custodians of the land. The images are encased in glass that captures the changing light of the day. It is a work of great subtlety and beauty, and an outstanding piece of public art. Its presence in this prominent position at such a popular local facility shows respect for our Aboriginal community as well as encouraging non-Aboriginal members of the Leichhardt community to celebrate the extraordinary talent of our Aboriginal artists, and of Bronwyn Bancroft in particular.
Finally, I acknowledge the wonderful contribution of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative to the exhibition. The multi-talented printmaker, designer and sculptor Euphemia Bostock, a founding member of Boomalli and designer of its logo, welcomed us to country. Bronwyn Bancroft, whom I mentioned, was also a key member of the development of Boomalli. Boomalli's gallery and workshop space is located on Flood Street in Leichhardt. It started in 1987 and has continued to provide support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists so that they can exhibit, define and promote Aboriginal art with Aboriginal endorsed guidance. The exhibition runs until Sunday 26 June. It provides a wonderful showcase for the students who have produced the outstanding works on display, which are available for sale. I commend this wonderful exhibition to all members of the House and acknowledge all those who have made a contribution to such a successful exhibition.
A news story about the Eora Students exhibition
http://www.amnesty.org.au/nsw/comments/25903
Coming Home
- Published on 9/06/2011
Written by Tom McMahon
The Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery will again open its doors for the second annual Eora College art exhibition. The exhibition, opening this month, is entitled “Home” and will provide a meeting ground for new audiences and the new artistic voices emerging from urban Indigenous culture in Sydney.
The exhibition, which runs from 21-26 June, is based on the theme of Aboriginal housing in response to the recent Indigenous Homelands Policy. Co-hosted by the NSW Demand Dignity Network from Amnesty International Australia, the event will raise awareness about the ongoing human rights issues faced by the world’s oldest living culture.
Ken Welsh, convener of Demand Dignity, says, “We are very happy to once again be involved in the promotion of Aboriginal art. We are very proud to be able to work in collaboration with such talented people and help them to publicly present their work".
Chico Monks, art teacher at Eora TAFE College for 9 years, says that, “the struggle continues to build a world understanding that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are not just dot painters and that there are a huge number of Indigenous people living in urban environments and they need to be heard.”
He says that, while at first some students struggled to see past the literal idea of the housing theme, they found inspiration through its emotional and spiritual elements. “I feel as though students are now realising the power within images and that their own opinion is very important”.
*
“All of my life, I’ve always drawn a diamond. You know, when you’re on the phone and you’re talking. I’ve always done diamonds. I’m starting to find out why.” Graham Toomey came to Sydney from a small country town, like many young people, to find better work opportunities. Now that he is a husband and father, he has been coming to the Eora TAFE College to keep himself busy in between dropping his kids off and picking them up from school. “I just loved it the moment I came in here and learning about who I am and all about Aboriginal history and people in general. Now I’m trying to convert it into art.”
Sitting beside his exhibition work – a vast outback landscape punctuated by a single ancient tree, the earth surrounded by diamond patterns rising from the horizon – Mr Toomey says his main interest at the moment is in researching about the traditional land and stories of his ancestors. Through this exploration, he discovered a strange connection between his unconscious scribbling and his cultural heritage. “They have sacred trees out there. It’s for a burial place, that our ancestors had hundreds of years ago, before the white invasion. And on these trees there are like diamonds, so these symbols represent our area.”
While he may never know who drew the original diamond symbols into the trunks of these sacred trees, Mr Toomey now tries to use them as much as possible in his art. By translating his understanding of Indigenous history in this way, he says that he wants his art to encourage people, when thinking about our multicultural society, to include the original people and their culture. “I hope that my kids’ future is a bit better, being accepted and things like that. I’m trying in a small way to get some acknowledgement out there and some recognition. I guess through art I hope to try and do that as well. Some art that maybe hits the spot.”
Another artist exhibiting his work this month, Clinton Russell, is also exploring the connections to his family heritage. As he daubs the finishing touches onto his latest creation, he explains that he is working on his father’s totem, the Willie Wagtail bird, called the “Piri-Wiri” in his ancestors’ language. “Each tribe has their own stories. Like some tribes believe that it is a bringer of death. Some believe that it is a bringer of fire, that it gave it to man. He was the swiftest out of all of the animal spirits.”
Coming from a family of artists, Mr Russell says that his personal background continues to inspire him. His mother, Elaine Russell, herself a member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, is a particular influence on him. “My Mum really encouraged me to do this, to express myself. I love her, I’m very proud of her. She used to draw stick figures and stuff [in the beginning] and now she’s got contracts for overseas, in Italy, Japan, places like that. She’s still doing it. She had a mild heart attack, but she’s still going. She still loves it.”
Organisers hope that the exhibition will inspire the new generation of students to pursue a career in the arts, with the support and recognition of their fellow artists and an understanding audience. As Mr Monks says, “Just being able to say that they had work exhibited at Boomalli will be a big achievement in itself.”
Coming from the Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri and Bundjalung languages, Boomalli is a word that means “to make a mark”. Since 1987, the Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery has continued to promote the original objectives of the founding artist members by providing support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists so that they can exhibit, define and promote Aboriginal art with Aboriginal endorsed guidance. It's one of Australia's longest running Aboriginal owned and operated art galleries.
