After lighting up the cityscape in Melbourne, arts collective The Pitcha Makin Fellas are proud to be showcasing not one, but two pieces at Ballarat’s White Night.
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Artist Peter Widmer, who assists the collective, said the idea behind the piece blackface (real face) came following an incident at Learmonth Football Club.
“There was a 21st birthday and some young people blacked up,” he said. “So there was that discussion the fellas were having and we were mucking around with paint values.”
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The end result was 24 portraits of local people that celebrated “real black faces”. Uncle Ted Laxton said the artwork was a form of reply.
“It was to try and do something that was true to who we are and what we are about,” he said. “There are six of ourselves (represented) plus we got the community involved.”
The portraits were created using flat black paint, semi-gloss paint and high gloss paint, causing the paintings to change depending on the way you looked at them.
“The birds in the mid ground are all stamps of native Australian birds and the idea was to put the eyes (which are small white dots) to identify each shape,” Mr Widmer said. “If you look at it from various angles as you walk past the bird disappears because of the light absorption and it just becomes a dot, which then becomes a star so (the eyes) become a starry sky… and ties in with Aboriginal astronomy.”
The portraits were first exhibited during NAIDOC Week, but took the fancy of White Night artistic director David Atkins.
“He appreciated that they were light-dependent works, therefore they could fit within the scope of a light festival,” Mr Widmer.
Artist Peter-Shane Rotumah said the collective also had a projection piece called More Than 1 Nation that took a couple of months to produce.
“It represents that here in Ballarat we have more than one nation – or one tribe or clan of people – who have come together from all over Australia,” he said.
The blackface portraits will be exhibited in the Anglican Church Hall on Lydiard Street South. More Than 1 Nation projection piece will light up the Former Bank of New South Wales on Lydiard Street North.
Members of the collective will be around the precinct and at the two artworks.
“People can come up and have a yarn with us,” Mr Rotumah said.
