KickArts becomes ‘NorthSite’: NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Cairns
It’s a new decade (depending on the calendar you use) so in the spirit of fresh starts, Cairns’ longstanding arts organisation KickArts will reopen in 2020 as NorthSite Contemporary Arts, with a fresh direction and ambitious vision under the leadership of Ashleigh Campbell. NorthSite’s 2020 program kicks off with six exhibitions. Artists and traditional owners Bernard Lee Singleton (Yirrgandydji) and Carl Marun Fourmile (Yidinji) have created new digital artworks for the LED facade that wraps the building. Wendy Mocke presents project m e r i, developed between Cairns and Port Moresby; large-scale cinematic paintings by Tim Ellis are presented in proximity to Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg’s touring show Montages; and a radical new series of prints that ‘Expose the Gap’ by Darren Blackman. The building has been gifted the name Bulmba-ja Arts Centre (meaning house) by both the Yirrgandydji and Yidinji Traditional Owner groups. These groups have also guided TPG Architects’ design process, along with the arts community, to inform new elements of the centre which include new gallery spaces, a theatre that opens onto tropical gardens, a yarning circle complete with sky portals, an Elders’ lounge and a ‘big verandah’ that acts as a canopy and welcomes people from footpath to front door.
