Local multi-disciplinary artist, Franca Barraclough presents her first solo exhibition at the Araluen Arts Centre

This November, the Department of Tourism, Sport and Culture’s Araluen Arts Centre presents The Visitors by local artist Franca Barraclough.

“We are very pleased to be presenting Franca’s work at the Araluen Arts Centre. Franca has worked as a conceptual artist in Alice Springs for decades, and this extraordinary exhibition is the culmination of a significant long-term project,” Senior Director of the Department of Tourism, Sport and Culture’s Araluen Cultural Precinct, Felicity Green said.

“The Visitors is a body of work that mines the complex nature of life in Central Australia and Araluen is delighted to support work that is dedicated to articulating the experience of being here.”

Comprising large-scale ‘tableau vivant’ (images created through staged photo-shoots, along with film and installation work), The Visitors is a visual survey of people, paths and stories woven through the sociological landscape of contemporary Central Australian culture.

Barraclough’s works are a distillation of poignant local imagery harnessed to give an artistic account of the impacts and influences on desert life.

Franca Barraclough explains, “The Centre of Australia is an important and much imagined part of our national psyche that has long been a gravitas for extremists (missionaries, misfits and mercenaries), adventurers, escapees, leaf turners and desert changers.”

The Visitors speaks to the ‘push and pull’ of living here, of belonging and not belonging, of a landscape that simultaneously repels and holds, emotionally and psychologically.

The creation of these large–scale photographs involved Barraclough engaging, choreographing and collaborating with a diverse range of local community members in unique, inimitable and immersive experiences.

Reproduced on the scale of tourism advertising, the imagery is alluring, but also documents the particular pressures and challenges of living in Central Australia - the combination of extreme weather, remoteness and culture-clash, set against a backdrop of ancient, powerful landscapes.

The Alice Springs community have been supportive of the project, volunteering their time and providing considerable financial support in realising the production of the images.

The Visitors will officially open on Friday 8 November at 6pm. Join Franca Barraclough for an artist floor talk at Araluen Arts Centre on Saturday 9 November, from 10:30am.

The Visitors will show in the Araluen Galleries until 9 February 2020.

Images:
Franca Barraclough, The Ferals 2018, photograph by Mick Walters, photographic print. (top)
Franca Barraclough, Crowned Land, 2018, photography by Mick Walters, photographic print. (bottom)