Indigenous Art Centre Alliance

The Indigenous Art Centre Alliance (IACA) is the peak body representing art centres and artists across the Torres Strait, Gulf of Carpentaria, Cape York and the tropical rainforest and coastal regions of Far North Queensland.

IACA aims to foster sustainable growth for culturally strong best-practice Indigenous art enterprises through a range of programs and services that build professional development and employment opportunities for Indigenous artists and art workers, as well as promote Queensland’s Indigenous art locally, nationally and internationally.

The Cultural Connections partnership is supporting IACA in two key ways. IACA will facilitate arts development workshops at three art centres: Bana Yirriji Art and Cultural Centre in Wujal Wujal, Hopevale Arts and Cultural Centre and Yarrabah Arts and Cultural Precinct.

The workshops will provide an opportunity for artists to express their perspectives on the arrival of the Endeavour in the region 250 years ago. A selection of this work will be exhibited in the National Museum of Australia’s Endeavour 250 exhibition.

Cultural Connections will also support the development and delivery of men’s and women’s cultural maintenance camps at Hopevale and Wujal Wujal in 2020.

Many of IACA’s member artists feel that traditional weaving and woodcarving skills from their region are being lost. Firsthand research in museum collections will help strengthen contemporary weaving and carving techniques and practices.

The cultural maintenance camps will facilitate intergenerational knowledge exchange of these critical skills. They will also generate high-quality documentation that will create an important cultural archive for future generations.

Pam Bigelow, Manager, IACA:

The Cultural Connections program is allowing IACA to offer invaluable facilitated art development workshops to three art centres in our membership and providing the artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in a major National Institution.

Cultural Connections funding has also provided IACA with the capacity to offer cultural maintenance camps for our members to revive traditional practices in weaving and woodcarving that have almost been lost. The legacy from these programs is a wonderful contribution to maintaining the cultural practices of Indigenous people from the Far North Queensland region.