The "Home" exhibition opens on Tuesday 21 June at 6pm, and runs until the 26th. The Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery is located at 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt.
Jeffrey Samuels on Message Stick, ABC TV
Monday 30 May 2011, 6:30pm ABC1
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/video/2011/May2011.htm?pres=s3230892&story=1
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/video/2011/May2011.htm?pres=s3230892&story=1
Milton Budge Exhibition press coverage
True Stories being told at Boomalli
Koori Mail, June 1, 2011
Milton Budge, with Anthony Flanders and Dorsey Smith
NIT, May, 2011
Governance issues for Boomalli Aboriginal Artists
Co-operative Ltd
By Arts Law Centre of Australia on 18th April 2011
BackgroundBoomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative Ltd (Boomalli) approached Artists in the Black (AITB) for assistance with governance issues which were threatening the closure of Boomalli despite a history of over 20 years. Since 1987 Boomalli has continued to promote the original objectives of the founding artist members by providing support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists so that they can exhibit, define and promote Aboriginal art with Aboriginal endorsed guidance. It's one of Australia's longest running Aboriginal owned and operated art galleries.
IssuesInitially Boomalli sought assistance from AITB about its business structure. In September 2009, AITB secured the support of Allens Arthur Robinson (Allens), one of Australia's leading law firms. Since then Allens has been providing Boomalli with pro bono advice on various corporate governance and legal issues which were impacting Boomalli's survival, growth and relationships with various entities, including government authorities.
The corporate governance work ranged from drafting various documentation such as amendments to the Boomalli rules to allow for the appointment of non-Aboriginal directors with the relevant set of skills and the charter of the Financial and Risk Committee (whose role is to supervise Boomalli's financial and risk matters) to advising Boomalli and liaising with the NSW Office of Fair Trading.
The legal work, most of which is on-going, relates to the proposed transfer of the premises at 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt (Property) from Tullagulla Limited (a consortium comprising of Boomalli, Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation and Indigenous Screen Australia) to Boomalli (Proposed Transfer).The most recent legal work relates to the proposed transfer of the premises at 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt from Tullagulla Limited (a consortium comprising of Boomalli, Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation and Indigenous Screen Australia) to Boomalli. The work in relation to the proposed transfer includes advising on the legal implications of the dissolution of the consortium arrangements and the proposed de-registration of Tullagulla, and liaising and negotiating with the relevant stakeholders, including the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Tullagulla, the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC). Allens have also drafted various legal documents such as the stamp duty exemption application lodged with the New South Wales Office of State Revenue, the Asset Sale Agreement and the NSW Transfer Form in anticipation of the proposed transfer. As the stamp duty exemption application was successful, Boomalli will not be liable to pay for stamp duty should the proposed transfer occur - a great outcome in helping out with some financial difficulties. Another milestone achievement was reached in February 2011 when the ILC Board consented to the proposed transfer.
Outcome for clientThe work that has been done by Allens so far has been really helpful in improving Boomalli's compliance with its legal and regulatory requirements and maintaining occupation of the Property.
Bronwyn Bancroft, founding member of Boomalli and current director had this to say:
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative will turn 25 in 2012. At 25 it is generally accepted that young people haven’t learned enough to be capable and competent around making life decisions.
Without Allens Arthur Robinson’s assistance we would not be turning 25 and would have been stripped of these rights. AAR's commitment and generosity in relation to the almost impossible task of saving the Co-operative has us getting ready to bake the cake of Self-determination. This wonderful achievement came to fruition through the skills, insights and professionalism of AAR, in particular, Cellia CotanCognard and Vijay Cugati, coupled with the referral from Robyn Ayres of Arts Law/Artists in the Black, which in its embryonic stage, was for assistance with a slight constitutional change.
We can only hope you come and blow out the candles with us next year.
image: Boomalli (c) Sharon Hickey 2010
http://www.artslaw.com.au/case-studies/entry/governance-issues-for-boomalli-aboriginal-artists-co-operative-ltd
BackgroundBoomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative Ltd (Boomalli) approached Artists in the Black (AITB) for assistance with governance issues which were threatening the closure of Boomalli despite a history of over 20 years. Since 1987 Boomalli has continued to promote the original objectives of the founding artist members by providing support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists so that they can exhibit, define and promote Aboriginal art with Aboriginal endorsed guidance. It's one of Australia's longest running Aboriginal owned and operated art galleries.
IssuesInitially Boomalli sought assistance from AITB about its business structure. In September 2009, AITB secured the support of Allens Arthur Robinson (Allens), one of Australia's leading law firms. Since then Allens has been providing Boomalli with pro bono advice on various corporate governance and legal issues which were impacting Boomalli's survival, growth and relationships with various entities, including government authorities.
The corporate governance work ranged from drafting various documentation such as amendments to the Boomalli rules to allow for the appointment of non-Aboriginal directors with the relevant set of skills and the charter of the Financial and Risk Committee (whose role is to supervise Boomalli's financial and risk matters) to advising Boomalli and liaising with the NSW Office of Fair Trading.
