Closing the divide with art

Artistic director Marcia Ferguson speaks to Neos Kosmos about the Big West Festival, and why we should immerse ourselves in art and culture as often as possible

Footscray is a multicultural melting pot. To comprehend this, you only have to spend a day perusing its streets, where a tasty Vietnamese pork roll, authentic African feast, and Melbourne’s best Italian cannoli can all be found in the same vicinity. To celebrate the community’s growing diversity, the Big West Festival is set to return with an exciting line-up.

A biennial event, after two years of hard work, artistic director Marcia Ferguson expects the jam-packed program to be a hit.
Encompassing art, music and dance, the 70 artworks scheduled to take place over the next week will transform the area, giving those who normally don’t engage in art the chance to do so.
“We’re site specific; our works take place in little nooks and crannies of the west that people haven’t seen before.

It might be a show about refugees and it’s held under a bridge where they sleep. We take our work right out to where people are already gathering,” Ferguson explains.
Started by the Maribyrnong City Council in 1997, over the years the week-long event has continued to use cultural community art projects to connect people divided by language, class, wealth, or distance, and to bring communities together out of a common interest in sharing culture, and creating new work.

MIGRATION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HOME

As part of the festival, artist and lecturer at Victoria University Greg Giannis will be showcasing a photographic exhibition entitled ‘Celebration’, on the significance of home for migrants – a subject the artist holds dear to his heart.
“I’ve been looking into this area of migration for quite a while now, and given the current situation of probably one of the largest movements of people across the globe, I thought it was time to do something in an Australian context,” Giannis shares.

Drawing on his Greek migrant background, the concept came about after looking through photo albums of family and friends during which he noticed a common pattern start to emerge: each family had a photo of themselves standing at the front of their homes.
“It struck me as fairly important in the sense that they were trying to make a statement of sorts about a new home and the importance of home for people who have come from another part of the world,” Giannis explains.
As we speak, thousands of people are being displaced from their homes around the world due to war and famine, and so the artist thought it was time to make a local connection, sourcing images from migrant families of Greece, FYROM, Poland, Vietnam and Italy from the 1960s onwards.

By curating this exhibition, Giannis hopes it will be “easier for people to connect locally rather than trying to understand a global issue that we’re disconnected from, unless you make an effort to follow what’s going on”.

RELIGION AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Taking art to the street, performance artist Nick Papas will be stationed on Footscray’s bustling Barkly Street in the form of an angel from heaven in For Heaven’s Sake. “We will be three angels in a plastic box, elevated above the ground. We will have three phones and a desk, and there will be an outdoor phone on which people can ring us up to ask us questions,” explains Papas.
Keeping in mind not to offend anyone, the improvised and interactive performance will give people a chance to engage with their spiritual side and ponder some of life’s big questions.

“People can reflect on the multi-faceted approach to religion that is in the world, rather than trying to be specific about one particular religion. It’s to try and help people open up a little to the various religions that are around us and also non-religions,” he says, emphasising the particular importance of such a project in multiracial countries such as Australia.
Papas and his co-angels are expected to be contained in the box for four hours, an experience the artist is all too familiar with, having performed in a shop window 24/7 for two weeks straight.

THE TRANSITION BETWEEN SELF AND COMMUNITY

Aside from art exhibitions and street performance, music and dance are also a big part of the festival.
Factory Reset features a dance crew made up of hip hop dancers, one of whom is Melbourne-based freestyle dancer Angela Baklis.
The crew are taking hip hop to a theatre space, with original music and visual material inspired by the history of Footscray.

“We’ve delved into the history of Footscray, an area that was quite industrial; over time fluxes of different cultures came in – how they developed their own businesses and how people came to be in the area,” Baklis explains.
The musical genre is seen as a way of bringing together young people on the margins of society to explore the transition from the familiar to the creation of something new.
“We also based it on our own experiences and what it’s like to go into a new place or a new experience, and transition into a culture and create your own. We decided to use that concept through dance,” she explains.
And with 2015 marking the 10th Big West Festival, this year’s event will culminate in a big street party.
While the festival has always held a significant place on the event calendar, as the west gains momentum, there’s no denying its increasing popularity. In 2013 more than 78,000 engaged with the program, a notable increase from the 39,000 in 2011.
“I think the reach of this festival is bigger than it’s ever been before,” says Ferguson, who is directing the festival for the second time since coming on board in 2013.
“We received a record number of submissions … 95 in total, which is maybe three times what we’ve received before!”
With a background in community planning and the arts, the artistic director says she was attracted to Big West based on its emphasis on ethics.
“I’m really attracted to positions that have a strong sense of social justice and seek to create a social impact, as well as a high level of high quality artistic impact,” she says.
While the core costs of the festival are covered by funding, it’s no easy task to secure, with work going on continuously over two years.

Aside from the week-long event, Ferguson and her team run talks and even have their own outreach community program catering to Melbourne’s outer-western suburbs. But above all, the artistic director says the main aim of the event is to be fully accessible, transcending all barriers, which is why over 80 per cent of the programmed events are free of charge.
“That’s what I think art should be; it should be all around us, all the time, and in some ways I think it’s something people should always aspire to do – to create a space where people can be in the images and messages that people create, reflecting life back to the people that live in this area,” she says.
“I love this immersion in place, where the contemporary experience can be crafted back to back. If you are immersed in your place, and you’re honest and authentic around the meaning of it and experience of it, it really does speak to the broader world.”

To view Big West Festival’s full program and exhibition and performance times, visit www.bigwest.com.au