AYR/HOME HILL CBD REVITALIZATION PROJECT

Narratives: Our Lives, Our Land, Our Water

Collaboration with Year 6/7 Home Hill State School, 2003

These bas relief wall installations incorporate groupings of figures representing human connectedness and relationship to the local and wider community.
Their dynamic movement symbolizes growth and energy.
Working with 75 eleven and twelve year-olds to produce 25 life-size figures, the individual images depict diverse aspects of the children’s lives, their ethnicity, local culture and unique environment. The works were installed permanently on walls around the town of Homehill.

COMMUNITY ART PROCESS:

ARTIST/CO-ORDINATOR BONNEY BOMBACH WITH YEAR 6/7 HOME HILL PRIMARY SCHOOL

Artist designed, community based process to produce series of wall installations comprised of twenty-five, bas-relief life-size figures providing a ‘vehicle’ for child-driven, individual narrative images depicting diverse aspects of their lives. This will inevitably reflect local culture/ ethnicity, environment/ecology, recreation/ agriculture etc. It will involve seventy-five children in three groups.

INTENTIONS:

Assist in revitalizing ‘dead’ spaces in main street by creation of groupings of highly colourist, uniquely designed figures, dynamic in movement, accessible to kids, broader community & visitors.

Create visual continuity through town, thereby linking spaces between walls of picnic parks, symbolic of community links/links between local community and visitors.

Promote sense of ‘ownership’ of works (establishing relationship between art & people) through

active participation of local school children, teachers and some parents
use of children’s body outlines
human scale of work

Provide an engaging alternative to the traditional mural model

The theme: Narratives: Our life, land & water was devised by the artist to fit the commission brief. I was given a week to work with the children within their school.

The Process: As with other similar projects, the shaped boards were cut from tracing around the children placed in dynamic positions choreographed by the artist.

Working with three groups of twenty five children, we brainstormed ideas around the theme, the children made sketches. The artist pre-mixed a large range of colours. Working three children per figure, through a process of collaboration and discussion each was allocated an area of the figure to work on , loosely transcribing their sketched ideas and then proceeding to paint the figures.

As the finished pieces were to be permanently installed on seven selected walls through the town, it was important that the finish be perfect. Thus the artist spent several weeks subsequently putting a final coat on each piece without in any way altering the work of the children.