The legal work, most of which is on-going, relates to the proposed transfer of the premises at 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt (Property) from Tullagulla Limited (a consortium comprising of Boomalli, Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation and Indigenous Screen Australia) to Boomalli (Proposed Transfer).The most recent legal work relates to the proposed transfer of the premises at 55-59 Flood Street, Leichhardt from Tullagulla Limited (a consortium comprising of Boomalli, Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation and Indigenous Screen Australia) to Boomalli. The work in relation to the proposed transfer includes advising on the legal implications of the dissolution of the consortium arrangements and the proposed de-registration of Tullagulla, and liaising and negotiating with the relevant stakeholders, including the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Tullagulla, the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC). Allens have also drafted various legal documents such as the stamp duty exemption application lodged with the New South Wales Office of State Revenue, the Asset Sale Agreement and the NSW Transfer Form in anticipation of the proposed transfer. As the stamp duty exemption application was successful, Boomalli will not be liable to pay for stamp duty should the proposed transfer occur - a great outcome in helping out with some financial difficulties. Another milestone achievement was reached in February 2011 when the ILC Board consented to the proposed transfer.
Outcome for clientThe work that has been done by Allens so far has been really helpful in improving Boomalli's compliance with its legal and regulatory requirements and maintaining occupation of the Property.
Bronwyn Bancroft, founding member of Boomalli and current director had this to say:
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative will turn 25 in 2012. At 25 it is generally accepted that young people haven’t learned enough to be capable and competent around making life decisions.
Without Allens Arthur Robinson’s assistance we would not be turning 25 and would have been stripped of these rights. AAR's commitment and generosity in relation to the almost impossible task of saving the Co-operative has us getting ready to bake the cake of Self-determination. This wonderful achievement came to fruition through the skills, insights and professionalism of AAR, in particular, Cellia CotanCognard and Vijay Cugati, coupled with the referral from Robyn Ayres of Arts Law/Artists in the Black, which in its embryonic stage, was for assistance with a slight constitutional change.
We can only hope you come and blow out the candles with us next year.
image: Boomalli (c) Sharon Hickey 2010
http://www.artslaw.com.au/case-studies/entry/governance-issues-for-boomalli-aboriginal-artists-co-operative-ltd
A news story about the Pink Sunrise exhibition opening
Boomalli is tickled pink, Koori Mail, March 25, 2011
Dickens at home with Rabbitohs
by Rachel Scollay
Koori Mail, March 25, 2011
by Rachel Scollay
Koori Mail, March 25, 2011
Boomalli gets the news that they can own the building!
ILC lifeline for Boomalli
by Rachel Scollay
Koori Mail, March, 2011
by Rachel Scollay
Koori Mail, March, 2011
Boomalli Mardi Gras exhibition 2011
Boomalli gets ready for its Pink Sunrise, Koori Mail, March, 2011
Boomalli News 2011
Aboriginal art gallery goes from strength to strength
by Author: Annette Maguire
Posted:Wednesday, 2 February 2011
http://www.altmedia.net.au/aboriginal-art-gallery-goes-from-strength-to-strength/30803#comment-3219
Boomalli Aboriginal Art gallery co-operative, based in Leichhardt, has bounced back from challenges that threatened its very existence, with new vigour and a confident eye on the next generation. From the brink of insolvency two years ago, to a flourishing hub of Aboriginal artistry, Boomalli is bringing the work of both emerging and “elder” artists to a wider audience.
Formed as a wholly Aboriginal operated initiative in 1987, Boomalli celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. As founding member Bronwyn Bancroft notes, “Twenty-five years of Aboriginal history is a fantastic achievement. We couldn’t afford to let it disappear. It’s an emblem for the future, what it can do for young artists.”
In keeping with its founding principles, the current exhibition, “A Show Of Strength”, showcases the work of Aboriginal artists across the State. It illustrates the breadth of artists supported by Boomalli, from those who have never been in an exhibition before, to quite a few elders. “What we want is not to target a particular demographic, but to represent the full spectrum,” says Bancroft.
In 2009, the Co-operative was facing insolvency and owed a hefty tax debt. Bancroft attributes this to being an all-volunteer organisation, where members don’t necessarily come equipped with knowledge of, for example, the intricacies of tax law: “There was a need for mentoring”.
The Gallery lost its government funding, and came within a hair’s-breadth of eviction from its premises at 55-57 Flood St. After being instructed to vacate the building by Peter Garrett’s Department of Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA), the co-op combed its records, and found that the building in fact belonged to the Indigenous Land Corporation. The Gallery now hopes to negotiate a transfer of the building within a matter of weeks.
With a new Board, pro-bono expertise from the Arts Law Centre, fundraisers and plenty of volunteer elbow-grease, Boomalli has navigated its way out of the “labyrinth”, as Bancroft puts it. “It shows people, never, never, never give up”.
In early 2010, the Gallery announced its fight for survival with a fundraising show called “Black or White, It’s Just Not Right”, where artists including Mikala Dwyer, Destiny Deacon, and Sally Morgan donated works. This was followed up with a benefit party hosted by SPUNK magazine.
Now, Boomalli has submitted its exhibition plans with evidence of its ongoing viability and is hopeful of winning government funding. Says Bancroft, “I’m incredibly optimistic, because the work’s been done…This is a fundamental moment. I’m ready to let the young artists take over!”
Launching on February 18 is Boomalli’s show for the Mardi Gras Arts Festival.
