The title Jugalbandi is used as an initial starting point. It refers to a duet in Indian music were performers from two different traditions, such as Carnatic and Hindustani, play together. Its literal meaning is ‘entwined twins’, which evokes the pre-history of Australia and India as once connected in Gondwana. 

This exhibition will feature a variety of Australian artists, craftspersons and designers, including some established but with a particular focus on those emerging. The prime venue will be the gallery at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, which will coincide with the Australian Year of India. 

In the lead up to this, there will be a series of pop-up exhibitions during Sydney Design Week in August 2012. Venues for this will include the Powerhouse Museum, COFA and the new India Cultural Centre. The plan is then to take this back to Australia for an exhibition in 2013. 

I am interested to hear from others involved in this exchange across the Indian ocean. I hope that Jugalbandi provided a platform for experimental creative dialogues between two quite opposite cultures.

These workshops are primarily intended to provide ways in which individuals can share hopes and fears with others using the traditions of the lucky charm. They include the following:

• A history of the lucky charm in various times and cultures

• An anatomy of the charm and how it works

• Reflection on those issues that we face as individuals but are not shared at a community level

• The design of simple objects that can be given to someone to offer luck in that particular situation

Beyond the workshop, there is a broader conversation about how we can make others feel lucky through online platforms.

Jewellery has a unique role to play in representing place. With the heritage of craft techniques and their own individual imaginations, jewellers are able to transform the world around them into wearable ornament. Thanks to their jewellers, it is possible for Australians and New Zealanders to display a complex and engaged relationship to place.

The aim of this book is to both provide an archive of information about recent history in facts and images, and engage jewellery in a broader argument about sense of place.

This book will recount the development of the contemporary jewellery scene in Australia and New Zealand from the 1960s. The two scenes run alongside each other, at times parallel, other times crossing and sometimes divergent. Both scenes can be read as attempts to make sense of what it is to live on the other side of the world to the cultural centres. In this quest, they have both been influenced by German modernism, particularly with visits from Hermann Junger and Otto Künzli. While in New Zealand the language of local materials has been much contested as a means of Pakeha expression, in Australia there has been a divergent tension between the immediacy of found materials and the excess of ornament.

The Australia-India Design Platform is a three-year program of parallel forums, workshops and pilot study. It aims to build a common understanding between Australia and India about how designers and artisans might work productively together. This platform is a step towards the development of a Code of Practice for Creative Collaborations, which will create new opportunities for designers and craftspersons by supporting the ethical and storied value of cultural products.

This Platform will be built on mutual respect, frank discussion, creative play and a focus on long-term outcomes for both designers and artisans.

2. Aims: Sharing ideas and skills

• To create new opportunities for designers and artisans
• To consolidate existing experience about Australia-India partnerships
• To develop innovative strategies for cultural sustainability
• To find a contemporary understanding between Australia and India, village and city
• To contribute to the development of the Code of Practice for Creative Collaborations

3. Program

a. Map a consensus through the life-cycle of product development

b. Pilot study

To test out the consensus with a particular traditional craft:

• Residency for Australian designer
• ARC Linkage research evaluating its progress

c. Case studies

To share knowledge gained by those who have experience working in both countries:

• Online profiles
• Online discussion forum

4. Partnerships

• Academic partner: Ethical Design Laboratory
• Industry partners: Australian Craft and Design Centres, including Craft Australia and Craft Victoria; National Association of the Visual Arts; Arts Law
• International partners: Icograda, World Craft Council
• Indian Partners: Craft Revival Trust, Jindal Global Law School, National Institute of Design, Craft Council of India, Delhi Arts Residency
• The Code of Practice for Creative Collaborations will be administered by the New Traditions Foundation

This project is currently open to partnerships with organisations that are engaged with product development. There is also interest in potential partners who are interested in providing venues for discussion, both real and online.

For more information, please visit www.sangamproject.net. For a philosophical context for this, please visit www.thetwohandsproject.net.

Welcome Signs website now online at http://welcomesigns.craftunbound.net

A common cultural thread throughout the Asia Pacific region is the ceremony of welcome. Honoured guests, returning fisherman and sometimes lost strangers are treated to delicacies, gifts, song and dance. The garland plays an important role as a beautiful and scented wreath with which to adorn the neck of a guest.

