Full cohort of artists to tackle documenting COVID-19 challenge

Be Kind – Be Creative an initiative of the City of Ballarat, has commissioned a bank of eight artists to document the period the city has lived through and to apply their creative perspective to the changing circumstances of COVID-19. 

 Four pairs of artists have been identified, introduced to one another and commissioned to jointly use their current practises to collaborate and create an artistic response. Each pairing will be asked to produce a work together that analyses responses to the pandemic environment. 

The collaborations will take place online, with artists required to respond to the idea within the challenges of social distancing. 

 Stan Woodhouse, a songwriter lauded for his observational lyricism, is teamed with illustrator Dillon Naylor. Award-winning ceramicist Neville French has been matched with visual artist Rhonda Baum; young wordsmith and hip-hop artist Sarah Barclay is paired with indigenous artist Donna Blackall. These groupings have joined poet Nathan Curnow and visual artist Kim Anderson, the first artists to be commissioned for this unique project. 

 Stan and Dillion describe their collaboration as a musical piece and pages of a graphic novel. 

“Over the following months Dillon will illustrate the tale while I compose the music for it. We’ll keep the channels of communication open so neither of us are creating in a vacuum and the separate works will have a chance to influence each other. The final ‘song’ and the original pages will be exhibited together,” says Stan. 

/Public Release. View in full here.