Supporting healthy communities through arts programs

There are some evaluations, critical descriptions of programs and systematic reviews on the benefits to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from participation in arts programs. These include: improved physical and mental health and wellbeing; increased social inclusion and cohesion; some improvements in school retention and attitudes towards learning; increased validation of, and connection to, culture; improved social and cognitive skills; and some evidence of crime reduction.The effects of arts programs can be powerful and transformative. However, these effects tend to be indirect.For example, using these programs to reduce juvenile anti-social behaviour largely work through diversion: providing alternative safe opportunities to risk taking, maintenance of social status, as well as opportunities to build healthy relationships with Elders and links with culture.Art forms such as song, dance and painting, coupled with ceremony, are integral to cultural continuity and cultural maintenance in Indigenous Australian communities.

Stand and deliver

Stand and Deliver is an installation that incorporates elements of video, painting and drawing within the format of the lecture performance to pursue a subjective engagement with feminist histories.

Marking time: duration as subject (Tony Woods)

Tony Woods: Archive, edited by Andrew Gaynor and published locally in 2013, records the durability of the artist’s primary painting practice as will as his filmmkaing, a painting practice in which he has accrued a level of prestige over many years and changes of circumstance.

I-Face

The small format nature of the annual exhiition provides a oportunity to experiment formally, specifically with ways to entangle subject and space/environment. Supplementary to primamry research focus on Landscape and Consciousness

Indelible 4

The painting is one of a series that responds to the landscape of central Australia and extends on my interest in the interaction of matter and the emergence of new insights that is inherent to the creative process

Indelible 3

This painting responds to the landscape of Central Australia and extends on my enquiry into the interaction of matter and the emergence of new insights inherent to creative practice

Indelible 2

This painting responds to the landscape of Central Australia and extends on my enquiry into the interaction of matter and the emergence of new insights inherent to creative practice

Indelible 1

This painting responds to the landscape of Central Australia and extends on my enquiry into the interaction of matter and the emergence of new insights inherent to the creative process