Episode 1: Cementa17 Festival and Regional Arts

Our first episode is on Wednesday 26 April 2017 and features conversations with artists and curators from Cementa17 Festival, in Kandos, regional NSW.

Cementa is a biennial Australian contemporary arts festival that takes place in Kandos, a small regional town located between Lithgow and Mudgee in Central West NSW. The region provides the backdrop to which artists make, exhibit and perform work relating to the social, historical or environmental context of the town. Cementa17 is four days and nights of performance, sound, cabaret, interactive and electronice arts, video installation and ceramics presented at more than twenty venues in and around the town of Kandos.

For more information on the festival, and the exhibiting artists, head to the Cementa17 website.

The first episode features conversations with

• Ian Milliss, co-director of Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation & Futurelands about the responsibility of artists in making social chance.
• Aleshia Lonsdale, artist and Aboriginal Cultural Development Officer at Arts OutWest, about her own practice and the culture of Regional Arts. Aleshia has recently exhibited at Artlands, in Dubbo in 2016, and was part of the Leftfield II project with OranaArts. Aleshia also exhibited at Cementa15.
• Nicole Welch, a Bathurst-based multi-media artist who produces stunning images of picturesque landscapes that have a loaded symbol implanted into each painstakingly-composed scene. We speak to Nicole about her current series of work, some of which is exhibited at Cementa17, titled Wildēornes Land, investigates the Blue Mountains wilderness from a historical, cultural and ecological viewpoint and is featured in the Blue Mountains City Art Gallery exhibition program 2017. Nicole is represented by Brenda May at MAY SPACE.
• Sarah Waterson, new media artist and academic, about recreating a climate from Borneo in a hothouse in Kandos, and her work 'Hothouse' exhibited at Cementa17.
• Ann Finegan, co-curator, director and founder of Cementa Festival, about how the festival all began and the curatorial process and intention.