Castlemaine State Festival

The third Castlemaine State Festival Visual Arts Biennial titled Periscope includes the work of 14 local and national artists and features 12 works that will have their premiere in Castlemaine.

Curated by Deborah Ratliff, Periscope presents the artists’ individual and collective responses to the Festival theme Elemental. Exhibited across a range of extraordinary sites, including an abandoned car salesroom, a former police lock-up and an original miner’s cottage, the works explore ruin, kitsch, abundance, alchemy, peepshows, history, projection and place.

The 2013 Castlemaine State Festival Visual Arts Biennial will offer immersive and unique engagement with some of the most creative individuals from the central goldfields region. Sugar from one artist, salt from another, mounds of spice, an artist’s mother, distilled concoctions, water, platinum, sound recordings, Chinese red packets, plants, stoneware, discarded homewares, a reconfigured 1972 Holden Kingswood…

Compelling, complex and sometimes strange, Periscope will be a multimedia and multi-sensorial exhibition revealing the full scope of the Festival theme. The artists are Daniel Armstrong, Julie Collins and Derek John, Rhett D’Costa, Pia Johnson, Ben Laycock, Jessica Ledwich, Tanya Schultz, Dean Smith, Leslie Thornton, Frank Veldze, Jason Waterhouse, Tara Gilbee and Clayton Tremlett.

Generous funding has been received from Latrobe University, the Albion Hotel, Griffin Conveyancing and the Public Inn but we still require a further $5,000 to support the curation of these works across the various sites.