2019 Astronomy and Art Partnership Project

Campus and Community Partners:  Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (LWAG) with International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR); the School of Mathematics and Statistics and the Graduate School of Education (GSE) all at UWA, Aboriginal Elders and three schools: Perth based Rosalie Primary and Osborne Park Primary and Halls Creek District High from the Kimberly, WA.

This was a year-long cross disciplinary collaborative program with two exhibitions within LWAG, Indigenous knowledge workshops and practical art workshops with the participating schools; and a related openly accessible arts activity titled "Light and Dark" at THE HUB for students, families and children.

The project aim was to bring art, science and culture together into primary school students’ experience, to both learn and communicate knowledge about the night sky. Learning from research astronomers and Aboriginal Elders about the night sky and learning new skills in art workshops (including mathematical strategies as with anamorphosis so as to transform the night sky into maps), they discovered how they might use art to express their new scientific and cultural knowledge and to demonstrate their own responses. Practical skills in mounting exhibitions were also developed by senior students at Halls Creek District High in the Kimberly, WA.

The project aimed to introduce students from three very different demographic contexts to each other, while also revealing to them all, the respect for their work that was afforded by the artworks being hung and exhibited together, professionally, in a significant art museum within the university. This project aligned with UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31; which focuses on the right of every child to rest, leisure, play, and participation in cultural and artistic activities. It emphasises that children should have opportunities to engage in recreational activities appropriate for their age and participate fully in cultural life and the arts.

Stage One: (May 2019) Facilitated by ICRAR partners, a public exhibition of astronomical light photography (images from a recent Astrofest exhibition and photographic competition), as well as a radio- colour view of the sky, assembled from information collected by the Murchison Wide-Field array radio telescope, was professionally hung by LWAG staff within the gallery. Participating metropolitan based schools – Rosalie Primary and Osborne Park Primary, were invited to the gallery to learn about the images in the exhibition with ICRAR’s Cosmos Consultant, Education and Outreach Officer, Greg Rowbotham.  As a second stage of this workshop, the students participated in a Night Sky Viewing with large light telescopes with a Question and Answer workshop, on the UWA lawns with Greg Rowbotham and four ICRAR PhD students and Noongar Aboriginal Elder Noel Nannup.

Stage Two: The practical strategies to install the photographic exhibition were demonstrated in a video produced by LWAG installation team: Anthony Kelly Collections and Exhibitions Officer and Installation Assistant, Lyle Branson. Both the video and the photographs were sent to the third participating school, Halls Creek District High in the Kimberly, where an exhibition was mounted by their senior students for their school community.

Stage Three: (16 May 2019) In Perth, Rosalie Primary School visited ICRAR at UWA to participate in a workshop with Aboriginal Elder Noel Nannup who used the Stellarium Web Online Star Map to discuss cultural stories in relation to the night sky. In Halls Creek, the students had their own local Elders and life experiences to learn night sky cultural knowledge.

Stage Four: The children participated in art workshops facilitated by Erin Knight of GSE in their own schools to apply their new knowledge in producing their own artworks for exhibition at LWAG. Osborne Park Primary students produced artworks using textile media while Rosalie Primary explored printmaking. Students from Halls Creek produced paintings for exhibition and wrote short texts ( which were compiled into a folio), to accompany their works These works were professionally installed at LWAG by Anthony Kelly, Lyle Branson and Richard Foulds while signage was prepared by Clare McFarlane.

Stage Five: The Astronomy and Art Partnership exhibition (18-28 September 2019) was mounted in the Schenberg Study Centre at LWAG. Students, teachers and families attended an official exhibition launch on 18 September 2019 at LWAG that was attended by LWAG Director Professor Ted Snell and the Head of the Graduate School of Education together with ICRAR  personnel, in which a group of students from each of the schools and well as their Principals, spoke about the project. Teacher Mark Cavill in the Kimberly at Halls Creek District High School took his mobile phone out into that community’s central park where he and many students were able to speak to the students within the exhibition at LWAG and to see their own artworks hanging together within the exhibition. 

In addition, each partner school mounted exhibitions of their own students’ artworks at their own school libraries for the benefit of their own local school communities, parents and teachers.

During this period, ABC Kimberly produced two consecutive morning programs with interviews about the project.

The first was with Dr Janice Lally, Curator of Academic and Public Programs at LWAG who had the curated and produced the Astronomy and Art Partnership. The discussion was about the overview and planning of the diverse aspects of the program, including the big picture aims and context and details about the four UWA partners and three schools.

The second interview was with Mark Cavill, teacher at Halls Creek District High who had overseen their part of the project. This discussion covered the particular value of the project to the students of that school.

Interview ABC Kimberley Breakfast

Night Sky learning opens up wide world for students
Thursday 26 September, 2019

"These kids know night skies"
Friday 27 September, 2019

Images from the Student workshop featuring the Astrophotography exhibition and Night Sky viewing eventat the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and the UWA lawns