Massage Artist

On my return from Japan I did a night of performance as part of 20/20 at Damien Minton's Annexe space in Surry Hills, curated by Robert Lake. I had purchased a very nice hat in Japan to wear, plus my yukata and a bottle of Takara Shochu, I made lots of friends that night and got to squeeze quite a few bums.

Bank Art's Life at Shinko Pier, Shin Minatomira Yokohama Sept-Oct 2011

Work continuing from residency at Tokyo Wonder Site, Aoyama from June-August
1. Tatami drawing, pen on cardboard with video of Izumi's tea ceremony playing, kimonos, apples and blue shochu bottle.

2. Maki-e works, gold pen on PET products, with paint

Showtunes

Izumi Murata hard at work within the walls of Shinko Pier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYPwFc19I4I&feature=youtu.be

Tokyo Wonder Site

Three months in Aoyama.
Collected and converted
PET products

Copies

This is a copy of a page of architectural features by Piranesi. Sharpie on donut box.



This is the original and the watercolour copy.
I sometimes feel that in order to truly value something, I need to make a copy of it.



I have reproduced a rendition of striking real estate advertisements. I became interested in perusing the ad pages for unusual photographs, finding that certain artworks featured in multiple homes. Primarily buddha paintings which I can only assume are installed by the real estate agent to provide a sense of 'peaceful place'.

Trashcan Dreams

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October 2010
Trashcan Dreams at The Performance Space
with dancers Morisan Yasuaki and Lina Ritchie
The title comes from an Elton John song; Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters
There were many elements to this exhibition, primarily I was responding to the site with my collection and with pieces that would provide an environment to respond to. The dancers, from Japan, worked in collaboration with the materials, over a nine day intense period, where we explored a huge variety of movement.
The work consisted of vast quantities of plastic collected over the last ten years from my local neighbours and friends. Many of the plastics were re-cycled from other exhibitions, being re-fashioned for this event.
The piece I am most proud of; Kyoto copy was made entirely of plastics and is a literal copy of a piece I saw in Kyoto in 2009.


Working with colour, materials, video and objects, interacting with the space and reacting to site-specific as well as historical contexts within the site.

Rectangular dance workshops with participants

Notebook collection

At Hazelhurst Regional Gallery 2010
Twenty years of notebooks

Fatty and Slender

This work was responding to my meeting with Takusan in Japan, 2009.
A bakers clay rendition of a Jakuchu painting.
A collection of the receipts collected whilst in the Tokyo studio at Takadanobaba for three months (which happened to fit the window at ICAN exactomondo)
Watercolour painting copy of Hokusai's "Fatty and Slender", including jewellery.
Here is the piece I wrote;

