Black Arts Market at Carriageworks

Overview

The Black Arts Market has a new home at Carriageworks this November, featuring a huge 55 stallholders and 93 Aboriginal artists from Australia's southeast region. The two-day market is a showcase of the cultural heritage of southeastern Aboriginal Australia.

The market showcases artists who have transformed their traditional knowledge and skills into contemporary artworks and products of wonderful and inspiring diversity. Artists include shell artist Esme Timbery (whose work earned her the inaugural Parliament of New South Wales Indigenous Art Prize back in 2005), Aboriginal florist Flannel Billy, who will be creating native floral arrangements on-site, and Uncle Greg Simms, who'll demonstrate wood carving techniques and Tasmanian artist Netty Shaw, who creates baskets woven from kelp (seaweed).

The market is co-curated by Hetti Perkins (former senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the AGNSW) and Sydney-based Aboriginal artist Jonathan Jones, who recently presented barrangal dyara (skin and bones), a vast sculptural installation in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Visitors will have the opportunity to interact with the artists and learn about southeast Australian Aboriginal cultural practices, as well as purchase works, which will include homewares, ceramics, weavings and contemporary visual arts.

The Black Arts Market will run from 9am-5pm on Saturday November 12 and 10am-6pm on Sunday November 13.

Image: Esme Timbery, Sydney Harbour Bridge, 2002. Photo by Jenni Carter.