Some More

1. Found pencils

2. Found erasers
3. Tally ho numbers 1-42

Each part of the gallery gets treatment. After five days this work that you see, was all I could do, but on Saturday when I mind it, I can fiddle and add. I would dearly like to have a space for one year and go all the way. Install process is fantastic, I can't find a better high than finding a place for every thing, and the connections that are made between objects. Sometimes when I am placing things, I feel like there are all these extraneous elements that just act as supports for the one true and dear thing. It is up to the public to enjoy those relationships and find them for themselves.

More

Happiness Table 2008

Mila

Mackenzie

Jane

Anne

Leo

Liz

Little was I to know that Anne Kay would invite people to sit on the floor, around my fashionable table set. Sometimes you make things and have no idea how they will function. I just saw it as a table setting re-fashioned out of disposable objects, but to see it being used as a conversation point was delightful.

Original image; Peter Sclesinger, Lunch table Chateau Mouton Redbook Diary 2004. Subsequently re-named Happiness Table 2008

Synchronicity

Footbridge symmetry; I'd been doing these sorts of florals on my plastics.

Too easy...

The building next door (where Tin Sheds used to be)

PJ brought this board in and plonked it down here, and it was right. Very little needed to be added, as it was perfect the way it was, but naturally I added a bit of decoration, along with a past work that I had used down the road in a show at Frontroom Gallery (kitchen) in 2002 called After you which I felt could stand to be re-scqueduled (thanks DMC). Two photos of Big Ben fit perfectly at the edges and a wonderful image of a Chinese landscape sat down the bottom. Luke Parker gave me the lampshades and I tried to install them elsewhere, but they had to be put where they are. Ikebana.

Anzac weekend

I installed the show the week of Anzac day, which is getting bigger and bigger every year. When I was younger I just hated war, all out, so I never participated in any of the rituals. But now I have developed a better understanding of it all, and am still sorrowful but it is complicated.

Last year I had the most wonderful residency down at Boyd's property in Bundanon with Lisa Andrew, Liz Day, Elvis Richardson and the wombats. As we were driving down there I saw a park with "Lest we forget" in welded steel at the entrance. I couldn't get it out of my head so I made this drawing, and brought it with me to Tin Sheds as it was pognant to the time.

More synchronicity

Fortuitous Aquarium right around the corner from my house...
when I needed it, I found it...











I don't know the name of this salt water dweller, but I thought it just epitomised everything*, in it's man-made container (reminds me of Lisa Kelly's great work), and also Josie Cavallaro...I remember her work with aquarium photos, cool! These are stills from the video in the blue section, and I shot the film only a week before the show (beautifully edited by IT Superman PJ). I was making work from home, and was going a bit stir crazy, it had been raining in Sydney for weeks...anyway, I went for a walk, and lo and behold, around the corner from my house this great new super-acquarium store had opened, only weeks before, and I knew right away, this encapsulated and super-artificial environment was necessary to include in the show. That blue, it seems to only exist in aquarium outlets! The isolation of the fish snake, in it's homemade converted food container either sheltered it form the other fish, or vice versa. Sherman, the proprietor of the shop was not forthcoming about the fishes, but I was impressed by the amount and quality of his fish specimens, and also these fantastic corals he was growing out of disposable plastic cups. What a trip.

They say that watching fish lowers our blood pressure. I love the fish, I hope they are happy.

I could write about fish and water for the rest of my life. I am very attracted to all the paraphenalia and would like to install in fishtanks, with real live fish, so if anyone has a tank and wants an innovative approach to decoration - I can't promise anything, but I can give it my best - I'm your man.

Water! I am a fish!

*epitomised evrything, huh? How is it possible to epitomise everything? Well trust me, that is what I want to do, I want to capture it all and freeze it, I want past present and future, but NOW NOW NOW! This moment, or set of moments of time, to reverberate and mark time...

Outside

Well of course I moved outside during my gallery minding Saturdays! Too easy. All the crap gathered from the deck outside . Thought about Lisa Kelly's fantastic ashtrays/planters outside of ICAN...The cleaners found it convenient to dispose of then. One week I hung the tropical hawaiian shirt in the tree, and left it there. I saw Bruce, the security guard whip it off at the end of the day. One week I tied the suit jacket to the base of the tree installed in the deck, and one week I hung pink shiny ribbon in garlands around the outdoor shadecloths and lay fabric on the ground. These I removed my self.

