The West Papua Women’s Office in Docklands is asking Visual, Media, Sculpture, Jewellery and Craft Artists to consider entering work in the 2017 SAMPARI ART EXHIBITION FOR WEST PAPUA. This third exhibition is also in the Australian Catholic University Art Gallery in Fitzroy (Melbourne) between 8 and 17 December 2017.
Submission Deadline: Friday 20 October 2017
Submission Form below. Please note that submissions must include a photograph of your completed work. There is no submission fee. Artworks chosen will be on sale to the viewing public unless otherwise specified by artist. Proceeds of sales are shared 50/50 between Artist and FRWP Women’s Office.
Sampari 2015 and 2016 attracted glass work, collage, print, wirework, photography, film, traditional weaving, mixed media, street sculpture, oil paintings. The only pre-requisite is that work is inspired by West Papua: BY the people, their culture(s), their politics, their history, OR their extraordinary flora and fauna and maritime and territorial environments.
West Papua, brutally occupied by Indonesia since 1 May 1963, is a bounty of inspiration and paradox. It’s a territory of extraordinary physical beauty (being plundered). An ancient landmass of complex geologies (being exploited). A living museum of rare flora and fauna (sold in black markets across Java). The home of an indigenous people with footprints across ancient time and space. The West Papuans are our closest neighbour. Their ambition is to be free and independent. The engagement of western and melanesian artists is crucial as they approach a dangerous climax in their long freedom struggle.
PDF Submission Form Sampari 2017, Submission form
INQUIRIES frwpwomensoffice.sampari@
MELANESIAN WALL OF ART
Sampari 2017 is again featuring artists from the Melanesian nations. This is to acknowledge their unique political support and leadership in the bitterly contested battle over West Papua’s inclusion in the Melanesian Spearhead Group and Pacific Island Forum. Recognition by these regional fora is the first formal acknowledgement of West Papua’s independence movement since the beginning of the Indonesian occupation in 1963. It heaved West Papuans’ self-determination ambitions onto the international stage, a quest now championed in the United Nations by a Pacific Coalition of Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian states.
Solomon Islanders, ni-Vanuatu, Papua New Guineans, Fijians, and the Kanak of New Caledonia (who are preparing for an independence referendum in 2018) have a unique perspective on West Papua. They see a war zone where brown-skinned people with frizzy hair like themselves are murdered for raising a flag. They see a kin state bursting with songsters and poets and imaginative resistance to Indonesia’s genocidal policies. They see tiny isolated villages struggling to survive within a militarized colonial space. They see unique flora and fauna stifling in the shadow of the biggest gold-and-copper mine in the world. Their solidarity strong-arms their politicians for the monumental battle of relisting West Papua on the UN Decolonisation List.
INQUIRIES melanesia.sampari@gmail.com, or Robin Vote on 0413 802 612
Click to view 2016 Melanesian Wall of Art https://dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.net/melanesian-wall-of-art-2016-sampari-art-exhibition-sale-for-west-papua/
SAMPARI FORUMS AND EVENTS
In 2017, the FRWP Women’s Office is again hosting a series of Sampari Forums in the ACU Art Gallery during the exhibition. The forums increase the audience for the visual arts exhibited, and provide space for the exposure of other artists like Poets, Songsters, Musicians, Writers, Activists and Intellectuals (details announced in August 2017)
INFORMATION TO INSPIRE [click to enlarge and read]
