Wednesday, December 14, 2011

4A Annual Member's Show


I'm currently part of the 4A Annual Member's Show 
which will be opening Tonight! 
Thursday 15 December 
from 6 - 8pm

My work and the fabulous work of others will be found at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
181-187 Hay Street, Haymarket
in the last show of the Year
to be launched by Lisa Havilah, Director, Carriageworks



Sunday, November 20, 2011

Pictures from 'The Final Word' Honours Exhibition










Just a few shots of the final installations and some close ups of the work I made for my Honours year at the College of Fine Art in Sydney.  The Honours year was both a horrible and wonderful experience, which not only pushed me to up the ante with my drawing skills but opened me up to a more cross disciplinary practice.  The works themselves evolved from charcoal drawings to drawing/painting hybrids on primed or bare zinc plates, which are usually used for printmaking.  They're displayed on a motley crew of made and pre-manufactured tables, shelves and boxes.

All the hard work and tears were rewarded at the end with a fantastic exhibition and I was proud to be among such talented emerging artists.  A Big Thanks to everyone who came and supported me during the Opening Night and the Open day last Friday, as well as the many who supported me throughout the year.  This work will hopefully see the light of day again next year with some careful planning and good applications to Artist Run Initiatives.  It is also an ongoing project which might eventually push my practice further into installation, and into live performance and interactive artwork.  So far I've gotten two private commissions on the drawings, which signals a jump from working with found photographs to very intimate possessions, something I am both looking forward to as well as being a bit intimidated by.  At the moment however I'm really looking forward to my new website.  Chris Ross is designing a new cleaner and clearer look to go along with my new body of work.  Once I've documented my work the website will be able to flesh out, but you can still see the new and improved version now, which has to be one of the sexiest skeleton sites around.  Go take a Look.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

End of Year Exhibition: The Final Word





The Final Word

Friday 18th November

This is the culmination of a year's practice-based research for BFA students at The College of Fine Arts.  It is my end of year show, and I am proud to be a part of such a fantastic exhibition containing stellar contemporary art from young emerging artists.  Please come along and immerse yourself in various installations, drawings, paintings, sculpture and photography.

Time:
11am to 5pm

Location:
540 George Street 
on the 6th and 7th Floor 
at the 'Woolworths Building at Town Hall'

Monday, October 10, 2011

Exhibition Notes from 2010-11









Unfortunately I haven't been to as many exhibitions as I'd like this year.  Even when I am out looking at shows I don't have the time to make detailed notes or any drawings at the moment.  But here are a few 'exhibition notes' from earlier on in the year and the end of last year.  Mostly of when I went down to Melbourne to visit some friends.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Exhibitions: Kudos Award & Lloyd Rees


I've been extremely bad at getting word out about exhibitions I'm in but this time I'm trying to get to it early:  I've been accepted into the Kudos Award!

Since I was just showing my Honours work in a recent show at Kudos I decided to put in my print 'Love in the Park', which is now one of the thirty-nine showing this Tuesday.


This will be the first exhibition of this work, which I'm really happy about, in an Award I look forward to every year.

Now in its 10th year, the Kudos Award is a open call to all disciplines and years in COFA.  The Award seeks to recognise innovation and excellence, and is especially enjoyable for me to see the variety and skill of work coming out of the other departments.  This year the award will be judged by Zoe Brand, Anna Kristensen and David Haines.

Awards will be announced on the opening night
               Tuesday 11 October
               5 - 7:30 pm
               @ Kudos Gallery
               6 Napier Street,
               Paddington, NSW

The Exhibition is on till the 22nd of October
Gallery hours are Wednesday to Friday 11 - 6pm
& Saturday 11- 4pm


And now, an Exhibition that's already past!




Unfortunately I forgot to post this a while ago, I was really sick during the exhibition and barely showed up to the opening night.  But I was accepted into the Lloyd Rees Youth Art Award.  You can still see all the work in the exhibition at their flickr site.  I didn't win, but the work did sell! You can see more about the Lloyd Rees Youth Art Award here.  And look at the work in greater detail in one of my other posts.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Photos from the Tim Olsen night


Someone admiring the runner up: Phoebe Rathmell
Another honours candidate Emily Cavenett
Winner of the night Ramesh Mario gets to clean up
Ramesh and I infront of his work
Ramesh and I infront of my work
Me and Chris Ross (my utterly amazing boyfriend)

Just a few happy snaps from the show last Tuesday Night
Thank you to everyone that came to support me and the other exhibitees!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Tim Olsen Drawing Prize

I'm one of the thirteen nominated participants in this year's Tim Olsen Drawing Prize.  I've been wanting to be in this show for roughly three years now, so please come and support me tommorow night: Tuesday the 13th of September. 