Keep thinking about the duty of objects.

Infinity Constructions

I proposed this show last year, and had been struggling to make the work from my home studio. Each time that I visited the campus I found major inspiration on site. The garbage surrounding the building site next door to the gallery was outstanding. Many months of work and many discarded bottles, cans and wrappers. I couldn't believe my fortune, I just thought maybe I should just collect everything thrown away on site, and pop it tidily into the gallery...too easy. But it did lend me a freedom to add this if I wanted! (Or ran out of my own stuff!)
The building site itself is a work of art. I love the unfinishedness of sites under construction. Raw and clad with the most interesting coloured materials, cranes and hardhatters, and industry...it's alive and unsanitised and special. The architecture, thats another story. I can see these jutting out bits, all v contemporary, big green glass windowed building, modern materials and it does indeed appear modern. But can I say lacking creativity, its like you draw some squares, and halve them and get some triangles and rotate them and voila, a new bloody block of pop-up mercy. Whatever! We are not in Melbourne.
The next time I came I noticed that the flower designs printed on the new glass cross bridge were the same as ones I had been copying for my Happiness table decorations! How cool was that.
As I went to mind the space, the other day I saw a construction worker with the firm's name "Infinity Constructions" on his vest (no camera of course). But believe me, this made my day. Everything came together...infinity huh? I dig it! My work is endless, it is confined by walls, yes, but it is an ongoing manifestation of now. It reflects and takes in all that is around, and is formulated gradually, but then in immediacy as well.

Please order at the counter

Self portrait in food

2007 detail

watercolour

Amorphic resonance resounds. It is my honour to work as an artist. I get to see, I get to think, watch and observe how it all goes, then I get to react and make work about it. Thank you to every curator has ever given my work a chance. I wish there was more. I wish that there were a hundred more times space and each show included more insights and that it wasn't so clubby. Over the years there have been some extraordinarily great omissions, I guess it is how things go, but I can't help think that if art were more important to the general public we would see greater support, and therefore more diverse work.

More

It begins with a bowl made of cornflakes, and it never ends in this land of plenty. So much thrown away, so much produced, so much to collect!
The plastic house was found and filled with wooden blocks that Ron had left over from his install...they all fit in perfectly.
The strange turquoise plastic pen was found. It is a lap-band sugery promoter, by some pharmaceutical company, and was PERFECT in colour and content for my installation. It matched the neon around the corner from the gallery, on the local club, and it matches today's get thin quick ideals. And I found it while working on the project. When I gave a talk about the show, although to me it was a seminal piece, I neglected to say it. So here it is! Any questions?

Install view

Plastics

Hot glue works in Small Mall
1.Local businesses
2.Workshop participants (with glitter on red plastic donated by Kate)

Working with the public

This counts as a collaborative affair; I sat in the lobby at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery for two weeks, making clay words of local logos. Passer-byes were invited to create their own, to be used in the installation Branding 2007

My Store

I really focused on the consumer aspects of the situation involving the shire riots and what we are made of. I thought, as we all shop in these same places we are equalised through our consumption! My store is the catchphrase for Myer's, and I found Westfield Miranda a minefield of inspiration, identical to each Westfield I have ever encountered.

Self portrait in food

Watercolour on nice paper. And a papermache lettuce. These were products I consumed during my residency at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, bought at Gymea shops. A vain hope that it will cure me of my addictions by blowing them up and painting them large scale. Also, the tim tam packet really had "Love me" written on it! Special.

Consumers buy products

Do I have the guts to video the fitness places at night, through the windows, all those people burning their fat off and making their muscles stronger?
2007
Dvd 15 minutes

Small mall 2007 installed at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre as part of Ron and George Adams' epic year long project unfortunately titled Our Lucky Country (still different)

