A DUBBO artist has drawn on the support of cultural hubs in the city to get to a festival that will utilise Kandos' shop windows and garages, pubs and churches, halls and vacant blocks.
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Kim V Goldsmith worked on her multi-sensory artwork for the Cementa15 biennial contemporary art festival during a three-month and Orana Arts sponsored residency at Dubbo's Fire Station Arts Centre in 2013.
This week the artist announced that Western Plains Cultural Centre and Dubbo City Council had sponsored her participation in the festival running from April 9 to 12.
Birds and fire are central themes of Ms Goldsmith's contribution to the festival.
Since the residency she reports of "exploring a range of ideas around environmental impacts on native birds, a species considered indicators of environmental health".
"It's been a distillation process that takes time to develop, but what's left of that process is a video of charcoal bird drawings being burnt in a fire, motioned-sensored birdsong recordings made locally and in Kandos, light and smell, which will be set up in one of the most beautiful spaces in Kandos," she said.
"I'm extremely fortunate to have been given access to the now privately-owned Convent Chapel in Kandos, which has amber stained glass windows, parquetry floor and many of the original chapel fittings."
Ms Goldsmith said she was the "only artist west of Mudgee representing the region" at the festival launched in 2013.
More than 60 artists from Sydney and regional NSW will converge on Kandos that in 2011 suffered the loss of its almost 100-year-old cement works.
Festival co-director Alex Wisser said the festival celebrated contemporary art, the "community of artists that generate this strange, challenging, and wonderful way of looking and thinking about the world" along with the "beautiful little town of Kandos".
"There will be robots and sound art, poetry and music, and artists performing with shadows and drums, making art out of earth and recalling the past through the sounds of birds," the co-director said. Cementa15 will also include artist tours, workshops, a sound night, poetry and cabaret night, and a film night.
For more information about the festival go to www.cementa.com.au.
