Christine McMillan's exhibition "Gathering"

We'd like to wish Archive friend and supporter, Australian artist Christine McMillan, all the very best with the launch of her exhibition Gathering, tonight at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.

That's Christine in the photo on the right, with Iman. This was taken at the opening of our traveling exhibition "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" at Museum of Victoria's Immigration Museum in 2002.

We displayed our traveling exhibition "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery the year after (photo at left).

Christine came to visit our director and use parts of the Archive's collection for inspiration, quite a while before that. She was very interested in Palestinian costume and Sinai bedouin dress, and even created a hand dyed and embroidered thob herself, along with a stunning burqa series. Jeni incorporated some of these works of art into "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" as a way of showing how wonderfully Palestinian traditions were continuing to inspire artists from all over the world.

You can find a photo of Christine wearing the thob on our website.

You can visit Christine's website here (there is a link to Christine's burqa series but it's not working at the moment, so here is one example on the right of her Oman Wahibi style burqa with shells voile, cotton thread and shells) and blog here.

The photo on the left is a detail from her Sinai Desert style burqa, one of the works that was in "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume". This is a postcard we sell here at the Archive.

Gathering opens tonight and runs from 17 August - 30 September, 2007. Christine is giving a talk at 11am tomorrow, Saturday 18 August.

(Photos: Christine McMillan, Jeni Allenby)

PalCast: Podcasting the Occupation of Palestine

We promised on this blog to recommend good ways to keep up to date with Palestinian issues, both political and cultural.

Their website says:

"PalCast.org was born when the founders discovered a distinct lack of quality internet audio programming focused on Palestine-related issues in the iTunes podcast directory. After searching the internet, it became obvious that Palestine-focused audio was hard to find.

"PalCast.org aims to become the center of quality internet audio programming on the internet focused on Palestinian culture, art, politics and the Israeli occupation"

We love that one of their focus categories is Palestinian music, and we really do suggest you have a listen to their podcast of CKUT radio's interview with members of Sabreen (The Sabreen Association for Artistic Development in Palestine) (the word sabreen means "patience") on culture and resistance. The program was produced by Community News Net for CKUT radio on November 18, 2006, during Sabreen's 2006 tour of Canada.

"if you are a Palestinian, you have to do miracles"

World Concert for Palestine

Here's a Palestinian support project we really like. Want to help us spread the word?! Here is their news release:

A world concert for Palestine

Bono! We appeal to you, and to
all the music world, to organize
a world concert for Palestine!"

So begins an online appeal - addressed to Bono, leader of the rock group U2 - launched by Gazzella, an Italian NGO that helps rehabilitate Palestinian children wounded in Israeli ground and air attacks on Palestinian cities and villages.

"We wondered why the music world has never held a global concert for the Palestinians," said Gazzella president Marina Rossanda, listing the many "humanitarian" events held in the past - from the historic Concert for Bangladesh (1971) and Live Aid for Ethiopia (1985) to the Freedom Tibet Concert (1997) and the recent 46664 concert to fight AIDS.

"We're sure a concert for Palestine would find widespread support among young people around the world - and also among many musicians, starting with Bono himself." (Over the years, Bono has campaigned for numerous causes, including Amnesty International and the Jubilee 2000 project to end Third World debt.)

The appeal is available at http://www.concert4palestine.org in English, Arabic, Hebrew, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.