Performed more than 75 times in 12 countries, this show has received multiple awards and accolades.

entomo is a collaboration between EA&AE, the Consulate General of Spain in Melbourne and Spanish Cultural Action (AC/E) who work to promote Spanish culture internationally.

EA&AE features, Elias Aguirre and Alvaro Esteban, two contemporary Spanish dancers based in Madrid.

Including EH5452 and Ab Blaster 40,000, these contemporary and innovative videos provide a compelling glimpse into the politics, personality, playfulness and heart being voiced by Bindi today.

Be prepared to have your heart and mind enlarged and your worldview transformed For Such a Time as This.

Artists include The Ulumbara Singers, Mal Webb, Ajak Kwai, Bigmouth choir and the Monster Meeting Band.

The day will also include an abundance of regional and exotic foods, and the famous Castlemaine Artists’ Market.

Curated by Clayton Tremlett and created with Castlemaine Secondary College students it also features work by Anatol Knotek – Vienna based visual poet and Pat Thompson.

SNAP SHOTS
Workshops for primary schools at Castlemaine Library, with Lisa D’Onofrio
10.30am & 2pm, Thursday 7 March
Participants will use images from the Verey collection of historical local photographs as inspiration to write their own poetry potraits. These pieces, generated by a number of poem-making techniques, will be displayed as ‘transparencies’ on the Castlemaine Library windows during the CSF alongside the the photos that inspired them.

Enquiries: Castlemaine Library, ph. 5472 1458 or castlemaine@ncgrl.vic.gov.au

Bite is an exhibition of new work by higher Degree and Honours  students from the Bendigo and Mildura Campuses.

These five selected artists have responded to the Festival theme exploring public space, memory, text, excess, living materials, the animal human nexus and  notions of  uncertainty.

Geoffrey Brown
Michelle Day
Philipp Pahin
Catherine Shields
Candy Stevens

Lost in Tranzit was first exhibited in a specially designed “transit lounge”, constructed in three different spaces at the Substation, Newport.

“I just don’t like being told what to do” . . . “I see myself in the future dreaming” . . . “It’s a place that I can’t fully explain. Its simple’’

Five young people from the Castlemaine district throw open the doors of their imagination to create video self-portraits which take us through the wild to the wonderful, from the intimate to the downright still and quiet.. Each participant has written their own text and chosen the location and visual framework for these short films about who they are and how they experience their worlds.

‘This is Me – Now’ is a collaboration between Ranters Theatre, Adriano Cortese, Paul Lum, Max Sharam, Andrew Sully, and Ruby Benedict, Bonnie Cook-Hain, Eamon Coulthard, Holly Mcnamara and Ruby Scott.

When young Alex is sent to her room to tidy up her mess, she discovers the land of Curiosity — a magical place that can be reached only through a tunnel in the bottom of her toy box. The characters Alex meets in Curiosity seem to defy logic with their outrageous gravity-defying feats, including handstanding on stacks of chairs, cantilevered ladder balancing and frolicking on giant stilts!

Performed by three of Australia’s most brilliant circus theatre performers, Curiosity is a truly rare theatrical treat.

Led by founder Jean-Claude Acquaviva, A Filetta’s music encompasses traditional compositions as well as its own interpretation of the island’s contemporary culture, without straying from its roots. To assert its Corsican identity, the group’s name refers to a type of fern that grows on the island of Corsica.

A Filetta will be performing works from the very traditional Corsican chant paghjella (sacred hymns), to contemporary works by Jean-Claude Acquaviva for Medea, Requiem, Pessoassion, theatre and film music.

Jean-Claude Acquaviva — seconda
Paul Giansily — terza
Jean-Luc Geronimi — seconda
Jean Sicurani — bassu
Maxime Vuillamier — bassu
Ceccè Acquaviva — bassu

“I don’t want to say anything, I just want to think back to this most intimate, intense, majestic concert I have ever experienced.”
Suzan Lohez, Paris, 25 April 2011.

Come to THE CLUBROOMS where you can warm up for an evening of Festival performances or wind down when the performances are done and dusted. Kick off, kick back and have a ball backstage at the Castlemaine Town Hall.