Take a look at 55-59 Flood St, Leichhardt. www.boomalli.com.au
by Author: Annette Maguire
Posted:Wednesday, 2 February 2011
http://www.altmedia.net.au/aboriginal-art-gallery-goes-from-strength-to-strength/30803#comment-3219
Boomalli Aboriginal Art gallery co-operative, based in Leichhardt, has bounced back from challenges that threatened its very existence, with new vigour and a confident eye on the next generation. From the brink of insolvency two years ago, to a flourishing hub of Aboriginal artistry, Boomalli is bringing the work of both emerging and “elder” artists to a wider audience.
Formed as a wholly Aboriginal operated initiative in 1987, Boomalli celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. As founding member Bronwyn Bancroft notes, “Twenty-five years of Aboriginal history is a fantastic achievement. We couldn’t afford to let it disappear. It’s an emblem for the future, what it can do for young artists.”
In keeping with its founding principles, the current exhibition, “A Show Of Strength”, showcases the work of Aboriginal artists across the State. It illustrates the breadth of artists supported by Boomalli, from those who have never been in an exhibition before, to quite a few elders. “What we want is not to target a particular demographic, but to represent the full spectrum,” says Bancroft.
In 2009, the Co-operative was facing insolvency and owed a hefty tax debt. Bancroft attributes this to being an all-volunteer organisation, where members don’t necessarily come equipped with knowledge of, for example, the intricacies of tax law: “There was a need for mentoring”.
The Gallery lost its government funding, and came within a hair’s-breadth of eviction from its premises at 55-57 Flood St. After being instructed to vacate the building by Peter Garrett’s Department of Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA), the co-op combed its records, and found that the building in fact belonged to the Indigenous Land Corporation. The Gallery now hopes to negotiate a transfer of the building within a matter of weeks.
With a new Board, pro-bono expertise from the Arts Law Centre, fundraisers and plenty of volunteer elbow-grease, Boomalli has navigated its way out of the “labyrinth”, as Bancroft puts it. “It shows people, never, never, never give up”.
In early 2010, the Gallery announced its fight for survival with a fundraising show called “Black or White, It’s Just Not Right”, where artists including Mikala Dwyer, Destiny Deacon, and Sally Morgan donated works. This was followed up with a benefit party hosted by SPUNK magazine.
Now, Boomalli has submitted its exhibition plans with evidence of its ongoing viability and is hopeful of winning government funding. Says Bancroft, “I’m incredibly optimistic, because the work’s been done…This is a fundamental moment. I’m ready to let the young artists take over!”
Launching on February 18 is Boomalli’s show for the Mardi Gras Arts Festival.
Take a look at 55-59 Flood St, Leichhardt. www.boomalli.com.au
December 2010
Show of strength for Boomalli, Koori Mail, December 2010
October 2010
Aboriginal art demands dignity
Saturday, October 2, 2010
By Sabine Kacha, Sydney
Green Left Weekly
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45572
Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity and Eora College art exhibition opened at the Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery on September 22 to a crowd of 50 people. The exhibition was based on the theme of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The artworks were produced by talented students from the Eora TAFE College.
The Demand Dignity campaign aims to eradicate poverty by making human rights law. As part of the campaign, Amnesty International has criticised Australia’s NT intervention policy, which was launched by the Coalition government of John Howard in 2007.
The NT intervention targeted remote Aboriginal communities, replacing half of welfare recipients’ income with a Basics Card, which can only be spent on certain things in certain shops.
Ken Welsh, the Demand Dignity campaign convenor, gave a brief introduction before Lynette Riley, the Academic Coordinator of the Koori Centre at the University of Sydney, gave a welcome to country.
Anthony Mitchell, from NSW Amnesty International, said the NT intervention breached parts of the UN declaration. Nicole Watson, from the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at UTS, and Bronwyn Bancroft, an Aboriginal artist and designer from the Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery, also spoke.
Eora student Mark Anthony Hampton exhibited a painting titled “Intervention”. When asked to paint something he was passionate about, he was inspired to do a painting of the Basics Card, because his partner is a Torres Strait Islander who had been placed on the Basics Card.
All artwork from the exhibition will be shown at the Eora College End of Year Exhibition, from November 16 to 23.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
By Sabine Kacha, Sydney
Green Left Weekly
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45572
Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity and Eora College art exhibition opened at the Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery on September 22 to a crowd of 50 people. The exhibition was based on the theme of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The artworks were produced by talented students from the Eora TAFE College.
The Demand Dignity campaign aims to eradicate poverty by making human rights law. As part of the campaign, Amnesty International has criticised Australia’s NT intervention policy, which was launched by the Coalition government of John Howard in 2007.
The NT intervention targeted remote Aboriginal communities, replacing half of welfare recipients’ income with a Basics Card, which can only be spent on certain things in certain shops.
Ken Welsh, the Demand Dignity campaign convenor, gave a brief introduction before Lynette Riley, the Academic Coordinator of the Koori Centre at the University of Sydney, gave a welcome to country.
Anthony Mitchell, from NSW Amnesty International, said the NT intervention breached parts of the UN declaration. Nicole Watson, from the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at UTS, and Bronwyn Bancroft, an Aboriginal artist and designer from the Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery, also spoke.
Eora student Mark Anthony Hampton exhibited a painting titled “Intervention”. When asked to paint something he was passionate about, he was inspired to do a painting of the Basics Card, because his partner is a Torres Strait Islander who had been placed on the Basics Card.
