Hannah Bertram Studio

Drawings for new work

2012-02-04T19:02:00.000-08:00

Artists Throwing Rocks

2011-11-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

Whilst in the states a few months ago, DC artist Kendall Nordin asked me "what is it like to make work and send it out into the world?" This enquiry into the creative process formed the bases her video 'Artists Throwing Rocks', in which artists choose a body of water and a rock/s as visual metaphors to illustrate the action of letting your work go. The resulting video is poetically filmed and as an artist I found that it explored a complex range of emotional relationships to art making. Watching it again this morning it reminded me of the ability of visual art to speak in ways that no other medium can.

You can watch the video on Vimeo. Click here

Sculpturescape

2011-10-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Sculpturescape was the final iteration of the Mildura Sculpture Triennial back in the late 70's, but has been conceptually revived by Lorne Sculpture Prize curator Julie Collins. This year the traditional sculpture trail along the foreshore of Lorne has been extended to incorporate the diversity of contemporary sculpture practice. It will include Sculpturescape a 1 day temporary installation exhibition, a program of Performances pieces by Australia's most significant Performance artists, Rawscape - a prize for tertiary art students, as well as a lecture by Inge King and a forum about contemporary sculpture.

Here are some of the details, please come and join us.

Over the next 2 weeks you will hear quite a lot from me on this blog about the event as I am participating in Sculpturescape, assisting with the performances, and supervising 2 groups of students for Rawscape.

The last remains

2011-10-09T02:14:00.000-07:00

I received this week a disk of images documenting the last remaining dustwork from 'The Silence of Becoming and Disappearing'. Pictured below is the work which I created in Pomonal in August 2010.

In my initial proposal, I said "that the works may go on on to gather further dust".... Here's what it looked like after a year.

Books books books

2011-10-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

The long awaited book launch of 'New Romantics: Darkenss and Light in Australian Art' by Simon Gregg is here. Please come along to the book launch and celebrate.

Across the other side of the globe, Melbourne artist Yandel Walton is featured in 'Where they create' by Paul Barbera. So if you've ever been to her wonderland studio and sung sing star till the wee hours and walked out into the dawn, wishing you could live in an awesome warehouse like hers, now you can have a little bit of awesomeness for your own coffee table.

Order on line here 'Where they create'

Still on the topic of books, I brought about 20kg's of art books back from the states and am now working my way, week by week down through the deep pile. This week it's Robecca Solnit's A field guide to getting lost. Part novel/non-fiction, part philosophy/practical advice, part journalism/part poetry, partly makes me want to stay in bed and read all day.

Brokeness and fearlessness

2011-09-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I cannot not know this anymore.
Pina Bausch has broken me.
Even with her eyes closed, with my eyes closed, I can't stop looking, searching, stumbling.

I'm grateful that I hadnt seen Cafe Muller before I did this experimental piece. I may have felt less lost had I known of Pina beforehand, and being lost was the most necessary and exciting part about doing this performance. In it I am remembering a drawing whilst re-drawing it onto the ground using sticks, with my eyes closed. My contribution to this performance isn't that 'good' or resolved, but it is a beginning, a sketch perhaps for walking into somewhere else. I see it as an extension of my drawing practice, in which I draw without looking at the page. But unlike the majority of my drawings, which I make as a way of looking and thinking, which are actions that need to be made before the 'real' work can be made and which shamefully pile up in the studio, this experimental performance is getting closer to bridging the gap between my privae studio drawings and the public ephermal installations and performances . As with most of my creative shuffling, it looks pretty straight forward, but behind the scenes where long conversations in which Nuno prodded me, gentle coaxed me, unsuccessfully persuaded me, belligerent nudged me, challenged me and encouraged me until just a few hours before the performance I surrendered, and walked all the way out there, into this...

Nuno Rebelos Swingstones

2011-09-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

Nuno Rebelo's 'Swingstones'. Sound sculptures created for I-Park Environmental Art Biennale.

Sad flags in new york

2011-09-11T19:19:00.000-07:00

Artworks part 3

2011-09-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

Sylvie and Miruielle's holding trees up installation

Nuno's swinging pendulum stone sound sculptures

There are also a few other sound peices and videos which I haven't had the chance to record.

Art works part 2

2011-09-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

Mary's palliative care for dying trees performance

Ward's kinetic word sculpture

Noa's dance piece on the dock.

Paul and Jillian's circle in the lillie pads

The art work

2011-09-10T05:32:00.000-07:00

Pedro's Cyclone and weather vane.

Misa's floating island of moss and her mound of dead pine needles that breaths and moves as if its alive

Kim's spider webs in the swamp, spun from cling wrap

Working through the work part 3

2011-09-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

Quite a few days this week I have had to surrender to nature, first there were days of rain and a new population of mosquitos to work amongst. Then a wind picked up and I would find myself hanging onto a leaf while cutting it, only to find out that the leaf was no longer hanging onto the tree. And then there was the day when I was walking out to my tree and from a distance I noticed the change of colour from greenest green into autumnal hues. Fall is here and the leaves are falling.

But every day is a day of joy, to stand in my try and create something new.

Who are the 'we'?

2011-09-09T15:43:00.000-07:00

A few times I have mentioned 'we' in my blog. As you have most likely deduced, this 'we' incorporates the eclectic range of artists in the residency program. Perhaps you might want to know a little bit more about who they are.

First a picture of us...

And here is are their web links:

Paul Burn, Visual Arts, New York | Jillian May, Visual Arts, Germany/New York
paulburn.net | www.jillianmay.net

Mireille Fulpius, Visual Arts, Switzerland/France | Sylvie Bourcy, Visual Arts, Francewww.mireillefulpius.com

Misako Inaoka, Visual Arts, Japan/Californiawww.misakoinaoka.com

Mary Ivy Martin, Visual Arts, New Yorkwww.maryivymartin.com

Javier Party, Musical Composition, Austria/Chilewww.javierparty.com

Pedro Marzorati, Visual Arts, France/Argentina
www.Pedromarzorati.com

Nuno Rebelo, Sound Sculpture, Spain/Portugalwww.youtube.com/nunorebelomusic

Noa Sagie, Choreography/Performance, New York/Israelwww.noasagie.com

Ward Tietz, Language Arts/Installation, Marylandhttp://www.wordimage.net/

Kim Waale, Visual Arts, New Yorkhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/kimwaale/

These are a few of our fine moments in fashion:

Working through the work part 2

2011-09-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

Almost every day I wonder if my work exists in a 'Bermuda Triangle' part of I-park, as at least once a day someone says "I tried to find your work, but I couldn't see anything".

I want the work to have a fragile and fleeting position in relationship to the environment and I'm also creating a situation that requires a few moments of stillness and slow looking on behalf of the viewer. I hope that they will have a gentle moment of discovery and through a continued experience of prolonged looking, more and more of the work will be revealed. As a result much of this week has been spent inventing ways to ensure that the work is 'just visible enough' rather than 'invisible too much'.

Inside the tree I have now created 6 viewing positions, these are located at the end of paths which help people find the work and was a solution for managing the poison ivy problem.

I then dug holes so that I could insert my beautifully sanded cross sections of oak into the ground.

In my mind I have started thinking of these markers on which the viewer can stand, as buried pedestal.

I have also sorted out more of my text. The leaves still say 'LEAVES' but the branches now say 'REMAINS'.

After I'd completed this much, I asked some visitors to the residency, who knew nothing about my intentions to have a look at the work. This gave me a chance to take note of the ways in which they went about searching for the work.

The sound of each of them 'oohing' 'wowing' and muttering things like 'oh there's more', makes me feel confident that the work was getting closer to being resolved.

