Country Art SA launches Reconciliation Week activities online

Reconciliation Australia’s theme for #NRW2020 – In this together – is now resonating in ways we could not have foreseen when they announced it last year, but it reminds us whether in a crisis or in reconciliation, we are all in this together. 

To connect us at a time when we need to keep to ourselves, Country Arts SA is launching a week of Reconciliation Week activities online. Each night at 7pm until May 31, Country Arts SA will profile on our Facebook page a regional South Australian Aboriginal artist. 

Reconciliation is a journey for all Australians – as individuals, families, communities, organisations and importantly as a nation. At the heart of this journey are relationships between the broader Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 

Cultural Programming Manager, Aboriginal and Reconciliation Programs, Samantha Yates said, “We all have a role to play when it comes to reconciliation, and in playing our part we collectively build relationships that value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, histories, cultures, and futures. These interviews highlight some of our great regional artists and gives us a snippet of what they are feeling at a time when we would normally all be together.” 

Schedule for Reconciliation Week regional South Australian Aboriginal artist profile 7pm:

• 26 May: Sorry Day – Mandy Brown (Adelaide Hills)

• 27 May: Michelle Jacquelin-Furr (Mt Gambier) 

• 28 May: Yvonne Koolmatrie (Riverland)

• 29 May: Elaine Crombie (Port Pirie)

• 30 May: Marika Davies (Port Augusta)

• 31 May: Ashley Pompey (Ceduna) 

We also commissioned a poem by Ali Cobby Eckermann:

Vase

it arrives as a shock when the world returns to kindness,
like a paintbrush dipped at midnight
and when touching a canvas only sunrise appears.
Friendship is best planted in a vase, when seeds
planted long ago no longer need to sleep. Ripples
of kindness can feel like a storm charging against
my aura, loud in their challenge for change. I am
lost without the shelter of sadness I have known
since birth, my canvas aglow with surprise as
rebirth appears, on the table an empty vase fills
with flora my grandmother grew.