tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/ten-days-on-the-island-68062/articlesTen Days on the Island – The Conversation2021-03-16T02:26:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1548312021-03-16T02:26:24Z2021-03-16T02:26:24ZTen Days on the Island: blistering rock, raw urgency, tenderness and dagginess in a festival spread too thin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389484/original/file-20210315-18-1ps6r7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6456%2C3632&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jess Bonde/Ten Days on the Island</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since its launch in 2001, the biennial Ten Days On The Island has aimed to be a festival for the whole of Tasmania, bringing in international artists and putting local artists on the world stage. </p>
<p>This year, as in 2019, the festival’s program — and the titular “ten days” — are spread across three weekends. With travel bans and conservative limits on <a href="https://www.examiner.com.au/story/7165721/theatre-industry-pleads-for-capacity-restrictions-to-be-eased/">theatre capacities</a>, the program is thinner than usual, making the stretch across the state an even greater challenge. </p>
<p>Artistic director Lindy Hume proposes a Romantic, rather than <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/tasmanian-gothic/">Gothic Tasmania</a>, placing Jess Bonde’s photographic re-imagining of Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 oil painting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog">The Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog</a> as the festival’s central image. </p>
<p>Bonde’s singular figure surveying an uninhabited landscape captures both the loneliness of isolation, and the accomplishment of getting on top of the curve.</p>
<p>The individualism of Romanticism, however, glosses over our <em>collective</em> action to hold back this pandemic, and the communities and institutions we have drawn on for support. </p>
<p>The festival itself is one such institution, calling on communities across the state to flesh out the 2021 program with workshops, talks and a range of projects. </p>
<h2>Works by community</h2>
<p>One of the few works that will travel the whole state is the charming There is No “I” in Island, led by filmmakers Rebecca Thomson and Catherine Pettman. The series of short films animate local experiences of lockdown. </p>
<p>The films explore an eclectic range of visual styles, but all are deeply engaging, drawing us in to the astonishing candour, humour, and down-to-earth dagginess of the respondents.</p>
<p>It meets the generosity of its participants with respect, weaving experiences of isolation into a resonant whole.</p>
<p>MAPATAZI is a glittering, blistering onslaught of rock: an electric guitar orchestra of 21 local women of all skill levels taking over the back room of the Launceston Men’s Workers Club in a joyously shambolic affair with an infectious sense of fun. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Women in brilliant outfits playing guitar." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389493/original/file-20210315-17-1bli8rs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">MAPATAZI orchestra of electric guitars is a joyously shambolic affair.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ten Days on the Island</span></span>
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<p>In the 2019 festival, <a href="https://utp.org.au/event/shorewell-presents-2">Shorewell Presents …</a> in Burnie took the form of a lavish outdoor dinner, a gesture of generosity exclusively for locals: community art projects are not always about public outcomes.</p>
<p>This year, a series of glossy billboards have been erected around <a href="https://burniecommunityhouse.com.au/">Burnie Community House</a> and the adjacent shopping centre as Shorewell Presents… Gallery of Hopes and Dreams. The billboards display phases chosen by consensus — “We have each other”; “Be kind to yourself”; “Go with the flow” — accompanied by cute comic black cockatoos on eye catching pastel backgrounds. </p>
<p>Our guide, local resident Bluey, was part of the group who developed the phrases, and speaks proudly of them. It has clearly been a meaningful project for him.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man smiles in front of a billboard reading " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389495/original/file-20210315-13-140inlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There is a disconnect between the framing and the outcomes of the Gallery of Hopes and Dreams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ten Days on the Island</span></span>
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<p>But the billboards read like motivational posters: clean and relentlessly optimistic. The phrases don’t communicate hopes or dreams. They focus on the now, describing tactics (“Let’s smile”) for surviving day to day. The dissonance between the framing, the community input and the outcome suggest this project has not quite met its intention.</p>
<p>While Sydney-based Urban Theatre Projects have a long and strong history of community engaged projects, this felt under-resourced and the language of empowerment eerily neo-liberal. But it did, thankfully, highlight the incredible work of Burnie Community House.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A joyously decorated hall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389497/original/file-20210315-15-14b76rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ten community halls across the state are hosts for the festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sonja Ambrose/Ten Days on the Island</span></span>