Destruction Violence and Electric Sanding

2011-09-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

My low impact intention felt marginally compromised today.

Local volunteers arrive today to help us out with our projects. I had mother daughter team Angela and Yuba, who brought an enviable collection of electric sanders and so we got to work sanding the chainsaw marks out of my markers/ buried pedestals, and I have to say - Tools. They are fun.

oh the power of tools

oh the power of power tools.

oh the incredible volume of high pitched whining noise from a generator and 3 electric sanders.

And oh my, am i glad to have had a few pairs of extra hands to get through some of the grunt work.

Personal jokes (possibly lost in translation)

2011-09-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

The longer we go without power, washing and contact with the outside world, the more ridiculous we behave. Our lack of decorum has escalated several times into chaotic but highly creative collaborative experiments. The most hilarious being, our attempt one night to create an interpretive contemporary dance pieces using the generator as a sound score and a torch and a candle as our lighting. It was hours of entertainment!

The masterpiece of our playful interventions, however, started early one evening when we realised that not only did we have no power or water, but also no working phone/email and no car. So, should there be an emergency, we were stuffed. Necessary caution, however, was abandoned when we decided we would entertain ourselves with night walk through the grounds and a boat ride on the pond to look at stars. After stumbling around in the moonlight we got the row boat into the water but could only find one canoe paddle - that'll do. So in we climbed.

"There's a 'ole in the boat" one of the french women cried.
"No no. its just a little water from the storm".
"No its a 'ole, the water is coming in."
"No no its fine, I'll scoop it out".

This went on for several minutes till someone with a flash light located a hole the size of an iceberg gash. Shrieking, scrambling and in a tangle of arms and legs we grabbed at each other and the undulating pontoon trying to get out of a leaking boat.

Later that night after we had taken it in turns to stargaze in the canoe, the exhilaration of night-wandering, universe gazing and a near drowning left some of us too wound up to sleep. I began the mindless gesture of cleaning the kitchen but just a few hours later 3 of us had turned the kitchen into one large practical joke.

Here are the things we made and in brackets a translation.

Emergency Phone

(hopefully no explanation required)

Communal Cutlery and Crockery.
Also a smal post-it note pad for big important ideas.
(We had tried to set rules to manage the mayhem, such as, each person has 1 cup and 1 glass with a sticker on it so it can be reused without washing it)

Fire Alarm arangement

The night of the storm all of the 8 fire alarms went off. Instead of the normal high pitched beeping these ones actually yell "Fire. Fire. Fire" at you. Due to our no power situation we were ironically running around in the dark holding candles up to the alarms to turn them off. Then we had to rip the alarms out of the wall after we found out they were wired in. But they didn't shut up, so we pulled out the batteries and then they just kept on beeping. Finally, in desperation we wrapped them in a towel and shut them in a cupboard.

Turning water into wine

New cup for Sylvie and Mirelle

Environmental protest

I wanted to see this bench clean just once.

(Since we the storm the kitchen table and bench had been occupied by towering piles of paper plates (used and clean) bags of corn bread, apples and warmed chocolate, cameras, insect repellent and redundant phones and phone charges, cereal, napkins notes and candle stubs - it was feral)

We also made sculptures out of stuff found during the clean up. This one uses a Tupperware container, stale bread and paper and reminded us of some work we had seen in a Sculpture magazine.

The next morning I woke to the sound of the house laughing.

Working through the work part 1

2011-09-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

In the first few days, when I was thinking about how to make a peice that had no impact on the environment, I wrote a handful of poems called 'Possible Performances'. I used some card from the recycling bin which happened to be programs for a previous performance event at I-Park.

This is the one that brought me out of the idealist position of not touching the landscape and into the beginning of the work that I'm making now.

I started cutting the word 'leaves' into the leaves.

But how to cut a tree without hurting it?
Mason, the grounds keeper and I have had a few conversations about the ways I could cut into leaves and bark and without killing the leaves branches or trees. Caterpillars were also very instructive in thinking about this - they never eat an entire leaf, they take a small amount from many leaves. So I reduced the scale of my text to the same dimensions of the holes left my caterpillars and would only cut 1 leaf out of each sprig of 5.

Interestingly, the caterpillars started collaborating on the work by nibbling away at my texts - its a delightful surprise.

At this stage of the development, the main problem was that I didn't want this to just be a concrete poem - the word 'leaves' on actual leaves. I wanted the word leaves not just to be a plural noun but also the verb - to leave. And I wanted 'absence' to be used as a material and as a conceptual investigation.

It needed more layers, more components. This isn't the right text, but it was a process of teaching myself how to cut into the bark and a way of maybe introducing more text that could draw out other meanings of 'leaves'.

The work is very subtle and requires the viewer to spend time discovering the piece in the tree. So I have created 6 viewing spots inside the canopy of the tree, so the viewer can have an individual experience of locating and being with the work and the tree. Funnily enough when I began the work I kept loosing it. I'd go off to lunch, come back, and I couldnt find it. Clearly it was too subtle. Now I'm thinking about a marker in the ground that quietly shows the viewer where to stand so at least they are given a chance of locating the text on leaves and branches. This was my practice marker.

After these small components came together I asked another artists to come and look at the work. This turned out to be invaluable not just for the critical exchange but also because she was able to point out that the ground which my tree canopy covered was carpeted with poison ivy.

So there are many issues to resolve, but its invigorating to be thinking through and around new work.

Without clocks - a list.

2011-09-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

Before she gets out of bed, she looks at the length of the shadow of the house on the lawn

If it’s short, she’s over slept

If it’s long, she takes her time

I leave my bedroom door open at night,

when there are sufficient people in the kitchen, making enough noise to wake me up,

it’s time to get up

The boiling brewing stewing filtering and later warming of coffee in the morning

takes a convoluted but necessary amount of time

If Tanya is in the kitchen it’s after 9 in the morning

When Jacob steams out the funky smells in the kitchen with herbs and spices cut from the garden its time for dinner

When Brad is around he

constructs

organises

and tells time what to do

Ralph, he understands the desire for a just little bit more time

So in the day if I’m considering trees, time is only the shadows moving

If I’m sweaty and bothered by the sun it’s probably lunchtime

When I’m in my tree up, time stays outside

When I’m reading, time is measured by the increments of pages

When I’m drifting around the pond in a canoe in darkness or daylight,

time

is the sky passing

When the generator starts

It has been an approximate hour of stillness

When the sound of the generator stops

ah h h h h h h

it’s been approximately an hour of full frontal white noise.

When Masons car dusts up the drive its somethime around 8ish,

but he brings with him speed and action and so time goes faster when he arrives:

Mary walks all day with time ticking ticking ticking ticking and work that grows faster than thought

Misa’s material has taken its own sweet time to grow into itself

ready for her picking

Nuno see’s time passing from the distant view of a son turning 1

Somewhere else

Jillian and Paul roar and rage all night long at the presence of time but in the daylight Paul panics at time

lost

(Jillian’s time is experienced by the poison passing through her veins)

Sylvie and Mirelle have secret inner knowledge of time,

their clocks know when and how to be where and how they need to be

Pedro knows that 5 hours of shopping takes much much much more time than 5 hours working or drinking wine

Javier’s time is carefully conserved in his phone. One amongst us that savours talk like sound and time and spends it with consideration.

Kim c o o l s and knows time

Noa moves in time

When our energy is fading, it’s either beer or coffee o’clock.

That particular reading of time understood by needs is confusing.

