CREATION’s Influence…

Good afternoon everyone, welcome to your Friday blog for The Wrapped Trees Project! It’s groovy to be with you again! I hope you’ve had a powerful week!

Intersectional environmentalism rocks! Get a big cup of something absolutely delicious and settle in! I have a most very fabulous treat for you! There’s lots to see and hear today! I’m going to share with you some of the work of Deborah Kelly (b.1962), who’s practice has significant influence upon mine. We’re going to trace along some of the evolution of her CREATION project and then talk about some elements of my practice, influenced by it. Take a look at the CREATION site here: https://www.creationtheproject.com/, accessed: 03.05.2024. I’m going to do my best to stay focused on just a few key elements of the CREATION project that influence my work.

Deborah describes CREATION as “… queer, insurrectionary, science fiction, climate change religion…”, which immediately invites us into its world. At CREATION’s heart is a series of liturgy, written by SJ Norman, https://nga.gov.au/stories-ideas/sj-norman/, Liturgy of the Saprophyte, https://www.creationtheproject.com/liturgy, commissioned by Deborah. In her interdisciplinary approach to bringing us a new religion, keep your eye out for some of CREATION’s  elements, such as collaboration, diversity, representation, activism and feminism. As we wander and wonder through CREATION, I hope you’ll get to see other components of our Wrapped Trees Project, that include ceremony, using already existing cultural protocols, rituals… I guess most importantly to my work and our project, note how powerfully and gently, care and relationship are woven throughout CREATION. Below is a snapshot of some of the CREATION members meeting via Zoom, during covid lockdown to give you just a hint of the number of people who make CREATION, an art project that welcomes and holds you within its religion. And rather than torture you with my inadequate command of the English language by describing this project, I’d like you to hear it from the lead artist herself, in interview at the Sydney Opera House in 2022. 

WATCH: ABC Arts, 2023, Religion you can dance to | Art Works, Deborah Kelly, CREATION, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbr4a4wzb9o, accessed:03.05.2024.

My experiences of CREATION as a large-scale, long-term project are those in which Deborah Kelly gathers people from all parts of life, holds us in and through both process and outcome as we work together to bring our version of it alive. Deborah seems to have some kind of magic eye, secret formula or secret recipe for bringing together beautiful, wide mixes of people and skills for learning and sharing, shepherding and leading us, mostly by her example, to building a strong sense of community within the work itself. A CREATION family. Part of the core of this family is nurtured and driven by collaborations with many moving parts and cross-disciplinary collaborators, at its heart, Musical Director and Composer Lex Lindsay,  https://soundcloud.com/lex-lindsay, Su Goldfish Production Manager, https://www.sugoldfish.com/, Kit Spencer Choir Captain, https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-spencer-257a35269/?originalSubdomain=au, with performers, choir, costume designers, animators, poets, prayer, ritual, song as well as collage, making with community empowerment and engagement. 

CREATION seems to continue to adapt and unfold at each iteration like a revolutionary evolving religion and a religious, evolving revolution at the same time. Although Deborah hasn’t given me her secret recipe for gathering all these amazing people and skills together, within a project thankfully, I have had the privilege of being part of CREATION a few times in the last two years and I think I’ve been  observant, hyper-vigilant even.  Participating in and witnessing the processes that revitalise CREATION each time, there are a plethora of elements that Deborah and collaborators seem to set free to intersect and interact at once. In relation to our project, the things I’ve started to learn about include, that the foundations must be built with people, communities, diversity with a common goal of leaving people in a better condition than when we arrived. Part of working with, in and for the CREATION project seems to be that care, people, process and outcome are equally important. In our project, we’d be talking about these within co-care.

Images: Deborah Kelly, 2024, Song Ceremony, EDGE: Inner West, Biennale of Sydney, Petersham Town Hall, Gadigal Land, accessed: 03.05.2024.

WATCH: Wellcome Collection, 2021, No Human Being is Illegal (In All Our Glory) by Deborah Kelly | The power of protest in art,   (Hannah Tyler talks about the Being Human exhibition), Distribution: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5yf-QfuEME, accessed: 02.05.2024.

Linking retro-accountability with another key element of CREATION that influences my creative work is that, CREATION is a practical, liveable religion. I’m not suggesting The Wrapped Trees become a religion but our project also options for practical, real life and achievable goals. Bear with me while I extend this to possibilities of cultural revitalisation. Our project proposes Aboriginal cultural revitalisation, and activism, and sharing knowledge in very practical terms. I’ve blogged about implementing protocols of yarning and Yarning Circles within our modern world as elements for approaching our relationships with more compassion and empathy. Our project also hopes to  support non-Aboriginal Australia to engage more deeply within Aboriginal ceremonies such as providing a Response to a Welcome to  Country, whereby visitors seek permission to be on that Country and undertake to not harm but Care for Country and kin during their visit. To try to sum just these few examples of how CREATION’s processes influence my work and particularly our project, is here, only a snippet. However, I’m going to try. Of these few sentences I have shared with you today some of the values I hold for The Wrapped Trees Project, are in part, practical approaches to collaborating across and with cultures, abilities, genders, and disciplines,  leading with vulnerability, leaving no-one behind and empowering communities through revitalising Aboriginal cultural knowledge and practices with a common goal for saving the only earth we live on and treat each other with compassion, urgently and gently.

I hope today’s blog has been of some interest to you and that you enjoy your weekend. I’ll sign off by leaving you with some extra videos of Deborah Kelly’s creative practice and her captures of choir members in all their regalia for CREATION’s Song Ceremony at Petersham Town Hall, for EDGE – Inner West as part of this year’s Biennale of Sydney. 

Thankyou for spending your time with the Trees and me. Have a fabulous week and look after each other!