All artwork from the exhibition will be shown at the Eora College End of Year Exhibition, from November 16 to 23.
September 2010
Boomalli Bounces Back in the Cultural Renaissance:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/boomalli‐bounces‐back‐in‐the‐cultural‐renaissance/story‐e6frg6zo-1225913614134
A NSW Aboriginal artists co-op is blossoming after a near-death experience
INDIGENOUS art is the darling of the contemporary art world. In recent decades the sector has grown to be worth an estimated $500 million a year with Aboriginal artists, mostly desert-based, producing stunning dot canvases that impress collectors from Sydney to Paris, New York to Tokyo.
But before this particular boom there was Boomalli, the NSW Aboriginal artists' co-op that is looking forward to celebrating its 25th birthday in 2012. It's a milestone that looked as if it might not happen because the not-for-profit group came close to extinction last year. That's a demise one of its founders believes would have spelled the end of recognised indigenous urban art in the state.
Artist Bronwyn Bancroft says NSW's main exhibition space, the Art Gallery of NSW, is so focused on Aboriginal art from everywhere but its home state that it has become vital for Boomalli gallery to tell the story of NSW's indigenous art tradition.
"It's incredibly important to have that history continue otherwise it gets disseminated only by those who have become very famous," she says.
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists' Co-operative was formed in 1987 by 10 indigenous artists who worked in a range of media. Their debut group show Boomalli au-go-go featured works from the founding group, which included video artist Tracey Moffatt, print maker Euphemia Bostock, photographer Brenda Croft, Fiona Foley, Fernanda Martens, Arone Meeks, Avril Quail, Michael Riley, Jeffrey Samuels and Bancroft.
Through the years Boomalli leased a series of exhibition spaces in Sydney's inner-west; its latest is a site in Flood Street, Leichhardt where, all going well, the quarter-century celebrations will take place.
Early last year all was not going well for Boomalli.
Bancroft recalls: "In May, Boomalli was essentially told by [a federal Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts] representative that they were to be evicted and needed to leave the premises because of a debt in excess of $200,000."
The artists running the space had racked up the losses through inexperience, poor governance and failure to pay tax, she says.
But faced with losing their meeting place and collective heritage, they began to fight their way out from under the debt.
Commercial exhibitions, featuring new and old work of black and white artists, have been mounted to raise funds and awareness, legal firm Allens Arthur Robinson has provided free advice and thousands of hours of voluntary work has whittled the debt back to $15,000.
Bancroft collected 5000 signatures in support of Boomalli's plight, which she presented to Arts Minister Peter Garrett. Despite handing the petition to him publicly at Carriageworks, a contemporary arts venue in inner-Sydney Redfern, she says she never received a formal response from the minister. Eventually it didn't matter.
She says: "When we sniffed that we had a possibility of retaining the building, a huge voluntary effort went into cleaning it up [but even] that was dismissed as window dressing."
Initially the artists were not permitted to exhibit work because doing so would be some version of trading insolvent, yet only by exhibiting could they raise funds to pay off their debt.
DEWHA eventually softened its stance and said Boomalli could retain the premises if it could prove it was able to run it.
"We have subsequently been made aware that DEWHA held no rights over the building and was not able to direct us to vacate," Bancroft says.
"They didn't own it anyway; the Indigenous Land Corporation has a caveat on the building that it inherited from the abolition of ATSIC," she says.
The building's other two tenants, Rachel Perkins's Blackfella Films and community radio station Gadigal Koori Radio, have since signed over to Boomalli a memorandum that will permit it to run the building and Bancroft hopes within months the co-op will be able to call it home without fear of being moved along.
"It will be the first permanent home for NSW Aboriginal artists since colonisation, which is alarming," she says.
"A voluntary board is running it at the moment, we're hoping to secure an administrator from a union. It's a matter of getting people to believe us," she says.
In addition to future exhibitions, a book will be written to celebrate the centre's quarter-century, for which a grant request to the Australia Council has just been completed.
Bancroft estimates she has personally invested thousands of hours endeavouring to rescue the co-op despite having had little to do with it in recent years.
"I'd been a member but I'd stepped away because it was such a mess," she says.
She was spurred into action when hit by the reality that their collective history was under threat.
"If anything good can come it's that permanency, which was always illusive," she says.
"We managed to run it as a bunch of artists for a very long time but now the template has to be completely redrawn.
"There's a lack of recognition of the authenticity of artistry of Aboriginal people in NSW," she says.
"The Art Gallery of NSW doesn't show any NSW shows," Bancroft adds. Its dedicated ground floor indigenous gallery, Yiribana, shows "everything but local art".
"Without the recognition of galleries and critical curatorial observations we don't get recognised," she says.
But AGNSW senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Hetti Perkins, says the gallery represents local artists across its programs. A survey of La Perouse artists is under way, Boomalli was showcased in 2007 and Boomalli alumnus Michael Riley was the subject of a retrospective in 2008.
Now the co-op's future is looking more secure and Bancroft is confident the new indigenous gallery at Canberra's National Gallery of Australia will increase exposure of all indigenous art.
"We're going into a really rewarding phase," she says.
