Building on the Castlemaine Festival’s historic tradition of a children’s parade, the Children’s Day Parade will kick off featuring the Migration Marching Band; a foot-stomping, street orchestra of the musicians and children who have developed their instruments and pieces during the previous week. Playing their instruments, wearing costumes and carrying the puppets they have made, children and adults will take part in this unique Victory Park event, created by them for the enjoyment of all of us.

Everyone involved in the Parade is to meet at the Victory Park marquee at 11.00am on Saturday 9 April. All welcome.

Then stick around for the Festival Picnic and help make Castlemaine’s biggest ever picnic rug. Enjoy your BYO picnic lunch or some of the delicious food available in the park. There will be short performances, roving characters and lots of other surprises planned for the afternoon.

There will be space to store your picnic rug and food on the day if you and your family are involved in the parade! The Picnic will begin at approx. 12.30pm.

Saltbush is an exquisite interactive journey through the culture and landscape of Aboriginal Australia, celebrated through live dance, music, song and stories. Internationally acclaimed Italian company Compagnia TPO has worked in collaboration with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to create another beautiful piece in the highly acclaimed Children’s Cheering Carpet series.

The Saltbush narrative centres on the journey of two friends from different Aboriginal backgrounds as they cross Australia on foot, and is performed on a touch-sensitive floor using infra-red imaging technology that triggers images and sound. Their journey sees them travel across diverse Australian landscapes (countries) — river country, an urban landscape, desert and the sea. The journey is one of discovering the land (country), growing an understanding and acknowledging how it challenges or provokes personal journeys.

Children are invited to explore, play and dance with the performers as the landscape unfolds around them, providing a unique immersive experience, where the audience can become part of this visually beautiful journey.

Co-Artistic directors Davide Venturini (Italy) & Jason Cross (Australia)  Dramaturgy Sasha Zahra (Australia)  Composer/musician Lou Bennett (Australia/Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung)  Choreographer Deon Hastie (Australia/Tjapukai)  Dancer Rosealee Pearson (Australia/Yolngu)  Dancer Sani Townson (Australia/Saibai Koedal)  Narrator/performer Jada Alberts (Australia/Larrakia)  Visual artist/designer Delwyn Mannix (Australia/Wangkangurru)  Digital designer Elsa Mersi (Italy)  Technical designer Rossano Monti (Italy)  Sound designer Spartaco Cortesi (Italy)  Artistic collaborations Edoardo Donatini & Francesco Gandi (Italy)  Technical operators Niccolo Gallio & Alberto Martino (Italy)  Tour creative producer Insite Arts — Lee Cumberlidge & Jason Cross (Australia)  TPO manager Valentina Martini (Italy)

The seas have risen, the human race is on the brink of destruction and only one man can save the world. Now science and humanity are turning to the oceans. A last ditch effort to save the human race requires journeying down through the mysterious depths of the deep blue sea to find a new place for us to live.

This is micro-epic theatre that melds technology and comedy in a touching story of enduring love at the end of the world.

Alvin Sputnik, Deep Sea Explorer, is our unlikely hero in a curious and fantastical production that will captivate audiences of all ages. Creator and performer Tim Watts uses mime, puppetry, and live and recorded music with animation to present an exploration of the next and oldest frontier: the deep blue sea.

This show is REALLY not to be missed.

Winner Best Solo Show 2009 New York International Fringe

Winner Best Puppetry 2010 Adelaide Fringe Festival

A Weeping Spoon production presented in association with Perth Theatre Company.

SUPPORTED BY MEZ WOODWARD

Below stairs is a world of differing speed
Morning . Noon . Night
She eats . . . . . . . . . . blackout
Peas
He craves . . . . . . . . . peas
A tall short tale where taste may equal . . .
Blackout

Enter the unique world of one of Australia’s most intriguing dancers and independent choreographers, Michelle Heaven.

