By Jennifer Ann Davies
NCWQ Arts and Letters Adviser
Secrets, stories, people, performances and paintings, present pieces of miraculous survival, and move towards change. Our women writers and artists forge new relationships with bolder viewpoints of vulnerability, love, loss and change. In truly authentic and wholesome ways, they celebrate the strength, resilience, hardship and tenderness of being fully alive, despite all – they celebrate the wonder of being ordinary, as distinct from being ‘superior’!! These same traits are recently, publicly, stated and celebrated by our former Patron, Dame Quentin Bryce.
Writers, in particular, have emerged from a former socio-political containment, into newness. Some of these are Geraldine Brooks, Anna Spargo-Ryan, Cate Kennedy, Mirandi Riwoe and June Love. Forerunners of this new ‘shape’ in the world of arts and letters, these women remain true to the nature of each chosen genre. The newness, characterisations, themes and action evident in publications, paintings and performances, sit hand in hand with our triennial theme: – Transforming Society through Women’s Empowerment!
The change defines a determined, growing strength, independence and maturation, which can, in turn, inform cultural change, to include and influence:
- The Human desire for connection
- Meaning in this World
- Understanding dichotomies between faith and reason
- Art and Meaning
- Tragedy, Open-ness and Perspective of Others
In symbiosis, bold photographic art presents itself, state-wide, distinctly different, graphic, beautiful and new! Whilst we are all grateful for the exquisite beauty of travelling visual art exhibitions, which once would not have been available to us; and the delights of Queensland Ballet’s Swan Lake touring the regions, the literary and artistic ‘newness’ is to be welcomed and celebrated!
“…wild, brave and moving – smashing and repairing hearts – intensely, vividly sad and wildly, gorgeously hopeful…” Emily Maguire – Our gift for 2018!
