Fear Not

A shrine to all women 2005, based on the piece by James Hampton, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Hampton had spent his lifetime as a janitor, but when he died, they found he had created a wondrous installation of artifacts, wrapped in tin foil. It is the most remarkable endeavour, absolutely fantastic, and he died without being recognised. This show, curated by DJ Robert Lake called Seven Beauties entails seven hard working artist women who play together and have social ties in and out of the art world. He curated it based on this.

I collected objects from all the women in the show; Lisa Andrew, Mishka Borowski, Sadie Chandler, Maria Cruz, Elizabeth Day, Elizabeth Pulie and wrapped these, as well as domestic objects and ephemera, to create a dazzling montage. I am in love with chocolate, and the wrapping really reflected that, but I also remember when I was young, my father (single after my mother's death) was a swinging bachelor, and he wallpapered his bedroom with aluminium foil. Installing these objects into this shrine formation on an upturned tabletop filled with water added to the reflective qualities, and also happened to host a colony of mosquito larvae for the duration of the show! I had been looking at the Taj Mahal, and was mightily impressed.Fear Not was borrowed from Hampton as well. It seemed a fitting epithet for a group of women all singularly trying to make it in the art world.

Red

The colour red is much espoused upon. Personally I have always loved it. I chose red paint for my room at one stage, and was designated red as a child, while my sister got dark blue. I love all bright colours but red has a particular hold on me. It is symbolic and loaded with significance, and is so easy to spot! It glows with it's own warmth, and is considered a primary colour. In my darkroom days, red was the first colour I worked with.

By collecting together red objects and fashioning a red installation I was thinking of Louise Nevelson, and also the synchronicity of my finds. As soon as I started looking out for objects of that colour, they came to me. I would walk to the Gallery and find a red book, or scarf. I went to someone's house and they'd give me a red thing. It all worked together. I painted on a bucket little electrical pylons, but otherwise just removed any colour that wasn't right.

As I sit here typing I look at my red glass water cup. The light travels through it and I am entranced. When I'm in a car, behind the brake lights of other cars, I am delighted. The red traffic lights, STOP, glow so readily. I loved Emil Goh's following red video piece. I would like to gather together all red cars, but found Nina Katchedorian already did it! I went to a butterfly farm wearing red and the butterflies were so all over me. And once, when I was going to post a letter, I nearly mistook a woman wearing pillar box red with a post box! When I go bush, I love wearing red. It's the opposite to green! My therapist likes talking about why I love red. Recently, my sister made a video of our old home movies and gave me a copy. I had never seen the footage and in it, my deceased little sister was running around the garden all in red. Perhaps I am honouring her memory. Perhaps when we are in the womb, it is all red around us, and the redness that glows is so primal. One day I want to have a red party and invite all the red enthusiasts for a red blast.

I love

Shrine to all women 2005
detail


I love laying objects out. I love collecting, arranging/assembling like and opposites. I could do this endlessly. The gallery exists as a home away from home.

Elastic archive show

At Cross Art

Elastic Projects was invited to put together a show for Cross Art, run by Jo Holder. Elvis Richardson, Lisa Andrew, Anne Kay and I curated this show of works made in the context of archives.

I curated a video programme, and wrote a booklet. I also invited people to my home for tea.

Installation view by Regina Walters

pictured; Liz Day, Liz Pulie, Elvis Richardson

The Gallery as Archive 2005

I identify with collecting for a number of reasons, but mainly because I admire other people’s collections. As a child, my family moved countries a number of times, and with each move, more things would get lost or broken. The notion of hanging on to something for a good long time was unknown. Even the most valuable things can disappear. When I returned to Australia, nearly 20 years ago, I only had two suitcases with me. It’d been my policy to be able to move myself, requiring only a taxi. Since then I have been able to stay put and bring home as much as I can find, within reason. My partner PJ and I trawl the streets for throwaways, collecting what others don’t want. Neither of us can believe what good things people put out on household rubbish collection days.

Collecting and Ownership
I remember being awestruck by giant mountains when I was young, and felt more than a sense of wonder. I felt a desire to own those mammoth things, to contain them, and somehow have access to that majestic beauty forever. Short of climbing them and living there, I felt some satisfaction by doing a drawing, and then I felt like it was in my heart, or at least in my sketchbook. My home and studio space are my archive, and are constantly in use and being improved upon.

For the Elastic archive show I wanted to assemble a collection of video works that dealt with collecting. I liked the idea of using the minute storage facility of the DVD to serve as such a fantastic recording device, holding potentially loads of information. This contrasts so heavily with my work, and my home, which serves as my archive.
The Gallery as Archive show initiates my quest for video works that deal with collecting in some way. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of an archive of video works that attempt to catalogue the notion.