Reminiscent of an old silent film in its style and execution, this bizarre and beautiful work sees Michelle in an unforgettable ‘pea de deux’ with the inimitable Brian Lucas. Disagreeable Object will be encased within Ben Cobham’s distinctive design and beautifully accompanied by Bill McDonald’s original sound score.

Choreographer/performer Michelle Heaven  Collaborator/performer Brian Lucas  Collaborator/designer Ben Cobham / Bluebottle  Composer Bill McDonald  Costume designer Louise McCarthy  Production manager Bluebottle.

Author, designer and artist Geoff Hocking will guide an informative stroll through Gill’s Castlemaine and also take in the sights that were once visited by other prominent artists: Lacy, Clarke, Daintree, Rowe, the A&A Photographic Company, Verey and Wheeler. Enjoy an entertaining meander among the shadows of the past.

This is history at its best —  a ripping yarn with tales of happiness and tragedy, oppression and rebellion, humanity and racism, and our relationship to this land.

Multi-award-winning author Cate Kennedy has invited four fellow writers to join her on the couch. In the Greatest Story Never Told, authors will describe a story they would love to write, but never have, and their reasons.

Carmel Bird is a Tasmanian-born novelist who lives in central Victoria. She has written nine literary novels, six collections of short fiction, three books on the art of writing, and has edited many anthologies of essays and stories. Carmel is sought after as a teacher of fiction writing, and has spoken at major literary events throughout Australia and overseas.

Mark Dapin is an award-winning author and journalist who writes a weekly column for Good Weekend magazine in The Age. His books include the travel bestseller Strange Country, and King of the Cross, which won last year’s Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction.

Jarad Henry has worked in the criminal justice system for more than 10 years, including the past four as a strategy advisor for Victoria Police. Jarad has a degree in criminology, is a regular presenter at many conferences, forums and seminars on crime trends, and is considered an expert on the links between crime and drugs.

Shane Maloney is the creator of the popular Australian crime series — the Murray Whelan novels — for which he was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association of Australia Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009 and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction in 1997.

As Australia’s masters of deep funk and super-heavy soul, The Bamboos are recognised as the country’s greatest of their kind. Combining elements of old-school funk, hip hop, modern rock and psychedelic and northern soul, The Bamboos have forged a sound of their own.

The Bamboos have performed at festivals across Australia and have toured the United Kingdom and Europe three times, performing highly acclaimed shows at The Barbican and The Jazz Café in London, and other equally esteemed venues in Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Switzerland.

The 8-piece line-up, led by guitarist Lance Ferguson and featuring the power-house vocals of Kylie Auldist, is renowned for blistering, high-energy live sets, which keep people dancing all the way from Byron Bay to Bratislava.

Vocals Kylie Auldist  Guitar Lance Ferguson  Drums Daniel Farrugia  Fender bass Yuri Pavlinov  Hammond organ Stevie Hesketh  Tenor saxophone, flute Anton Delecca
Trumpet Ross Irwin  Baritone saxophone Philip Noy

Originally created by Barking Owl Theatre, Movement Zone,
unqualified, People Pictures and loads of local young people, COUCH went off (was successfully sprung) at the Castlemaine State Festival in 2009. Since then, COUCH has been an invited guest of festivals in Launceston and Melbourne.

With some new faces and new locations, the Castlemaine State Festival is ReCovering COUCH for 2011. We’re opening our living rooms and putting our sofas on the street. Old couches will be transformed with our vibrant artwork and dynamic energy, in our own town. So look out for random couches scattered around Castlemaine — places for hanging out, dancing, storytelling, or just watching the world, catching a rest and reflecting on the meaning of home.

Barking Owl Theatre conceived COUCH in 2009 in response to hearing stories about young people’s homelessness and couch surfing. COUCH asks questions about where we feel comfortable, safe and secure. COUCH asks us where we feel at home.

So get comfy and get involved — come and hang out with us on the COUCH and show us where you belong.

