Brief interlude of Old Work

Some old work that I don't think I've shown before.  I've been cleaning up my room (for weeks) and I've finally cleared enough detritus from my desk for it to be useable.  These three works have been removed from the rubble and are now staring at me when I work at my desk.  They're relatively early and mostly experimental work from last year, and I like to look at them to get me in the mood for trying weird stuff and making mistakes.  Pretty happy with the first two images, the third remains unfinished but hopefully I'll figure out where his feet go in the future.  They're mostly experiments with charcoal, water and wax on canvas.

Knick knacks picked up at the market

New Work

These are just a few experimentations I started recently.  They are continuations from the work I did last year with replicating photographs onto metal plates.  Previously I was priming the plates then working on top of them with charcoal and other dry media.  During that year I was interested in working with the plate more, especially since they were mostly off-cuts from zinc etching plates and I knew that I could be altering the surface more.  But I just didn't have the time.

After recharging for a few months this year I've started with these new works.  I might build them into a proper project but at the moment I'm simply still exploring what can be done with the medium.  I'm still at a learning process with transforming tonal qualities into textural qualities, and how that relates to reading the image as a positive or negative image.  But I'm really enjoying the tactile quality of these works, and how touching diminishes the need for visual legibility.  They're quite strange little artifacts and I think they read more directly with tin types, negative glass plates or other forms of photography, which is nice.

Most of the new works are just an open bite with acid, which has me blocking out parts of the metal I don't want eaten away with acid resistant bitumen.  (The last image still has bitumen on it!)  With the possibility of progressing towards more forms of intalgio as the experiments go on.

Old Sketches

Soda_Jerk @ UTS

Running along the same line as my last post: I urge people to see Soda_Jerk's Lecture project on tomorrow night at UTS!  I saw "The Carousel" tonight at Serial Space and it was an hour well spent.  This video performance lecture ties together Cinema, Death and resurrection, addressing the ability of film to reanimate dead actors, past scenes and impossible sequences.  Film samples from movies of the undead are  clipped together with more oblique hauntings, and offer strange temporal collisions in the act of watching.


The second running of "The Carousel" is on:


Monday, May 14
6:30 pm at UTS
702-730 Harris Street 
at the DAB Building
Level 3, Room 56


The lecture is free and open to the public

Awesome Shows to See

I've been to a few lovely shows recently,
and I've also missed a few.

It irks me that I didn't see the Thomas Demand show almost as much as it saddens me that people didn't make it to some exhibitions that I thought were amazing.  Too many thoughts on the past however, brings too little action in the present.  Rather than moulder in my sadness I've decided to try more actively recommending some great shows.

Best show(s) so far can be seen at:

Tin Sheds Gallery

148 City Road
Part of University of Sydney
Architecture, Design and Planning

Now showing

Červená Voda (Red Water) by Nathan Babet 

Chances are if you like tree houses, watch towers and camping grounds you'll like Nathan Babet's show at Tin Shed's.  A heady combination of video, installation and performance Babet's work transforms half of the gallery into part-fictional part-factual wood working space.  Pine trees collected by Babet (shown in the videos) are installed in the gallery space to evoke a forest-like setting.  In which Babet, over the period of a month, builds a working wooden watch tower.  The work has deep roots in Babet's European family ancestry, but even without any knowledge of familial, cultural or geographical specifics the work retains an immediate relationship to nostalgia, mythologies, and the quiet and sometimes subtle menace of the forest. 

‘We need you, you need us’ – Curated by Georgie Meagher

Taking up the other half of Tin Sheds is a group show consisting of Paul Gazzola, Dara Gill, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Sebastian Moody and Lara Thoms, curated by Georgie Meagher.  There is a subtle humor which underlies each work, and as a result there is an overriding playfulness in the artists' response to the curatorial theme of 'Economy'.  Taking a step back and working with simple exchanges and relationships with money, chance, production and success, 'We need you, you need us' avoids any anxiety or vanity that could cloud an exhibition based on an artist's place in the capitalist economy.  It is a fun show with interactive elements, clean reduced work, and great installation.

Luckily both shows exist in one location, rarely is there a better two-for-one deal for those with little time on their hands but starved of a good art show.  The exhibitions are on till the 19th of May, the gallery is open 11-5pm Tuesday to Saturday. 

More Starbucks!

Jenny Birt Award

Deadlines have been pouring in recently, and I have been neglected my blog quite a bit.  But here is some delayed news:
I've been selected to be in the Jenny Birt Award, which opened on Monday 30th April.

The Jenny Birt Award is a shortlisted exhibition of works by COFA painting students. This annual award was initiated by the U Committee in 1995 and named in honour of Jenny Birt, a committed supporter of the visual arts. The award is presented to an outstanding coursework students.

It was a lovely opening (great catering) and the show is on till this Friday 4th May.  The exhibition is at Cofaspace, at College of Fine Arts on the corner of Greens Road and Oxford Street.  The gallery is open 10-3pm.  Showed above is a new installation with a mixture of old and new work.  Internet be willing I will post more images soon.