I’d like to acknowledge a few VIPs – Flying Arts Board members here tonight: Chair of the Board, John O’Toole, Vice Chair, Susan Ostling, and Directors, Kasia Kondas and Sarah Barron.

Allow me to sing up the amazing Flying Arts staff, especially Elysha Rei, Scheduled Program Lead, for her expert project management of the Exhibition Development Program that all the artists tonight participated in.  Maya Carter-Malins, Exhibition Program Lead, for her support of this exhibition coming to fruition in such a short period of time, both in the office and on the ground here in the install. Jess Cuddihy, By Request Program Lead for lending a hand tonight and during the lead up. Kat Johnston, Marketing and Communications Lead, especially for creating such striking and fruity artwork! And, of course, the rest of the team playing their part.

A special thanks to Ben Werner for his expertise in the install, and so generously sharing this knowledge with the artist, many of whom commented on how valuable this spontaneous professional development was to partake in.

Thank you to the Judith Wright Centre for their wonderful support as our venue partner, and the staff who always go out of their way to help us bring our exhibition visions to light.

Flying Arts is an arts and cultural development organisation that has been providing visual arts services to regional and remote Queensland for over 45 years. We exist to connect with artists, educators and communities.

Flying Arts collaborates with Regional organisations, local government and galleries in its commitment to promoting the appreciation, practice, and professional development of the visual and media arts throughout Queensland; especially for artists and communities disadvantaged by distance and isolation.

This is possible thanks to the generous support of our partners including the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and the University of Southern Queensland, Tim Fairfax Family Foundation, TOLL NQX, RSM & Travel Associates to name of few.

And of course, the VIP art lovers without whom there would be reason to exhibit art! Thank you for coming out tonight. It means a lot.

Tonight we are here to marvel at the work of the 19 talented artists on show tonight, all of whom participated in the Exhibition Development Program, both in Cairns earlier in the year, and in Brisbane in the latter half of 2017. Over half of the exhibiting artists hail from regional Queensland.

Allow me to make special mention of John Armstrong, who was not only the knowledgeable and engaging facilitator of Flying Arts Exhibition Development Program, he was also the conceptual magician behind this group exhibition. I would now like to invite John to the stage to say a few words.

And I acknowledge and thank our artists who are generously sharing their creative works with us and allowing us, as viewers, to experience the world a little differently.

Each of these artists attended a Flying Arts workshop earlier this year. I facilitated this workshop on Exhibition Development and it quickly became apparent that this group of artists were not only a very nice bunch of quite different people but shared some similarities of approach to their creative activities. During the workshop this phenomenon of similar yet different was described as ‘like a fruit salad’ and it was suggested that it’d be a great idea to have a group show in the future. We thought, yep, good idea – might be possible in a couple of years or so! But, the opportunity for a show arose faster than any of us expected and this exhibition has been exactly 6 weeks in development – pretty good work by all of us I reckon!

I curated this show in a way I hadn’t done before – it was a bit of a risk but – it worked! As part of the workshop each artist developed a 250 word artist statement so I asked them each to send those to me and I crunched those together as 3 wordclouds and it became very apparent that there were some distinct thematics emerging – words like: relationships, materials, nature, people, conversation, life, human and world loomed large. I then sent these wordclouds to the artists and asked them to send me 3 images of works that they thought reflected some of the key words. From these I selected the works for the show – it was a jointly created curatorial premise like no other!

To give some context to the show and to the creativity of these artists I’d like you to consider a room – not this room but a room without any lights. Now this room contains an elephant. Five people spend some time in this room – in the dark. The five people are; a plumber, a sailor, a plasterer, a stonemason and a philosopher.

None of these five people have ever encountered an elephant before and each one of them gropes about in the dark until they touch an elephant bit.

When they have left the dark room they are asked of their experience – what did they think was within this particular room?

The Plumber was amazed at the extreme flexibility of the piping he had found. He’d felt the elephant’s trunk.

The Sailor was quite impressed with the incredibly strong sailcloth she’d discovered. She’d felt the elephant’s ear.