Every

single

time

that we are deep in contagious and collaborative laughing

time

understands it’s home is not with us

Experiments into the landscape

2011-09-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

One of my first concerns about making work in this place was - how to work in the environment in a way that wasn't plonking down an object, or adding anything to what was already here, or marking the land in a way that was intrusive. I wanted it to be gentle and sensitive to the space and kept switching my thinking from 'doing something in the landscape' to having 'the landscape do something to me'. I would be the page rather than the other way around. I also got a little bit obsessed thinking that the main action of art making/viewing is looking, and looking might be a material to work with here.

One project I began was performance drawings on my body. I would stand and look at a plant. Whilst looking only at the plant I would draw it on my body.

It wasn't so successful but it had the beginnings of possibilities and could maybe become something at another time. But after 2 days I knew it wasn't the thing I was looking for.

Storm Dancing

2011-09-02T06:26:00.001-07:00

After the storm

2011-09-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

The anticipation of the hurricane mirrored my waiting, listening and watching for potential new work which I could make here. It’s heavy and thick and exciting and potentially disastrous. Today the sky was clear/my mind was clear. I wanted to get going. But we had been without power and water for over 24 hours and the forecast was that it would be at least a week to get it back on again. Our post-disaster situation was this: the back-up generator for the fridge had overheated and stopped working, the bath tub of water we had filled in preparation had been slowly draining through the day and nothing was left, the toilets were being taped off as more and more of them were getting blocked, the dishes pots pans and cutlery which we had left outside over night to get washed by the rain, remained unrained upon, we had not washed for a few days and all 13 of us had spent the better part of 24 hours in the kitchen – it felt communal, it was the centre of entertainment but in the brightness of day every surface was grimy greasy filthy, smelly, and disorganised.

We needed to clean, sort, categorise, and plan our post-disaster situation, one day of high-drama was an exotic experience, a week of filthy place and self was unpleasant. In particular we needed to work out how to get water and how to get power but very specifically how to get coffee, how to get the dishes and us clean and what to do about the toilets?

Which is how I found myself at this day spa.

We were the Collecting water for the toilets committee and after having scavenged amongst 8 industrial sized rubbish bins for drippy mouldy but potentially still useful plastic bottles, we were rewarded with a purifying cleansing swim in the river. After which we went home and sorted out our new dish washing system.

Post hurricane postcard

2011-08-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

I am sending you this post-Hurricane postcards as a homage to conceptual artist On Kawara, who once sent a series of postcards to his art dealer stating the time/date and this message: “I am still alive.”

Time unknown, date unknown “I am still alive and kicking.”

P.S No Power. No water. Lots of art. So much laughter.

My Hurricane has a name.

2011-08-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

Irene.

In my head tapes I keep singing the Dixies Midnight Runners song "Come on Eileen". Of course I sing "Come on Irene" but i just googled the lyrics to see if I could do something entertaining with them and its about something that I wasn't aware of, so I'll leave the musical appropriation it in my headtapes.

Is it on your news? There's a hurricane heading my way - yes a cyclone. New York has shut down it's entire subway system and bus service and evacuated residence from certain area. I'm about 10 min from New London and we are getting ready.

actually Im still 24 hr drawing but around me they are preparing:

filling sinks/baths/bottles with water

finding flash lights

charging anything that plugs in

writing out emergency numbers

getting beds for everyone in the main house

opening the basement door.

In preparation I have told two darling French ladies to take the list of residence names to the basement and find me if I'm not in the basement before they lock the doors. It took me 24 hours to get out of Oz, I don't want to be whipped back there by a hurricane.

Gotta be quick there's a hurricane coming

2011-08-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Wednesday Thursday Friday things happened - more on that later.

Today I needed to stop.
and look.

Look in slow motion, look attentively, look as a process, look with wonder. I know a way to do this, but don't hold it against me given that my post about the unknowing I'm using a process that I know very well to explore looking. The 24 hour Drawing Project. Its just a useful tool. The premise is you start and finish a work in a continuous 24 hour period, its an exercise in endurance, tha action of making, and a chance often to simply spend some concentrated time on a small idea that you don't have time to investigate when the demands of exhibiting are competing with the demands of creativity.

Its hour 8 of the drawing project and I have gathered random samples of plants to look at. Im drawing them with two hands but I never look at the page. The drawing is a by-product, its the gathering of visual information through experience and into my memory bank that I'm focusing on.

Me drawing.

The by-product/drawing

I didn't bring any materials so I am using things from the paper recycling alos found some post-it notes in the kitchen and a few biro's around the place.

Views and viewing

2011-08-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

From outside looking into my studio, it's picturesque and calm.

From within me, inside my studio looking out. The view is unclear and calm.

Unknowing

2011-08-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Some books fall on your head. They get knocked off a top shelf and the corner of the hard spine smacks your skull. When you pick it up, the action of peeling opening the book is like clawing your fingers into a small crack in your mind and prying it open. Not so open that your brain falls out but a gap that lets the breeze in.

Such was my experience of ‘Options with Nostrils’ which contains an essay by Dieter Roelstraete titled ‘A room with many doors’. Dieter is the founder of the ‘Office of Unknowing’ and writes that our longing for art is “to be shown the very limits of understanding” and that when we are defeated by knowing (which is different from understanding but you can read the book if you want to find out more), what is left of the experience of art is wonder.

Normally when I work overseas, I am meticulous organised. I have the work ready to go, I am rehearsed, prepared, ready. I have back up plans, I know what I need and how to get it, I know how to deal with the unexpected, I know where the nearest exist are.

I came to the I-park residency with 2 plans:

Plan A: Do exactly what I always do

Plan B: Don’t have a plan

Somebody else’s heart attack made my mind up about which option to choose and so here I am at I-park with ‘Options with Nostrils’ being not only an object of brain splitting ability but a lullaby to my fear about doing Plan B - the unknown.

Foraging

Martha says hi Mum

2011-08-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing Martha Wainwright play a gig. Let me paint the picture a little...

She was playing at the Copper Union Hotel. Sounds like a dive bar right - something akin to the Inkerman Hotel. But oh no no. it was a swanky pants hotel, on the top floor, part of the penthouse suit in fact. Picture a glass room half
the the size of our house, 25 floors above the east village, with 3 walls (thats a 360 minus 90 degree view - more if you lean around the railing) which looks out over the vast Manhattan night. (do you understand the vastness? go up the Eureka tower then do some maths number thing that makes melbourne look many times bigger, then squish it like a bit of clay so the width gets thinner and the height gets fatter, then do that mental biggering thing again Yx X +++++Z, ok close engough).

I's surprisingly hushed up there, surprising for the cacophony that is NY. It's balmy and still and wonderful. On the horizon you can watch the flight patterns of plans landing at JFK its hypnotic. The walls all open out onto decking, there's a small bar, about 50 people. And Martha. She sings a casual little acoustic gig for 2 hours. and she sings in a whisper that stills you.

ah

With so few people around and no backstage for her to exit to, I wondered over to her to thank her. It's NYC after all, so these things happen. It was nice we had a chat, I told her how i discovered her. My Mum had arrived late to an exhibition of mine, she explained she had sat in the car and listened to 'that song about her dad', and my mum was blown away. I have hundreds of memories of my mum dancing to music but i don't know that i have ever heard her talk about a song like she did that night.

She didn't sing 'that' song for me but here it is anyway (Some people probably shouldn't listen to this)

MOMA

2011-08-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

I became a member of MOMA this week. I'm not normally a joiner but apparently I was buying so many art books that if I paid the $60 membership they would refund my $20 entry and give me 20% off all my books and return the books I'd already brought and buy them at a member rate, and cause id had lunch they would give me 20% back fro that- it would be so cheap they'd have to pay me to walk out.

