Claire Wildish: The Papyrophillia Project FRINGE 2021
February 19 - March 21, 2021
Exhibition launch Sunday FEBRUARY 21st at 3-5pm
The Papyrophilia Project is an interactive space designed by kids for kids. During Fringe 2021 paper loving kids are invited to Hahndorf Academy to create, collaborate and help curate this growing, immersive and interactive exhibition exploring self-expression inspired by all we have around us. If you love building rockets and castles out of cardboard boxes, this is the place for you.
Artist Bio
Claire is a passionate community artist and kid at heart who grew up in the country in a family of theatrics. She studied fashion design and multimedia while travelling and looking for adventures, breathing in the air and the people she met along the way. She found her passion in community arts, developing multi-arts programs with children, Indigenous Australians and multi-cultural community groups in outback and urban Australia and internationally.
For five years she and her family lived in in the remote Western Australian Indigenous community of Irrunytju where she learnt the secret art of listening and storytelling while managing the Minyma Kutjara Arts Project. In collaboration with senior Pitjantjantjara/Ngaantjarra elders and local artists she helped initiate the re-opening of the art centre after many years of closure. In 2014-15 she project managed and curated Kapi Ungkupayi / He Gave Us Water for Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art, a multi-media, multi-sensory exhibition involving five principal artists and over 100 supporting artists.
Since moving to Adelaide five years ago she has grown her own arts practise while working alongside the South Australian Museum, Life Without Barriers, Autism SA, Westcare, Mitcham Council, Laurel Pallative Care Foundation and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
In 2020 she was the successful recipient of the Adelaide City Library SALA Festival Emerging Curator Grant. “I am Awe-tistic”, a collaborative exhibition giving twenty-eight young emerging artists on the autism spectrum a voice, celebrating their hearts and minds and exploring their curious curiosities.
All this is a constant inspiration for her art practise along with her two extraordinary children who taught her how to make zines and from their breakfast table publishing company where they cut and paste strange characters on wild adventures in search of cockroaches, cucumbers, dead potatoes and ice cream dreams. They also helped her start the after-school arts program, The Cucumber Project at Cumberland Park Community Centre.
