These Easter school holidays, the Art with the Stars exhibition is open at the WA Shipwrecks Museum, Cliff Street, Walyalup (Fremantle). It showcases artwork produced by Shooting Stars participants from schools across WA as they’ve learned from local Aboriginal artists, connecting to culture through art.
The exhibition is free and open to the community until Sunday 28th of April. Visitors to the Museum will experience powerful stories shared by the young artists through their work. The range of projects covers various media including basket-weaving, textiles, painting, fashion, and dance, showcasing the diversity and strength of art-making and culture across Western Australia.
Shooting Stars is an education and empowerment program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls in Western and South Australia. Based in 22 schools, Shooting Stars is predominantly staffed by Aboriginal women and reaches over 1,200 girls and young women.
Art with the Stars is an enrichment program within Shooting Stars, which connects participants with local Aboriginal artists to explore cultural identity and belonging through creativity and art-making.
Everything Shooting Stars does comes from local Aboriginal communities and is informed by research that is grounded in Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing. The staff facilitate yarning circles with program participants, communities, and localised steering committees to gather feedback, to ensure program delivery is place-based, and to identify barriers and facilitators to participants’ empowerment.
The Art with the Stars enrichment program was conceived in 2019 when a localised steering committee suggested that Shooting Stars implement an art based cultural project. This project would have two key outcomes:
1) Participants could connect with, and learn more about their culture, identity, and community through art-making or storytelling, and
2) The art or story would be shared with non-Aboriginal community members who could learn more about local Aboriginal culture.
From this idea, Shooting Stars applied for pilot funding, and the Art with the Stars project was born.
The Art with the Stars exhibition brings together artwork made across eight different projects at six sites across Western Australia — Carnarvon, Collie, Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek, Kiara College and Mullewa. Each piece of art featured in this exhibition is a narrative in its own right, offering a window into the unique perspectives and incredible stories of the young artists. The artwork collectively reflects their journeys, aspirations, and their deep connection to culture, community and self, adding depth and dimension to the broader Shooting Stars program.
In October last year, the first Art with the Stars exhibition was launched in Carnarvon. The Carnarvon Shooting Stars Program Coordinator, Natalie Crossley, attended both the Carnarvon Opening Night in 2023, and the Walyalup Opening Night earlier this year.
"It was incredible to see the artworks showcased at the WA Shipwrecks Museum, giving our participants a unique opportunity to share their stories and deep connection to Aboriginal culture through art-making. I hope other sites can have their participants visit the exhibition, as the participants at the Carnarvon exhibition had a great sense of pride and excitement in seeing their artworks displayed and their community celebrating their achievements,” said Crossley.
After the 28th of April, the exhibition’s next scheduled destination for the year will be the Collie Art Gallery from June until August, 2024.
The Art with the Stars project and the Walyalup exhibition is supported by Centurion, the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Lotterywest, the Australian Government in partnership with the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal, UnLtd, and the Western Australian Museum. Major partners of Shooting Stars can be found at https://shootingstars.com.au/partners
