Floating Land Arts Festival

Floating land: Rising Seas and Changing Climate was a 10 day art festival held in June at Lake Cootharaba on the Sunshine Coast Queensland Australia. We were fortunate to see sculptures by artists from different countries as well as Australia plus performance artists and musicians.

Of interest to us here at BLONG MI Fashions was the presence of internationally acclaimed artist Eric Natuoivi of Vanuatu. We had the pleasure of viewing his exhibition on the shores of Lake Cootharaba. Eric Natuoivi, the Principal of Vanuatu Teachers College, uses Vanuatu’s traditional cultures as inspiration for his art.

Eric worked on the shores of Lake Cootharaba in the wind and rain taking axe and chisel to carve posts (TamTam) from fallen wood. After the “Welcome to Country” by our own Indigenous Leader, Gubbi Gubbi Elder Dr Eve Fesl, Eric felt at ease with the natural and spiritual environment. He has not taken anything precious from it, only trees that the earth has given up and rocks from the lakeside.

The rock arrangement, grouped in a rough circle, represents a meeting place of the people of the land. A little further away, four carved posts stand for the ancestral spirits, concerned about the rising seas and the fate of their people.

Eric uses only natural materials. In Vanuatu culture each material – clay, pigs tusks, wood and coconut fibre - carries symbolic meaning, aesthetic and heritage value. His message to us is, “We should cherish and safeguard the natural world to enrich the way we live”.

Ni-Vanuatu (Vanuatu born) people, like other Pacific Islanders, are very aware of the effects of climate change as some low lying atolls in their archipelago are already suffering the effects of the encroaching seas.

Traditional dancers from Tokelau and Tuvalu presented their homeland and lifestyle in traditional song and dance. After traditional welcomes the Tuvalu Community was presented with a “fale” by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and presented Indigenous Gubbi Gubbi Elder Dr Eve Fesl with a ceremonial mat and then the celebrations began.