With urbanisation, traditional communities and families are becoming increasingly fragmented. The welcome garland changes its function from an ephemeral part of the ritual to a keepsake of home. Degradable materials like flower petals can be replaced by other materials, including plastics, money and confections. This is particularly poignant in Pacific communities, where sea-level rises combined with economic diasporas is placing increasing pressure on maintenance of traditional culture.

Welcome Signs is an exhibition of jewellery and adornment that draws on the tradition of the garland. It considers how the cultural traditions might be sustained despite displacement and urbanisation. And it re-considers the role of welcome in a world increasingly made of strangers, including temporary citizens, such as students and refugees.

As a project, Welcome Signs draws on the success of the Melbourne Scarf Festival, which over five years explored the many cultural dimensions of this popular craft, including its religious, tribal, fashion, psychological and even technological aspects. By comparison, the garland is like a closed scarf whose meaning is more in the act of bestowal than in the wearing.

It also draws from the Turn the Soil exhibition that toured Australia in 1998-9, featuring the work of second-generation Australians. As this exhibition visited venues throughout the country, it focused on different stories about the particular contribution of non-British cultures to the story of Australia.

Welcome Signs aims to be a touring exhibition that not only contains beautiful and interesting objects, but also acts as a catalyst for thinking about the practice of welcome today. Jewellery will be sourced from throughout the Asia Pacific. This will include Australasian contemporary jewellers who create unique works of art out of these traditions. Works will include:

• Salusalus and leis from Pacific islands, including new forms from Auckland
• Innovative versions of the var mala garlands that are part of Hindu ritual
• Urbanised versions of the phuang malai in Thailand
• Contemporary interpretations of the tais from East Timor and selendang from Indonesia
• Contemporary art neckpieces from Australasian jewellers, including wreaths, laurels and medals

Welcome Signs: Contemporary Interpretations of Traditional Garlands consists of several components

Delhi exhibition (confirmed)

New Delhi, India, 4-6 February 2011

Exhibition for the World Craft Council Jewellery Conference, Abhushan: Tradition & Design – Dialogues for the 21st Century

This exhibition from the Asia Pacific region will form a key element in the international survey of jewellery for this major convention

Touring exhibition (in development)

While most returned to Australia, some remained. The next generation included Léon Cadogan, who became friendly with local Guaraní while playing in the bush as a child. As a young man, he championed the rights of the Guaraní against quite brutal treatment – they were only recognised as human beings in 1957. In 1949, Cadogan was made the first Curator of Indians for the Department of Guairá. During this time, he collected their rich mythology and eventually published a translation into Spanish of their classic genesis tale, ayvu rapytá.

Avyu rapytá is a wondrous story of creation that ranks alongside Popol Vuh as a one of the world’s great cultural expressions of the mystery of life’s origins. In this tale, the Great Father, ñanderuvusú, founds human language with a fragment of divinity, conceiving a sacred chant even before he created the earth itself. Very much around the origins of language, the story involves the quest for ayvu porä, the beautiful words of the gods. Creatures of nature, such as the humming-bird and owl are granted special powers. And echoing the Semitic genesis story, there is a primeval flood from which a new world emerges.

Despite the value of this story, Cadogan’s current translation of ayvu rapytá is quite difficult to find. More amazingly, it has never been translated into English. Léon Cadogan’s legacy is currently being continued by two of his sons. In Paraguay, Rogelio is carrying on the Léon Cadogan Foundation, protecting Indigenous rights. And in Australia, Léon (Jimmy) is publishing books about his own family and childhood in Paraguay.

The current project entails translating ayvu rapytá into English and producing a tri-lingual edition, in Guaraní, Spanish and English. There are a number of benefits to such a venture:

• A unique contribution to the corpus of world creation stories
• Making good what was a sad episode in Australian history
• Focusing research into Guaraní culture
• Bringing in Guaraní voices about the current state of their culture

Currently we are seeking interest from the following partners:

• Translation services specialising in Guaraní language
• Publishers with a focus on world literature
• Anthropologists working in Guaraní creation myths
• Organisations seeking to promote the interests of Indigenous peoples

Links

• Léon Cadogan on wikipedia