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<p>The centrepiece of the festival, If These Halls Could Talk, produced events for ten regional community halls across the state. </p>
<p>Produced in regional New South Wales <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/10/02/4324279.htm">in 2015</a>, in the original vision, each project told the unique story of each hall. Here, the halls I visit are presenting events, rather than being the focus of the art themselves.</p>
<p>In Rowella, I watch Tasdance’s Where do We Start, a series of short duets between dancers and musicians developed from discussions that began over Zoom. The process has produced a vibrant quintet of performances, full of a raw urgency. </p>
<p>The standout is a collaboration between harpist Emily Sanzaro and dancer Jenni Large, transforming the harp from instrument into a third dancing body moving around the space. The exploratory resonance of voices and strings across the three bodies summons tenderness and strength, encapsulating a sensual and defiant resilience responding to more than just the pandemic. </p>
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<span class="caption">In a series of duets between dancer and musician, the harp becomes a third performing body.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sonja Ambrose/Ten Days on the Island</span></span>
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<h2>An uncertain recovery</h2>
<p>Ten Days is much cherished by Tasmanians, and since the arrival of MONA’s festivals, has served as an important cultural counterpoint. The 2019 festival ambitiously targeted a greater regional focus, and from this, <a href="https://theconversation.com/births-deaths-and-rituals-a-revamped-ten-days-on-the-island-explores-tasmanias-past-and-present-113745">a sense of optimism</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/births-deaths-and-rituals-a-revamped-ten-days-on-the-island-explores-tasmanias-past-and-present-113745">Births, deaths and rituals: a revamped Ten Days on the Island explores Tasmania's past and present</a>
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</em>
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<p>This year, the festival seems overburdened by the task of reaching the whole island, and spread too thin over the first two weekends. </p>
<p>There was a sense of things coming together at the last minute – from the late announcement of various workshops and talks, to the hand drawn sign on the street in Burnie and the letters lost in the post that were supposed to be part of an otherwise charming wilderness walk in A Weekend Poetical. </p>
<p>While these community works show how the arts might lead our recovery from the pandemic, they also show the lingering aftereffects: this recovery is going to take some time.</p>
<p><em>Ten Days on the Island runs <a href="https://www.tendays.org.au/">until March 21</a>. This review focusses on community engaged projects over the first two weeks of the program.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Warren supervises a PhD project 'The Art of Re-entry: Roles and impacts of experimental Art for people convicted of crime' that is affiliated with Ten Days on the Island. </span></em></p>With travel bans and conservative limits on theatre capacities, this year’s Ten Days is a smaller affair than usual, placing community arts at its heart.Asher Warren, Lecturer, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1141912019-03-28T03:06:55Z2019-03-28T03:06:55ZKate Mulvany’s The Mares bristles with energetic feminist storytelling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265738/original/file-20190325-36267-5r1mke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The performers in The Mares switch between roles using simple theatrical magic.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">José Navarro</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Mares, Tasmanian Theatre Company and Ten Days on the Island</em></p>
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<p>The Mares, a new work by playwright Kate Mulvany, was commissioned by the Tasmanian Theatre Company as a vehicle for some of Tasmania’s leading female performers. The work draws on multiple Greek myths to concoct a contemporary mythological feminist play.</p>
<p>The success of this complex and ambitious work owes a lot to Mulvany’s knowledge of the actor’s craft, and director Leticia Cáceres’ ability to create simple theatrical magic. Each of the performers plays at least three roles, often needing no more than a lighting change and a flick of hat or belt to complete rapid transformations.</p>
<p>The Mares flips between an ancient world and the present day practice of racehorse breeding. The first world depicts an island of warrior women, under the leadership of Queen Hippolyta (Jane Longhurst), who are defending their island from Heracles and his cousin, Alexander the Great. As a result of ongoing war between the male and female societies, Hippolyta’s army has been depleted.</p>
<p>Her loyal band of warriors, Thalestris (Jane Johnson), Penthesilea (Melissa King) and Antiope (Ben Winspear) perform ritual remembrances of their departed sisters, either killed by men or “missing in action”. The list of Greek names chanted by Hippolyta and the warrior women is a theatrical version of feminist activist group Destroy the Joint’s <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/counting-dead-women-the-project-keeping-toll-of-australia-s-hidden-epidemic">list of Australian women</a> who have died as a result of male violence since 2012.</p>
