Posts tagged NTWA
National Trust of Australia (WA) Heritage Festival 2013
Title: A Patchwork of Memories
Artist: Caroline Telfer
Darkan artist Caroline Telfer uses her camera to document abandoned dwellingsin the Westv Arthur Shire. For Safe Keeping, she has selected some of these images to create a work that pieces together parts of this history in a patchwork.
Caro is not one hundred percent sure of the provenance of her Coolgardie safe. It may have come from her great aunt’s farm at Pingrup. (She was Clare Solly, a renowned singer in the 1920s and 30s and later lived alone on her farm until her just before her death in 1983.) If not, then it is one that her parents bought to replace it when they were increasing their collection of kitchen antiques when they owned the Imperial Inn at York (WA) in the 1990s. The manufacturer’s stencil on the top of the safe says “GEO. W. PRESTAGE & CO, MANUFACTURERS, MID JUNCTION”
Title: Sandalwood Country
Artist: Debbie Carmody
Debbie Carmody is an Anangu (Maralinga), Pila – Spinifex (Great Victorian Desert) and Noongar (South West) person. Sandalwood Country tells the story of her grandparents working to collect sandalwood. They slept in a bough shed which they built out of wood and branches. They cooked outside, and to keep their food fresh they used a Coolgardie safe which sat in the bough shed. It was her mother’s job to keep the water filled at the top of the Coolgardie Safe which played a very important part in the social and economic survival of my family.
The Coolgardie safe is inknown provenence but is usually on display in the Warden Finnerty’s Residence, a National trust property in Coolgardie. In 1895, this residence was built for Coolgardie’s first
Title: Asparagus (asparagoides) - A(Veil)Able From your Garden
Artist: Tania Spencer
Lake Grace artist Tania Spencer provided this poem to accompany or fascinating wire sculpture:
Asparagus (asparagoides) - A(veil)able from Your Garden
The lacy delicate exotic green foliage, attractive white flowers and plump red berries of Bridal Creeper enticing you to plant it in the garden.
It’s wiry resilience, establishing its stranglehold on the environment, twisting, tangling and climbing its way, further expanding the infestation.
Unseen, underground tubers and rhizomes link together, a dense mat endlessly multiplying. The seed dispersal by birds, foxes, and rabbits giving rise to new patches of these insidious weeds.
The creeper drapes and veils native plants.
Native plants, no longer there.
Safe Keeping, a medium for proliferation of information.
Title: Untitled
Artists: Dr Audrey Fernandes-Satar and Artif Satar
This installation pays homage to the camel drivers who came to work in WA from countries such as India. Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan. The artists nim was to remember and keepsafe the contribution of the camel drivers and their rle in establishing critical transport links, delivering mail and carrying water to the outback of Australia.
This artwork incoorporates two Coolgardie safes from private lenders: The first is loaned from Margaret Prickett, daughter of Ian Metcalf, one of the original group of concerned citizens who identified the need to promote heritage conservation in WA and established the National Trust of Australia (WA) in 1959. The family were Methodist Missionaries in Coolgardie before moving to Albany and eventually Perth. Margaret remembers that during the war they family used this safe as a fridge.
The second safe was donated by Rod Cunningham, who was interviewed by Lindy Wallace from the Oral historuy Association (WA) for this exhibition. Rod worked in the hardware industry for 46 years and remembers Coolgardie safes were sold up until the late 1940s. Safes were readily available to buy from the larger shops in the city Rafael’s and J&W Bateman in Hay Street, McClean Bros and Rigg in Murray Street and later Sandovers, Bairds and Boans.
Title: Unknown Stories
Artist: Trish Little
This is one of two Coolgardie safes that actually travelled down from Coolgardie for the exhibition. This one is on loan from Tex and Margaret Moore, who live in “Peter Pan,” the house recently featured in the ABCTV series “Who’s Been Sleeping in House.”
The artworks are as equally fascinating. Textile artist and Kalgoorlie resident Trish Little has placed objects with no known provenance, and no known story inside the safe. Like many Coolgardie safes, these objects have been found and ‘saved’ because of the beauty of their shape and texture, and for their possible stories that can only be imagined.
Title 1: Sea Change Organic Sculpture
Title 2 Title: Precious
Artist: Simon Venturi
Simon has made two pieces for Safe Keeping. The first uses amazing seaweed balls found on WA’s Myalup Beach, carefully installed in a one of the smallest Coolgardie safes in the exhibition, on loan from Wilkinson Homestead in the City of Gosnells. The second is a wall sculpture that reinforces the inherent natural beauty of these seaweed balls by presented them in a stunning grid like arrangement.
Title: You Don’t Know What you’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone (For Banksia Woodland)
Artist: Holly Story
Holly has transformed her Coolgardie Safe from Azalea Ley Homestead Museum in Cockburn with her artwork that pays homage to the delicate, diverse but seriously endangered ‘Banksia Woodland’ along the Swan coastal plain.
As Northampton Historical Society had kindly offered a Coolgardies safe to the Safe Keeping exhibition, it was even more of a treat to be offered a quilt from the Northampton Patchers and Stitchers to display with it.
Made by Elaine Mauger, this quilt is known as a “wagga,” the name given to an early type of Australian wool quilt, made from old clothes or tailors’ samples and backed with wheat or jute flour bags.
It was a treat that both Elaine and a group of ladies from the Northampton Patchers and Stitchers based in Chiverton House Museum made it down to see the exhibition. Hopefully, we will catch up again on October 12th when Northampton hosts their Airing of the Quilts festival.
Today City of Cockburn Mayor, Logan K. Howlett visited Safe Keeping, spending some time looking at the exhibition and keeping an eye out for the Coolgardie safe from Azelea Ley Homestead Museum, on generous loan from the Cockburn Historical Society. He even shared a couple of memories from of his crayfishing days up north, where a Coolgardie safe or two came in very handy.
Special thanks to Major Howlett for finding the time to catch the exhibition.
Title: Safe Keeping Series
Artist: Judith Roche
Judith series of small size canvases pays homage to the women who lived in the once thriving mill town of Jarrahdene, in WA’s south west. It is firring, therefore, that Judith’s delicate works are displayed carefully in a Coolgardie safe once owned by another pioneering women of the south west, Alice May Stanley. Alice was instrumental in developing an excellent herd of Guernsey cattle which produced some of the best milk in the district. Her safe has been passed down through the Stanley family, who have generously loaned it to the National Trust for the Safe Keeping exhibition.