The Hanging Man at Kunitachi
TOKYO 2009

I finally made it to Kunitachi, in Tokyo, to see this famous action I had heard the Yanaka dancers I knew rave about. Takusan, an older man, had been hanging himself by the neck every night for ten years, giving public showings a couple of times a week.
I met with a couple of the dancers and we made our way there, each had seen the work numerous times
It was a bit of a walk from the station, down a modest lane with an unassuming lantern hanging at the entrance to an older style dark, wooden house. There was a box with money in it, Y1000 admission. We sat in Takusan's small yard on homemade wooden benches, after picking up a cut piece of styrofoam to provide comfort, and a tiny bit of warmth. Very cold that night. He was inside his wooden house, I could see shadows of him through the glass, and hear beautiful Japanese music playing. He came out dressed in red trousers, a red polo neck shirt with a white blouse over the top, and began his gentle silent movements through the garden area. This consisted of a few straggly bushes and trees, one tall thin bamboo, and a shrub that had gone brown and died. The dark brown earth ground had been well compacted and a few paving stones hinted at a path. The fences were lined with blue tarps, old ones, very frayed with some parts spray-painted with silver.
Takusan
His presence was so sincere and delicate, minimal but exploratory. I had met him once before, where he had a metal thing, like a cigarette holder, with a block of herbs smoking out one end, and he had taken my hands and pressed them and smoked them, my friends explained that it was ‘cauterisation’. He had accurately pinpointed sources of trouble and pain on my hands, and they felt warmed afterwards.
I felt the wind in the air and watched him react. Action, reaction, honouring time and moving slowly and carefully, knowing every centimeter of the ground he was covering. He moved through the space for nearly half an hour, in a gentle and magnetic way. He seemed to pay special heed to the dried shrub, taking its energy and giving it back. Near this shrub was a square hole, not very deep, dug into the earth. At its edge stood an iron anvil, and over this was a beam, with hooks. There were lights positioned on the house to illuminate the space and we could hear the outside world operating, sirens and occasional footsteps penetrating the silence. Otherwise it was completely quiet bar the wind in the trees.
Takusan explored the space, and then he climbed back into the house, tentatively I noticed...almost as though he was uncertain about it. Perhaps, a justifiable reluctance. He came back with a woven rope, red, with a hook on one end. It was at this point that I remembered that this was what he was renowned for.
Let me say I was worried about seeing this seminal part, but also curious, as the Yanaka group had raved so much about him, and after meeting him, I was interested but still a bit scared. He stepped on to the anvil, hung the rope, and then he hung himself, under his jaw, by the neck. He hung for something like 5 minutes, maybe 10. Such tremendous strength and such power his profound agility communicating something from deep within, not limp and dead, but alive and beautiful, such unbelievable beauty, I was moved beyond. He mainly faced away from us, but swung around at one point. I felt like he was dancing throughout, using his body’s muscle to retain his own life.
I felt shame at my own physical discomfort as it was so very cold, sitting so still, hugging my shawl closer around myself, and snuggling into my scarves. I watched his pain, but also his strength. Such an older man, so thin, with these worn red trousers, sewn tightly at the back in order to keep them from falling down, hanging by his neck, in a residential neighbourhood, every day for ten years. Rain, snow, sleet... He had been doing it for more than 40 years actually, I was told, but only ten years so devotedly.
This is his concept to “bring him to paradise”.
His weakness after hanging was apparent, and he fortified himself with slow movement, energy gradually returning. To sit in such a humble yard and to see something so profound, it felt very great and momentous.
After his actions, we all went inside and sat around a heated table, a kotatsu, to warm our legs, and drank shochu with tea and ate lovely things made by his partner, Mika Kurosawa, the greatest dancer in Japan. My eyes were full of appreciation for the surrounds, but I didn’t want to take photos. We discussed his work, while drinking eating, and smoking. After more than an hour Takusan said, let us make a gift for Sarah! Then they sang for me! Old Japanese songs ringing out like a clear bell of beauty.
"Correspondence", the wise man said, in English. He knew. He said strength was what life was about. “The most important thing is to be strong”.
I said I thought he was dancing to the tune of the wind, and he said he was. I asked if the neighbors knew what went on behind the fence, that there was such a great thing going on, each night, such a powerful thing, such a thing that was so private, yet public...they said shush, don't tell them!
We came home on the train full of bliss and gratitude. I loved it there. The contrasts and the fortitude, I chanced to happen on, in the outskirts of Tokyo. It gives me hope.

A piece written by Intern Rachel Smith

Following her residency in Japan in 2009, Sarah Goffman presents Fatty and Slender: The Hanging Man’s House at the Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown. The result of some intriguing experiences during her stay, Goffman responds specifically to a powerful performance she witnessed at the ‘The Hanging Man’s House’ in Kunitachi; a suburb of Tokyo. Goffman and a group of local Yanaka dancers watched on while the aging man Takusan hung himself by the neck, a ‘death-defying’ act that he has been performing every day, sometimes for an audience, for the last ten years.

Unable to take photographs during the performance, Goffman creates a mixed media installation in the gallery space, re-producing the yard of Takusan’s traditional wooden home from memory using wood, glass, cardboard, and paper as well as the stuff of everyday life collected during her residency. In addition to serving Japanese tea and sake, Goffman re-creates some of the dishes that were eaten in the supper that followed the act at Takusan’s house.

Renowned for recycling and reinventing detritus from consumer culture, such as cartons, plastic wrappers, advertising material, and plastic bags, the artist meticulously arranges these familiar objects in the space; pieces hang from the ceiling, cover the doors, lean on walls and sit neatly on carefully arranged shelves. From the bizarre to the every-day, strange and wonderful juxtapositions are created, seemingly transforming the banal to the beautiful.


In the centre of the installation, surrounded by a collection of shoes, stands an upright structure made of old jackets and shirts piled high and topped with a black hat representing the tall figure of Takusan. An exquisite miniature Japanese landscape made of dough, strikingly lit from the side is complemented by a delicate series of wooden sculptures by Peter Jackson. Goffman’s elaborate but seemingly casual installation is typical of a sensibility described by fellow artist Nobuhiro Ishihara as like ‘Ikebana’ - the Japanese art of flower arranging - “because it looks easy, but isn’t.”

Goffman includes two video works in the installation inspired by Takusan’s profound action; one of oozing liquids played on a horizontal screen transformed into a table around which visitors sit, and the distorted video Conversation with the Peachtree projected through glass on a wall nearby. The latter shows Goffman forcibly propping up a peach tree in her back yard, attempting to “sculpt” the living trunk.

Fatty and Slender: The Hanging Man’s House attempts to capture Goffman’s feelings of bliss and gratitude felt as a result of her intense and extraordinary experiences in Japan.