The pre-occupation with gathering together, archiving, storing and collecting seems inevitable. Relatively little from the distant past remains, so we seem to be on a mission to preserve remnants, souvenir our culture, to the death! Who decides what is kept, and what is thrown away? Bart Simpson nearly killed for a comic book. A giant air controlled hangar filled with Sydney 2000 Olympic records exists! I’d prefer to see a museum filled with snapshots taken at Olympic events, by visitors, actually. E-bay acts as the largest catalogue collection in the world. Sci-fi writer William Gibson observed this obsession with thrift-shop hunting and picking may be a sign of “some desperate instinctive re-configuring of the post-industrial flow, some basic mammalian response to the bewildering flood of sheer stuff we produce”.[1]

Regina Walter’s video ‘IN’ is a collection of images of women taking a puff from a cigarette. The camera acts casually, outside a plaza and often there’s an embarrassingly candid gaze of the smoker, as you’re watching them inhale. Magnifying through repetition. The simplicity of gathering together groups of sames appeals to me psychologically seeking order in chaos, but also because it makes you look at those moments with a different concentration. After analysing something, you are much more involved with it. In ‘Smithfield’, the idea extends to asking passer-byes to say “Smithfield”. The random choice of people, and their genuine personalities, as well as their enthusiastic, almost ritualistic boredom makes me feel glad. I see some reflection of myself in those residents, and their quintessentially Australian dynamic is apparent.

Kutlug Ataman’s Küba, shown this year at the Argyle Centre served as an amazing installation of Istanbul resident’s stories. I loved seeing the work, for it’s obsession with tragic stories, fringe residents (they looked like my kind of people), and also it’s physicality. The collection of well-worn Salvation Army armchairs, old televisions, and TV tables had to be experienced, to be believed. The warmth and cosines of those very domestic objects, all varied, making a giant living room out of the old wooden wool store building, and eerily one chair per monitor, all facing South-East (?).

Liz Day’s work The Origin of Ideas is an ongoing inquiry into these places where thought processes meander. An interdisciplinary archive of notebooks showing the intimate working processes of people working across arts and sciences. She records random sequences of sketchbook pages, and as you watch, the sense of following each artist’s neural pathways is evident and delightful. The translation of paper through to video is quiet and fluid. The assemblage of people’s works, and just a taste of a few of their books have a sensibility that achieves so much through passive contemplation. I felt the seminal act of creation was evoked, and made the ordinary quite beautiful. Private jottings and notes are scanned as quickly as a complex drawing or configuration. I watched my own with trepidation, but feel honored to be included. She has been working with other people’s notebooks since 1997 and has a further work planned for later this year, in Tasmania.

Che Guevara’s image lives on in Raquel Ormella’s zines Che 2005. This document of his ever-increasing popularity demonstrates a fortitude, commitment and readiness to record each and every image of Che that came her way over 10 years. The revolution seems to have only begun and his face is everywhere! I think she even culled her collection to keep the costs of printing down. If only Gandhi was as photogenic… The pre-occupation with the subject seems devotedly fan-like, as that’s what is required for a collector. Time is of the essence when you’re collecting. You can go to e-bay and purchase a ready-made collection, but marking time through you pursuit historicises a life’s journey.

When I invited Luke to do something for the show, he wanted to display some aspect of his collection. Mark wearing my t-shirt collection 2005 reminds me of Brigid Berlin’s substantial pile of identical Lacoste© t-shirts from the Pie in the Sky documentary. It didn’t matter how ragged they were, they had done their time and it was integral they were there. Luke’s photographs document a devotion to interesting t-shirts, handsomely modeled by Mark. I admire obsession. It is the commitment that keeps the collection alive. The devotion over time seems somewhat religious to me, I know how enthralled I am, when I find a thing that compliments my collection. Once I have a number of similar items, and they really start mounting up to something, I pore over them with pleasure. Accumulating a substantial collection can make a person famous; someone I knew, knew someone who sold their ABBA scrapbooks to The Powerhouse Museum for $10,000. I wonder if anyone will ever want my collection of tobacco-related paraphernalia!

A couple of years ago I was given some watercolours and I embarked on a series of paintings of packaging I’d amassed. I filled a book with quaint paintings, in the hope that I wouldn’t have to keep all the empty packages forever, that the painting would serve as a record, and that was enough. Unfortunately, when I looked at the paintings on their own, they weren’t as interesting as when they had the object next to them. At art school, studying painting, I was confounded by the length of time it took to paint something reasonable. I moved into photography, where capturing things on film takes a millisecond, but stills weren’t enough.[2] I went back to the objects themselves.
So, for my own work, I would like to invite visitors to my home, open by arrangement in November.
‘In perpetuity’ seems impossible as I consider our population, era, environment, and history.


[1] William Gibson, “My Obsession”, Wired, January 1999, 102
[2] The removal of the object through photography, and the distance created between the viewer and that original object seems distorted to me. The interruption, or lie of the lens is an easily manipulated tool. How to display photographic works dictates their interpretation. It can be an expensive medium.

