CONTENTS 1 Acknowledgement of Country 2 Introduction 3 The Altitude Team 4-6 Essay - Dr Ann Finegan 7-10 Observatory Latitude 33° 42’ South Longitude 150° 29” East, Linden Observatory 11-15 Altitude - The Aviators, Kingsford Smith Memorial Park 16-19 Altitude - The Aviators, Melrose Park 21-22 Michaela Gleave with Amanda Cole and Warren Armstrong 23-24 Michael Petchkovsky 25-26 Graham Davis-King 27-28 Brad Allen-Waters with Jon Drummond 29 Brad Allen-Waters 30-31 Gail Priest The Altitude Project is supported by the NSW Government through 32-33 Chris Caines Create NSW 34-35 Rachel Peachey and Paul Mosig 36-37 Solange Kershaw and Damian Castaldi ISBN:978-0-6483350-0-9 38-39 Jacquelene Drinkall Publication date 20 May 2018 40-41 The History of the Sites 42-43 David Brazil - Emerging Artist in Residence © Miriam Williamson and Mahalya Middlemist 2018 44 Thank you The Altitude Team Miriam Williamson, Mahalya Middlemist, Caroline Wilde. www.thealtitudeproject.com www.vimeo.com/thealtitudeprojectbm The Altitude Project logo and branding design, image page 43 - Racket https://racket.net.au Catalogue layout - Caroline Wilde The organisers acknowledge that The Altitude Project took place on the traditional lands of the Darug and Gundungurra peoples and pay our respect to the Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge that our events were held on Aboriginal land and recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community. Chris Tobin performs a Smoking Ceremony 1 INTRODUCTION At Kingsford Smith Memorial Park, Katoomba we continued the project shifting our focus to the early celebrity aviators of the 1930’s and 40’s after Our vision for The Altitude Project encompassed the themes of aviation and whom the parks were named. We invited artists to consider the aviatrix Amy astronomy, drawing on histories of individual endeavour and the use of Johnson who, unlike her male counterparts, did not have a local park named technology to reach the skies throughout the 1920s-40s. A contemporary art to memorialises her achievements as a plot and as the first woman to fly project, The Altitude Project was held on three historically significant, yet solo to Australia. under-utilised, sites across the sandstone ridges of the high altitude World Heritage Area of the Blue Mountains NSW: Linden Observatory, Kingsford Our final event was at Melrose Park, North Katoomba where four selected Smith Memorial Park and Melrose Park. Linden Observatory was built by Ken artworks from the previous two events were reconfigured to target an Beames, the only amateur telescope-maker in Australia in the 1940s, while audience of youth and families. In addition to the art installations and the two parks were named after celebrity aviators, Charles Kingsford Smith performances, we invited a youth parkour and acrobatic group to run a and Jimmy Melrose. parkour workshop and give performances. As curators we invited the artists to produce site-specific works in response We worked closely with the Blue Mountains City Council and with to the histories, technologies and the science behind early aviation and community organisations to build new audiences for contemporary art and night-sky watching. It was rewarding to work with such high calibre artists, engage with youth, particularly at-risk youth from the local area. who were each able to respond to the nature of the sites, in their respective ways, with a variety of conceptually innovative works. We would like to thank all of our supporters, our funders, the local community and in particular the artists for their enduring enthusiasm and Eleven contemporary artists exhibited Zartworks across the three sites, commitment to the project. utilising a range of media including two newly composed, live sound art Mahalya Middlemist & Miriam Williamson - Curators performances by Chris Caines and Gail Priest; a sculpture, sand drawing and performance work by Graham Davis-King; a kinetic laser sculpture by Brad Allen-Waters in collaboration with a sound composition by Jon Drummond; an interactive 4 channel sound installation by Solange Kershaw and Damian Castaldi; a work utilising sensors and real-time processing to produce manipulated reality by Rachel Peachey and Paul Mosig; a multi-layered work involving a seance performance, video, sculpture and installation by Jacquelene Drinkall and a networked LED installation by Michael Petchkovsky. In addition, we invited an emerging local artist, David Brazil to undertake a residency and exhibit the resulting work alongside the professional artists at two of the venues. At Linden Observatory the theme of altitude was connected to the site’s recent history as an observatory, on the one hand, and its pre-colonial use by Aboriginal people, on the other. Many artists responded to the built-environment, the legacy of Ken Beames’ who, in his determined quest to view the stars, mined the sand on the site to make telescope lenses and built his own observatory, telescope, planetarium and workshops. 