About the Artist
For the past 25 years Renita Glencross has been practicing as a cultural community development specialist advocating the value, importance and potency of the arts within the community identity; and has mentored many other artists into business while maintaining her own quiet elemental practice to keep creative spirit strong.
A very long time ago (last century) Renita completed an arts degree in textiles and married this with a love of architecture to work with interior design and outdoor living spaces; from exploring the botanical chemistry of natural dyeing in the forest of South-West Australia to digital mapping in the Central desert; connecting images, place and people with time and space.
A significant part of her career has been dedicated to working with regional and remote Australian Indigenous communities to develop capacity for cultural tourism and cultural business opportunities through exhibitions, festivals and performance.
Through her work as an artist and creative producer, Renita advocates for the arts as a tool for social change in the community and its capacity for passive diplomacy; and believes that it is elemental to our well-being.
In the past the artist has worked directly with grass-roots organisations such as 3C Projects, Ethos Global Foundation and Artback NT to facilitate community arts and cultural development projects in remote locations in Australia and internationally. More recently, her work has been with government in an arts policy and advisory capacity. A full bio can be found here.
In previous solo exhibitions (Relics 2003; Relics, Look Again 2013; Rust & Dust 2015) Renita has explored the repetitive journeys we make between places of inspiration (inhalation-centrifugation) and allocation (exhalation-communication); and the transient beauty in discarded or forgotten objects.
Ongoing, her focus is shifting to the role that inter-disciplinarity plays in community development; the creative space that is occupied by scientists and artists alike, where collaborative energies can really transform existing patterns of thinking and seeing into new ways of doing.
Renita currently creates from a studio in Wagait Beach, Northern Australia - across the 'ditch' from Darwin, the capital. Access to the mainland is via ferry or a 130km drive through the magnificent tropical top end forests of cycads, palms, eucalypts and pandanus-lined creeks, all the way to the beach; and it is this place of elemental inspiration where her soul rests and responds.
Like an Echo - an Art Echo. Visitors are welcome!
If you would like to contact me to find out more about what I do, send me an email here