PERFORMANCE
The Zest Festival is taking the essence of the Chamber of Rhetoric from Amsterdam and holding a storytelling event around a bonfire.
The bonfire represents the beacon of the Zuytdorp survivors on the top of the cliffs, which is believed to have been kept burning in vain as a signal fire for a much yearned-for rescue ship which never came. READ MORE
Chamber of Rhetoric
Chamber of Rhetoric | Zest Festival 2012
Chamber of Rhetoric 2015
Chamber of Rhetoric 2014
2014 Chamber of Rhetoric
Chamber of Rhetoric 2013
2015 Japanese Teahouse and Ceremony
It was an honour to have Japanese Tea Master Eisetsu Miyahara and her team Tamiko Miyake, Kyomi Matsui, Lisa Miyahara, Takako Matoba and Hirotaka Miyahara perform and guide patrons through a beautiful Japanese tea ceremony. Guests experienced a very special cultural experience that was beautiful, intimate and set in an architecturally designed tea house by architecture student Jared Malton and built by the Kalbarri Men’s Shed. It’s location on the Murchison River beach overlooking the river mouth and out along the wild coast was breathtaking. A truly remarkable experience.
2014 Dance performance
Over three months, local dance students learnt about the significance of dance in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka and learnt new choreographed dance pieces that were performed at the 2014 Zest Festival.
It was a joy to see such young talented children embrace learning about different cultures and expressing themselves through dance.
They put on a colourful and energetic performance that had the crowd clapping along and cheering.
Patrons also had the pleasure of watching a troupe of Bollywood dancers; all braved the fierce storm and crammed conditions in our large marquee. Despite the wild down pour outside the atmosphere was electric and the glamour, colour and talent of the Indian dancers thrilled the damp crowd. They said we were blessed by the Rain Gods!
EXHIBITIONS
Art offers pleasures that are as tangible now as they were hundreds of years ago. For the art makers of today, as it was for the seventeenth-century Dutch, there is the joy of immersing oneself in the world of colour, light, line and shape; the satisfaction of mastering physical materials so they respond to one’s personal intent; and the freedom to express one’s imagination, ideas, observations and experiences of the world.
The Power of the Beautiful Exhibition 2015
Taste and Desire; The Power of the Beautiful exhibition explored the emotions tied to objects of beauty and power and the VOC trade with China and Japan. Regional artists Marina Baker and Marianne Penberthy and Poet Renee Petit-Schipp worked with this remote community and through a series of workshops in papermaking, poetry, sculpture and the reflection and selection of personal valued ‘vessels’ the community learnt about the cultures of Japan, China, Europe and themselves.
This exhibition had an inside and outside experience, with physical and projected elements aiming to reflect the emotions we feel when we encounter the power of beautiful whether it is nature, a poem or a loved object.
Colour of Ritual exhibition 2014
Artists Marianne Penberthy and Marina Baker transformed two beach shacks into spaces that tapped into deep emotions. This exhibition took patrons through a sensory experience using textures, aromas and colours to evoke emotions around birth, death, marriage and ritual. The exhibition weaved local landscape elements with the religious meanings of colour and the power of ritual in Indian, Indonesian and Sri Lankan cultures while examining the VOC response to the religions and rituals they encountered during their maritime trade in the Indian Ocean region.
Far From Home exhibition 2013
We invited community members to present an object, artwork, story or anything which holds meaning about being Far From Home to them, and to provide a story about how this chosen item connected them to home. The object could have been anything, it could have been a letter, a traditional meal recipe, a treasured memento, a musical instrument, a song – it was the story that made the choice meaningful.
The seven entries we selected show how powerful the emotions are that connect us to home at any age. Memories are created and stay with us for our lives and can be triggered by the smallest thing – a smell, a landscape, an object, and thinking of a loved one. This part of the exhibition tells modern day stories. READ MORE
Still Life Our Life exhibition 2012
The myriad of possibilities this presents to the artist are clearly evidenced in the choice of materials, subject matter and styles revealed here in the Still Life / Our Life exhibition. Art and craft materials of the early modern past are referenced by artists through their use of pigment and canvas, ink and paper, stitch and fabric, glass, porcelain and precious metals. Several artists have looked to the style and compositional arrangements found in typical Dutch Master paintings for inspiration, while others have chosen to work within old European traditions of art production such as etching, trompe l’oeil painting and needle and thread in their interpretation of more contemporary subjects. READ MORE
Workshops
Puppet Making
Puppet making workshop
Gamelan cultural session
The Gamelan instruments were ornate, colourful and beautiful but the music they made was enchanting. Learning to collectively play these cultural instruments was fascinating and discovering their significance in Indonesian culture another window into another world for patrons.
FILM
Zest Festival 2013 ABC Open video
There are many stories to tell about Kalbarri and the lives of those who choose to live here.
The Zest Festival has partnered with ABC Open to provide skills training in digital storytelling and inspire local Kalbarri residents to use the tools they have on hand (such as smart phones, or DSLRs that shoot video) and share their stories.
It can be quite daunting to try new media, however Chris Lewis, the ABC Open MidWest Producer, has worked closely with a group of locals to make their own video stories – some even went a step further and ventured into the world of blogging.
We asked people to think about the festival theme of ‘Far From Home’. The ABC Open video postcard project fitted nicely within this. READ MORE
Music
The ARC Centre for the History of Emotions’ Performance Program investigates pre-modern production and dissemination of emotions in the creative and performing arts through performance practice. The Zest Festival is an opportunity for our arts practitioners and industry partners to share and co-investigate with the public and with school groups how historical musical and theatrical practices, often unfamiliar to modern audiences, were used to arouse intense emotions among spectators of dramatic and musical performances.
Colour Dance Party 2014
What can you do when you get hit by the wettest day in 65 years, a storm front that whipped up a fury like no other. Well dance of course.
DJ Adam Love turned up the tunes and young and old frolicked together, dancing, chasing and throwing coloured powder, laughing and totally enjoying the colourful splashing experience in the rain.
Sea Shanties and Ballads 2013
We also explore, through the Zest Festival, the emotional reactions and responses of modern audiences to these works from long ago. Do they still resonate and inspire us to cry, faint or experience sheer joy? Do we share the feelings of their audiences to the comic, sad, or fearful moments of dramatic tension? READ MORE
Baroque 2012
At the Zest Festival, we consider how eighteenth-century Dutch composers expressed their emotions through religious and courtly music, a very different environment to the songs of sailors on the VOC ships. We also use Shakespeare’s The Tempest to explore how early modern writers and their audiences felt about the discovery of new lands and the colonisation of their peoples. READ MORE
Community Textile project 2014
We worked with the Midwest community in creating a large-scale textile piece that reflected the rituals in their lives today and how colour is part of life.
Zuytdorp Quilt 2012
The Hand-made Zuytdorp Commemorative Quilt
Members of the Kalbarri Arts and Crafts Group designed and hand-crafted a beautiful commemorative quilt/wall hanging to commemorate the final journey of the Zuytdorp.
The piece was constructed using a range of techniques including applique, painting, embroidery and other textile media. The design was loosely based on an embellished map of the East Indies during the period 1600 – 1700.
The commemorative quilt represented a beautiful and collaborative project that reflected this significant event in a meaningful and modern way for these local quilters.