Ok, there was Maths involved, I didn't really understand the numbers bit. It just sounded like an impossible temptation that meant i could enter a utopia that is real it exists now, in the bricks and mortar world and not in a magical realism manifesto. This utopia was named Unlimited Access. It's a beautiful beautiful place - so i went to MOMA 3 times.

And I'm euphorically happy.

My new best friend Dougals Huebler - a square of sawdust photographed every hour as it gets walked over. How have i not seen this before!!!

Me and Michelangelo Pistoletto (also Andy and Marilyn in the very far background)

Murder and minatures

2011-08-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you about a thrillingly terrifying, perplexing then surprising, immersive on a scale you cant imagine, performance adventure of Macbeth that I went to see but first I need to tell you about an exhibition of miniatures at the New Art and Design museum, because that, my dears, is where the theatrical unreal/real experience of wonder began.

With the majority of galleries and museums closed for the summer the pickings of what to see are a little slim. Slim by New York’s standards is still 40 or 50 more kilos fatter than the picking’s in Melbourne, so I have still been getting about to a decent number of galleries. But oddly there was a miniature show on that my friend was super keen to see – it’s hard to understand why artists who live in the city don’t just want to go to MOMA every day of the week but hey, off we went to the New Art and Design museum which was exhibiting dioramas. Ridiculously precise renditions of artists studios, hair salons, itty bitty villages frozen under ice, a violin makers workshop and library all with tiny people and teeny books the world shrunken with a ray gun was there. The one small problem I have with dioramas is that Im not singularly impressed by craftsmanship, I always want a bit of content in there, something more to think about than just “Man that’s small.” A couple of pieces in this show did stand out – a reduced scale skyscraper just slightly taller than the average person, in which you could view from one single window an open plan austere office. But the office stretched out to a far distant horizon seemingly miles away, which makes you mover back and visually measure the outer dimensions of the skyscraper again. Also at one single desk was a hologram of a rotating ghost chair, it was captivating how your mind knew that the office was small but visually it just looked bigger, it was both miniature and vast and it undid logic in my brain. A different work which had us gasping, laughing and repeatedly saying “NOOOOO. Really??? Ahhhh oh my god what?” was made up of 2 strips of tiny LED’s in a short single file down the wall, it looked not surprisingly just like 2 strips of tiny LED’s in a short single file down the wall until you walked passed it without looking directly at it, then BAM you could see a 3D eye blinking at you or the word “See”. Perception is a perplexing thing and I love to art that contradicts my expectations.

But lets get to the peak of excitement in the story.

Later that evening we went to a performance called ‘Sleep no more’. The premise was that it was a postmodern version of Macbeth in which scenes are acted out in different locations and the audience moves around the venue at there own discretion. We arrived at 11pm and were told to check in our bags, jumpers or jackets, phones, cameras etc, we entered a long long labyrinthine deep black maze which ended up in a cozy dark jazz club. At this point you are firmly separated from your friends, ushered into a small room where you are told that you are no longer allowed to speak, that you must wear a mask at all times and that you must explore this alone, that there will be others with black masks who are not there to guide you and that you will be rewarded for your curiosity! They then shuffled a group of you into a lift and deposited you on different floors.

Oh no – what’s going to haaaaapen to me!

The set was a hotel circa 1940’s. Let me say that again the set was … an entire hotel. About 6 stories high with never ending corridors, hundreds of rooms, false rooms with in rooms and darkness was every where and the music was an intensely load horror movie genera sound track. Every inch of the building was a highly crafted meticulous set, there were secret passages, doors got locked behind you, sometimes other audience people would enter a room but you would get locked out, at first I cynically thought “oh this is like a walking ghost train, or a house of horrors type of thing”, but the shear scale of it and the Macbeth-ness of it consumed you. It was as if the dioramas from earlier in the day had grown up around us and we tentatively felt our way through, watched, discovered, and missed 3 hours of the essence of Macbeth.

These are some of the things I expereienced:

a child’s room deserted and dusty, one wall was made of dark glass and when you pressed your nose against it you could faintly see an exact replica of the child’s room on the other side but… the sheets were bloody stained,

A dance piece on a four poster bed – the persuasion of Lady Macbeth

A dance in which Lady Macbeth

Many many scenes of people washing shirts, towels, walls and sheets in strange space a clock rooms, in hospital wards, in bath tubs.

A detective offices with filing cabinets full of records you can read

Mental wards

Psychiatric offices

Interrogation rooms

A candy store where you could eat anything you wanted

A foggy moor the size of school gymnasium with a labyrinth that makes you feel like you’re destined for the mental institution

A graveyard, complete with an earth floor and ruined buildings and so dark you stub your toes and cant see the end of the room

Information every where notes, letters, posters, messages scratch inside draws, diaries of book shelves – hard to know what was relevant and what was not, but you could read it all.

A ballroom that I couldn’t get out of no matter how many different exists I tried to escape from, the first time a stage was set with a long white clothed table and at it sat 8 actors in slow motion violence and excess at this point about 40 audience members had appeared at the same time. The next time I went in there it was a forest of Christmas trees and not a single audience member in site.

Everything moment felt suspenseful violent and passionate and bloodied and gruesome and sinister and insane and intense. But Macbeth isn’t a rom com is it.

skyscrapers outside my window. Skyscraper on my desk

2011-08-22T05:23:00.001-07:00

3 walks

2011-08-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

1. a walk in space.

2. a mind walks

3. a walk in New York city.

Elastic City is an art walking tour. But not your average ‘let me lead you around a gallery and explain art to you” kind of tour. Instead, they are walks created by artists to make audiences active participants in poetic experiences of a city. ‘Solar Alignment’, my space walk of the day was invented by local artists Neil Freeman which claimed to explore the way the sun synchronizes with the city, but actually delivered much more. The walk physically covered just a few blocks of the east village/china town/little italy, but mentally took us out of the neighbourhood, out of NYC, out of the country and into the vast sublime of the solar system. Our time was spent watching the sky, and the sun and the light and shadows move behind and over the city, but with each of these moments you became acutely aware that it was us, on this plant that was moving, not the sun. When you standing still for long enough you can see your shadow moving in tiny increments, BUT it isn’t moving at all - the earth is moving under it. Now I know that you all know this – the earth revolves around the sun big deal. But it’s very rare to have this knowledge so well illuminated that you see it and you feel it. Instead of feeling like we were 5 people walking along the sidewalk, we were 5 people standing on a planet, in space, within a solar system. It was a delight to talk and wlak and look and be surprised. It also gives me a kind of vertigo that makes me want to grip tightly onto something made of steel and cement. Don’t stop spinning world, I like gravity.

Walk 2 was located in an extensive exhibition of Francis Alys’ performative walks pieces at MOMA. It largely comprised of video, drawings, notes and diagrams that recorded his many many walks, so ironically I spent the entire afternoon sitting down in dark theatres and at small tables while I imagined his walks, here is a sample of my favourite video, which was both humours and poetic in its exploration of isolation and belonging:

- 64 Coldstream guards (you might know them as Beefeaters with the big black fuzzy hats) enter the city of London by different streets, unaware of one another’s route.

- The gurads wander through the city looking for each other

- Upon meeting they fall into step and march together, looking for more gurads to join up with.

- When a square measuring 8 x 8 gurads has been built, the complete formation marches towards the closets bridge

- As they step onto the bridge, the guards break step and disperse.

And also this one...

"Sometimes making something turns into nothing."

In this walk he pushes a massive block of ice around the streets of mexico until it melts - oh the futility of creativity!

