Year 11 Art Exhibition

On Monday 20 June a group of students accompanied by Mr Lee-Lindsay, Ms Thompson, Ms Tring and Ms Connolly went along, after a very special invite from one of our Year 11 students to attend, the final week of the Love Endures All Obstacles Art Exhibition at The Rocks Discovery Museum.

You see the special invite was from Gagara Farrawell who also happens to be the granddaughter of the artist of this exhibition. Kathryn Dodd Farrawell is a proud Kaanju and Biri Wirri woman, artist, mother and grandmother.

Kathryn very kindly took the time in this the final week of the exhibition to welcome the students into the studio for a personalised tour of her artwork. We discovered that in her artworks presented in the exhibition, Kathryn explores her family’s history and the darker side of Australia’s past. We viewed some of the original paintings created in 2009 that started it all through the love of her parents’ marriage which was a story that began on Palm Island in Far North Queensland.

It is an intimate exhibition and Kathryn sensitively took us through her family’s first-hand experience surviving a number of harrowing and traumatic events. That includes being part of the Stolen Generation, and being impacted by the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Acts. Kathryn spoke of her parents’ love that endured through these very difficult times and now that Kathryn, the youngest of these 11 children is honouring this love but continuing their commitment to family and culture. We learnt about some of the people who have inspired Kathryn over the years including Clinton Pryor, the spirit walker, whose walk for justice in 2021 took him from Perth in WA all the way on foot to the nation’s capital Canberra.

In those last precious moments in the studio with Kathryn, she allowed the students contribute to her artwork by encouraging them to sign some of the canvas pieces she had recently created for the NAIDOC Week celebrations. It was a lovely moment captured here in some of the pictures we took. The below link will take you to the exhibition details which closes on Friday 24 June.

Thank you Gagara and thank you Aunty Kath.

Laura Connolly
Director of Student Wellbeing