<p>In the contiguous narrative of the Trainer (Sara Cooper) and her Mare (Jane Longhurst), the Trainer explains to a student observer (Winspear), that the Mare must be kept awake under bright lights to stimulate her reproductive system and advance the breeding season.</p>
<p>Jane Longhurst evokes the Mare with skill, with her faraway gaze, distracted swinging head and heavy back and legs. It’s a powerful evocation of equine movement, which suggests that the Mare exists in two worlds at once – in a brightly lit modern dressage arena, and as companion to the mythological female warriors defending their island from the violent incursions of Heracles’ army.</p>
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<span class="caption">Sara Cooper as Trainer, Jane Longhurst as The Mare and Ben Winspear as Observer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amy Brown</span></span>
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<p>But not all is well in Mulvany’s idealised ancient world of feminist sisterhood. Thalestris (Johnson) has fallen in love with Alexander the Great. When the warrior women make their way to a nearby islet for their annual breeding ritual with Greek men, Thalestris slips away to continue her enthusiastic love-making with Alexander (Longhurst). </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the virgin Antiope (Winspear), who is attending the breeding ritual for the first time chooses Theseus (Johnson) as her mating partner. Their awkward, teenage encounter allows for some humour and tenderness, a counterpoint to the high-minded tone of much of the text. </p>
<p>Odd wrinkles of comedy do appear in the fabric of the work. These may have been deliberately placed to break the attentive membrane between performers and audience, or perhaps were the result of off-kilter rhythms on opening night. However, the cast handles the swift shifts between mythological and contemporary worlds with flair.</p>
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<span class="caption">Jane Johnson as Thalestris, Jane Longhurst as Hippolyta and Ben Winspear as Antiope in The Mares.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amy Brown</span></span>
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<p>Nicholas Higgins’ lighting design flips between bright overhead fluorescence and a golden glow from a bank of lights on the side wall. The rocky rear wall of Hobart’s Peacock Theatre, the foot of an old quarry, is utilised by Cáceres and designer Jill Munro to great effect, as both Johnson and Winspear scramble up its face, vividly evoking Hippolyta’s island realm. </p>
<p>Jessica Dunn’s score provides textured sonic underpinning for the two worlds, as well as ritual song and music for the warrior women. </p>
<p>Mulvany’s text winds up to a violent and inevitable conclusion, as her idealised community of powerful women warriors is subjugated by Heracles and his army. In a final exchange between Hippolyta and Heracles (played in this scene by Cooper), the mythological world now tips into a very recognisable sneering misogyny of the present day. The conquering hero is full of contempt for the defeated Queen, because she “no longer bleeds”. </p>
<p>In the powerful final moments, Mulvany fuses the two worlds of the play. The Trainer cannot allow her Mare to mate with a violent stallion, and turns her back on the lucrative business of breeding champion racehorses. The beaten and violated Thalestris, alone on the island with her baby boy, meets the Trainer’s abandoned yet still proud Mare. </p>
<p>The play’s conclusion leaves us wondering about whether women and men can escape their calcified gender roles, and whether violence against women will ever cease. </p>
<p>The Mares bristles with energetic epic storytelling. It is an outstanding example of how skilled artistic collaborations, courageous commitment to big ideas, and support from state funding bodies can result in exciting new Australian theatre. Although made on the island, The Mares could have many more seasons, and should be seen by audiences in a wider world. </p>
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<p><em><a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/the-mares/">The Mares</a> is playing at the Peacock Theatre in Hobart until March 30.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Woollard receives funding from Arts Tasmania. </span></em></p>A new play draws on Greek myth and the modern world of racehorse breeding to explore present day violence against women.Jane Woollard, Head of Theatre and Performance, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1137452019-03-19T07:02:49Z2019-03-19T07:02:49ZBirths, deaths and rituals: a revamped Ten Days on the Island explores Tasmania’s past and present<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264522/original/file-20190319-28512-1r8cyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Youth dance troupe Stompin performed their thought-provoking work Nowhere as part of this year's Ten Days on the Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacob Collings, Lusy Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the tenth biennial Tasmanian Arts festival Ten Days on the Island, and the first under new artistic director, Lindy Hume. Since it began in 2001, the festival has always been ambitious: seeking to showcase Tasmanian art, bring international works to the island, and at the same time be a festival for the whole of the state, rather than just the hub of Hobart. </p>
