The development of the banners based on designs from the Possum Skin Cloaks

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TRANSCRIPT

The design material, the design information on the banners or on the screens was collected in the community through the Cloak Project, which was delivered by Regional Art Victoria. Because the Cloak designs are quite subtle and we think that image will be beautiful and powerful, the idea was to find a way to let those be seen on a massive level as well.

This is a really preliminary model example. We were going to take the designs that were later panels from the Cloaks themselves, that were burnt into the back of the possum skins, the favoured designs by the artists. The designs were black and white when given to us so we derived these colours from the Cloaks themselves.

Vicki Couzens who’s the Artistic Director, worked with a team of artists one in each region, a team of three or four other lead artists, and they worked with local artists on the ground across the State of Victoria, 37 language groups and then those local artists worked with the community in each area and that community sought the appropriate elders and the appropriate approval for a particular design. We’re really honoured to have all this beautiful material coming in from people and that people have contributed to that in this way, in particular that’s because for us, this is a really lovely heartfelt project to be happening within the kind of bigger, more spectacular, glitzy thing.