AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL GRANTS

 

Memetica’s Support materials for

Scraps: Creative development

Content:

SCRAPS – Further information (concept sketch)
EXISTING WORK
SCRAPS – Creative Development: Artists Bios
SCRAPS – Creative Development: Support Letters

 

 

SCRAPS – Further information (concept sketch)

:: Scraps installation – Artist impression
Scraps sculptural installation will be suspended of the ground – from the ceiling or between buildings. Visitors will enjoy the colorful display from the outside, and can take the experience further by inserting their heads into the sculptures to experience an immense expanse of space and colours. The sculptures will be simple and abstract or complex and figurative depending on the participant’s design and intentions.

 

About Scraps

Scraps is a community art project that combines playful giant inflatable sculpture making workshops with entertaining colloquial language learning and cultural immersion. The final outcome is a public exhibition of collective work with strong artistic merit.

Scraps is a two-day creative workshop for community participants, invited to design and create immense inflatable sculptures from salvaged materials. They will learn inflatable design, fabrication, and presentation. The twist: they will do so under the guidance of a core team of artists, facilitators and experienced sewers speaking only in their mother-tongue Italian. As participants learn about and create inflatable sculptures, they also learn scraps of Italian language, in a playful, colloquial and communal process, supported along the way by short language ‘lessons’ and a cumulative series of instructional ‘flashcards’ written and drawn onto offcut scraps of fabric. Cultural immersion and community atmosphere will be amplified by shared Italian meals and Italian music.

The final outcome is a public exhibition or installation, suited to arts or community festivals/events. The inflatable sculptures have strong aesthetic value – large-scale, brightly coloured, and visually and tactilely engaging – and will engage an audience beyond workshop participants. The exhibition would also showcase the artefacts of making – the scraps of fabric turned into linguistic flashcards.

 

This project has been developed by Italian-born Lead Artist Daniele Poidomani and Lead Facilitator Rosella Bataglia, who teaches community cooking courses in Italian. After the first iteration of this project in Italian, the intended extension to deliver the project in other languages, ideally languages relevant to the local community. Lead Artist Daniele Poidomani will work with lead facilitators (experienced CALD artists, community leaders or teachers) and sewers from different language groups. The various Scraps workshops would come together in a joint exhibition – demonstrating how different cultural infusion impacts creative outputs; and perhaps also similarity across cultures.

 

Project outcomes / objectives

  • Creative, linguistic and community outcomes for participants, including:
    • New creative and design skills, including specialist skill in inflatable creation, facilitated through 12-14 hours collaboration with an experienced artist.
    • New or increased language skills and conversational ability, facilitated by someone with experience in language teaching.
    • Increased cultural awareness, facilitated through cultural immersion
    • New community relationships facilitated by a two-day collaborative experience, including relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds
  • Public exhibition of collective artwork with strong artistic merit.
  • Creative stimulation for public exhibition audience, and exposure to an uncommon art form
  • Employment of two CALD artistic/community leaders (at minimum) as well as three community members (sewers), with potential for further volunteer engagement
  • Activation of venue through a two-day weekend product; plus public exhibition
  • Connection with cross-cultural community members

 

EXISTING WORK

 

 

::Tendon – external and internal
Tendon is an example of large scale inflatable installation. Tendon can be visited from the inside offering a surprising vibrant kaleidoscopic vision of colour unexpected from the outside. Tendon demonstrates the engaging aesthetics that can be achieved with inflatable installations. Scraps sculptures, while large, will be smaller than Tendon and self-contained, rather than designed around an exiting structure.

 

 

::Appendicitus – external and internal
Appendicitus was a project created in 2015 with the Village Festival in North Fitzroy Edinburgh Gardens, and demonstrates Memetica’s history of practice with large scale inflatable structures and participatory installation: the protruding appendix shapes were created by audience members. Facilitated by Daniele, visitors designed and created new shapes that were immediately added to the main body of the sculpture providing a constant, cumulative growth of the installation made by the audience themselves.

 

 

 

:: The Naming
The Naming was a project conceived by Daniele Poidomani for The Tablelands Folk Festival 2019. In collaboration and consultation with local indigenous elders, Memetica intervened on the territory to promote local indigenous culture at the Festival. Honoring the International Year of Native Languages, Memetica worked with local community members to create and install street signage written in Ydinji language and referring to culturally relevant sites and historical places. It also created a giant character to perform around the theme and attract attention to the project. The Naming demonstrates Memetica’s interest in and focus on language and cultural sharing, a key theme being explored by Scraps, as well as Memetica’s practice of involving communities in the making and delivery of artwork.

 

 

:: For Want of a Better Word, Maribyrnong 2020
For Want of a Better Word is a new project being delivered wholly online during May and June 2020.  The project reflects on language, and the unique and poignant words that exist across cultures. The project, being developed with Daniele’s local Maribyrnong community, is evidence of Memetica’s increasing focus on both local community art projects and linguistic explorations.(https://www.forwantofabetterword.com)

 

SCRAPS – Creative Development: Artists Bios

Collated document: Daniele Poidomani + Rosella Battaglia + James Wilkinson
Please, click on document to scroll through pages

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SCRAPS – Creative Development: Support Letters

Collated document: Footscray Community Art Centre + Hastings Community House
Please, click on document to scroll through pages

[pdf-embedder url=”https://memetica.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Memetica_Scraps_Support-Letters-FCAC-Hastings-Community-House-Brigida-Russo.pdf” title=”Memetica_Scraps_Support Letters – FCAC, Hastings Community House, Brigida Russo”]

 

Collated document
Please, click on document to scroll through pages

[pdf-embedder url=”https://memetica.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Memetica_Scraps_Community-Member-Support.pdf” title=”Memetica_Scraps_Community Member Support”]