Julian Laffan

This piece was made by students from Years 5 and 6 at St Bede's Primary School in Braidwood NSW. The children worked on issues of reconciliation and used the lino cut to collaborate with one another to make a collective piece. They won the NSW School Reconciliation Challenge and the piece was exhibited at the Australian Museum, Sydney in 2013. The prize was presented to the children by the Member of Parliament, Hon. Peter Garrett. 

Photo documentation: Kelly Sturgiss

Part of a Culture Kitchen Art Collective collaboration with Gembel of Dili, East Timor and members of Taring Padi of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This large format work was made in 2008 at Megalo in Canberra and exhibited at the Recovering Lives Exhibition at the Canberra School of Art as well as in Dili, Timor Leste. In 2009 additional workshops were facilitated by The Culture Kitchen and Bayu Widodono held in Dili to produce a series of lino cuts. 

Julian Laffan is a founding member of the Culture Kitchen with collaborators Jon Barajo, Angie Bexley and Bernie Slater.

The Culture Kitchen has exhibited their work Internationally in New York, London, Dili and Yogyakarta, and nationally in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

For details on The Culture Kitchen, see: 

https://culturekitchenfoodlab.wordpress.com/tag/the-culture-kitchen-art-collective/

Also see: http://www.etan.org/et2008/11november/23/22drawin.htm

This series of works printed on cotton were made in an effort to communicate shared understandings and hope for the future between Indonesia, Timor Leste and Australia. The maps were printed at Megalo in Canberra and then travelled to Dili and Yogyakarta to be worked on by the collectives Gembel and Taring Padi.  The Culture Kitchen collaboration of 2007 was the first of a number of inter-cultural projects and was first exhibited at Recovering Lives at the Canberra School of Art, an exhibition curated by David Williams and Caroline Turner. 

See The Culture Kitchen Art Collective site: https://sites.google.com/site/culturekitchenartcollective/

Also see: http://www.insideindonesia.org/we-refuse-to-become-victims

Banner photography: Brenton McGeachie

'Eternal Sky' was a collaboration with G. W. Bot within an exhibition curated by Julian Laffan entitled 'Retroactive III' (2008). The exhibition invited artists to respond to a shared understanding of place. Julian and GW Bot responded to Mount Painter and the corresponding outlook over the Molongolo valley in the ACT. The title 'Eternal Sky' references connections between a valley in the Khangai Mountains in Mongolia and that of the Molongolo, ACT.

A second and different installation of this series was shown at Canberra Contemporary Art Space for the launch of the Retroactive catalogue.

http://jaykochel.com/wp-content/uploads/catalogues/Retroactive_Catalogue.pdf

Photo documentation: Brenton McGeachie