Elastic City

After all my mind blowing walking, I decided to hop off the subway 10 blocks early and digest my day of wandering and wondering, in the twilight and in the rain.

Where is the art?

2011-08-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

Its 5am. Coffee. Other things come to mind but mainly just that ... coffee.

I've been chatting this morning to the guys from I-Park in the USA about my residency there, coffee. It was an early call. Coffee. It's not yet dawn, but it was wonderful to talk about the work I want to make and comforting to hear how organised and supportive they are but also how open they are to artists processes and the development of work. I like them already. I like them like coffee. They provide food but I forgot to ask about coffee. hmmmm... I might need to organise that myself. And the house and studios sound wonderful. They asked me what time I like to get up. I said 10am. At 10:01 I have coffee.

I miss not being in the studio at the moment. I've noticed my agitation and restlessness at not making anything for a month - you have probably just notice that nothing arty has happened on the blog. Perhaps its the longest I've gone without making work. Coffee could help with that calculations. Some days its not just agitation it's a simmering distress like a caged animal that starts gnawing at its own leg. I'm pleading with the world "Enough with all the paper work!' "Stop sending me emails and forms".

RIP
Hannah Bertram formally know as 'The artist'
Cause of Death: Bureaucracy

Or maybe it wasn't the paper that killed her, but the balls that killed her? Remember that ad that was out a while ago, with all those coloured bouncy balls. They get released at the top of the hill and bounce all out of control and crazy like down the street. It looked like fun in the ad, but in life when your insanely busy and you 'drop the ball' or in my case 'balls' it's not fun. (coffee could also help to extend my early morning vocabulary). This week I have apologised to more people then I may have apologised to in my whole life. "Dear So-and-so, I'm really sorry I missed the meeting last week" ... "Dear So-and-so, I'm really sorry I haven't got around to sending you the catalogue images" .... "Dear So-and-so, I'm sorry.. " "I'm sorry" "I'm sorry" "I'm sorry". Its quite humbling to have to be apologetic and to daily admit your flaws to people. Still, I'd rather have everything under control. I'd rather drink instant coffee with powdered milk than drop balls.

I'd rather be in the studio.

Places I went. Things I did. Thoughts I had

2011-07-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Last week was a bit of a mish-mash of activities in the studio

1. I sorted through the meter high pile of stencils on top of my plan draws. Then cleaned out the 12 plan draws - I felt concerned that despite the ephemerality of my practice I have still accumulated vast amounts of paper/card and other art making residue. I often ponder a project that would forces me to use up all of the old stencils and drawings. The easiest option would of course be to re-enact Micheal Landy's 'Breakdown' exhibition in which he shreadded everything he owned, in order to explore issues of value and ownership, or I could make use of his Art Bin

2. Made a paper-mache lions head hat for Brittany's Harry Potter costume, and a death eater costume for Jon.

3. Re-read Terry Smiths 'Provincialism's Problem'. Then read 5-6 articles around the Provincial Problem. Followed by 2 unrelated ABC Artworks podcasts, that both touched on examples of how we still suffer the cultural cringe in Australia.

4. Started doing my tax, whilst watching Gillard's announcement of a Carbon Tax Price. Got a bit conflicted, cause in theory I don't mind paying taxes - especially the carbon tax. Broadly speaking, I use a range of the services that taxes fund and from my egalitarian position I do believe that those who have more, should contribute towards those who have less. However, I spent hours and hours entering in every single receipt, even those amounts less than $1.00, in order to do what? Yep, pay less tax. Why is it so hard to live wholeheartedly without compromise?

5. Dug a whole in the garden to consider new ideas for work. Considered the whole. Thought: that's not a bad idea.

6. Drove to Lorne for the day to do a site visit for the 'Sculpturescape' exhibition. Came back to the cardboard tent idea again! Does this idea keep coming back because its worthwhile, or am i just stuck in a creative bog.

7. Went to the Vienna exhibition at the NGV, with my Dad, and spent several hours talking walking looking and wondering. We each brought our own separate knowledge: mine - the history of ornamentation and Dad's - of travels in Vienna and an understanding of broader world history, and we combined it with a love of talking about, around and through ideas.

8. I ended the week with a call asking if I could teach Landscape Painting and Drawing 1 day a week. This additional work load sent my already soupy head space through the blender, and i found myself initially overwhelmed with the amount of things I was trying to do. So after some cut-throat prioritising and a lengthy family meeting, I have decided to do the following; firstly I'm saying no to all social events, secondly I have decided that I won't be able to resolve my ideas for my trip to the US before I leave. I have a 3 week residency and so I need to rely on my own experience and expertise and trust that I am capable of turning up and creating the work once I arrive. I feel quite liberated by this, not just because its one less thing to do this month but also because I'm excited by the potential to respond more directly with the landscape when I arrive.

David Evans - Internal Temporal Order

2011-07-06T17:17:00.000-07:00

Later this year I will be releasing a new website to document the 24 Hr Drawing Project, this will co-inside with another international 24 Hr Drawing Project - an event in which artists start and complete a work of art in a continuous 24 hour period. I'll keep you up to date with applications, website and dates.

But in the meantime, you should check out David Evans album 'Internal Temporal Order'. It's a beautiful and compelling album with quiet ambient sounds, eclectic rhythms, and endless loops of repetition that shift between being hypnotic and being surprising. Some of the tracks were produced during last years 24 Hr Drawing Project and so it's a brilliant example of what artists can achieve during this project.

Read more about it and have a listen here David Evans - Internal Temporal Order in Releases : Mess+Noise

Also note the patterned cover art by Louise Kellermen (another 24hr DP fellow). It is a great visual companion to the music, with its order/chaos and irregular patterning.

More on the cardboard tent.

2011-07-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Once the idea took on some physical form I could see chasm between intention and object - and it was deep wide and vast. The cardboard tent was meant to be a fragile temporary structure in which 2 elements of the environment could be revealed. From the outside the work would appear to be an unassuming banal cardboard structure, but inside it would be a decorated shrine in which visitors could intimately experience the materials of earth and light. But the gentleness of light and earth were quickly becoming overwhelmed by the thick heavy handed clunkiness that the mass of cardboard was forming.

A tent in my mind is a delicate temporary shelter, it yields to the wind, it absorbs the moisture of dew and rain, it reveals the light of day turning into night and then into dawn, inside it you can hear the environment moving and feel the uneven surface of ground and rocks and grass - unlike a building it is not severed from its environment. The mere shift of material from canvas to cardboard, however, dramatically eradicated these sensitive qualities. In order to make it sturdy enough to withstand the elements, and because I need to engineer it in such a way that the walls could support the ceiling and it could be large enough to stand up in, the tent took on all the insulated presence and permanence of a double fronted brick veneer home.

What became clearer over a beer with an honest and generous friend was that I had created the opposite of my intentions. It was time for the tent to go.

How to find the work

2011-07-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

Three Canons

Be still with yourself
Until the object of your attention
Affirms your presence

Let the Subject generate its own Composition

When the image mirrors the man
And the man mirrors the subject
Something might take over

Minor White 1968

Thanks to Art Blart - Look up this blog if your interested in exhibition reviews

Blurring the line between real life and theatre

2011-07-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Recently a friend sent me this link to a blog about an unassuming public performance project, just had a chance to check it out today and thought I'd share it with you.

Here's the link Momentary Performances: Atlanta

3D printing

2011-06-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

I got very very excited recently when I stumbled across Makerbot's Thing-o-matic which is, wait for it...... a 3D printer. Strangely no-one that I have shared this news with has been as thrilled by this new technology as me. One friend said "So, what? You pay $1000 for something that can make plastic ornaments. I don't get it, why would you want one?" Becauuuuuse you can print them yourself, because its not about making ornaments - it has a thousand creative possibilities, because this is the most radical piece of creative technology I've seen, because it's so brilliantly genius that a person could invent a machine that can take a jumble of 0's and 1's and make a real physical object. Imagine the thought process to get there - I stand in awe.

