Stewart and Tjingapa

My friends for over twenty five years have passed away.

We shall not see the like of them again.

Much love to them, and deepest sympathy to the families,

from Karliwalku and WAP.

The China shows delay

OK - so this is a preliminary post because I could not enter info from China due to their restrictions on this online format. So much has happened - 87,000 visitors at Shanghai Art Museum, 37,000 visitors at Nanjing Art Museum, and the Beijing opening was incredible. Really was a terrific response and only just opened. Now we are touring seven museums across China.

We have formed a great team of Australians and Chinese for each venue and the results, in their own small way, make history.

More soon a& best to all who have helped -

g.

Bryce & Cecil

Bryce and Cecil try out the wire. Bryce Grunden first worked with the WAP in 1993 recording the CD for the PICA/ S.H.Ervin Gallery shows we did then. He even worked in the PICA space with Tonya his wife. Then a big recording stint at Patjarr in the second half of '97. Now are together again and creating the 24 channel sound installation for the China touring show.

Cecil Bates is our first arts trainee and he is settling in. Cecil has worked with the arts project off and on for several months now and today was working with Bryce choosing the sounds of the town for the installation.

An important part of the soundscape we want to create are different registers of the wind - wind being the great constant in this environment. As well as recording the wind passing through different trees, we also want to record wind over a 8mm x 50 metre wire under tension. What you see above is the test in the back yard - a short wire over the pick ups on top of the camera tripod and a grasp of the very simple technical issues we were dealing with. The end of the week should see all the recording and most of the logging of sessions completed, and allow us to begin conceptualising the immersive installation itself. Fun.

Data Base

Over the last several weeks we have been working on the reconstruction of the Warburton Collection database to make it comprehensively functional and accessible and also, for the first time in 20 years, have all the work out in a way that could be viewed by Yarnangu as a collection they could see. To do this we worked with a Melbourne data consulting firm called Carbon Data Solutions to design entirely new software specifically tailored to our needs. We needed both simplicity and an extensive scope of applications within the software such as the creation of exhibition check lists, condition reports and venue check forms, but also the ability to add multi media data elements and substantial cross referencing.

The last entries of paintings establishing the collection as a whole were completed on Wednesday 18th by Natalie at ten minutes to five - next morning Nat flew out for a few weeks (back in October for the Felt project). Both Natalie and Carl had worked so hard to get this stage finished and with that it was the end of a crucial first part, the entries of the all the works in the painting collection as accession numbers. Each entry needed to be re-photographed, have dimensions taken and notes of inscriptions on the reverse of the works. This happened for over seven hundred paintings over a six week period. When we had visitors (see the blog elsewhere) during this time we adapted, but it made the work quite intense. And it is only the beginning, a sound and very functional foundation to add all the material we have to as we go along. There will be new categories for the glass, textile and paper collections as well.

It is unusual for us to give testimonials to commercial companies, but Scott Porter at Carbon Data has been really great to work with and given us an excellent asset. We had so much support during the development of the data base and the use of it, and this will now go on into the creation of an iPad application linked to the data base to do condition reporting in China as well as another for exhibition design in the space. Then, down the track a bit, is a website when the data base goes online for all Australians. Scott has been very generous with his time and really dedicated to getting the whole thing right - no problem was to much trouble or too difficult and we soon started calling him Mr. Wolf ...

So here's the website: www.carbondata.com.au - highly recommended.

Elizabeth Holland

Elizabeth Holland painting Minyma Kutjarra WAC 580 (L), her third work in three months made for the Warburton Collection in 2009 ( the others were Nyirri Nyirri WAC 579 (L) and Kungkarangkalpa at Kurruala WAC 581 (L). Elizabeth's first painting for the collection was

Wati Kutjarra at Talitjarra WAC 011 (L) 1991, shown below. Talitjarra Rock hole, aproximately 50 klms East of Warburton, is Elizabeth's birthplace.