The end of a dream

The end of a dream
A painting at the AGNSW “The end of a dream” (1908, by G. Pennasilico) leads me to wonder what hopes and dreams occupied the minds of travellers in the past. It shows an obviously upper-class woman looking a bit dishevelled, in a beautiful dress, in a beautiful room, with a serving maid behind her. It’s coppery tones and feathery paint strokes imply a romantic, romance fiction fire-lit aura. How did he envision the future when he painted that? Not just his personal fate, but the destiny of civilisation.
What would people from the past think of us if they were deposited into the 21st century?
In order to explore these speculations I intend to tell a story. Inhabiting the Sleeper with hot glue objects, radio music, scent and lighting, to project a traveller’s dream into the atmospheric antique interior of the Sleeper coach enabling the viewers to partake of their for bearers reverie.
This work was produced as part of 24:7 at the Canberra Railway Museum




Detail hot glue words: Mr.Speaker
Top
Install detail, paint on cloth, light, paper, bowl

Tank

Tank 2003
New Zealand at Michael Lett's Gallery in Fantasy Island group show curated by Hany Armonious

Shelves

Using the existing shelving

1. Twigs grown in my garden hot glued together.

2. Styrofoam ball floating on pool of water contained in a plastic bag resting on my yellow t-shirt.

3-4 Bakers clay with blue food colouring, mini mountains with architectural features ( retro model houses).

5-6 Fairy lights under red plastic bag

The doctor is in

Bus ticket collection
Printed numbers in water


I collected Metro Ten tickets because I liked that they printed out the exact time of the transaction. I used the services of Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald to acquire more tickets. I found there were other people who had been collecting for years. I wanted to map out every minute of every hour of the day that the buses run. I cut out the time and pasted it on to sticks, shown here. I never completed every minute of the day, but I got close. I think they matched the ghastly laminex counters in the gallery.

Sunrise

Install view

Sunrise 2004 Install detail
Josie Cavallaro, Lisa Kelly and I shared a studio at 16 Pidcock Camperdown for about five years. Marrickville Council runs Chrissie Cotter Gallery just down the road, with a Bowling club, and a tennis centre. We decided to do a show together. My work, The doctor is in, was playing with all sorts of ideas.
Sunrise
This portion contains a collection of pink materials, offset by a flouro flag (kindly donated by Josie) draped off a plinth. On the plinth were small offerings, sweet honeysuckle, some food and a candle. The bright blue table was found and I painted it. It had been used for years as a palette and was hugely bumpy. It is a painting. These found Australian coins had rusted in a jar, and formed a centerpiece. I keep coming back to money over the years. The inference of transactions. Symbolising exchange, wealth and my desire for money. That one and two cent pieces were discontinued (I still find this radical), and nowadays people will step over a 5c coin on the street (some people).
Money on the table: gambling? voodoo? bribes? illegal activity? I have a well cultivated reaction to money. From the thousands of images I have seen of greenback-filled suitcases to my personal desire for enough money to live on, money is a huge part of our society. I dream of cash, literally. Wads of it. When I was little I would take money and steal. I'd throw the money on the ground and pretend to find it. Who doesn't love finding money?
Capitalism. What a loaded gun, the temptation for money. What we'd do for money. As a kid, I used to hang out after school asking for bus fare money from strangers. I am not proud of this, but it was something I did to get money for sweets. One man turned out his pockets and he had only 35cents and a little charm. He held it out to me in his palm, offering it all to me, and I was shocked, he had so little and he was willing to give it to me. I turned it down and felt so ashamed.
I was in Paris in 2000, waiting in a queue outside a gallery. It was freezing cold, and the wait was long. A homeless fellow was gleaning money from the crowd, and when he got to us, we gave him some cash and he flipped out and threw the cash onto the street and yelled incomprehensibly and stormed off. We gathered the money and left it on the ledge for him, it was like 100 Franks. His action was so unexpected. He humiliated us.
The doctor is in refers to the psychiatrist's office. I was sent to analysts/psych since I was about eight years old. I have always loved them. A formal exchange where you have someone to talk to who doesn't judge you, and who can illuminate your ways of thinking about things and coping with emotion.

Essay

I wish I were bigger


Fatter? Taller? More famous? Or just giant?


I wish my work was bigger!
The stain on the carpet looks like spew. The day I was minding the show outside on the pavement someone had done a big red spew and I knew I had done right.