Psychiatrist 7 cents AT HELL GALLERY 2010

WHAT AN AMAZING NIGHT
NEARLY 3 HOURS IN THE BOOTH WITH A BOTTLE OF VODKA AND AN ASTOUNDING VARIETY OF GOOD PEOPLE, TRYING TO RELATE

Big in Japan

Video of oki-do (Japanese) yoga at night, in the winter rain at Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, December 2009.
Seeking to counter-act the business aspect of this vibrant and populated area with a slow movement, oki-do yoga, learnt in Australia. Shibuya is known as one of the busiest pedestrian traffic areas in the world.

Curtain made from my clothes.



Installation view

S.N.O.W.

Some new objects with snow 2006 or something years ago, but this year I made similar models based on photos from the real estate guides of home interiors. These were made based on some engineering photos I found near the Camperdown studio.



Photograph Scott Donovan

Placed drawing of shed in shed

The Polkinghorne shed 2009


Photograph Lisa Kelly

Another project

Oh my god 2009

One year later

I am so slack, I wanted to start a new art blog, and look, I am too lazy!
Here are a few things I did this year:

Plastic Arts 2009
PET Bottles spray enamel and permanent marker





Photographs Mike Myers

Building

I wish I built this. In fact, I was going to do a rendition in cardboard but never got around to it. It is the former Deaf and Blind Institute on City Road, and when I go past I always admire it. The olden days.

So many windows,

so many styles

such a plethora of decoration

such balance.

I'd like to build my own buildings. As a child in Vienna

I visited the Hundertwasser House numerous times...loved it. I still haven't been to Barcelona, and know how much I would love to see Gaudi's work. The merging of styles always seemed to make so much sense. I love going to Melbourne and seeing the architecture there. When I was in Darwin, doing the show Eco-Boutique I made a cardboard construction of houses in a cardboard box. It was funny, because there was a real gated community

called

The Narrows.

Minimalism vs Maximalism

Two sides, each reacting to each other. I am interested in both, and wonder if perhaps I am a minimalist in a small space. My photos don't tell the truth, they lie about the space, framing it falsely. I am very inspired by most art work, whether I love it or don't I either want to improve on it, or wish I had made it myself. There is a lot of work that I am ambivalent about, I think that's normal.

Sometimes my work is essentially a hint, a suggestion, perhaps something that could be explored further, as a line which may be expanded upon at some stage. I often see projects as play areas, where I can expose and try out ideas. I know some artists who will only show a very finished work, but that is not me. I relish the idea of public presentation, the reality has it's own limitations. Perhaps if I had a really big studio I could turn it into an ongoing gallery project, and invite interaction...hm, sounds like The Factory...

I am interested in creating designated spaces where work occurs, work spaces can be so inviting and I relish setting up spaces where you can project your own narrative.

Turn the light on

How lucky? For 2 minutes each day, the sun came through the window and appeared to turn the 'light' on!
photo Deborah Vaughan

Paradise Found

While making work for the show and negotiating beauty and content, a doco played for 2 weeks on the ABC; Paradise Found. It is a super piece of film making about the arts of Islam, architecture and history. I was gobsmacked throughout, ashamedly admitting there was so much that I didn't know about the Islamic influence on all Europe, and much of the world. Had my education been deficient? We find paradise through understanding, through seeing and loving. My world is enhanced by my vision and exultation that we are all in this together, each individual one of us, at different stages, co-existing. The doco made me understand that art in mosques was there to uplift the viewer and contemplate beauty itself. The spires leading to heaven, closer to God.

I am not religious, except about my committment to the earth itself.

But this program helped make me accept what I had made.

Red white and blue

Re-scheduled work; Have we found paradise? This world of plenty where 1/4 of the world consume 3/4 of the resources. Shocking shit out there. I joke that if the water levels rise, my works would all float. I often wonder what will happen to plastics in landfill over millions of years. This work is a couple of years old, and only the ABC shop bags have deteriorated.
I would like to cover a giant field with logos, I loved the AIDS quilt, and the mass of decoration as well as commemoration.

SLAVE TRADE

Letters given to me by the wonderful Kate Sowerby, they had been used in labs for labelling on x-ray film. I found the material in a box, it was cut exactly the size 0f the vitrine it is installed in. Also, it reminds me of Liz Day. On reflection I recalled the essay Marise Williams wrote for the Our Lucky Country catalogue.
She wrote;

"Sarah Goffman is a slave to her materials. This is her intention and this is how she likes it. She takes the stuff of everyday life as it finds her and rearranges it, layering and embellishing the flotsam and jetsam of consumer culture, the ordinary, the discarded and what we take for granted - what we don’t notice because we see it all the time. As a reclamation artist, Goffman makes us look at the ordinary with our own eyes invigorated by her artistic interpretive process. Her gift is an ability to reveal the special life of objects: familiar quotidian artifacts are lovingly reclaimed, recrafted and reendowed with the value of a common cultural significance – something we can all relate to, something we all have in common, or we’d like to share."