Another friend who I was certain would show at least more than a mild interest, had already heard about the technology and then he told me something which completely blew my mind out the top of my head and onto the ceiling - medical researchers are using 3D printing technology to create organs made from your own cells.

I gave you a long pause there, so you could take a moment to fully absorb this information. Imagine the future possibilities, you could create a new liver on your computer, pop it on a memory stick, wonder across the street to Officeworks and say "I'd like to print this file, my other liver got used up. Also is it cheaper if I get more than one, cause I seem to go through livers quite quickly. Great I'll be back in half an hour."And then you could go off to the pub.

Flowers on a flowers grave

2011-06-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

These lyrics are on constant repeat in my head tapes - For weeks I have heard the distant gravely voice singing "and tell me who will put flowers on a flower's grave". It's being played on a piano far away in an abandoned ballroom down the end of the long corridor of my mind.

Flowers Grave (Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan)

James Turrell 'Skyspace'

2011-06-20T19:13:00.000-07:00

Failure and beginnings

2011-06-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

The good thing about this project is that the material is free and there is an abundance of it conveniently located in the lane way beside my studio. But every time I go down to collect more boxes, I imagine my decorative tent/space located next to these dumpsters instead of out in the landscapes for which I am producing the work. It's something to do with a gentleness of simply moving materials around and the transformation of that which is abandoned into something beautiful, it's the contrast and the potential for unexpected discover that makes that space feel right. At the start of a project there are infinite possibilities and this week in particular my mind is like a saucepan full of popcorn ideas bursting and bouncing all over the studio. There is so much popcorn the lids coming off and its a big mess, but this is the nature of beginnings.

Most of the cardboard we have collected is cut down into sheets and patchworked together with tape, to make sections of walls to work with. But an occasional pieces are deemed 'special' and these get put aside for potential poetic functions later.

One of the first things i was curious about was 'how can it stand up?' With no engineering skills to draw on I figured the simple pole structure used in old style tents was a good place to begin, so I set about experimenting with methods to hold walls up. The results were predictably mediocre and clearly a better support structure was needed throughout.

I am planning on using extensive decoration inside, so then played with the possibility that the decoration could form part of the structure. Im thinking something along the lines of Islamic pattern work, with the interwoven latice work of the design being cut out and stuck on to the wall to form a second layer inside.

One of the first attempts ended up looking like this..

I can't decide if this has the potential to be interesting if it covers the whole of the interior or just plan fussymessycrappy looking. Some of the other unresolved efforts have been to use curvilinear patterns instead, or cardboard marquetry, or just the pin pricks, or nothing, or make an earth carpet inside, or a carpet pattern cut out of the ceiling that lets the light cast a carpet pattern on the earth, etc etc. All of this then lead me back to thinking about the structure again. The main thing I want it to avoid is looking like a cubby house.

Although I do like how this cubby house has amazing weeds growing around it - it feels like its been there for years. I started making a model of a tent and it occurred to me that one way I could have the tent feel small outside and large inside would be to create it on a slope. The front would be small and the structure would fan out wider and taller towards the back. Now that I had a space to think around it made a few things clearer, most importantly if i wanted to use light entering through pinpricks or cut out patterns to create patterns inside the space, I couldn't have a gapping open entrance. So i made a mock paper curtain.

It looked much better when I photographed it from the inside. I could see this being interesting.

But at the end of a week of messiness there are a few major things to think about. Is a cardboard tent just a cardboard tent? If the weather is humid will it be suffocating to be inside the space. If its windy can I make it strong enough. Should work at an Environmental Art Biennale deal more directly with the landscape/elements/environment. How can I make something which is more gently integrated into its site. I keep thinking about making a space to view the changing light, but get stuck at James Turrell's skyscapes (more on him later). I want to use elements of light earth and maybe air, how can i do this? Is the decoration getting in the way?

The state of my studio really reflects the state of my mind and the unstate of the work.

But as Samuel Beckett said "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better"

Lane way paste up

2011-06-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

Startlingly new past up in the lane way beside the studio. Anyone know whose work it is?

I blame Harry Potter

2011-06-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

I'm developing some new work at the moment for 2 outdoor exhibitions. The plan is to create a series of (or maybe just one) cardboard tent/s. From the outside, the work would appear to be an unassuming temporary cardboard structure, the inside however will be filled with decoration, such as marquetry walls, dust carpets, a vaulted ceiling and pin prick patterns in the roof, . As I started making the work today, I realised there was quite a big flaw in my idea, one which defies physics and requires magic to pull it off. See when I imagine looking at the outside of the tent, I see a tiny old triangular tent hugging the ground, pulled taught with guy ropes. Its just big enough for one person to crawl inside and lie down. There is long wild grass partially camouflaging it and it's way off in the distance, small in comparison to the large expanse of sky and field. But, and here is where physics got left out of the plan, when I go inside I have been imaging it to be huge - bigger enough for 4-5 people to stand up in and walk around without bumping into each other. It was only today when I started my first attempt at building the structure that I realised I had been working with the magical scale of imagination.

So I have to put aside working out the actual scale of the piece, and let it simmer in my mind, while I tackle some other details, such as how do you make a tent out of cardboard boxes, how will it stand up, how will I make it weather proof...

New Romantics.

2011-06-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

I am please to announce that you can now order online a copy of:

New Romantics: Darkness and Light in Australian Art
by Simon Gregg

Order here at the Australian Scholarly Publishing website

Something is happening in Australian art today. We are witnessing the resurgence of ideas that took root centuries ago – a return to passion in art, and a return to atmosphere and awe.Historians called it Romanticism; a disposition for melancholic yearning, for communion with nature, for the sublime. Australian artists, in countless numbers, are engaging with these themes again today.

Set against the dazzling backdrop of the Australian sublime, New Romantics charts the dynasties of Romantic art. From its nascent beginnings in European philosophy to a cause championed by Australian colonialists, this compelling survey seeks to understand how it has landed in the hands of a new generation of Australian artists.

Through the work of 36 contemporary Australian artists who have reinvigorated this movement, New Romantics traces the influences that led them to this unlikely path. This is the first book that seeks to understand a paradigm shift that is shaping the future course of Australian art.

Lavishly illustrated, New Romantics is a book for lovers of art, atmosphere, and awe. A compendium for the twenty-first century, New Romantics is a defining work on the return to beauty in Australian art.

Artists include: Rob Bartolo, Hannah Bertram, Magdalena Bors, William Breen, Sheridan Brown, Jane Burton, Jason Cordero, Peter Daverington, Iris Fischer, Dale Frank, Briele Hansen, Louise Hearman, Bill Henson, Petrina Hicks, Annie Hogan, Mark Kimber, Chris Langlois, Richard Lipp, Joanna Logue, Tony Lloyd, Susan Milne, John Morris, Saffron Newey, Sarah Nguyen, Izabela Pluta, Robbie Rowlands, Kathryn Ryan, Natalie Ryan, Sam Shmith, Sophia Szilagyi, Camilla Tadich, Juha Tolonen, Stephen Wickham, Philip Wolfhagen, Greg Wood, and Joel Zika.

SIMON GREGG has held professional posts at Heide Museum of Modern Art and City Museum at Old Treasury. Simon Gregg has curated over fifty exhibitions at a variety of venues, and has published widely on Australian art. He is currently curator of the Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale. New Romantics is his first full-length book.

