A Quick Response Grant recipient, via the Regional Arts Fund, as managed by NT Regional Arts (through Darwin Community Arts).

Senior artist Raelene Kerinauia Lampuwatu and emerging artist Raylene Miller White travelled, with the art centre manager, from Milikapiti Community in the Tiwi Islands to Broome to represent Jilamara Arts and to expand their professional networks.

A group exhibition, TURNUWA AMINTIYA KIRIJIPUNI : BLACK & WHITE, featuring Jilamara Artists, was held at Short Street Gallery in April 2019. Jilamara Arts and Crafts received Regional Arts Funding to travel to the exhibition opening and undertake a series of visits and meetings in the region to represent Tiwi Island arts and culture and forge connections for future collaborations.

Raelene Kerinauia delivered a public welcome at the opening celebration in both Tiwi and English, further developing her skills in the public representation of Tiwi art and culture to curators, collectors and the broader audience. Attending this exhibition offered Raelene Kerinauia the chance to expand her interstate networks and her public profile as a senior Jilamara artist.

Raylene Miller was mentored by Raelene Kerinauia in the professional representation of Jilamara artwork and culture on a public exhibition platform. This was Raylene Miller's first public exhibition and she represented Jilamara by leading a screen-printing workshop, offering a chance to establish new networks and potential stockists for hand-printed Jilamara products.

The individual artists were pleased to visit Short Street Galleries 'Bungalows' site where they spent more time with the Short Street Gallery directors and were able to see the variety of artwork being created by artists working at art centres across Australia.

The artists also visited Broome Art Centre, Nagula Jarndu Design and Magabala Books, Australia's oldest independent Indigenous publishing house, to expand these networks and forge ongoing professional relationships in the arts sector.

Opportunities to promote Tiwi Culture on the mainland helps reinforce pride and support the value of strong Tiwi culture, art and community. Artwork sales in the gallery are often enhanced as a result of the artists attending the exhibition. Being a remote art centre with limited tourist visitation, group exhibitions in mainland galleries forms a significant part of general artwork sales and awareness of Jilamara artwork. Having representatives from the organisation on the ground for public celebrations such as the Short Street opening helps to strengthen and expand relationships with curators, gallerists and collectors for the continued development of such public outcomes, the number of connections and opportunities that have flowed on from the trip greatly exceeded the applicants expectations.

Impacts:

• Increase profile: this project created more awareness of Jilamara Arts and supports ongoing sales online.
• Increased confidence for artists: Raylene and Raelene continue to work closely together at Jilamara and are both highly motivated in their painting and screen printing. They would love further opportunities to travel to represent Jilamara artists at exhibitions.
• Broadened networks and ongoing relationships:
  • Jilamara is in conversation with Magabala Books about a potential visit from their CEO to discuss future publication opportunities as part of their Art book series. Senior Jilamara artists and the Jilamara Executive committee are currently considering how we might work toward making a Jilamara Art book in association with the publisher.
• Jilamara artists and managers reconnected with Nagula Jarndu artists and managers in Darwin at DAAF later in the year, where they continued conversations about ways to work together, share professional knowledge and experiences as well as organise the reciprocal visit of their artists to Jilamara in the near future.
• Broadening screen-printing networks and sharing technical and professional knowledge will assist in expanding the Jilamara printing studio and its capacity to employ more screen printers on the ground in the future.

Applicant location: Milikapiti, Tiwi Islands, NT

Project Location: Broome, WA

Amount of RAF support: $4,000

Total project cost: $10,195

https://jilamara.com/