<p>Its challenge has only increased with Tasmania’s now burgeoning festival scene, which includes The Unconformity, Dark MOFO, and the Festival of Voices to name just a few. </p>
<p>It should come as no surprise then, that this year’s Ten Days adopted a new approach, moving from ten consecutive days to programming split up over three distinct weekends. The first two weekends took place in the state’s north west and north east respectively, with the festival due to conclude this weekend in the south.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-unconformity-festival-embraces-the-power-and-peculiarity-of-tasmanias-wild-west-106147">The Unconformity festival embraces the power and peculiarity of Tasmania's wild west</a>
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<p>This distribution of work across the state makes it a challenge for all but the most intrepid to see everything. With this in mind, I have focused on the festival’s first two weekends, but to summarise even these two weeks is a challenging task. </p>
<p>The diversity of work reflects the different regions of Tasmania – often proud of their isolation. While this creates a challenge in finding coherence, the work of these two weeks was notable for a number of key themes: belonging, life, death, and Tasmania’s colonial history.</p>
<h2>Stories of the island</h2>
<p>Ten Days officially began at dawn on March 8, on the beachfront at the Devonport surf life-saving club in the state’s north west, with <a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/mapali/">Mapali – Dawn Gathering</a>.</p>
<p>Narrated by the commanding voice of Dave mangenner Gough, the ceremony began with a Welcome to Country that celebrated the local Aboriginal (palawa) communities, with the sweeping and smoking of the beach, the gathering of kelp to make water carriers, and the unbroken practice of crafting intricate shell necklaces. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">This year’s Ten Days on the Island festival is spread across three weekends and three parts of Tasmania.</span></figcaption>
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<p>A short time later, Jessie Pangas and Anne Morrison’s <a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/here-she-is/">Here She Is </a> opened at Devonport’s Stewart St Gallery. There could have been no more fitting work to celebrate International Women’s Day. </p>
<p>A collaged, stitched and woven collection of stories and connections between women of the north west coast, Here She Is was built from audio recordings, participant submissions, archival materials and artistic responses to these materials. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264517/original/file-20190319-28499-a8c67h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Here She Is was the perfect work for International Women’s Day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Provided by Ten Days on the Island</span></span>
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<p>It is a dense work, constantly drawing you closer to make out handwriting and listen to stories. Yet evocative spaces open up between the fragments, pictures, and conversations, where just as much is left unsaid. This induces viewers to participate in the work through the addition of their own recollections, stories and mementos of the women in their lives.</p>
<p>Another hour’s drive along the north coast brought us just near the picturesque coastal township of Boat Harbour, for Big hArt’s <a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/acoustic-life-of-sheds/">Acoustic Life of Sheds</a>, a series of intimate concerts held in sheds throughout the region.</p>
<p>It was a rather genteel and romantic affair, as we travelled from an industrial potato shed, to woodworker’s sanctuaries, a derelict grain silo, and a shearing shed. </p>
<p>In the shearing shed, a collaborative suite of songs written and performed by Lucky Oceans and Heath Cullen closed the tour. The songs were written from the perspective of nonhuman things: from the shed we were sitting in, to an artificial intelligence in the not too distant future. A delightful and masterful set, these voices were used to interrogate the more problematic foundations of our “shed-romanticism”: their footprints on the landscape and the consumption behind the junk that fills them.</p>
<p>But as an audience member, I longed for a little more breathing space. The pace left little time to engage with fellow patrons, the sheds, their owners and their histories.</p>
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<span class="caption">Audiences for Acoustic Life of Sheds visited locations including an industrial potato shed, a derelict grain silo, and a shearing shed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Beth Sometimes</span></span>
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<p>The second weekend took place in the state’s north east. Tamar Island, just a short drive from Launceston, was the site for youth dance company Stompin’s ambitious new work, <a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/nowhere/">Nowhere</a>. The work explores this island on an island, its colonial and pre-colonial history, and most poignantly, its future. </p>
