Raising the Flags: Inside John Whitney’s Three Decades at WOMADelaide

Culture

22 May

Ahead of this year’s WOMADelaide Festival, we chatted with “The Keeper of Flags” John Whitney about his 30-year association with the festival

His name might not be familiar, but if you’ve attended WOMADelaide regularly over the past three decades, you’ll more than likely recognise the bearded, flat cap sporting John Whitney, aka “The Keeper of Flags”. An accomplished visual artist whose work has been displayed in galleries across the country, John was once responsible for erecting the hundreds of flags dotted around the WOMAD festival grounds.

Speaking over the phone from his home in Adelaide, John is currently focused on his upcoming exhibit, Pipes, a collaboration with fellow artist James Parker. Set to open in May at The Signal Point Gallery in Goolwa, Pipes consists of a series of drawings, paintings and etchings of waterpipes, fire hydrants and more from across Australia.

“James is doing a lot of work up in the APY Lands, and when he drives up there, he often says that the only company he's got is this water pipe from Port Augusta that goes right through the APY Lands,” explains John. “He's doing all that area, and I'm doing the big pipes that go from Murray Bridge to Adelaide and how they snake all over the hills.”

Projects like Pipes are part and parcel of John’s nearly four-decade career as a visual artist. After 10 years as a teacher, he packed it all in to become a full-time artist in 1987. During those early years, John found himself heavily involved in the Adelaide arts scene and ended up working with an event management company that secured the site management for a new festival called WOMADelaide in 1992. Originally founded by the legendary Peter Gabriel in 1980, WOMAD had been running for over a decade before the Australian leg was announced.

“I got quite excited,” John recalls about being asked by his then-boss, Steve Brown, to be part of the inaugural WOMADelaide. “The first one, I was just one of the crew and would bang in the signs and put up things and stuff like that. In those days, they used to bring out a visual artist from somewhere around the world. One year, we had a chap from South Africa who did all these amazing wire sculptures. Another time, these Indian ladies came out and did these huge mandalas on the ground using food. When they realised that I was a visual artist, I was [put] in charge of supervising them and looking after anything they needed.”

John’s role as an artist liaison changed in 1999 when Angus Watt was brought over from the UK to erect hundreds of flags around the festival. Responsible for designing flags for the many iterations of WOMAD across the globe, along with festivals throughout Europe, Angus was employed to give a bit of colour and culture to the festival grounds.

“That became the symbol of WOMAD, because in those days, there used to be 10 or 12 WOMADs around the world,” says John. “They bought all these flags out, and Angus needed a crew to help install them and look after them. So that's where I came into it. After he came out about four times, [he] realised that if I was going to be doing it, he didn't need to come out anymore.”

Angus ran a series of workshops when he first arrived to help everyone understand how to erect the flags, which stand roughly eight metres tall and are attached to bamboo poles. Along with Angus’ designs, there is a group of Indigenous women who also supply flags for the festival.

“He (Angus) sends out about 200 flags from overseas, and then we have 80 of the Indigenous ones,” John explains.

Talking about the process of setting up the flags, John says “the flags would arrive on the Friday before the festival” and he and his team of eight would then head to the event site and plan out where the flags would be positioned before spending two or three days putting them up. Across the weekend, John would patrol the festival grounds “to make sure they flew all right and didn't get wrapped around anything.”

After almost 30 years, John stepped down from his role with WOMAD in 2021 and was looking forward to enjoying the festival as a punter. Then his protégé, Tom Lauck, who took over erecting the flags, was diagnosed with COVID. John was roped back in for one last hurrah but is now happily retired from WOMAD, enjoying the last few years as a spectator, which he says is a “more relaxing” experience.

“2022 was my official last one working on it. Now I've been along as just a punter, where I look at everybody else's work and complain,” John says with a cackle.

Discover Pipes at Signal Point Experience Centre from May 2 to June 28. Details available at johnwhitney.art.