Drawings for new work

Artists Throwing Rocks

Whilst in the states a few months ago, DC artist Kendall Nordin asked me "what is it like to make work and send it out into the world?" This enquiry into the creative process formed the bases her video 'Artists Throwing Rocks', in which artists choose a body of water and a rock/s as visual metaphors to illustrate the action of letting your work go. The resulting video is poetically filmed and as an artist I found that it explored a complex range of emotional relationships to art making. Watching it again this morning it reminded me of the ability of visual art to speak in ways that no other medium can.

You can watch the video on Vimeo. Click here

Sculpturescape

Sculpturescape was the final iteration of the Mildura Sculpture Triennial back in the late 70's, but has been conceptually revived by Lorne Sculpture Prize curator Julie Collins. This year the traditional sculpture trail along the foreshore of Lorne has been extended to incorporate the diversity of contemporary sculpture practice. It will include Sculpturescape a 1 day temporary installation exhibition, a program of Performances pieces by Australia's most significant Performance artists, Rawscape - a prize for tertiary art students, as well as a lecture by Inge King and a forum about contemporary sculpture.

Here are some of the details, please come and join us.

Over the next 2 weeks you will hear quite a lot from me on this blog about the event as I am participating in Sculpturescape, assisting with the performances, and supervising 2 groups of students for Rawscape.

The last remains

I received this week a disk of images documenting the last remaining dustwork from 'The Silence of Becoming and Disappearing'. Pictured below is the work which I created in Pomonal in August 2010.

In my initial proposal, I said "that the works may go on on to gather further dust".... Here's what it looked like after a year.

Books books books

The long awaited book launch of 'New Romantics: Darkenss and Light in Australian Art' by Simon Gregg is here. Please come along to the book launch and celebrate.

Across the other side of the globe, Melbourne artist Yandel Walton is featured in 'Where they create' by Paul Barbera. So if you've ever been to her wonderland studio and sung sing star till the wee hours and walked out into the dawn, wishing you could live in an awesome warehouse like hers, now you can have a little bit of awesomeness for your own coffee table.

Order on line here 'Where they create'

Still on the topic of books, I brought about 20kg's of art books back from the states and am now working my way, week by week down through the deep pile. This week it's Robecca Solnit's A field guide to getting lost. Part novel/non-fiction, part philosophy/practical advice, part journalism/part poetry, partly makes me want to stay in bed and read all day.

Brokeness and fearlessness

I cannot not know this anymore.
Pina Bausch has broken me.
Even with her eyes closed, with my eyes closed, I can't stop looking, searching, stumbling.

I'm grateful that I hadnt seen Cafe Muller before I did this experimental piece. I may have felt less lost had I known of Pina beforehand, and being lost was the most necessary and exciting part about doing this performance. In it I am remembering a drawing whilst re-drawing it onto the ground using sticks, with my eyes closed. My contribution to this performance isn't that 'good' or resolved, but it is a beginning, a sketch perhaps for walking into somewhere else. I see it as an extension of my drawing practice, in which I draw without looking at the page. But unlike the majority of my drawings, which I make as a way of looking and thinking, which are actions that need to be made before the 'real' work can be made and which shamefully pile up in the studio, this experimental performance is getting closer to bridging the gap between my privae studio drawings and the public ephermal installations and performances . As with most of my creative shuffling, it looks pretty straight forward, but behind the scenes where long conversations in which Nuno prodded me, gentle coaxed me, unsuccessfully persuaded me, belligerent nudged me, challenged me and encouraged me until just a few hours before the performance I surrendered, and walked all the way out there, into this...

Nuno Rebelos Swingstones

Nuno Rebelo's 'Swingstones'. Sound sculptures created for I-Park Environmental Art Biennale.