If you have ever dreamed of being an opera singer, this event is for you. Join maestro Richard Gill and soloists from the Victorian Opera for this stunning event as the ever-popular community big-sing premieres in Castlemaine. Sing Your Own Opera is a rare performance opportunity for anyone who loves to sing.

After taking part in a full rehearsal conducted by Richard, it will be time to frock up and sing a selection of choruses from the greatest works of the operatic repertoire including Carmen, Rigoletto, La Bohème and
The Magic Flute.

Far from karaoke, this is your chance to become part of the spontaneous, one-night-only, 2011 Castlemaine State Festival Opera Company.

Conductor Richard Gill  Soloists and accompanist Victorian Opera

The Australian Youth Orchestra (AYO) has a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s most prestigious and innovative organisations for young pre-professional classical musicians. During the 2011 Castlemaine State Festival, the AYO will be conducting their AYO Ensemble in Residence, and producing a music program in response to this residency experience.

The AYO Ensemble in Residence will also include a mentorship of Castlemaine Secondary College musicians in collaboration with Richard Gill, the Music Director of Victorian Opera.

HAYDN – String Quartet in G major, Op.76, No.1

Richard MEALE – Cantilena Pacifica from String Quartet No.2

PURCELL – A selection of Fantasias written for viols

SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op.73

Overlander brings together four of Australia’s leading musicians in an entirely unique union — the funky rumbles of didgeridoo super-star William Barton, the dulcet tones of singer/songwriter Mel Robinson, the boundless charm and wit of composer/performer extraordinaire Iain Grandage, and the voluptuous strength and energy of percussionist Claire Edwardes.

The program will feature works composed and arranged exclusively by members of the group. Each musician has a different take on the Australian musical landscape and together their works combine to form a rich tapestry of sonic colours.

In this premiere performance, music and moving images combine to entice audiences on a mesmerising journey through contrasting emotional landscapes; of places both known and unknown, real and imagined.

The moving images for this performance are the result of an Aphids’ Remote Sense residency and mentoring program, in collaboration with Punctum and filmmaker Paul Fletcher.

SUPPORTED BY
APHIDS
PUNCTUM
IAN POTTER FOUNDATION
YUBA MUNDOO
MECHANARCHY

This year’s outdoor festival is a continuation of the Castlemaine Music Festival, with the blues and roots line-up promising a rewarding insight into some of the sparkliest musical gems around.

Visitors can also immerse themselves in a major art exhibition in the magnificent Lot 19 Gallery, and partake of scrumptious fare from the excellent menu of Mama’s Kitchen and Papa’s Bar.

The program will include two recently commissioned Australian works: Cat Hope’s Kuklinski’s Dream (for carving knives, clarinet, cello, viola and Max/MSP) and Natasha Anderson’s That is; that not is (for cello and Max/MSP).

This exhibition showcases a selection of key works resulting from Australian Print Workshop projects with artists from Aurukun (Qld); Bathurst Island (NT); Fitzroy Crossing (WA); Kalumburu (WA); Melville Island (NT); Moa Island, Torres Strait Islands; Ngukurr (NT); and Oenpelli (NT).

Since the early 1990s, Australian Print Workshop has worked collaboratively on projects with Indigenous artists and communities throughout Australia.

Over the years, Australian Print Workshop has developed important on-going partnerships with artists from as far afield as the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, the Tiwi Islands, Central Australia, Torres Strait Islands, Cape York Peninsula and south eastern Australia.

Australian Print Workshop frequently travels to remote communities in these regions to work on site with artists, often setting up a ‘bush workshop’ to enable artists to engage with the print medium for the first time.

As interest in the print medium has grown, artists have embarked on more ambitious projects, often visiting Melbourne specifically to work at Australian Print Workshop to produce more complex work.