Plastics

Here is my plastic bag collection.
Photo: Margaret Roberts

1. I love the way plastics can be bundled up, and squashed, then laid out again and re-flattened. They have a memory, physically, and can become impregnated with scents. I notice very few used bags in our affluent society. Occasionally someone on the train will have their trusty favourite that they use regularly, and you can see how the colour has evaporated around the handles, however it is quite rare.
2. I was asked recently why I focused on plastics. Perhaps because I grew up in the USA and was a victim of polyester! For sure because of the environmental impact, but also because they symbolise our affluence, and neglect as well. But growing up in New York city in the 70's and 80's there were various artists who made sculptural works in abandoned lots, using garbage they'd create fantastic art works. I found these very inspirational. I would watch the barges go down the East River laden with millions of bags of rubbish. Even as a child I was incredulous that these got dumped out at sea. Sick! The synthetic nature of petrochemicals and their impact on our everyday life is one that I am examining.
3. Maybe Christo has something to do with it? Or Jeff Wall? Later, in the 90's I saw work by Mikala Dwyer and Hany Armonious. I knew I was amongst friends. Nowadays I can list dozens of artists, just locals who work with the stuff, and I love it. Anne Kay! Josie Cavallaro! Lisa Kelly! Kathy Cavaliere! Simon Yates! Simon Cavanough! Nick Strike! Caz Haswell! Jason Markou! Michelle Hanlin!

In every dream home

Curated by Sophie O'Brien at SCA Gallery 2007

Heavy Duty
Collected plastic bags, photocopy, pencil on paper, shelf by Marley

I first saw the audio processor on Tim Hilton’s computer last year. What a pretty and complex picture it made! He printed it out for me, as I knew what I wanted to do with it right away. I wanted to replicate it as best as I could, so I drew it, photocopied it and coloured it in. It seemed to present me with so many possibilities as a picture, painted or coloured in various ways. Presumably, originally an artist designed the series, and perhaps began with a sketch, then scanned it into the computer, before modeling it using software. The racks of sound mixing equipment convincingly resemble the actual things found in expensive studios, and are available to anyone owning a computer with the desire to make their own sounds. My appropriation of the drawing lends a facile, childish interpretation of what it was originally designed for…misuse of advanced technology.
The plastic bags are a result of fourteen years of collecting from my family, friends and neighbours. Their usage is primarily a billboard to advertise the retailers, and secondly a carrier to take your purchases away with you. What are we supposed to do with these once they’ve served their purpose? En mass their weight is surprising, their colours amazing, and their bulk sizeable. Shouldn’t I just discard them and make more room for myself? I cannot let them go.

Excess

Excess 2007
found fabrics, trestle table, Lisa Andrew's borrowed sewing machine, photocopy

At SNO, curated by Billy Gruner with Margaret Roberts (pictured).

Photo Sue Pedley

Colour world, it appears as though you could just step in the room, whereas in fact, you never got out from behind the continuous curtain, I made holes for seeing through every now and then. It was fun, and felt like a big playroom, or being in a giant dress.

VICTORIA!

VICTORIA!

Ocular Lab, Melbourne


curated by Elvis Richardson

I was thinking about the gold fields that established Melbourne, and researched Queen Vic and her coronation;

"After the Homage was concluded I left the Throne, took off my Crown and received the Sacrament; I then put on my Crown again, and re-ascended the Throne, leaning on Lord Melbourne's arm; at the commencement of the Anthem I descended from the Throne, and went into St Edward's Chapel ...where I took off the Dalmatic robe, Supertunica, and put on the Purple Velvet Kirtle and Mantle, and proceeded again to the Throne, which I ascended leaning on Lord Melbourne's hand ... I then again descended from the Throne, and repaired with all the Peers bearing the Regalia, my Ladies and Trainbearers,to St Edward's Chapel, as it is called; but which, as Lord Melbourne said, was more unlike a Chapel than anything he had ever seen; for, what was called an Altar was covered with sandwiches, bottles of wine etc. The Archbishop came in and ought to have delivered the Orb to me, but I had already got it…The Queen of Hawaii gave me a present of very rare feathers, but very strangely arranged as a wreath about my monogram, also in feathers on a black ground, framed." From Queen Victoria's diaries online

I have seen Queen Vic's clothes and although she was much shorter than I, as she grew older we filled about the same space. Also, when I was in London I visited the Royal Albert Hall, and the monument to her lost and beloved Albert, which amazed me. I spent many hours in the Victoria and Albert Museum and believe it is my spiritual home. For the opening I made real cucumber sandwiches, and shandies.

Brand Identity

Brand Identity 2006
collected plastic bag logos, sellotape
Polite car 2006
cardboard, paint, wood, plastic, police scanner radio (borrowed from Elvis Richardson)
Self portrait 2006
watercolour on paper

Our Lucky Country (difference) 2006
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and MOP projects

The show was put together as a response to the Cronulla riots.

Polite car

Polite Car 2006

detail

texter and paint on cardboard