July 2010:
Boomalli featured in Blak History Month
July is BLAK HISTORY MONTH In Australia: WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are advised this article may contain images and references to the deceased.
also featured in Green Left Weekly, July:
Save Boomalli Art Cooperative
by Rachel Evans
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44889
Boomalli, one of Australia’s longest running Aboriginal artists’ co-operatives, is threatened with closure. Based in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Leichhardt, Boomalli was set up in 1987 by Aboriginal artists to get their art recognised.
Boomalli means “to strike, to make a mark, to fight back, to light up,” in the languages of the Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri and Bundjalung peoples of New South Wales.
Lynette Riley, an Aboriginal artist and co-operative member has been campaigning to save the space, spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans about the value of Boomalli.
***
[When Boomalli was first set up] urban Aboriginal art was not considered art — only traditional dot paintings coming out of the Northern Territory were considered “Aboriginal art”.
So Boomalli was and continues to be about supporting NSW Aboriginal artists, their cultural recognition and helping them make a living.
Bronwyn Bancroft, Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Foley, Jenny Fraser, Michael Riley, Jeffery Samuels, Frances Belle Parker are just a few Aboriginal artists who have benefited from Boomalli.
Boomalli is about giving strength to Aboriginal culture. This is very important because the custom before the successful 1967 referendum in the “protection era” was not to practice culture. There was thinking it was in the best interest of Aboriginal people to be assimilated.
My uncle spoke his own language in class and was told it was a dirty language and he got taken away for just talking his own language.
The lesson learned was: don't talk language in front of white people and don't transmit culture. Aunties didn’t want to lose kids so we were not taught the language. My parents didn't teach me. The eastern communities in Australia were the worst hit.
It’s only been in the past decade that there is confidence that you can transmit culture. Boomalli is so important because it strengthens the foundations of Aboriginal cultural identity.
Aboriginal nations are very diverse. The concept “tribe” is a white social construct and doesn't let people understand cultural and social complexities. Distinct nations have different languages and art; we represent all nations at Boomalli. For us it's about defining our culture and not having anyone else defining it for us.
We are very hopeful that we have saved Boomalli — we will find out for sure in two weeks. Boomalli is still open and we’ve already held two exhibitions this year. We want to evolve as a major artistic and cultural centre for Indigenous people.
Boomalli is run on all volunteer work at the moment — Aboriginal and non Aboriginal people together.
We are negotiating to get Boomalli gallery to be handed back to us — as it still legally belongs to someone else. We are in the process of proving we have capacity to run it with a new board of directors with me as a new chairperson.
We are calling on the community to support us in proving the benefits of having a place like Boomalli so we can keep it. People can become Friends of Boomalli. They can volunteer with us in any capacity they’re able and writing an email supporting us will help us a lot.
[Boomalli is located at 55 -59 Flood St, Leichhardt. Visit www.boomalli.com.au for more details.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/boomalli‐bounces‐back‐in‐the‐cultural‐renaissance/story‐e6frg6zo-1225913614134
A NSW Aboriginal artists co-op is blossoming after a near-death experience
INDIGENOUS art is the darling of the contemporary art world. In recent decades the sector has grown to be worth an estimated $500 million a year with Aboriginal artists, mostly desert-based, producing stunning dot canvases that impress collectors from Sydney to Paris, New York to Tokyo.
But before this particular boom there was Boomalli, the NSW Aboriginal artists' co-op that is looking forward to celebrating its 25th birthday in 2012. It's a milestone that looked as if it might not happen because the not-for-profit group came close to extinction last year. That's a demise one of its founders believes would have spelled the end of recognised indigenous urban art in the state.
Artist Bronwyn Bancroft says NSW's main exhibition space, the Art Gallery of NSW, is so focused on Aboriginal art from everywhere but its home state that it has become vital for Boomalli gallery to tell the story of NSW's indigenous art tradition.
"It's incredibly important to have that history continue otherwise it gets disseminated only by those who have become very famous," she says.
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists' Co-operative was formed in 1987 by 10 indigenous artists who worked in a range of media. Their debut group show Boomalli au-go-go featured works from the founding group, which included video artist Tracey Moffatt, print maker Euphemia Bostock, photographer Brenda Croft, Fiona Foley, Fernanda Martens, Arone Meeks, Avril Quail, Michael Riley, Jeffrey Samuels and Bancroft.
Through the years Boomalli leased a series of exhibition spaces in Sydney's inner-west; its latest is a site in Flood Street, Leichhardt where, all going well, the quarter-century celebrations will take place.
Early last year all was not going well for Boomalli.
Bancroft recalls: "In May, Boomalli was essentially told by [a federal Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts] representative that they were to be evicted and needed to leave the premises because of a debt in excess of $200,000."
The artists running the space had racked up the losses through inexperience, poor governance and failure to pay tax, she says.
But faced with losing their meeting place and collective heritage, they began to fight their way out from under the debt.
Commercial exhibitions, featuring new and old work of black and white artists, have been mounted to raise funds and awareness, legal firm Allens Arthur Robinson has provided free advice and thousands of hours of voluntary work has whittled the debt back to $15,000.
Bancroft collected 5000 signatures in support of Boomalli's plight, which she presented to Arts Minister Peter Garrett. Despite handing the petition to him publicly at Carriageworks, a contemporary arts venue in inner-Sydney Redfern, she says she never received a formal response from the minister. Eventually it didn't matter.