Catalogue Essay

Sarah Goffman’s wish to be ‘bigger’ is a clue to the ethos of her latest installation. If only she was more capacious, then she might be able to harbour all the junk in the world. This passion for objects may be read as a symptom of intense curiosity. While studying literature at university, Goffman was plagued by the thought that she could never read everything, marvelling at libraries stacked with more books than she could hope to absorb. Evidently she feels the same way about all the detritus she now seeks out. Her plaintive proclamation may be understood as the inevitable outcome of a collector’s obsession, or the manifestation of a desire to save the planet from rubbish. Indeed, the two aims may be intertwined in an altruistic yet covetous drive to improve the environment.
Goffman’s installation, made almost completely from found materials, is full of intriguing combinations, seemingly infinite in their variation, like a microcosm of the world made from trash. Here, the artist suggests new aesthetic forms for things which are usually despised or beneath notice. Arranged in organic formations, these cast-offs appear compellingly beautiful. A tree branch in a giant bag, plastic shopping bags sport customised pockets and toilet paper is embroidered like exquisite craftwork. Commonplace items are repeatedly transformed from the prosaic into the decorative, blurring the boundaries between categories.
While this composition may be read as an inspiring DIY dream, or a masterpiece of waste management, darker themes may be discerned. The structures on display have unmistakably apocalyptic resonances, suggesting a crumbling cityscape after a disaster. Miniaturised scaffolding submerged in a fishtank illuminated by a floating strobe, with stained carpet beneath, summons up the spectre of civil decay. Here, nature is visibly damaged by artificial constructions, but is itself already man-made and mass-produced, reflecting the perils of excess. In spite of these black undercurrents, humour is evident in various distortions of scale: scaffolding inside a fishtank, a small box labelled ‘Extra Large’ and a miniature newspaper mountainscape.
Goffman’s collections could be understood as a way of filling the void, a compensation for loss or momento mori. After all, every collection is a constant reminder of the very reality it has been created to stave off. The objects she covets are talismans of an inverted conoisseurship, each piece the grave of a past desire. Many of the materials Goffman puts to use will be around long after we are gone, given their virtually indestructible, toxic qualities. In this installation, people are absent except in caricatural forms while inanimate objects testify to the folly of our endeavours. Inhabiting a blackened zone, an empty motorcycle suit hangs surrounded by an audience of cut-out faces. Elsewhere, money and ashes sit side by side on glass, as in a macabre shop display, posing an equivalence between human life and hard currency.
B.L.Magner

I

Install detail I wish I were bigger 2003 Solo show at Scott Donovan Gallery, Liverpool Street
Found motorbike rider's suit, lace gown, goggles filled with sand, embroidered toilet paper, light, tissue box, candied nuts, hot glue bowls and cubes, plastic bag with orange on glass plate, found table.

Protect me from what I want found Simple shoe box

Newspaper mountain
Newspaper, water, tray

I wish

Tank
2003
detail
Hot glue, copper wire, sand bags, water, laser, pump

Giant woman 2003
Install detail
plastic bags, hot glue, lights

I wish I

Install detail

Embroidered toilet paper 2003

By embellishing this throwaway material I suggest an alteration to ways of thinking.

I wish I were

Shopping bag, glass plate and an orange
Tank 2003
Plastic hot chips 2003

I wish I were bigger

Plastic bag spray painted, tree limb from outside, string, paper silhouettes






















Detail
photocopied cash, spraypainted found board, found brick, tea, buttons, lights, hot glue, found carpet, paint

After you

After you 2003

Rubber band face detail and painted Vitawheat biscuit I've got love in my tummy

bubbling light fog machine

mirror, found objects, wooden fruit, tissue box, wire, paper, hot glue, paintings on canvas Someone told me I should try painting

Front Room Kitchen

Trouble in Canberra

Hotel Module 2003


Solo show at Canberra Contemporary Art space Cube
Top right Install view
Centre left detail Centre right Install view
Bottom detail DEGENERATE MATTER hot glue

What possessed me to make such a complicated installation out of town?
I wonder. The title, Hotel Module refers to a hotel room I stayed in, when I ran away from home at sixteen. I'd taken my passport and all sorts of belongings. I was a naughty and disturbed kid and this act got me into a lot of trouble (I was found). I stayed in the room devising plans to get me out of the situation I was in. There was justified anger but also a lot of false illusion. In this show I was thinking about all that past baggage I still carried around with me, and the symbols of that.

Trouble

Texter on Kleenex tissues.

Found book

More trouble

Top Found postcard with plastic and hot glue

Centre Repetitive texter on blotting paper (site specific work)

Bottom Detail Glass beaker, water, styrofoam, light

I used a lot of different coloured detergents and liquid soaps in the show, Playing on their scents and different pearlised colours.

A factor of my shows has to do with experimenting with putting objects out into the gallery environment. I am constantly learning how to install, always trying.

Plastic Reality

This was made for a group show at MOP curated by Koji Riju.

It is a simulation of a real event in my bathroom where a praying mantis came and sat on a pink jellyfish hanging on the wall. It is made from hot glue, paint, string and a jelly cup container.

2003