Juundaal & The Trees

WATCH: AMCI, The Gods of Tiny Things, 2022,  Curator, Chelsey O’Brian conversation with Deborah Kelly, Distribution: YouTube The Gods of Tiny Things: In Conversation with Deborah Kelly, https://www.acmi.net.au/works/119198–the-gods-of-tiny-things/, accessed; 02.05.2024.

WATCH: Wellcome Collection, 2021, No Human Being is Illegal (In All Our Glory) by Deborah Kelly | The power of protest in art,   (Hannah Tyler talks about the Being Human exhibition), Distribution: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5yf-QfuEME, accessed: 02.05.2024.

WATCH: Artful Dodgers Studios, 2016, Spectrum of Practice with Deborah Kelly, Distribution YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZct95evjSE, accessed: 03.05.2024. Brief description YouTube::1,251 views  6 Sept 2016 – Spectrum of Practice is an ongoing community arts framework embedding professional practice development within high quality artistic outcomes. In June and July 2016, Artful Dodgers partnered with Signal and artist Deborah Kelly to deliver 5 collage making workshops. Young artists learned the ins and outs of collage making to each create a large composition from vintage magazines and materials. The final collage artworks were displayed as large banners that hung down Melbourne’s Swanston and Flinders Streets in September 2016. This project was made possible by support from the City of Melbourne. Artful Dodgers Studios is a program of the Jesuit Social Services.

WATCH: Kelly, Deborah & Goldfish Su, 2024, Solace: first Marrickville sing through, (CREATION rehearsals: March 2024) https://vimeo.com/911949566, accessed: 03.05.2024.

References & More to Watch:

ABC Arts, 2023, Religion you can dance to/ Art Works, Deborah Kelly, CREATION, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbr4a4wzb9o, accessed:03.05.2024.

AMCI, The Gods of Tiny Things, 2022,  Curator, Chelsey O’Brian conversation with Deborah Kelly, Distribution: YouTube The Gods of Tiny Things: In Conversation with Deborah Kelly, https://www.acmi.net.au/works/119198–the-gods-of-tiny-things/, accessed; 02.05.2024.

Arrow Collective, 2022, creation | art assembly, beautiful so deeply moving, Deborah Kelly, Lex Lindsay + Collaborators, https://www.arrowcollective.org/deborah-kelly-lex-lindsay-collaborators-2022, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Artful Dodgers Studios, 2016, Spectrum of Practice with Deborah Kelly, Distribution YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZct95evjSE, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2021, In the Frame: Deborah Kelly & Bhenji Ra on queer art & community, (in conversation with Eddie Ayres, broadcaster & musician, on facilitating collaborative art-making to…support communities.. “Rise, grow and flourish”, Distribution: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV9hgzI1-fY, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Goldfish, Su, website:https://www.sugoldfish.com/. 

Headlands Centre for the Arts, Artist in Residence, 2020 & 2023, SJ Norman, https://www.headlands.org/artist/s-j-norman/, https://www.instagram.com/vitreous_lustre/?hl=en, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Hartshorn, Aidan, 2022, First Nations: SJ Norman, National Gallery Australia, https://nga.gov.au/stories-ideas/sj-norman/, accessed: 01-03.05.2024.

LISTEN: Kelly, Deborah & Goldfish Su, 2024, Solace: Marrickville first sing through, https://vimeo.com/911949566, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Kelly, Deborah, https://www.creationtheproject.com/poetry-song, accessed 01-03.05.2024.

Kelly, Deborah, 2020, How to make a collage portrait with Deborah Kelly, Su Goldfish: Cinematography & Sound, Art Gallery of New South Wales, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/art/watch-listen-read/watch/935/, accessed: 01.05.2024.

Kelly, Deborah & Goldfish Su, 2024, Solace: first Marrickville sing through, (CREATION rehearsals: March 2024) https://vimeo.com/911949566, accessed: 03.05.2024.

LISTEN: Lindsay, Lex, Distribution: Soundcloud,  https://soundcloud.com/lex-lindsay, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Maher, Harriet, 2016, Looking Back: Contemporary Feminist Art in Australia & New Zealand, Paper, Minerva-access, University of Melbourne, https://rest.neptune-prod.its.unimelb.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/01fcd007-d8f3-5f64-b138-bfa6d0197169/content, accessed: 01.05.2024.

Mutual Art, https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Deborah-Kelly/B90A94B3B00847CE/Biography, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Norman, SJ, 2019,  Author: Liturgy of the Saprophyte, Liturgy Card Images: Deborah Kelly for CREATION, https://thewrappedtreesproject.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/54660-ba67fc_40a31dc0bfb3440aa6fde0f350b199c3mv2.jpg, https://www.creationtheproject.com/church-merch, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Pierce, Julianne, 2019, Deborah Kelly: CREATION: Sustenance Workshop, Artlink, Vol.39, Iss.4, December 2019, p.58-61, ISSN: 0727-1239, https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.798167661167180, accessed: 01.05.2024.

Spencer, Performer & Choir Captain, Kit is a musician, artist and teacher, whose work focuses on music making as experimentation, performance-oriented practice, and accessibility, Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-spencer-257a35269/?originalSubdomain=au Instagram: @thekitanator3000, https://www.creationtheproject.com/about, accessed: 03.05,2024.

Sydney Opera House, 2022, All About Women, https://web.archive.org/web/20221104041704/https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/content/soh/events/whats-on/all-about-women/2022/creation.htm,  https://web.archive.org/web/20221101065111/https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/, accessed: 03.05.2024.

Wellcome Collection, 2021, No Human Being is Illegal (In All Our Glory) by Deborah Kelly | The power of protest in art,   (Hannah Tyler talks about the Being Human exhibition), Distribution: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5yf-QfuEME, accessed: 02.05.2024.

Juundaal & The Trees.