Works produced as a result of Australian Print Workshop collaborations have been exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas, and are represented in important collections around the world, including in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, British Museum (London) and Musee du quai Branly (France).

Mimih Figures — Susan Marawarr, Jimmy Njiminjuma, Kevin Djimarr, Mick Kubarkku, John Mawurndjul, Jimmy Bungurru, Jimmy An.gunguna, Owen Yalandja and Crusoe Kurddal

Figuring the Earth brings a focused integration of works of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian artists whose images and sculptural objects attest to the enduring power of the land to shape who we are as people and how we think. Figuring the Earth suggests that artists are simultaneously depicting — configuring — images related to the world, and in doing so are trying to ‘figure it out’; to come to grips with landscape, its mysteries, our place in it, our organic connection to the earth and other species with which we share. Judy Holding and John Wolseley have long-established practices of working directly in remote landscapes to absorb and evoke something of the primal force and beauty of places. For the various Arnhem Land artists in this exhibition, the land is formed and inhabited by spirit ancestors brought into material reality as a community of profoundly moving sculptural objects.

The Artists Rooms are a series of site-response works. Local and international visual artists stretch the contemporary art boundaries through performance, installation, prints, film and paste-up.

Emily Floyd’s knock-out installation The Temple of the Female Eunuch owes as much to great literature as it does to trends in modern sculpture. There are over 60 inscribed wooden meccano-like pieces of a meandering beauty, which explore constructs of feminism and concepts from the lexicon of modern thought.

Aleks Danko and Jill Orr are both highly regarded in contemporary art practice for site-response and performance work. Danko’s lyrical nonsensical and hard-hitting ‘words’ tell of another way to exist as artist. ‘What’s the point’ is a droll classroom spoof, or is it? An accompanying Aleks Danko performance will undoubtedly raise the consciousness of those who skipped class and always wondered what they missed. Orr grapples with the balance and discord that exists at the heart of relations between the human spirit, art and nature. Helen Vivian wrote ‘Jill Orr is a fiery artist and her work expresses the beauty, power and spiritual depth that is her trade mark.’

Local artists and editors of TROUBLE magazine, Melissa and Steven Proposch, make an entrance into the hallowed hallways and stairwell with disparate and surreal papery images of Hedony and her Hounds. Working from the Steven Proposch narrative, collages form the basis of the monotype etchings and collagraph paste-ups by Melissa Proposch.

A parallel performance will accompany the installation
by Aleks Danko Saturday 2 April 11.30am-12.30pm

William Kentridge (born 1955, lives and works in Johannesburg) is one of the most critically acclaimed and widely popular artists in the world today. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held in major museums across South Africa, Australia, Europe, Canada and the United States. He has developed a highly distinctive art practice, where the hand and the body of the artist are constantly evident in drawing, printmaking, sculpture, performance and the animations — or what he calls ‘stone-age filmmaking’ — for which he is famous.

This selection of Kentridge’s works draws on several recent series that demonstrate the breadth of his research and visual enquiry. From the colonial and apartheid histories of South Africa, the experimental art and music of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde, to intimate images of himself and his studio, Kentridge is an artist whose images are acute observations of the world and his place in it. They are poignant, humanist, mysterious and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

Kentridge is preoccupied with the ways people see. His studio and exhibitions could be considered as a type of laboratory, where image fragments and ideas converge to propose a new way of seeing and understanding the transient state of things, or the marks, scars and
signs that we leave behind us.

Kentridge delves into political events using powerful poetic allegory. His drawings, prints, performance and animation have inspired generations — once seen not easily forgotten.

Indonesian-born Heri Dono is one of South-East Asia’s most innovative and prominent artists, with a multi disciplinary practice, including performance, installation, painting, printmaking, sound and sculpture.

Cultural change in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto in 1998 enabled greater freedom of speech and expression for a new wave of artists. Heri Dono’s particular social and political commentary has played a leading role in what is recognised as a ‘New Internationalism’ in recent South-East Asian art, fusing aspects of tradition and cultural specificity — in Heri Dono’s case Javanese culture — with images and ideas drawn from the seemingly globalised world.

