Welcome to the Artback NT: Arts Development and Touring website.

"Leading Regional Arts throughout the Territory by delivering art to and from remote and regional areas:
linking communities, empowering artists, presenting quality cultural experiences
and facilitating local and national outcomes."
- Artback NT Mission Statement

Following a highly successful pilot tour in 2012, Gift of Life is set to tour again in 2013.

Gift of Life seeks, through entertainment, to increase active engagement and awareness of organ and tissue donation, and the wishes of loved ones. A heartfelt and informative story of an Indigenous woman who is struggling with end stage kidney disease, the play follows her journey through the difficult process of dialysis to receiving a kidney transplant. It is a story about family, loss and love and the extraordinary gift of giving through organ and tissue donation.

This short film, put together by MiseEn Media, includes interviews with cast, director, audiences and Associate Professor Dianne Stephens of DonateLife. It follows the production from the Darwin Entertainment Centre to Nguiu on Bathurst Island, giving a small insight into the work and dedication that drove the project in 2012 - with the same passion following the show into a new season in 2013.

Read the full story in the media release here.

Artback NT: Arts Development and Touring are excited to be taking Territory talent around the country as they gear up to tour two fantastic Northern Territory shows nationally in 2014. The success of recent funding applications to Playing Australia will make both tours possible.

Following an enthusiastic uptake from venues at the Long Paddock national touring forum in August 2012, Mary Anne Butler’s moving one-woman show Highway of Lost Hearts and the well loved Djuki Mala (Chooky Dancers) will hit the road next year.

Highway of Lost Hearts, written and performed by Darwin based playwright Mary Anne Butler played to sold-out shows in August last year. The gist of the show? A woman. A dog. A campervan. And 5000klm of wide open road as Mot goes in search of the missing pieces of her heart.
Highway of Lost Hearts leaves audiences pondering the question: when your heart goes missing, what lengths will you go to in order to find it again?
Photographer: Brett Boardman

Djuki Mala (The Chooky Dancers) from remote Elcho Island shot to Youtube fame with their cross-cultural interpretation of Zorba the Greek in 2007 and haven’t looked back.
Blending influences from Bollywood to Hollywood with traditional Yolngu culture, the troupe are now booked for a national tour, encompassing five states and territories.
Photograph courtesy of Djuki Mala.

Read the full story in the media release here.

An exhibition featuring one of the Katherine Region’s most well-known desert artists is opening at:
Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre
Saturday 6 April at 6.00pm.
Features dance performance by the Warlpiri Dancers.
Closes: Saturday 18 May 2013.

Mimi Arts and Crafts Katherine has partnered with Artback NT: Arts Development and Touring in Darwin, to present the first major retrospective of this significant artist.

Curated by Margie West, the exhibition has been touring nationally over the last eighteen months, and now returns home to Katherine for a final showing.

The exhibition features paintings on paper and canvas, prints and three-dimensional works, drawn mainly from private and several public collections across Australia and overseas.

Barbara Ambjerg Pedersen, Manager of Mimi Arts and Crafts will open the exhibition. Barbara had a strong professional and personal relationship with Lorna.

Wapirti, White Bush Potato
2002
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
157 x 200 cm
Courtesy of Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne

Photograph of Lorna Fencer by Barbara Ambjerg Pedersen.

Lorna Fencer Naparrula was a senior artist from Lajamanu, in central Northern Territory. She was born around 1924, near where the Granites mine is now situated in the Tanami Desert and is the custodian of Yummurrpa country and the Caterpillar and Bush Potato (Yam) Dreaming that are associated with that land.

Along with many Warlpiri people, she was forcibly taken to the government settlement of Lajamanu in 1949, 400kms north of her own country. Despite being uprooted from her traditional land, she had an unrivalled knowledge of her tribal lore and maintained her cultural identity including the songs and dances that accompany the dreaming of her land.

She was a skilled painter of decorative body designs for ceremonies and traditionally painted on coolamons and digging sticks. In 1986 she painted on canvas for the first time and went on to develop a rich, distinctive style. Vivid colour and liberal use of paint are signatures of her work. She departed from the classical dot style to a free, abstract imagery, working in layers so that the most intimate aspects of her Dreaming are concealed from the observer.

Lorna gained prominence as a contemporary Aboriginal artist and is represented in International and Australian collections including the Holmes a Court Collection, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and the Ganter Myer Collection among many others.

Stay Home Sakoku

Artistic Collaboration Opportunity - calling all Alice Springs based artists!

Melbourne artist Eugenia Lim is looking for kindred creatives to take part in a remote collaboration (via email, phone and Skype) and an Alice Springs based artist workshop in the lead-up to her Stay Home Sakoku performance, 2-9 August 2013.

Stay Home Sakoku v 2.0 is an introverted performance that explores the impact of online and digital technologies on human relationships.

More information here.

The Indigenous Traditional Dance Program (ITDP)
promotes cultural maintenance and exchange in relation to traditional dance.

In 2013, DanceSite, the showcase event for the ITDP, will be held in Borroloola,
and the program is receiving support of close to $1,000,00. Read more here.

Please take the time to explore our website.
Click on the menu bar above or links here to check out what is coming up in 2013, including:

The latest news from Artback NT: Arts Development and Touring

360 Allstars - a phenomenal theatrical performance exploring all forms of rotation

Stories in our Songs - a new screen work highlighting the work of Indigenous Northern Territory musicians

Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen - plunge headlong into a netherworld of intrigue and imagination

Eugenia Lim in Alice Springs - exploring the Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori or ‘shut in’ syndrome

Artback NT: Arts Development and Touring is the Northern Territory's visual and performing arts touring agency and proud winner of the 2009 National 'Not for Profit Project of the Year' Award. In 2010 the organisation celebrated 15 years of promoting and delivering music, theatre, dance and visual arts throughout the NT and nationally.

Artback NT acknowledges the Aboriginal Traditional Custodians of the Country on which we perform or exhibit.

Artback NT is the National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) agency for the Northern Territory and is an Associate Member of the Blue Heeler Network (State Performing Arts Touring Coordinators).