<p>The young troupe built toward a mesmerising sequence that evoked the interplay of natural plant formations and wind patterns, leading to a penultimate gesture equal parts touching and devastating. As they broke away and wandered in single file from the island and into the sunset, Nowhere asked us what, and even who, will be left to applaud when our environment disappears? </p>
<p>Later that week, 40 minutes west of Launceston, I was ushered by a stage manager in blue scrubs to an upstairs room of Deloraine’s Empire Hotel, to see Robert Jarman’s new work <a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/intimateepics/">The Protecting Veil</a>. </p>
<p>Delivered by Jarman in a matching set of blue scrubs, The Protecting Veil uses <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Poussin">Nicolas Poussin</a>’s second series of sacrament paintings as its structure. Jarman’s work takes inspiration and incorporates material from British writer, director and performer Neil Bartlett’s work, <a href="https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-seven-sacraments-of-nicolas-poussin/">The Seven Sacraments of Nicolas Poussin </a>. Bartlett’s work was first produced at The London Hospital, produced by Artangel, on July 1st, 1997.</p>
<p>Drawing on the rituals and figures depicted in these seven images, Jarman delivers an art history lecture of sorts, weaving in personal experience and contemporary politics, and reflecting on the ways that rituals structure our lives, from birth to death. </p>
<p>Guitarist David Malone shares the stage throughout. His musical interludes help build a certain feeling in the work, heightened by the room’s arrangement and the scrubs: the feeling of waiting in a hospital or funeral parlour. </p>
<p>The titular “protecting veil”, we learn, refers not just to the curtains that force viewers to contemplate Poussin’s seven paintings one at a time, but the curtains that surround patients, and the curtains which cover the glass in funeral viewing parlours. </p>
<p>The show warms up, literally and figuratively, as we reach the sacrament of communion (taken as a joyful tea break with jam rolls) before moving on toward death. When this moment arrives, the intimate audience dutifully obeys the request not to applaud, but our reverence – the ritual – seems a little forced. </p>
<p>Perhaps this is because of a scene I had witnessed just before the show began. Somewhat serendipitously, while waiting downstairs at the public bar of the hotel, I saw the Deloraine social club raise their glasses (and I mine) to a recently deceased member of the community. The collection of downstairs rituals were profoundly ordinary, but touching in their camaraderie – from the raffle held in her honour, to a ribald rendition of the folk song Old Grey Mare.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hail-mona-but-what-about-the-rest-of-tasmanian-art-18857">Hail MONA! But what about the rest of Tasmanian art?</a>
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<p>Finally, I visited <a href="http://tendays.org.au/2019/intimateepics/">Crime Scene</a>, a forensic-style installation in the Longford Town Hall by Anna Gibbs, Elizabeth Day, Julie Gough and Noelene Lucas. </p>
<p>Four video works are projected from inside onto each of the four walls. Each piece takes an instance of violence researched through colonial records, and attempts to present the evidence though an aesthetic lens. These pieces seek to draw our attention back to the deep scars of Tasmania’s history, not only between invading colonists and the Indigenous peoples, but also among the settlers.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264521/original/file-20190319-28499-ua6idc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Crime Scene is an installation exploring colonial violence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artists</span></span>
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<p>The simplicity of these works allows the researched accounts of this violence to cut through. In fact, they quite relentlessly confront the wounds that haunt Tasmania - wounds that <a href="https://griffithreview.com/articles/tasmanian-gothic/">Greg Lehman</a> notes must be properly addressed before they can begin to heal. </p>
<p>In moving their base of operations to Burnie, and embracing a more distributed Ten Days, the festival has broken away from the old. This new generation model offers a valuable example of how arts and culture might be curated for and by Tasmania’s diverse population, giving great voice to the north of the state. </p>
<p>Change is always difficult, but it is necessary as Tasmania becomes more and more globally connected. Ten Days on the Island serves a vital role in developing a diverse cultural sector (which is in many ways dominated by MONA and its festivals) and supporting the next generation of Tasmanian artists to speak not only to the island, but also to a national and international audience.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://tendays.org.au/">Ten Days on the Island</a> concludes March 24.</em></p>
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<p><em>Correction: this piece has been updated to note the original production details of Neil Bartlett’s work, The Seven Sacraments of Nicolas Poussin.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Warren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite the diversity of art and performance on display at the tenth Ten Days on the Island festival, key themes emerge: life, death, and Tasmania’s colonial history.Asher Warren, Lecturer, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.