Ridiculous Cheese Boards

Angharad Wynne-Jones

In the decade beginning in 2010 Arts House was at the centre of an incredible time of experimentation and creativity. We hosted three Dance Massives, birthed Festival of Live Art (2 editions), began the 6 year Refuge journey (led by artists, exploring the role of arts and culture in response to climate change), tested our appetites for Going Nowhere – an international festival with no-one getting on a plane. All this alongside 2 annual seasons with 6-8 presentations in each season, many of them in partnership with the likes of Yirramboi, Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne Festival (as it was then), Performance Space and PS122 in New York. We collaborated with international artists, companies, curators and festivals, supported research and development with 20 plus culture labs each year, convened international art conferences (Water Futures), went regional with environmental art camps TIME PLACE SPACE, got seriously social with Supper Clubs, hosted international artists and greenies in residence, created reading rooms, heaps of public talks, shared the archives, and put on really great parties with ridiculous cheese boards. In that ever adaptable Town Hall and its’ nooks and crannies. All of it filled to the brim with stubbornly curious and generous artists supported by kick ass producers and designers, skilled technicians and communicators and partners and funders who knew a good thing when they saw it. And all made possible under the searingly incisive leadership of Jane Crawley at the City of Melbourne and the brilliant strategic fierceness of Catherine Jones as GM. And actual financial resources. We still complained. But compared to now? We were in clover.

So knowing I can’t do the artists and their practices justice in 800 words, nor properly address the bias and barriers, the oversights and the exclusions I perpetuated, I’ve taken a different approach – an account of recent conversations I had over the last 24 hours with three dear friends, who I first met at Arts House.

I began with a cuppa and biscuit with Lorna Hannan, in her 90’s now. We talked about the solemnity she is finding in the everyday actions, things she barely noticed previously, but that now fill her with awe. Finding the toothpaste top. She said she wasn’t going out with a whimper. That there were still stories and songs to sing. That kindness was being open to people and things that are different to us. That most works of art are a universal invitation to whoever comes across them. They both define and ignore community. (For those that know Lorna, that’s a pretty typical mic drop one liner.) And how Refuge was the most impactful creative collective adventure either of us had in our lives. How not knowing the answers was foundational. How holding space for confusion was critical.

That evening Jen Rae called in from Belem from COP30 where they were repping Centre for Reworlding and Creative Climate. They were planning to join a flotilla of 200 boats sailing down the Amazon to try to make the fuckers listen. (Surely kindness doesn’t have to extend to the fossil fuellers? But if it did…oh my… what would that look like?). The Pavilions are filled with people of all ages fighting for their futures. Jen sent me the link to Gabor Mate’s Hold On To Your Kids. Gabor says that since the 50’s and exponential rise of extractive capitalism and the social media algorithms it has spawned, people now engage more with their peers than intergenerationally. And look where that’s landed us.

The next morning Samara Hersch and her 4 month old daughter Frida and I went for walk at the edge of the Northcote golf course and crossed the Merri Creek to Ceres. COVID lockdowns have for ever changed the way I feel when I walk along the creeks of Naarm. I’d seen Lynette Wallworth’s stunning documentary, The Edge of Living, about dying. And Samara and I talked about the right to mysticism, which Lynette advocates for, to reconnect with what all our ancestors knew that there are other realms beyond and inside the tangible here and now. Samara said she felt at ease with that connection, and I’m inspired to think more deeply about my responsibility to learn about the culture, the language and land practices of my Welsh ancestors and the privilege of that possibility. And what /how /if it could be of material benefit to the Wurundjeri WoiWurrung People on whose land I now live.

Samara is navigating parenthood and her international artistic practice. She has a culture lab coming up at Arts House and is wondering about how or if the conditions of flow will occur, when Frida only has eyes for her. Arts House will support her process with active care and consideration of that I am sure. Some things change for the better.

Three convos with three exceptional artists in 24 hours. Being thoughtful, challenging, acerbic, funny, tender and open to the mystery, manifesting a culture I am so grateful to be part of.

So if you are an artist, a designer, a producer, a technician, a communicator thank you.

Thank you for consistently looking and listening deeply, for sitting in confusion and offering complexity and embodied knowledge.

And if you aren’t an artist, I suggest you make friends with one or ideally many. Or maybe become one?

Artists will show us what we need to know. They can be relied upon. And together we won’t give up.
 

Angharad Wynne-Jones

With thanks to the learning communities of Feral MBA, Queer Permacultures, Co Culture Fieldwork and the Creative Climate consortium and my friends and logical and biological family from whom I am learning everyday.

And to Arts House for being there. I trust you.

Image Credit : James Henry
Image Description: Two people carry a large wooden board, covered in platters of food and greenery. People are sitting on the floor in the background, mid-conversation with each other.