PhD candidate Jacinta Walsh and Faculty of Arts Design Collaboration
In late 2022, the Faculty of Arts’ Marketing team undertook a design collaboration with Jacinta Walsh, PhD candidate and Research Officer with the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, to create a series of Indigenous Australian artworks that could reflect and celebrate the dynamic, collaborative and creative culture of the Faculty.
The team was looking for an artist who had a connection with the Faculty to help visually represent our value proposition:
“A 60 year tradition of revolution, fueling the disruptors of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Monash Arts’ reputation is built on 60 years of revolution and impact, in Australia and beyond. We have a curious, restless and rebellious spirit, influencing, and influenced by, our living legacy of groundbreaking discovery, paradigm-shifting advancements, and transformative innovation. Through our global and meaningful research and education, our students, staff and alumni have become the disruptors for good that our world needs now more than ever.”
Integrating the best of two worlds
The key message we wanted to convey was ‘You Belong at Monash Arts’.
Our collective brainstorming imagined the following themes:
- Where the curious live
- Coming together
- You Belong
- Nucleus of Activity
- Dynamic
- Social Connections
- Social Networks
- Relationality
- Storytelling.
Armed with this design brief, Jacinta created hand-drawn patterns, linework, shapes, symbols, and colours that are representative of our dynamic, fluid and interconnected Faculty.
The Marketing team’s in-house graphic designer, Chanel Coquet, beautifully translated Jacinta’s artworks into a digital format. Chanel was extremely mindful and worked closely with Jacinta to ensure that she did not misinterpret or misrepresent her artwork. Chanel carefully integrated the best of two worlds: the "old world" of indigenous visual storytelling and the "new world" of digitised art.
Unearthing creative storytelling
The first design suite took its inspiration from the ancient craft of basket weaving or coiling, undertaken predominantly by Australian Aboriginal women. The process of coiling and weaving is itself a ceremony of cultural practice and a celebration of family, community, and collaborative processes. The ancient practice both honours the past and protects the preservation of cultural, artistic and survival practices for future generations. Through these collaborative and creative practices, we are finding and expressing our sense of purpose and belonging.
The second design suite, currently in production, centres on leaves: their uniqueness, their power, and their role in community and in ceremonies. Native leaves are a part of powerful ecosystems that not only sustain human life, but also the lives of other living creatures. Leaves hold a deep significance when burned in ceremony; “To be blessed by smoke in ceremony is to be held and welcomed by Country herself. It is an honour. Through each smoking ceremony, we are reminded of our reciprocal relationships and responsibilities to care for each other and the places we live and visit,” explains Jacinta. She also describes them as 'nature's fingerprints,' imbuing within her designs a celebration of each Monash student's individualism.
Using her digital art talents, Chanel was able to unearth Jacinta's creative storytelling across multiple physical and digital mediums such as signage, merchandise, and digital banners. The artwork has attracted hundreds of admirers and has helped Monash Arts stand out from the crowd at multiple events.
Their collaboration underpins the Monash Arts experience and impact whereby in order to thrive in the world we live in today, and build for tomorrow, you need a deep understanding of different cultures and cultural sensitives, world affairs, society, and the context of geopolitical landscapes.
About Jacinta Walsh
Jacinta is a woman of Jaru / Yawuru and Irish heritage and a proud mother to three young men. She was adopted and raised in a loving and adventurous non-Indigenous, multicultural family in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. In 1998, Jacinta approached Link-Up and began a lifetime journey of reconnection with her birth mother, who is of Irish descent, and birth father, an Aboriginal man, whose heritage is from Jaru / Yawuru Country in the east and west Kimberley regions of Western Australia.
Jacinta’s research interests lie in culturally informed, careful and compassionate research practices, Aboriginal family life writing, twentieth-century Western Australian Aboriginal policies, narrative and identity formation and reformation and stories of intergenerational family knowledge repatriation and reconnection. Jacinta advocates for Indigenous family access to all the archives that relate to them, reconciliation through truth telling and healing through Story.
Jacinta’s artworks are derived through a lifetime of embodied and remembered ancestral stories, and are an expression of love for her ancestors, for her family and for her Country. Her Songlines, deep connections with Country, are expressed through every line, every shape, symbol and colour.