Cathy Coomer

12/01/2023

Mary Durack Miller’s ‘Carrolup Collection’

I find it hard to believe that it is seven years since I first came across Mary Durack Miller’s collection of material at the Battye Library in Perth related to the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup. At the time, Mike Liu and I were involved in a project […]
29/09/2021

Revel Cooper’s School Science Note Book

The Aboriginal children of Carrolup Native Settlement received their first newspaper coverage when Max Praed published an article entitled Aboriginal Children Show Amazing Skill in Art in the Sunday Times of 13 July 1947. The reporter first became interested when teacher John Placid Stokes showed him some of […]
11/01/2021

How I Came to Write About Carrolup, Part 1

Here is what I wrote in the Preface of Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe about how I came to be involved with Carrolup. ‘When filmmaker and close friend Michael (Mike) Liu and I were first shown work of the Carrolup artists Revel Cooper, Parnell Dempster and Reynold Hart […]
23/06/2020

Carrolup Book is Available Today

My book Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe, written in association with John Stanton, is available today as a downloadable eBook from Amazon, Apple and Kobo. It’s been six years since I first saw a piece of art from one of the Carrolup artists. And four years since […]
08/04/2020

How My Carrolup Journey Began

‘When filmmaker and close friend Michael (Mike) Liu and I were first shown work of the Carrolup artists Revel Cooper, Parnell Dempster and Reynold Hart by our close Noongar friend Karen Hume in 2014, we were stunned by the beauty of these artworks and beguiled by the stories […]
17/10/2019

Jan James: My Path To Connecting Aboriginal People

On May 31st this year, I (and many others) lost a very special friend. I wrote a blog about this beautiful person entitled An Extraordinary Human Being: Jan James R.I.P. I know I am not the only person who considers Jan to be extraordinary. ‘Jan James was a genealogist, […]
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