Interview with Alex Wisser, Cementa_13 Director

The Cementa_13 Contemporary Art Festival is happening in one months time, the four day festival starts on February 1, and preparations are now seriously underway to organise and accommodate the as yet unknown number of people who will be descending into the small and at the moment quiet rural town of Kandos. A call out has just gone out on the Cementa_13 website for participants and guests  to register so that a clear idea may emerge of the size of the coming festival. Just before the New Year I interviewed festival director Alex Wisser, and was fascinated to find out more about the background and stories behind the festival.
The full interview was published earlier today in Arts Features International. Here is an excerpt:

Alex Wisser: "One night we sat drinking too much wine, talking about the recently closed cement works on the mountain next to the town and the thought quickly formed that we could stage a contemporary art festival here.  Haha.  Yes, another glass of the shiraz please.  We woke up the next morning and Ann was drawing up artist lists and thinking about public liability insurance.  Georgie and I rubbed our eyes and realized we had signed on.  Artists have these kinds of crazy ideas all the time.  It usually requires someone taking them seriously to cause any real trouble".

The full article and interview is in Arts Features International at artsfeatures.com, at this link.

Copyright ©Ruth Skilbeck,  2013

Interview with Alex Wisser, Cementa_13 Director

The Cementa_13 Contemporary Art Festival is happening in one months time, the four day festival starts on February 1, and preparations are now seriously underway to organise and accommodate the as yet unknown number of people who will be descending into the small and at the moment quiet rural town of Kandos. A call out has just gone out on the Cementa_13 website for participants and guests  to register so that a clear idea may emerge of the size of the coming festival. Just before the New Year I interviewed festival director Alex Wisser, and was fascinated to find out more about the background and stories behind the festival.
The full interview was published earlier today in Arts Features International. Here is an excerpt:

Alex Wisser: "One night we sat drinking too much wine, talking about the recently closed cement works on the mountain next to the town and the thought quickly formed that we could stage a contemporary art festival here.  Haha.  Yes, another glass of the shiraz please.  We woke up the next morning and Ann was drawing up artist lists and thinking about public liability insurance.  Georgie and I rubbed our eyes and realized we had signed on.  Artists have these kinds of crazy ideas all the time.  It usually requires someone taking them seriously to cause any real trouble".

The full article and interview is in Arts Features International at artsfeatures.com, at this link.

Copyright ©Ruth Skilbeck,  2013

Summer of Art in The Daily Fugue- Cementa_13 and These Heathen Dreams

 By Ruth Skilbeck

This summer, The Daily Fugue is excited to be reporting on two significant new Australian- International contemporary arts projects: Cementa_13 contemporary arts festival. And These Heathen Dreams, a new documentary film in the making, on Australian émigré artist Christopher Barnett.

 Cementa_13, is a new contemporary arts festival based in the rural-industrial town of Kandos, New  South Wales. Over 70 artists will be gathering over four days in early February for a unique festival event in the town which was founded in 1901 as the base for a cement works  - that  made cement  used in many Sydney constructions including the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Last year the cement works closed down, and in the inimitable style of creative renewal (made famous through Renew Newcastle) now artists are moving in to rejuvenate the empty sites and create a memorable event that is putting Cementa on the art map. The festival is the brain-child of organisers artists Georgina Pollard and Alex Wisser. Ruth Skilbeck's interview with Alex Wisser will appear in the Daily Fugue, along with reports  leading up to the festival which runs from February 1-4.

Kandos, NSW

These Heathen Dreams is a documentary film in the making about émigré Australian artist and poet and theatre director Christopher Barnett, who has lived and worked in France since the 1980s. Christopher had a profound influence in Adelaide's conceptual performance arts scene in the early 80s, and left the country to work in political theatre in Europe. The documentary is being made by Anne Tsoulis, director, and Georgia Wallace-Crabbe, producer, Ruth Skilbeck will be interviewing makers of the documentary and writing about the ideas and work of Christopher Barnett that inspired  this collaborative venture between the documentary's makers in Australia and France.

The Daily Fugue will be following and reporting on these arts projects in progress, throughout the Australian summer. Interviews with the founders and directors will appear here soon.

Both projects are start-ups and self funded with Pozible crowd funding campaigns, in the making; and Facebook pages.