Common Goods is a Craft Victoria exhibition that will be on display at the Melbourne Museum for the Commonwealth Games. It will include eight visiting artists from Commonwealth countries, who will work collaboratively with local artists in residencies throughout Victoria, including Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Morwell, Artplay, Moonee Valley and Craft Victoria. The guest countries include South Africa, Mauritius, Malta, Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Samoa and New Zealand. The resulting exhibition will contain works by the sixteen artists individually plus eight collaborative works. As well as creatively engaging with the craft skills of visiting cultures, Common Goods is designed to develop dialogue around concepts of humanness, particularly the South African value of 'ubuntu' ('a person is a person through other persons'). The accompanying book will include essays by writers (from the countries featured in the exhibition) around concepts and rituals that represent 'common good'.
Common Goods participants are now arriving from all corners of the south. The first to come were the darners from Najibabad, India. Thanks greatly to Ilka White for billetting them before they go to Ballarat. Zakir Hussain's skills in darning were put to immediate use when he quickly attached a lining to the Kashmir shawl that is going into the museum display. All the late night airport pickups combined with the museum installation is exhausting, the cultural alchemy provides its own energy.