2 THE ALTITUDE TEAM Miriam Williamson is a sound and visual artist. Her work explores the Caroline Wilde is one of the small team of organisers for The Altitude themes: sense of place, familial ties and historical displacement. In addition Project. Caroline’s own practice is based in the craft of weaving that to her practice Miriam is an experienced arts administrator and specialist in incorporates found objects, industrial materials and technology. She weaves community based arts events. in the Saori method, which encourages freedom and creativity in weaving and sees irregularity as "the beauty with lack of intentions created by our She is Director of The SLAB, an Artist Run Initiative in Hazelbrook NSW and natural creativity”. She has exhibited work in Modern Art Project’s Magenta, Cultural Officer of Linden Observatory. Recent works include Bag Hut in North - West and The Club Edition and recently in the artist run initiative Cementa 17, and Seeds of Empire, Explorers: Narratives of Site (MAPBM The SLAB’s Postcards from Laika. 2017) at the Woodford Academy. Miriam is the recipient of an Aria Award for her collaboration with techno duo Itch-e and Scratch-e on dance track She runs her own business as an interior and graphic designer and has a Sweetness and Light and has received funding for projects from the background in architectural drafting. Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW and the Blue Mountains City Council City of the Arts Trust. Caroline was previously a member of the executive of the Blue Mountains Makers Association where she organised and curated artisan markets, and a http://theslab.net.au member of the executive of Modern Art Projects Board (MAP) where she was involved in the organisation of a number of contemporary art projects. Mahalya Middlemist has been a practicing professional artist and filmmaker for over thirty years, producing a range of screen-based works and installations. Her current research explores the connections between landscape, biography and memory. Her recent curatorial practice focusses on working with emerging and re-emerging artists, drawing on her extensive experience mentoring emerging artists during her previous career as an Academic at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. Concurrent with her role as Curator on The Altitude Project, Middlemist was Co-Curator of Explorers: Narratives of Site (MAPBM 2017) an exhibition of 15 contemporary visual artists at the historic Woodford Academy in the Blue Mountains. Her work has been in many festivals, galleries and broadcasts both in Australia and internationally. The production of her work has been supported through grants including from Create NSW, Screen Australia and The Australia Council for the Arts. 3 Dr Ann Finegan reflects on the first two of use by indigenous peoples. events of The Altitude Project: For The Altitude Project Wiradjuri and Ngiyampaa artist and activist, Graham Davis-King was invited to reactivate the indigenous relationship to the site, presenting a conversation and performance piece in which he staked out an THE ALTITUDE PROJECT Aboriginal astronomical star chart on the rocky ground adjacent to the observatory. This sophisticated traditional knowledge system can map the For The Altitude Project curators Miriam Williamson and Mahalya Middlemist exact time and place of the seasons through charting the progress of the have conceptually taken to the skies, engaging a group of sound and ‘dark emu’ and other dark sky formations within the constellations against installation artists to explore the notion of ‘altitude’ in many permutations local geological formations. Some seven months earlier, at Cementa_17 over a number of remarkable, if somewhat undervalued, Blue Mountains Contemporary Arts Festival, Davis-King had similarly traced the trajectory of locations: Linden Observatory, Kingsford-Smith Memorial Park and Melrose the ‘dark emu’, its head only just appearing in the night skies, in a large sand Park. In restoring cultural value to these quieter, somewhat hidden, and more drawing. At the time of The Altitude Project, the body would be more fully discreet sites and histories, The Altitude Project takes a turn from the in view. dominant master narratives of tourism and its major sites, Scenic World and the Three Sisters. As such, The Altitude Project could be said to embrace A Galaxy of Suns, by Michaela Gleave, in collaboration with Warren what Deleuze and Guattari have described as ‘minor literatures’: Armstrong and Amanda Cole, complemented Davis-King’s performance- artist-activated narratives that eschew the familiar discourses of the installation with a unique cinematic soundscape that directly responds to majority to explore radical potentials and creative becomings of alternative the site and the constellations overhead. This is achieved through a sites. complex data-gathering interface that maps sonic elements onto a computer generated astronomical chart based on exact geographical locations. The Observatory Latitude 33 42’ Longitude 150 29” East resulting sound score thus intimately connects time and place through a Linden Observatory, Linden , NSW relationship to the stars.