PUBLIC - Art in the City 9.4.1 - Attachment 003 Sponsorship Report for the City of Vincent ‘800 Hours’ by 2501, 2014. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor. 9.4.1 - Attachment 003 PUBLIC - Art in the City The inaugural PUBLIC – Art in the City event was a resounding success: in collaboration with our partners, FORM delivered 35 wall-based public artworks for the city over 14 exciting days. In addition to these world-class artworks, PUBLIC transformed the city with temporary installations, digital projections, exhibitions, workshop programming and street parties, to truly celebrate art as a public good. PUBLIC: KEY ACHIEVEMENTS • PUBLIC – Art in the City: • Artist residencies, workshop programming and a laneway event in the City of Vincent: January-April, 2014 • Dear William, a dedication to William Street, an exhibition of urban art, temporary installation, performance and photography celebrating the history and diversity of William Street • 35 public artworks across Perth and Northbridge • 45 local, national and international artist engaged over the 2 week period • Nasty Goreng exhibition by Yok and Sheryo at Turner Galleries: 21 March-19 April, 2014 • PUBLIC Salon, an exhibition of work by PUBLIC artists at FORM Gallery • PUBLIC House, 2 days of events in Wolf Lane including temporary installations, a pop-up bar, DJs and street food from the local businesses • PUBLIC – Art in the Pilbara: Delivery of urban art in the unique landscape of the Pilbara • PUBLIC – 100 Hampton Road: Delivery of transformative artworks at Foundation Housing’s100 Hampton Road lodging house in Fremantle (continuing project) Sheryo (left) and The Yok (right) working on their mural at Turner Galleries, April, 2014. Photograph by David Dare Parker. 9.4.1 - Attachment 003 PUBLIC - Art in the City DELIVERABLES FOR THE CITY OF VINCENT PUBLIC - Art in the City resulted in numerous high quality deliverables for the City of Vincent, its residents and businesses, and the broader Perth community. These included: • 5 artist residencies directly engaging the local community, including a 2-month residency by a leading international photographer • The development and display of 13 artworks directly engaging with the City of Vincent as a site, including 4 permanent wall murals along William Street that add ongoing vibrancy to the precinct, and would have cost in excess of $40,000 to commission independently • The Dear William exhibition, which showed in two configurations over a month- long period for a diverse audience • Workshop programming directly engaging at-risk young people, delivered in collaboration with The Salvation Army Crossroads Programme • The engagement of numerous community members and local businesses as collaborators in the production of artworks, for the provision of artwork display locations, and as audiences for exhibition programming and artists’ talks (outlined in detail, below) • Showcasing of local businesses through Dear William programming and opening night event • Substantial media coverage, (outlined below) • Wide-reaching acknowledgment for the City as a key sponsor over PUBLIC on all printed and online promotional material including tens of thousands of printed invitations and maps, e-invitations, FORM’s website and verbally, via speeches and opening night addresses during the project run, and via logo placement on the Dear William signage, displayed on 12 sites along William and Newcastle Streets • A private event for local residents and PUBLIC artists in the Moir/Lake Street laneway that allowed for intimate engagement between the Vincent Community and the international artists, in addition to permanent laneway murals, tranforming a badly vandalised site Jaz working on his mural at Turner Galleries, April, 2014. Photograph by David Dare Parker. 9.4.1 - Attachment 003 PUBLIC - Art in the City DEAR WILLIAM, A DEDICATION TO WILLIAM STREET In 2013 the City of Vincent commissioned FORM to curate a programme of artists’ residencies focused on central William Street, as it runs through the City of Vincent (north of Newcastle Street), as part of FORM’s PUBLIC festival of street, mural, and public art, scheduled for April, 2014. FORM invited a number of local and international artists to particiapte, whose practices focus upon community engagement, in particular working with ethnic and community groups to create collaborative works that reflect their identity. The artists spent early 2014 developing artworks that then exhibited in selected locations along William and Newcastle Streets as a walking tour in April, 2014, as the closing event for PUBLIC. These Vincent-funded residencies were complemented by additional works from the broader PUBLIC programme that similarly reflected the diversity of the William Street precinct, including large-scale murals and associated community programming. Following the closure of the initial site-based exhibition, selected works were re-exhibited at the project’s Newcastle Street pop-up artist studio and gallery in early May, 2014. KEY DATES • Artists’ residencies: January-March, 2014 • Nasty Gorgeng exhibition by the Yok and Sheryo at Turner Galleries: 21 March-19 April, 2014 • Exhibition preview: Saturday 12 April, 2014 • Exhibition opening and launch of map/walking tour: Sunday 13 April, 2014 • Exhibition open along William and Newcastle Streets: 14-23 April, 2014 • Re-hang of selected works at pop-up exhibition space: 30 April-11 May, 2014 • Artist’s talks: 6-8 pm, Friday 2 May, 2014 Untitled performance by Casey Ayres in collaboration with the Chinese Community Centre Lion Dance Troupe, March, 2014. Photograph c/o the Artist. 