Sporting a rub-a-dub bar and grub, The Clubrooms have a trophy winning atmosphere and A-grade performances backstage, on stage, and beyond – warm ups, coaching, coaxing, crazy dance, cool tunes and hip moves, The Clubrooms combine live art with Allstar attitude, cabaret with locker room cheek, deep heat and Dencorub.

Featuring the Allstars, The Black Diamonds, Tuba, Flap! and guest players from the festival “bench”.

Come celebrate with the team ‘til the stars go home.

Twig explores and develops the geometry of the pentagon in two and three-dimensional structures, where mathematical perfection and the imperatives of tessellation balance against natural variation and bush-litter chaos. We begin with some basic materials and some rules of combination, but where do we end up? Twig alludes to both the biological and cellular, and to the social and societal, to the connections that exist between our molecules and cells, and to those we have with each other, in networks of family and friends.

Do you twig?

Twig has been created as an integrated artwork within the Festival’s Literature Program and will be fully experienced during these special events (see Collective DNA: We Are Made of Stories, Poetry and Song for details).

Elements of the artwork can be viewed at other times during the Festival, prior to performances, during the Castlemaine Market Building opening hours 10am to 5pm.

‘…the everyday transformed into something magical and enigmatic…’
Gina Fairley, Asian Art News Nov/Dec 2008

‘This is not art… I’ve got a 7-year old daughter and she could have done this for free and done a better job…’
Oscar Yildiz, Mayor of Moreland City Council, June 2011

Fourteen local and national artists!

Twelve premiere Festival works!

Exhibited across a range of extraordinary sites, including an abandoned car salesroom, a former police lock-up and an original miner’s cottage, Periscope explores: ruin, kitsch, abundance, alchemy, peepshows, history, projection and place.

Curated by Deborah Ratliff, the exhibition offers immersive engagement with some of the most creative individuals from the central goldfields region. Sugar from one, salt from another, mounds of spice, the artist’s mother, distilled concoctions, water, platinum, sound recordings, double adaptors, Chinese Hong Bao, plants, stoneware, discarded homewares, a reconfigured 1972 Holden Kingswood…

Compelling, complex and sometimes strange, the third Castlemaine Festival Visual Arts Biennial presents artists’ individual and collective responses to the Festival theme, Elemental.

Hunt & Lobb Building

Daniel Armstrong
Julie Collins and Derek John
Rhett D’Costa
Pia Johnson
Ben Laycock
Jessica Ledwich
Tanya Schultz
Dean Smith
Leslie Thornton
Frank Veldze
Jason Waterhouse

Tutes Cottage
Tara Gilbee

Old Police Lock-up
Clayton Tremlett

Periscope will include a Floor Talk Series and the following free participatory events:

Floor Talk Series
Enjoy a series of 30-minute artists’ talks on the Sunday of the opening weekend:
11am — Jessica Ledwich
12pm — Daniel Armstrong
1pm – Bindi Cole
2pm — Pia Johnson
3pm — Rhett D’Costa
Venue: Hunt & Lobb Building
Date: Sunday 17 March
Cost: Free

Eat! My Son
On the Saturday of the opening weekend, Rhett D’Costa and his octogenarian mum will prepare and serve a staple Anglo-Indian meal, extending the sensory and interactive experience of Rhett’s installation titled, Trade.
Venue: Hunt & Lobb Building
Date: Saturday 16 March
Time: 12.30pm to 1.30pm

The Elaboratory and the elixir of life: An apothecary’s wonderment.
Join artist Tara Gilbee at Tutes Cottage to examine the esoteric aspects of alchemy in her metaphorical laboratory.
Venue: Tutes Cottage, Greenhill Avenue, Castlemaine
Date: Saturday 16 March
Time: 2:30pm to 3:30pm

Hong Bao
Festival goers will actively contribute to Pia Johnson’s installation, Hong Bao. By adding Chinese red packets, audiences will be engaged in the traditional Chinese custom of gift giving and ancestor worship.
Venue: Hunt & Lobb Building
During hours of opening

Co-written, directed and performed by Mark Penzak and Eliza-Jane Gilchrist

Performed by Stéphane Georis
Written by Stéphane Georis and Francy Begasse
Directed by Francy Begasse
Presented in Association with: Black Hole Theatre