CWA Art Awards

The 22nd CWA Art Awards showed
that art is alive and well in Tennant Creek.
Ruby Reed tells of its history

Molly Courts and the manager of Peko out here, they started it 22 years ago, quite a few years back now! It was a big do back then. You know, if you were asked to be in it, well, you would've thought you were wonderful!
Molly went away and then Caroline Joswig carried it on, now Caroline's gone and so it's me. The winning prize has always been $1000. Peko used to donate the winning prize to us but now we raise the money from town business support.
When our Art Award started it was held in the old C.W.A building on Paterson Street. Then we held it in the building which is now the Emporium. It has also been held at the Memo Club, the Primary School and the Council Chambers. It has been in our new building in Noble Street since 1989.
It's a good place for artists to start and we've had a few artists go on to bigger things from the awards. With the prize money being $1000 it's surprising that not more people are interested in it, but we get a lot from Darwin and some from Katherine and Alice Springs. We used to get entrants from Mt Isa too. I was pleased that we had a lot of entries from Tennant this year.
We were lucky to get a judge this year. I'd been onto people for ages about getting a judge. Anyhow, Peter Cooley came up from Sydney and was touring through Alice Springs and he knew a woman in Alice Springs that worked in the same place as him, and she got onto me and said, "Would you like him?" and I said, "Yes please!". He was here for two days out of his touring.
The people of Tennant Creek are really really good to us with their support for the CWA and the awards have just been able to carry on with the selling Bingo tickets and various fundraising that my husband and I do. We also run a raffle outside Enterprise Electrics occasionally. That's how we keep going.

... AND IN OTHER ARTS NEWS

The work of Alice Springs based artist Jenny Taylor entitled "Rites and Sites" is on display and will remain at the Dolly Pot till the end of July.
The work on display is a collection of paintings about camping and travelling in the bush from a woman's view, including images of dried out lips, dried out skin, a screaming baby, to a lovely hot cup of tea and sausages and baked beans of toast.
The Dolly Pot, with the help of Artback NETS and Barkly Regional Arts, has recently been equipped with tracking in the meeting room, where half of the exhibition is installed. The remaining half has been mounted around the bar/restaurant area.
Tennant Creek now has several exhibition spaces, which is a reflection of the interest by the community in the arts and of the amount of visual arts practice in this region.
Opening on July 17th at the Civic Hall, Artback, Barkly Arts and Tennant Creek Town Council presents Wicking's Territory exhibition and Book launch. Mayor Paul Ruger will open the show at 5:30pm. Bring your chequebook and cash.
Also coming up, the Monaro Show (exhibition and workshops) for the 1998 Desert Harmony Festival, and the Barkly Regional Arts Exhibition, touring the Territory.