Page 59 - Tropic Magazine Issue 36

TROPIC • SPECIAL FEATURE

MASTERS OF

COUNTRY

EVENTS
Cairns Indigenous Art Fair is set
to return to a full-scale
celebration this July, showcasing
five days of art, culture,
performance and storytelling.
Words: Annabel Bowles
The region’s premier arts and culture
festival is back, and by all means of the
phrase, in a big way.
The 2022 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF)
marks its 13th year and long-awaited
return to a physical format after two
digital iterations.
Tens of thousands of visitors from around
Queensland, Australia and the world will
gather at the Fair’s home in the newly
reopened Cairns Convention Centre, as well
as at several satellite events around the city.
The theme of this year’s program is
Masters of Country – a creative showcase
of Queensland First Peoples’ knowledge
and resourcefulness of Indigenous plants
and trees.
Gerry Turpin, a senior ethnobotanist at the
Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre
and Australian Tropical Herbarium, as well
as a judge of this year’s Art Awards, said he’ll
be looking for cultural, ecological, social
and aesthetic aspects within artist works.
“Queensland has about 14,000 native
species of plants, algae, fungi and lichens
and is the most diverse state in Australia
in terms of plants,” Gerry said. “Australian
Aboriginals have lived for thousands of
years on this land, developing intimate
knowledge of its biodiversity and
landscape. This has allowed them to live
sustainably through environmental and
climatic changes.”
“Today, our people are botanists, doctors,
nurses, chefs, nutritionists, gardeners,
architects, builders, pharmacists, arborists,
physicists, and horticulturists,” CIAF’s
Artistic Director Janina Harding said.
“We have always had and always will have
1 experts on plant knowledge.”

59 • tropicnow.com.au