Heri Dono’s recent work melds the drama and humour of the
traditional puppet form wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppets)
with cartoon animation and the 3D dolls used in wayang golek (Indonesian rod puppets).

The Castlemaine State Festival is delighted to host Heri Dono as a special guest artist of the 2011 Visual Art Biennial, in association with
the Castlemaine Secondary College.

Heri Dono will be in residence at the Artists Rooms for several weeks and will conduct a series of workshops for art and Indonesian language students from the Castlemaine Secondary College, in a unique partnership co-funded by the Castlemaine State Festival and the Castlemaine Secondary College.

Pressing Issues — The Exhibition is the Visual Arts Biennial flagship exhibition representing artists who have an association with central Victoria. The artists have been invited to interpret the theme of Pressing Issues as a response to contemporary, traditional, personal, political, social, global, environmental, biological, relationship, gender or cultural issues. Pressing Issues may evoke serious, subtle, overt, religious, political, scientific, symbolic and even humorous ideas. It is an open-ended concept that was chosen to allow for maximum creative interpretation. Underpinning this theme is the notion of print media, which includes, but is not limited to, artist-made prints, linocuts, wood engravings, collagraphs, screen-prints on paper, textiles, wood, photography, moving image, collage, artist-made books and installation.

Exhibiting artists have expanded, stretched and developed the idea of printing to incorporate pasting, stamping and stencilling, alongside traditional printmaking techniques of etching, lithography, wood engraving, digital printing and site-response works.

Fittingly, Rose Nolan’s artwork is sited in the Castlemaine Phee Broadway Theatre foyer, traversing the divide between the grand and the intimate, the theatrical and the bookish, the public and the personal.

A thought provoking point of entry to Festival theatrical performance between acts, Rose Nolan’s grand scale striking red and white banners drop from the gods and make a statement. Read or not, you cannot ignore their presence

The Union Studio is proud to present an exhibition of lithographs by some of Australia’s best known artists in this new gallery in the heart of Castlemaine. This is the first time in over 30 years the complete Bodfford Terrace folio has been exhibited.

This folio of eight lithographs, printed in 1978, has significance in the history of the Australian Labor Party and in Australian art. John Brack, Len French, Frank Hodgkinson, Franz Kempf, Clifton Pugh and John Olsen, all of whom had been known nationally for some time, were joined by two younger artists, George Baldessin and Les Kossatz, to produce the unusually long ‘run’ of prints.

The brainchild of Peter Redlich, then President of the ALP Victorian Branch, the purpose of the project was to purchase and develop Bodfford Terrace as the new party headquarters. Architect Evan Walker identified the terrace in Drummond Street in Carlton as a suitable building for the purpose, and it provided a headquarters for the branch for many years. The name of the folio commemorates the building.

Peter Redlich asked Judith Pugh to run the fundraising project, and she managed everything from commissioning the artists and printers to arranging the launch by Sir Richard Kirby, President of the Arbitration Commission, at an exhibition at Melbourne University Gallery.

Exhibition Launch
by Judith Pugh
Sunday 3 April 2pm

Rhyll Plant is well known for her humorous turn of phrase and Escher-like interpretations. Rhyll will demonstrate the very fine art of wood engraving and printing of blocks on a small press. There will be a number of free original Rhyll Plant prints given away.

Merit.Fear.Desire.Responsibility.Privilege.Greed.Sacrifice.Contribution.Self Esteem.Belonging.Pressure.Places of Value.Individuality.

IN THE ANNEXE
Your moment: an evolving interactive installation using sound, photography, text and the moving image. Visitors will be invited to contribute.

IN THE MAIN GALLERY
The Artists’ moment: a Festival Salon that invites various artists to consider issues they find integral