Thanks to Rockwiz for this quote...

2011-06-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Just because you don't make sense,
Dosent make you an artists.

A list about 3 types of people

2011-06-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

1. Those of you who have sent me lists.
You will be interested to hear that after 2 1/2 years of collecting your lists, I am finally doing something with all the lists that you have sent me. I can't say exactly what it is yet cause I love the grand drama of a great unveiling, but its on the horizon.

2. Those of you who have lists and wonder if you shoudl send them to me
Yes, I am still collecting lists. Here are a couple of ways that you can send them to me:

Post to:
Room 1 Level 3, 329 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000
You can send original or photocopied lists

Email to:
hannah_bertram@iprimus.com.au
You can send photographed or scanned images or type your list directly into the email.

3. Those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about.
You can read more about it on my website - click here

Carpetry and the satisfaction of precision

2011-06-10T17:23:00.000-07:00

I applied my knife cutting skills to making cardboard marquetry this week. This involves cutting patterns out of cardboard to make a negative space, then cutting the exact same pattern out of a different piece of cardboard and inserting it into the first bit of cardboard. I'm discovering that it takes micro-millimetre precision and a whole new world of satisfaction is experienced when you get it exactly perfect.

Initially I thought it was parquetry that I was making but a quick glance at Wikipedia tells me parquetry is the geometric version of inlayed wooden patterns and marquetry uses curved and natural designs. Good to get the lingo right as I had previously thought that parquetry went on the floor and marquetry went on furniture. My wordy confusion was equally matched by Lisa' who throughout the day blended the words 'cardboard' and 'parquetry' which resulted in her referring to it as 'Carpentry' and which i have now morphed into a blend of cardboard/carpet/marquetry and come up with 'Carpetry'.

I want to go to a dress up party

2011-06-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

Some days life is more fun than art. B and her friends were invited to a Lady Gaga costume party and the hours spent making costumes and doing ostentatious make-up and hair do's was the most fun I have had since .... when? Maybe since I made a similar silver costume to wear to an Andy Warhol Silver party at the Chelsea Hotel.

In defence of the occasionally brilliant interactive/public artist

2011-06-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes artists who incorporate interactive elements to their practice get it right. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is one of them.

Check out his webiste http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/projects.php.

The essay I promised to post

2011-06-03T16:42:00.002-07:00

Difficulty and the intellect.

The ideology of being a well-meaning anti-elitist is hard to let go of. There is a perceived political correctness in trying to make art that can engage the ‘general public’, a virtuousness of trying not to be high brow but to be on the same level as the ‘average person’. At the same time there is something really admirable about being an expert in your field. We can’t get enough of sporting heroes and we are impressed by those who develop new technology. In art however there seems to be a perception of intellectual elitism that is exclusive and impenetrable. Of the vastly diverse talks within the seminar program, four interrelated moments stand out for me. Each of them were points that stimulated an exploration of this projected elitism and which in turn allowed me to reconsider my approach to intellectualism within art, once I’d addressed the broader issue of arts’ position within the context of our wider society.

In a round table discussion documented as part of the 2004 Australian Art Now exhibition catalogue Pillip Brophy commented on an essay he recently wrote for Callum Morton. He described it as being a

“typically long-winded, lurid, self collapsing attack on architects and has no redeeming value for anyone except Callum…. You either get it or you don’t. If you don’t then that’s the sign that there is space beyond your critical monocle.” [1]

Initially this came across as being deliberately exclusive, to knowingly alienate the reader/viewer by publishing a private joke between the writer and artists and comes across as being boringly high-brow and narcissistically self absorbed. When I’m looking at art, when I read about art or when I hear an artist talking about their work what I am partly hoping for is a sense of connectedness. An ‘aha’ moment, or the kind of mild epiphany of understanding which Alain De Botton refers to as the ‘finger placing ability’[2].

“It stretches an ability to describe these (similarities) far better than we would have been able to, to put a finger on perceptions that we recognize as our own yet could not have formulated on our own”[3].

For the majority of speakers at the seminar program this was most certainly the experience, but what do you do when you’re confronted by someone who says if you don’t get it then it’s your fault. You’re the philistine with the gap in your ‘critical monocle’. Generally speaking this accusation gets read as coming from an elitist position. When we are confronted by something that is hard to understand we call it pretentiousness, impenetrable theory with irrelevant language. There is a reactionary feeling not of connectedness but of alienation and elitism.

Occasionally Public art is put forward as a solution to break down elitism. However in an example sited by Amanda Rodriguez Alveres, art in public places does not necessarily engage the audience any more than art in a gallery. She referred to an incident with MICO in which they realized that one aspect of their presumed audience was illiterate and therefore could not read the banners and posters that MICO had been dispersing around the city. Whilst the deinstitutionalization of their collaborative work was often successful in its engagement with the general public, we might conclude that it’s not always the audience that doesn’t understand art, but that we fail to understand our audience. It also highlights that the argument about elitism isn’t about access but more specifically about accessibility. Just because art is on the street doesn’t mean it is any easier to understand, or that the invisible barriers of exclusive language are broken down just because the physical walls are removed.

Another more dubious response to making art more accessible is the intervention of education officers, and explanatory text panels in larger galleries. Admittedly for some people this does provide an easy entry into the work, but predominantly what these two things do is flatten the work. They dumb it down and simplify it into dictatorial bite size grabs. And the over explaining of the work often does a disservice to subtlety and complexity, and frequently tell you what you should be seeing or experiencing and denies you the opportunity to contemplate the work yourself and consider your own experience of looking the art.

It might be suggested that the argument about elitism in art is not just a matter of choosing one extreme or the other but more about examining this term so you can make a better decision about where you stand in relation to it. A few weeks ago I read an article by John Armstrong that allowed me to come to terms with the accusation of elitism in art. He defined elitism as the artificial barrier of “pretentious talk, prohibitive expense, rituals of etiquette”[4] which results in a fairly small audience of those in the know. Whilst he claims this is true of the arts he identifies that it is only true in as much as it is true of any subculture or micro-culture within society. He sites sport as an example, having its own language, its particular manner of behavior, and its own insular codes. There are rules and a history and value that to an outsider appear foreign. The only reason he claims that we accept this in sport is because of its popularity. As basic as it may sound what this has helped me to identify is that we are making art within a particular context and therefore its language is specifically relevant to that space.

So it would seem that it is not the exclusiveness of art that is the problem, its not that it is elite. Perhaps it is the difficulty that is the problem. In his article Armstrong proposes that it’s easier to falsely project blame onto external barriers such as snobbery and pretentious language than it is to admit that you are too apathetic to rise to engage properly with creations of human imagination[5]. This perhaps is more the issue; that we lack the discipline to pay attention long enough to make sense of the complexities we face in art. Personally I find that it’s not so much apathy but bewilderment that prevents me from embracing intellectualism in art. It is such an awkward struggle to unlock mental complexity, at best I am clumsy and fumbling and at worst I wonder if even English is a second language to me. What is most frustrating though is when you suspect that you don’t have the tools to dissect it.

So what tools are required? In John Nixon’s crowd pleasing talk he said that art is an endurance event, and I suspect that this is the key to getting through difficulty. He spoke with an economic use of language that was refreshingly simple. But his straightforwardness was surprising because it was only a simplicity of oral language not of concept. It certainly wasn’t basic because his practice lacks depth, it was uncluttered and refined by what I can only assume has been a long process of mentally distilling the expansiveness of his practice. I think I’ve heard this process referred to as finding simplicity on the other side of complexity. What this illuminated was a possibility that clarity and confidence will come over time through sheer persistence and dedication.