9.4.1 - Attachment 003 PUBLIC - Art in the City DEAR WILLIAM, A DEDICATION TO WILLIAM STREET: PARTICIPATING ARTISTS ABDUL ABDULLAH (PERTH, AUSTRALIA) @ The Moon Café, 323 William Street/206 Newcastle Street Erected during the early 1930s, this iconic Art Deco building has had numerous uses over the past eight decades. It was home to the Blue Room, a popular dance venue amongst Northbridge’s European immigrant communities from the 1930s-1950s; in the latter part of this era it also housed a roller-skating rink on its first floor. During the later 1950s the building was the Midland Bus Co. Depot. Since 1991 it has housed iconic late-night cafe, The Moon. Abdul Abdullah explores the cultural anxiety and displacement experienced by young Muslims in Australia, and by extension his work has the ability to speak to all minority groups. His work for Dear William aggressively camped upon the stereotypes and paranoia associated with Muslim identity in post-9/11 Western culture. In the work he dons a rubber mask from the 2001 film of Planet of the Apes, and wears clothing popularly associated with dissenting Muslim youth in the consciousness of contemporary Western society, via media coverage of the 2011 London riots. The work’s aggressive imagery made it difficult to place, and two William Street businesses refused to exhibit it before The Moon agreed to do so. The artist himself formerly worked as a delivery boy for Dominos Pizza, previously located next to The Moon, making the cafe a particularly appropriate site to reference his own personal links to the precinct. By exploring ideas concerning identity in terms of ‘otherness’ I hope to question adversarial attitudes that potentially hinder or diminish opportunities for intercultural dialogue. This project will be an extension of previous bodies of work that have looked specifically at the Muslim experience in Australia...at the forefront of my methods and outcome will be an earnest and sincere engagement with the issues facing the communities that exist and have existed in the [William Street] area. Abdul Abdullah, artist’s statement, December, 2013 Lightbox installation by Abdul Abdullah at The Moon Cafe, April, 2014. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor. 9.4.1 - Attachment 003 “…we looked at quite a few different sites…in the end, that site PUBLIC - Art in the City turned out the best and the most relevant, largely because it was on the north wall of the Mosque...[some of my previous works] had Arabic titles but this one I wanted to make a bit more universal, so as to remove it from being specifically a ‘Muslim thing’ - that’s sort of where it began, but...the idea of ABDUL-RAHMAN ABDULLAH (PERTH, AUSTRALIA) the moon acting as a timepiece, acting as a calendar, is much @ Perth Mosque, 427 William Street more universal than one cultural background, but planting it on the Mosque just made it a lot more relevant, I mean I did The construction of Perth Mosque in 1905 was a significant achievement spend a fair bit of time as a kid at that Mosque…” for Western Australia’s small Muslim community during an era of marked hostility toward ‘non-white’ Australians. Following a failed plea to State Abdul-Rahman Abdullah Government In 1895 for a land grant (like those already awarded to churches and synagogues), they looked to their own resources, inspired by the self-funded construction of Adelaide Mosque in 1890. “Fundraisers in Western Australia toured the goldfields or the country places where cameleers and hawkers operated, calling on their brother Muslims to rally and donate some of their hard-earned saving” (Australian National Archives, 2013). Initially the ‘Perth Mohammedan Mosque’, the building was designed by Pakistani immigrant Din Mohammed and its construction linked to high-profile members of Perth’s formative Muslim community. For Dear William, local artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah created a projection of the moon for the north-facing wall of the Mosque’s recent shop- front extension. Reflecting the significance of lunar cycles to numerous religions, the work functioned to both situate itself firmly within the Islamic tradition while simultaneously opening out in a gesture of inclusivity. It aptly reflected the cultural mix of the William Street precinct, which alongside the Mosque has housed two synagogues, a Vietnamese-Buddhist temple and places of worship for the Salvation Army and Chinese communities. [My Dear William work] looks at the relevance of lunar cycles as a common basis of the Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu religious calendars.