Fundraising event with Indigenous art and award-winning musicians nets $10,000.
The award-winning Indigenous singer-songwriter, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu performed to a full house at the Merenda Fine Art Gallery last month – an event raising $10,000 for Crossroads Community, a Fremantle-based centre to help people overcome addiction.
The event took place on Wednesday August 19 with tickets selling for $100 to contribute to the agency’s ongoing costs in assisting clients in fighting drug, alcohol and gambling abuse issues as well as future plans to expand to a second site. Surrounded by world-quality indigenous art, an audience of over 60 people also enjoyed a performance by the East Timorese composer Ergo Lemos who wrote music for the recently-released Australian film, Balibo.
Mr Yunupingu, the recipient of APRA’s "Breakthrough artist of the year" award for 2009, was in town to play at the Perth Concert Hall on August 20 playing songs from his double-platinum debut album.
The blind north-east Arnhem Land artist has been lauded by critics throughout the country for the imagery invoked in the lyrics he sings in the local languages of Gumatj, Galpu (his mother’s language), Djambarrpuynu and also English.