Death and Ashes: Sport vs.Art

Once again I am disappointed to be Australian. On today’s ABC News 24, normally an intelligent and partial news source, Ricky Ponting’s retirement from Australian cricket was given ten times more coverage then the death of Jeffery Smart.

3 sentences were allocated to Smarts passing - he painted urban landscapes (no image was shown), he studied in Australia and Europe and he was an ex-pat living in Italy. Nothing was said about his life long contribution to Australian art.

The section of Ponting’s achievements covered, his vast contributions to cricket, and the significant effects his retirement will have on the Australian team and ‘our’ performance at the Ashes, and was given 3 ½ minutes.

I don’t want to take away this moment from Ricky, but what miffs me is why that kind of coverage couldn’t be equally given to an iconic Modern Australian artist. If sport, which let’s be honest is not news, can occupy 10 mins of news time on most channels, why can’t wider cultural activities and achievements also be broadcast. People will argue that its not popular enough, but isn’t that partly because it there is so little coverage.

So for those of you interested in finding out a bit about this great of Australian Modernism here is a youtube link.

Jeffery Smart on Youtube

 

 Jeffery Smart Cahill Expressway. 1962

"Do you feel sad when you sweep up the work?"

I have done a few interviews recently with some online journals. The first of these has been published online today.  So click here to read my interview and a selection of other wonderful interviews about creative people  Meander Journal

Another 24 Hour Drawing Project

When Miso moved out of my studio she bequeathed me a glorious roll of rich, creamy, weighty, expensive looking paper. Normally I work with scrap paper or the cheapest possible roll of cartridge, so this fancy expanse of paper seemed luxurious. Almost too luxurious to use.

But i got over that pretty quickly and decided on a project for another 24hrDP. For 24 hours I would draw patterns that would over lap, become disjointed and incur irregularities. I keep thinking about undoing patterns. Making patterns that have all the motifs of decoration, but none of the repetition of a pattern. The material I wanted to use was dirty water. It is a by-product of making the ash pieces, and I have for a long time wanted to use it to create documentation of these ephemeral works. This project provided a concentrated time to develop a process for drawing with dirty water and playing with the possibility of entropy within my patterns.

Serious business deteriorating

24 hours ago I stood on the high ground of important paperwork achievements. I was serious, organised, focused and ... achieving goals. Kick kick kick. In one afternoon I had submitted 3 different exhibition applications, an application for funding, sent follow up emails to numerous arty possibilities and was kicking though tones of papery bits of importantness.

Today. Same deal. More applications, more please give me money, more replying to emails.

And then.....



I cant even join the dots....



I started thinking about lyrics to songs about NY....



and then I started recording myself...



it was bad...



but i did some more...



they were worse...



so I did some more...



no better.

But i thought that maybe a tiny tiny number of people might find them funny and release us all from trying so hard. I titled the album 'It's Worth Tryin'".

Happy to email some tracks if your curious

Biological Biography

I have lived 14,600 days. I have spent about half an hour as a single cell. Since then 6 billion, 3
hundred and 7 million, 200 hundred thousand cells have died in my body. I have shed and regrown
my outer skin 504.74 times. I have lost 1,168,000 strands of hair and more than half of
my taste buds. My heart has beaten 1,471,680,000 times. I have walked the globe about 3
times. When I die my ashes will weigh about nine pounds.

Preparing for Artecycle Exhibition

24 Hour Drawing Project

The 24 Hour Drawing Project was established by Kendall Nordin and myself in 2005 during our MFA as a method for generating a large volume of unedited work within a short period of time. Since our first courageous effort it has become a more complex project in which intensive effort, attention to process, action and time are explored. It has also expanded to include artists in various states of Australia as well as Washington DC and Shanghai. 

The 9th iteration of the event took place with Jenny Hector and myself earlier this month. Here are a few pics.

hout ever looking at the paper.

Then after 24 hours

Jenny's project was divided into 4 painting actions in which she coloured in the scuffs and pits of her studio wall

sometimes the 24HRDP is pure exhaustion but this time it was exhilarating