The Plasterer was pleased that someone had made such lovely textured wall surfaces. He’d felt the elephant’s side.

However the Stonemason was not very enthusiastic about the lumpy and irregular column he had investigated. He had felt one of the elephant’s legs.

And the Philosopher, well the Philosopher complained that no matter how hard she had pulled the cord the lights just would not go on. She had been tugging the elephant’s tail.

Each of these people had brought their own cultural experience and expectation to the elephant – and therefore each had encountered something quite different and unique to themselves.

I suggest that we all construct our own world view from the material of our own histories and sometimes this world view may have little to do with reality yet a lot to do with imagination.

The artworks created by these artists show us some different imagined realities and I thank all of them for allowing us to enjoy the way they remake the ordinary intothe extraordinary.

Picasso said, “everything you can imagine is real” and another great artist, Groucho Marx, said, ““Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” Somewhere in there is an important concept I’m sure!

Seeing and hearing a story is one of the ways that creativity adds to the understanding of our own culture and the culture of others – when we listen and see good things and bad things, funny things and sad things, we start to think and feel outside of our own experiences – we become better able to make some sense of the confusion that sometimes seems to surround the environment we all live in. The sharing of an artist’s work is an act of generosity and should be the starting point for a conversation – art is a catalyst for interaction and the pondering of imponderables.

So, thank you to all the artists – Anthony, Beverley, Bronwyn, Cathy, Chrys, Deborah, Fiona and Donna Maree and Tracey andMulum, Hazel, Janet, Jennifer, Karen, Kate, Lyn, Mandy, Nicola, Sally, Simone, and Todd– your stories are unique, and this show is an important milestone in your creative careers, and it has been a joy to work with you all.

These artists now invite you to have a conversation, firstly with their remarkable creative works and then, with them as artists with so much to say and so much to offer to enrich our cultural life here in Queensland.Please take time to talk with the artists – they are all deeply immersed in their creative practice and each of them is, in various ways, demonstrating what the surrealist artist Rene Magritte articulated when he said, “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.”

Enjoy the work, most of it is for sale so why notbuy some and not only support these artists but also enliven and enhance your own environment. And please be aware that just inside the gallery is Sally Jones’ sculpture of Saint Hubert and, quite remarkably, today is the feast day of Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers, and now, of fruit saladers as well!!

Thank you. 

Chrys Zantis: Speech

Truly, thank you Kerryanne for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I must say in my experience this is very unusual and as artists we are generally side stepped and left feeling a little ho hum. But here you are so graciously giving the artists the opportunity to speak about how we feel tonight. We are very grateful to Flying Arts for how attending a simple workshop became a positive catalyst in our lives. So we thank you Elysha and John for being our first contact those months ago when we turned up for a week end workshop on writing exhibition proposals and to you Maya for your patience and expertise in bringing this show to fruition.

 From the very onset of coming to the workshop it was apparent we were all going to gain so much and that was because John firstly made us feel so comfortable. We are a mixture of emerging, mid career and established artist working in a range of media and genres. John immediately made connections and facilitated with wisdom, fun and compassion. What eventuated was a genuine warm connection between us coupled with a genuine respect and interest in each other’s practise. There was a sharing of ideas, knowledge and laughter. Yes we are all so different but together we make fruit salad.  So if we are the fruit salad John is the ice cream.

We were asked to write a proposal to pitch to a gallery of our choosing and send it into John for his appraisal. As you said Kerryanne more than half of us come from regional Queensland so my pitch was for Logan Art Gallery. This workshop was beneficial because quite honestly as an artist you just need to know if you’re

 on the right track. Soon after the positive appraisal of my proposal by John I received a surprise email from Elysha asking me if I would like to submit my proposal to QCA for an exhibition in 2018. I do admit to being stoked at the prospect of submitting my proposal to a venue I have aspired to showing my work. Since then I hear others received a similar email. We are very grateful to Flying Arts for the opportunity.

This exhibition is the outcome of the many synergetic connections between the artists and John.  Because of Flying Arts we have been left with new friends, inspiration and an invigoration joyous feeling.  You will be seeing a lot more from us.