Kate Gorringe-Smith, coordinator of the Flyway Print Exchange project, writes:
‘It has been an exciting week for the Flyway Print Exchange, an environmental art project linking 20 artists from nine countries along the East-Asian–Australasian Flyway…
…after travelling for 59 days and 29,000 km from Melbourne, via New Zealand and Singapore, to Anchorage, Alaska, and then back to Melbourne, the Travelling Prints have arrived back safely! Each one has come back — we have a 100 per cent survival rate (better than the birds I suspect) — a little worn, a little weary, but with a tale to tell…
…the travelled prints will be exhibited alongside their pristine counterparts at the Flyway Print Exchange exhibition to illustrate the journey travelled by Australia’s migratory shorebirds.’
The exhibition opens at the OzAsia Festival in Adelaide on 4 September 2014 then on to its next destination, Melbourne.
n. an imaginary paradise on earth, esp. a remote and exotic utopia [after the fictional Tibetan land of eternal youth in the novel The Lost Horizon (1933) by James Hilton]
‘During the Taiyuan era of the Jin Dynasty there was a man of Wuling who made his living as a fisherman. Once while following a stream he forgot how far he had gone. He suddenly came to a grove of blossoming peach trees…
…The peach trees stopped at the stream’s source, where the fisherman came to a mountain with a small opening through which it seemed he could see light. Leaving his boat, he entered the opening. At first it was so narrow that he could barely pass, but after advancing a short distance it suddenly opened up to reveal a broad, flat area with imposing houses, good fields, beautiful ponds, mulberry trees, bamboo, and the like. The fisherman saw paths extending among the fields in all directions, and could hear the sounds of chickens and dogs. Men and women working in the fields all wore clothing that looked like that of foreign lands. The elderly and children all seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves…
…After several days there, the fisherman bid farewell, at which time some villagers told him, “It’s not worth telling people on the outside about us.”
The fisherman exited through the opening, found his boat, and retraced his route while leaving markers to find this place again. Upon his arrival at the prefecture town he went to the prefect and told him what had happened. The prefect immediately sent a person to follow the fisherman and look for the trail markers, but they got lost and never found the way…After that no one else ever looked for the place.’
From Peach Blossom Shangri-la by Tao Yuan Ming, naturalist, poet and government official, c365-427