She says: "When we sniffed that we had a possibility of retaining the building, a huge voluntary effort went into cleaning it up [but even] that was dismissed as window dressing."
Initially the artists were not permitted to exhibit work because doing so would be some version of trading insolvent, yet only by exhibiting could they raise funds to pay off their debt.
DEWHA eventually softened its stance and said Boomalli could retain the premises if it could prove it was able to run it.
"We have subsequently been made aware that DEWHA held no rights over the building and was not able to direct us to vacate," Bancroft says.
"They didn't own it anyway; the Indigenous Land Corporation has a caveat on the building that it inherited from the abolition of ATSIC," she says.
The building's other two tenants, Rachel Perkins's Blackfella Films and community radio station Gadigal Koori Radio, have since signed over to Boomalli a memorandum that will permit it to run the building and Bancroft hopes within months the co-op will be able to call it home without fear of being moved along.
"It will be the first permanent home for NSW Aboriginal artists since colonisation, which is alarming," she says.
"A voluntary board is running it at the moment, we're hoping to secure an administrator from a union. It's a matter of getting people to believe us," she says.
In addition to future exhibitions, a book will be written to celebrate the centre's quarter-century, for which a grant request to the Australia Council has just been completed.
Bancroft estimates she has personally invested thousands of hours endeavouring to rescue the co-op despite having had little to do with it in recent years.
"I'd been a member but I'd stepped away because it was such a mess," she says.
She was spurred into action when hit by the reality that their collective history was under threat.
"If anything good can come it's that permanency, which was always illusive," she says.
"We managed to run it as a bunch of artists for a very long time but now the template has to be completely redrawn.
"There's a lack of recognition of the authenticity of artistry of Aboriginal people in NSW," she says.
"The Art Gallery of NSW doesn't show any NSW shows," Bancroft adds. Its dedicated ground floor indigenous gallery, Yiribana, shows "everything but local art".
"Without the recognition of galleries and critical curatorial observations we don't get recognised," she says.
But AGNSW senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Hetti Perkins, says the gallery represents local artists across its programs. A survey of La Perouse artists is under way, Boomalli was showcased in 2007 and Boomalli alumnus Michael Riley was the subject of a retrospective in 2008.
Now the co-op's future is looking more secure and Bancroft is confident the new indigenous gallery at Canberra's National Gallery of Australia will increase exposure of all indigenous art.
"We're going into a really rewarding phase," she says.
July 2010:
Boomalli featured in Blak History Month
July is BLAK HISTORY MONTH In Australia: WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are advised this article may contain images and references to the deceased.
also featured in Green Left Weekly, July:
Save Boomalli Art Cooperative
by Rachel Evans
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44889
Boomalli, one of Australia’s longest running Aboriginal artists’ co-operatives, is threatened with closure. Based in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Leichhardt, Boomalli was set up in 1987 by Aboriginal artists to get their art recognised.
Boomalli means “to strike, to make a mark, to fight back, to light up,” in the languages of the Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri and Bundjalung peoples of New South Wales.
Lynette Riley, an Aboriginal artist and co-operative member has been campaigning to save the space, spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans about the value of Boomalli.
***
[When Boomalli was first set up] urban Aboriginal art was not considered art — only traditional dot paintings coming out of the Northern Territory were considered “Aboriginal art”.
So Boomalli was and continues to be about supporting NSW Aboriginal artists, their cultural recognition and helping them make a living.
Bronwyn Bancroft, Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Foley, Jenny Fraser, Michael Riley, Jeffery Samuels, Frances Belle Parker are just a few Aboriginal artists who have benefited from Boomalli.
Boomalli is about giving strength to Aboriginal culture. This is very important because the custom before the successful 1967 referendum in the “protection era” was not to practice culture. There was thinking it was in the best interest of Aboriginal people to be assimilated.
My uncle spoke his own language in class and was told it was a dirty language and he got taken away for just talking his own language.
The lesson learned was: don't talk language in front of white people and don't transmit culture. Aunties didn’t want to lose kids so we were not taught the language. My parents didn't teach me. The eastern communities in Australia were the worst hit.
It’s only been in the past decade that there is confidence that you can transmit culture. Boomalli is so important because it strengthens the foundations of Aboriginal cultural identity.
Aboriginal nations are very diverse. The concept “tribe” is a white social construct and doesn't let people understand cultural and social complexities. Distinct nations have different languages and art; we represent all nations at Boomalli. For us it's about defining our culture and not having anyone else defining it for us.
We are very hopeful that we have saved Boomalli — we will find out for sure in two weeks. Boomalli is still open and we’ve already held two exhibitions this year. We want to evolve as a major artistic and cultural centre for Indigenous people.
Boomalli is run on all volunteer work at the moment — Aboriginal and non Aboriginal people together.
We are negotiating to get Boomalli gallery to be handed back to us — as it still legally belongs to someone else. We are in the process of proving we have capacity to run it with a new board of directors with me as a new chairperson.
We are calling on the community to support us in proving the benefits of having a place like Boomalli so we can keep it. People can become Friends of Boomalli. They can volunteer with us in any capacity they’re able and writing an email supporting us will help us a lot.
[Boomalli is located at 55 -59 Flood St, Leichhardt. Visit www.boomalli.com.au for more details.]
