It’s day one of the LINES in the SAND install on North Stradbroke Island, with artists arriving, relaxing, beginning to cast their ideas over their respective sites, choosing materials, tuning in to the rhythms of the changing weather, seas, winds. The conditions are not perfect – the warm blue sky weather that may characterise winter in Queensland absent. Instead, today light rain threatens: there is wind, cloudy sky, overcast, the light muted. But there is a certain romance in that, a Shakespearean sense of ideas in portent. Off shore, the whales are heading north for their own purposeful gathering.
We check into Headlands Chalet, and on its colourfully painted bungalow walls are evidence of past creativity, with murals, paintings, charismatic groupings of objects and gardens, and sculpture. To date we’ve met a few of the artists’ in residence – Sharon Jewell, Anaheke Matua, Caitlyn Halsall and Luke Kidd. All are gathering materials and imagery, the ideas they have arrived with influenced by the convergence of the place, the conditions and the stimulus of other artists.