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2013
12 January 2013
FOR THE DIARY
NSW
Mudgee
Kandos, in the Mudgee region, is hosting its inaugural biennial contemporary arts festival, Cementa_13. Featuring 40 artists over four days, the program includes artist-guided tours, sound and video installations, exhibitions, performances and film nights as well as art-themed hikes, bike rides and food and wine events. From February 1-4. See cementa13.com1 .
2017
24 March 2017
Cementing a cultured reputation
KATIE MILTON
Three and a half hours out of Sydney, between Lithgow and Mudgee, lies Kandos, a small industrial town once home to the largest cement works in the southern hemisphere. It supplied the cement used to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge and much of the city, but the plant closed down in 2012, leaving the town without its staple industry.
Around this time, academic and contemporary arts worker Ann Finegan bought a retail shop on the main street, a haberdashery in a past life. Finegan began using the space for residencies among friends, academics and local artists.
‘‘There were displays in the windows and artists started working with the community and the idea got seeded,’’ says Finegan. Urged on by a town bumper sticker that read ‘‘cement-a friendship’’, and with the help of fellow artists and curators Georgina Pollard and Alex Wisser, Cementa began in 2013, an innovative four-day contemporary arts festival of free events that activates the quiet regional town.
‘‘Part of the mission of Cementa is to develop the culture of contemporary art and support and develop regional artists,’’ says Finegan.
The biennial festival has hosted highend electronic artists, robotics and multimedia creations, site-specific performance and installation works, as well as the Cementa Salon, showcasing the work of Kandos locals. In the two years between festivals, artists are invited to spend time at Finegan’s space, now named Kandos Projects.
‘‘Artists cannot be in the festival unless they have done a residency in Kandos or have work related to the town in some way,’’ says Finegan. ‘‘We’re really working to deepen regional engagement.’’
The previous festival in 2015 attracted 2500 visitors and increasing support from the Kandos community. This year’s program features more than 60 artists showing in more than 20 local venues including churches, a paddock, an old pharmacy, the local tennis court and nearby Wollemi National Park.
Wollemi is the setting for Pagoda Parkour, created by parkour and acrobatics team Dauntless Movement Crew from Fairfield, and performed among the pagoda rock formations at Ganguddy (Dunns Swamp).
The festival’s opening night presents its first choral work, A Galaxy of Suns. A collaborative project between visual artist Michaela Gleave, composer Amanda Cole, programmer Warren Armstrong and astronomer Michael Fitzgerald, the Cudgegong choir will sing the sound of the stars while dressed in liquid silver capes.
‘‘Data about individual stars drives the rhythm and pitch of the composition, with singers lit the colour of the stars they are singing,’’ says Gleave. ‘‘It’ll be a very ethereal experience, celebrating a sense of the awe and wonder at the beauty of the cosmos.’’
Cementa, April 6–9, Kandos and surrounds, cementa.com.au2 .