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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-09-26 Daily Xml
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ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER VISUAL ARTS FESTIVAL

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (14:13): My question is directed to the Premier as the Minister for the Arts. Premier, could you inform the house about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Arts Festival announced today with Andrew MacKenzie, chief executive of BHP Billiton?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:13): I thank the honourable member for her question. South Australia has its newest artistic festival. This is a fantastic collaboration with BHP. It will be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Arts Festival. It will be held in spring and spring 2015 will be the first of these festivals. It is supported by the state government, the state Art Gallery and of course a range of our other cultural institutions, including the Museum, and a $4 million investment from BHP Billiton.

We know that art is a significant contributor to Aboriginal communities and we want to strengthen the future of Aboriginal artwork in that high end of the art world. This is unashamedly about excellence in Aboriginal artwork, and we have an ambitious goal here to make South Australia the international hub for Indigenous art in this country.

When we asked BHP Billiton last year to recommit itself to South Australia, we asked them to support a national Aboriginal cultural event as one of the initiatives that we sought. South Australia has been a leader in the appreciation of Aboriginal art. We were the first to display an Aboriginal artist in a state art collection in 1939 with the hanging of an Albert Namatjira painting.

The South Australian Museum houses the biggest anthropological Aboriginal artefact collection in the nation—indeed, probably anywhere in the world; it is an extraordinary collection. If you look at some of the drawings from Tindale you will see that, in the first contact with Aboriginal people when he was getting them to draw their images and symbols, they bear a striking resemblance to what we now understand today as classic Aboriginal art forms.

This is obviously a festival that has been brought together by BHP's commitment as a result of its ongoing presence here in South Australia. Along with its $540 million investment in rescoping the Olympic Dam expansion project, BHP has committed more than $110 million to scientific, environmental and social initiatives such as the one we are announcing today.

The winner of this year's Premier's NAIDOC award and the first Aboriginal curator appointed to the Art Gallery, Nici Cumpston, has been appointed as the inaugural artistic director for this important festival. The festival will feature a series of exhibitions; a curated Aboriginal art fair featuring recognised Aboriginal APY lands artists; other selected artists; a national symposium that brings together collectors, exhibitors, academics and art centres; and an Aboriginal trainee program.

This is an ambitious goal—to take the whole effort across Australia and say that South Australia should be the focus of it—but we think that we are entitled to reach for that goal, and we think this festival will not only make a massive contribution to our state, but also be massively beneficial for our Aboriginal communities, especially in the Far North of our state.

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