Footy Show
Billy Kenda, Traeger Park Oval, 2022
There was a Powerade ad on TV maybe fifteen years ago: a monochrome montage of Adam Goodes panting, weaving, bouncing and sweating blue beads. He finally stopped, exhausted, and swilled blue electrolytes, turned to the camera, to us, and whispered gently, with all the intensity of an exasperated legend of the game, “September…”
Footy Show is a group exhibition opening this September at Watch This Space as part of the Desert Mob 2022 satellite program. Earlier in the year WTS invited artists from Bindi Mwerre Anthurre, Hermannsburg Potters and Hidden Valley Artists to develop work for a show exploring their relationship to footy. This show brings together First Nations artists from the Central Desert region for a celebration and interrogation of local footy on and off the field.
Come September, as Stan Coombe observes, Central Desert communities empty for the weekends as hoards of cars pile into town adorned with club colours and hand-made decals, parading up and down Gap Rd past Watch This Space to the "MCG of the bush," Traeger Park. The seductive whisper of September is forgotten and the honking erupts as “almost everyone heads into town to support their teams.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a poem by Blue Brashaw and an essay by Randal “Stan” Coombe.
Where’re you from and who’s your team?
by Blue Brashaw
Essay
by Randal “Stan” Coombe