May 2010
Boomalli kicks on at Leichhardt
Village Voice Balmain
12 MAY 10
http://balmain-village-voice.whereilive.com.au/lifestyle/story/boomalli-kicks-on-with-leichhardt-show
In an effort to save one of Australia’s longest running Aboriginal artists’ co-operatives, members of the Boomalli group staged an exhibition at its gallery in Leichhardt.
The exhibition was aimed at keeping the volunteer-run group afloat, since it was declared insolvent last year because of a $90,000 tax bill.
The two-day show raised more than $10,000 for the Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, and attracted several new volunteers, Boomalli founding member Bronwyn Bancroft said.
“We are not in the black yet but closer to where we need to be,” she said. “It’s just about convincing people to believe in the organisation and get behind it.
‘‘We are ignored by governments, but we would like to showcase our work and get support from governments and the general public.” she said.
Entitled ‘‘Black or White, It Just Ain’t Right’’, the exhibition featured almost 60 works from founding members of the group as well as non-indigenous artists from Australia and the United States.
“If we can’t put our Aboriginal aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces into the view finder, then we don’t exist,” Ms Bancroft said.
Village Voice Balmain
12 MAY 10
http://balmain-village-voice.whereilive.com.au/lifestyle/story/boomalli-kicks-on-with-leichhardt-show
In an effort to save one of Australia’s longest running Aboriginal artists’ co-operatives, members of the Boomalli group staged an exhibition at its gallery in Leichhardt.
The exhibition was aimed at keeping the volunteer-run group afloat, since it was declared insolvent last year because of a $90,000 tax bill.
The two-day show raised more than $10,000 for the Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, and attracted several new volunteers, Boomalli founding member Bronwyn Bancroft said.
“We are not in the black yet but closer to where we need to be,” she said. “It’s just about convincing people to believe in the organisation and get behind it.
‘‘We are ignored by governments, but we would like to showcase our work and get support from governments and the general public.” she said.
Entitled ‘‘Black or White, It Just Ain’t Right’’, the exhibition featured almost 60 works from founding members of the group as well as non-indigenous artists from Australia and the United States.
“If we can’t put our Aboriginal aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces into the view finder, then we don’t exist,” Ms Bancroft said.
November 2009
Rescue package for Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative
2 NOV 09
BY HANNAH PARKES
ABORIGINAL artists have come together to try to save the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.
Two months ago Boomalli, one of Australia’s longest-running Aboriginal owned and operated art galleries, was threatened with eviction from its Leichhardt premises.
A debt of tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes had put its future in doubt.
Due to the unpaid debts, the co-operative was told to vacate the building they have occupied for six years by its landlord and financial supporter, the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Two of Boomalli’s founding members, Bronwyn Bancroft and Jeffrey Samuels, only heard about the troubles after the eviction notice was issued.
Since then the artists have rallied to save the project, clean up the building, sort through finances and accept pro-bono legal and financial advice.
“There was a huge breakdown in communication and relations among board members,” Ms Bancroft said.
“We only found out two months ago that we had been declared insolvent and had to get out.
“We are in discussions with the Australian Tax Office, lawyers, politicians, everyone, trying to remit $90,000 in tax debt.
If we can do that and sign off on the 2008 audit then we will be free to apply for funding again and get the wheels turning.”
Mayor Jamie Parker said the problems were caused by financial and administrative inexperience. “It’s about getting the structure so when the money comes in there is a system to deal with it,” he said. A spokesman for Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett said Boomalli had been given $167,000 in funding for 2008-2009 through the National Arts and Crafts Industry Support (NACIS) program.
He said the organisation did not apply for funding for 2009-10.
“Any new organisation will be able to apply to the NACIS program for operational funding support,” the spokesman said.
Boomali has helped boost the careers of many indigenous artists, including Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Foley and Joe Hurst.
2 NOV 09
BY HANNAH PARKES
ABORIGINAL artists have come together to try to save the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.
Two months ago Boomalli, one of Australia’s longest-running Aboriginal owned and operated art galleries, was threatened with eviction from its Leichhardt premises.
A debt of tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes had put its future in doubt.
Due to the unpaid debts, the co-operative was told to vacate the building they have occupied for six years by its landlord and financial supporter, the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Two of Boomalli’s founding members, Bronwyn Bancroft and Jeffrey Samuels, only heard about the troubles after the eviction notice was issued.
Since then the artists have rallied to save the project, clean up the building, sort through finances and accept pro-bono legal and financial advice.
“There was a huge breakdown in communication and relations among board members,” Ms Bancroft said.
“We only found out two months ago that we had been declared insolvent and had to get out.
“We are in discussions with the Australian Tax Office, lawyers, politicians, everyone, trying to remit $90,000 in tax debt.
If we can do that and sign off on the 2008 audit then we will be free to apply for funding again and get the wheels turning.”
Mayor Jamie Parker said the problems were caused by financial and administrative inexperience. “It’s about getting the structure so when the money comes in there is a system to deal with it,” he said. A spokesman for Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett said Boomalli had been given $167,000 in funding for 2008-2009 through the National Arts and Crafts Industry Support (NACIS) program.
He said the organisation did not apply for funding for 2009-10.
“Any new organisation will be able to apply to the NACIS program for operational funding support,” the spokesman said.
Boomali has helped boost the careers of many indigenous artists, including Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Foley and Joe Hurst.
