Greenbush Art Group return to Araluen Arts Centre with a history of Central Australian transport

The Department of Tourism, Sport and Culture’s Araluen Arts Centre extends a warm welcome to the Greenbush Art Group, who are back with a new body of work focusing on the history of Red Centre transport.

“This unique collective, comprising Batchelor Institute’s visual arts students from the Alice Springs Correctional Centre pays tribute to the history of transport in Central Australia with an exhibition of playful, lively works.” Senior Director of the Department of Tourism, Sport and Culture’s Araluen Cultural Precinct, Felicity Green said.

Including planes, camel trains and automobiles, big rigs and troopies, Shake, Rattle and Roll reframes Central Australia through the evolution of transport; transforming the landscape, accelerating colonial expansion, and irrevocably changing the way people live, move and engage with the Red Centre, culminating in the intercultural complexity that now exists here.

The range of materials available to the artists at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre is limited to inexpensive, recycled and repurposed items. The artists respond to this limitation with great creative freedom.

The works in this exhibition are idiosyncratic and detailed, articulating Greenbush’s renowned humour and quirkiness. These are works made in detention, but are imbued with joy, playfulness and acute observation.

From 2017, whilst undertaking visual arts studies at the Batchelor Institute, the artists of Greenbush Art Group have held group exhibitions in the Araluen Galleries. This includes Tjulpu Thipe! (Birds), their first solo group exhibition in the Araluen Galleries, followed by Big Mob of Dogs!

In addition, a limited number of Greenbush Art Group sculptures are presented each year in the renowned Desert Mob exhibition, and over time these works have reinforced their reputation.

Shake, Rattle and Roll will officially open on Friday 15 November at 6pm and will show in the Araluen Galleries until 1 March 2020.

Image: Artists of Greenbush Art Group, selected works 2018, found objects, wire, aluminium foil, paper-pulp, recycled woollen blanket, leather and acrylic paint.