Monday, August 29, 2011

Side projects: Stuff I was working on...


This is one of the many projects that was gradually pushed aside for Honours work.  I finished the ink painting quite some time ago but I was planning on making it into an etching.  I was playing around with spit biting in my last etching and after many MANY tedious failures I starting being mildly proficient.  Skills like that should not be wasted, so I'm looking forward to using them on this image in the future. 
  

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Stuff I'm working on

























I apologise for not writing in a while. 
Life has been busy
I've moved into a new place 
and after living a whole month on take away and dining out
I have bought a fridge! 
Here's just a little something I've been working on in the meantime.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Backlog

I seem to have quite a large backlog of cafe drawings that I haven't brought out yet, most of them done in Singapore when I had free time (I can almost remember what it was like to have free time).  Drawing in Sydney doesn't seem to happen too often mostly because I either feel like 

a)    I should be doing something productive  
b)    If I'm not working I should be spending time with my friends
c)    If I'm drawing it should be for my Honours Project
d)    Coffee and food is so expensive! Why are you spending money?! You're Broke! Stop doing drawings that require you  
to spend money!

I also intermittently get the horrible drowning feeling of despair when I'm drawing and I think the drawing is not going well.  Then I look at the clock and realize that its taken me an hour to do a bad drawing.  Drawing takes a long time.  I always seem to forget how long it takes.  It's usually worth it in the end, and I have some saving techniques up my sleeve when it gets into crunch time for finishing (this is usually when the guilt of not doing something productive and the urgent need to pee nudges my concern for the picture out of the way)

Horrible drawings seem more frequent in Sydney.  Detailed and enjoyable drawings usually populate my Holiday time, so I'll be scrounging around in my backlog for more drawings from Singapore and Melbourne soon!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Studio Shot
























I stumbled across a photo book of artist's and designer studios recently.  I've seen a few of them before, as well as finding studio shots in magazines or on websites.  There is something incredibly fascinating about seeing the 'behind the scenes' of creatives.  Its like the hidden birthplace of artwork, part Frankenstein's laboratory, part Aladdin's Cave.  Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed with the cleanliness of these studio portraits.  They seemed way too sparse, too large...too hygienic.

Nevertheless I wanted to show my studio in its awesome messy glory.  I have pretty much one of the best spaces.  Corner with window, a mixture of easel and table space, as well as being next to some amazingly creative, funny, and friendly artists.  During class time, as well as out, we bring in snacks, chocolates and baked goods (sometimes Home Made!) and munch away while sometimes getting onto the topic of art, but mostly discussing food-particularly Yum Cha.  

Monday, June 13, 2011

Love In The Park


This print took me roughly a year to complete. I started it in February 2010 in the strange twilight time of ‘after University’ and before ‘Working life’. I think it was my one big hope to keep on creating as I had done previously so I sort of clung onto printmaking during that time. Also I used the print as a procrastination tool against sending out even more CV’s to people who didn’t want them.

In its beginning stages this work seemed to be one of those images that grow naturally with very little effort involved. It happens once in a while. When I say little effort I mean I got most of the composition down in two to three days of solid work instead of weeks to months of fiddling. Maybe because of that, or because I had gotten a job by that time, when it came to aquatinting (applying tone/shading to the outline on a print) something horrible happened. Horrible. So I took the rest of the year fixing it. Fixing it involved me scraping back layers of metal, re-aquatinting, not being happy with the result, going back and scraping it off again etc.

I learned a lot, and I’m thankful to people who gave me advice, complimented me endlessly and who took the time to teach me how to burnish, scrape and spit bite properly, particularly David and Quillan. I don’t think there is one point in any artistic career where you can stop learning. There is a point where you can start teaching, I think you can get a little uppity or a bit complacent when you reach that point…I certainly did. A small knock down is good for you once in a while.

So is sticking to your guns. Many times during the year people tried to console me by telling me to stop and just move on to the next thing. Or that it was good the way it was. When you know something can be better, when you are actually aware of what the potential of something could be, I don’t think you should stop trying. It negates all the work you put into it in the first place. I was really proud of my composition and my line work and I wanted to be just as proud of the aquatint. I got it to 90% satisfied (you can never get the full 100) and editioned it with the help of Jess Edwards and David. I’m really happy with the final image and I hope you like it too. This work is called Love in the park.