In Jonathan Franzen’s Essay Mr Difficult he says that enduring difficulty can make you feel virtuous “as if I’d run three miles…been to the dentists, filed my tax return and gone to church”[6], but realistically it’s not something we do if given the choice. We live in a society were we make all the demands, we are required very infrequently to think abstractly, to probe an issue deeply or to spend time in silent contemplation. We equate complexity with hard work which we begrudgingly do despite knowing that we can sometimes actually benefit from it. What is sometimes overlooked is that philosophical thinking and intellectual wrestling can also be incredibly rewarding. Serious research, deep abstract thinking and rigorous reading can provide a pool of richness that can’t be acquired by skimming the surface of a topic. When I’ve persisted with difficulty I know it has given me a greater capacity to make more precise, appropriate and considered decisions about my work. And if nothing else, has contributed to a greater understanding and fuller appreciation of art.

Perhaps it is time to let go of some of the skepticism I have about intellectualism in art. Having addressed the fact that I have chosen to be part of a serious community that may not be popular but as a result of its demands can be rewarding in its challenges, it makes no sense to be intimidated by difficulty or intellectualism. It’s time to do some polishing of the critical monocle.

[1] Waite. D (ed). Two Thousand and Four. Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria. 2004

[2] De Botton A How Proust can change your life. Picador. London 1998 p28

[3] ibid p 28

[4] Armstrong John. ‘Elite Elitist’ A3 The Age. Monday, August 16, 2004 p7

[5] ibid

[6] Franzen Jonathan. How to be Alone. Harper Perennial. London 2004 p245

VIVIDiot

2011-06-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

Took a stroll around the Circular Quay after deinstalling my exhibition in Sydney and stumbled across 'VIVID festival'. On its website the event is described like this...

Vivid Sydney will colour the city with creativity and inspiration, featuring breathtaking immersive light projections on the iconic Sydney Opera House sails, performances from local and international musicians as part of Vivid LIVE and a free outdoor exhibition of interactive light sculptures.

http://vividsydney.com

In real life however the 'breath taking immersive light projection' on the Opera house and other surrounding buildings resembled nothing more than giant screensavers. Green lines go down, red lines go across, green lines go down, red lines go across, green lines, red lines, green red green red and so on. Yes it was colourful and yes it was big, but really so what. It was pure technique with no content, it was mere decoration. The 'interactive light sculptures' were equally uninteresting and only confirmed my deep scepticism for the word 'interactive' in relation to art. Most of the interaction that audiences had with these sculptures was simply to do a basic action and the art work would change - ride an exercise bike and a light will turn on, wave your arms around and a colour will appear on a wall, stand in front of a glow in the dark screen and your shadow will be cast on a wall. Too often interactive art takes the position of being accessible simple because the audience takes part in the creation of the work, but this accessibility is a dubious pursuit because it assumes that much art is inaccessible, which leads to accusations of elitism.

I was going to have a little rant here about the misplaced pursuit of anti-elitism in art but then I remembered an essay I wrote during a Seminar program at uni which says everything I want to say here, so I'm going to post that instead.

Saturday - survival surrender and success

2011-06-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Solution 1 - Get a tarp!

This sad looking 'marque', was only in slightly better condition, than our spirits. It was dismal. The rain still leaked down the walls, there was no room to move, I stuffed up the pattern in my haste, the mud stank in the claustrophobia of the tent, the slightest breeze tore the tape off the walls and little rivers would trickle over the work. It was pathetic, I was pathetic, the work was disappointingly even more pathetic.

Solution 2. Get help.

On friday night I sent out an SOS text to friends, family and artists - please help, I can't pay you, and you'll have to work on your hands and knees possibly in the rain with stinky filthy mud. Surprisingly people offered to help and so with the support of friends family students and artists we had an incredibly enjoyable and productive day.

Solution 3. Get organised.

All the materials were put in labeled containers. Plastic storage cotainers were used to orgaise all the materials. Everyone working knew what the "Rain plan' was - protect the stencils, get the tarp!!! We also had umberella's (what a remarkable invention), knee pads, daylight and good cheer.

Solution 4. Enjoy the day for what it is not what I hoped it would be.

I had said yes to this gig for reasons which sound good solid and rational - good exposure and great pay. But i should've said no a thousand times over for reasons that are irrational and idealistic. Firstly I have been agonisingly bored of the dust stencil work for a while now, secondly the conditions weren't going to allow me to make work to the standard I like to perform at, and lastly the time frame (3weeks) to produce the work meant it was rushed and unresolved. And despite the 'money and fame' more than either of these things I am driven to make the best work I can make. I want to be satisfied with what i produce and present.

But, its interesting because once I let go of my own disappointment and intentions I had a good day. It was heart warming to have so many friends help out, and it wasn't just the manual labour that they helped me with, it was their enthusiasm for the work that soothed me. It was good to surrender, to hand over my work and let other people enjoy the process of making it, in the same way that I have enjoyed it over the years. I felt like each of them treated the work with the same level of care and respect that I would and it was a humbling experience to be so supported.

By Sunday evening, after the barricades were cleared away and the materials packed up and the crowds were leaving the area, I had time alone to look at the work. I was more relieved then I have ever been, and quietly pleased with what we had done.

Feeble friday

2011-06-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

Despite a lengthy time traveling around Australia in a bus and a childhood filled with camping holidays in the drizzerling British countryside, I still don’t cope very well in the outdoors. Even in the comparatively tamed outdoors of a city landscape I find myself ill prepared to deal with the elements, I never carry an umbrella and I can get scorched by the sun just crossing a street. Give me a warm dark cafe, bar, gallery or bookshop and I know how to ‘be’, but in the face of weather I am feeble, and yet there I was making a large work from mud and ash underneath a grey Melbourne sky on a late May weekend.

On Friday night I was optimistic, twitching to get going and in reasonably high spirits about the work and the weekend. Lisa and I trundled down Swanston street with our nana trolley’s full of gear and folios full of stencils and the untainted possibility that this might be fun. The plan was to get one layer of stencils finished, so that on Saturday we’d be under less pressure. We had tested out the materials against the rain during the previous few weeks and knew that once the ash and mud were dry they were pretty resilient. What we hadn’t tested was my resilience.

The night sky grew dark and as we worked the street lamps cast our shadows across the damp steps making black pools over the black stencils and black ash. In the blackness, bleakness arose – we couldn’t see, but were compelled to continue trusting instinct and knowing that we really couldn’t afford to stop cause the work wouldn’t get done in time. Then it rained, at first just a little, so we kept going. As it got heavier, we couldn’t see if the ash was getting washed away or not but we kept going - on hands and knees, on cold wet concrete, with hair dripping and hands blackened with ash, the stencils getting soggy and deteriorating quickly and a welling dread swelling in my stomach, rising in my chest, clamping itself in my throat.

Eventually we stopped and took shelter under a near by tree. From the depths of the trolley I managed to locate 3 beers and like sad drunks we stood in the shadows of wet darkness and laughed a mildly hysterical laugh at what a bad situation this was. From our position up on the hill we looked down to the river and watch other artists – prepared outdoorsy artists, installing their work under the shelter of customer made white marquees, beside vans that were smoking pot-bellied stoves.

We needed a better plan.

2011-05-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

I'm making a new temporary installation for the National Gallery of Vicotria's 150 year celebration. As part of the weekend festivities 26 local artists and community groups have been asked to create work in response to key works from the NGV collection. These responses will then be located on a trail between NGV International and NGV Australia at Federation Square.

My work will be created from Yarra River mud and responds to 'The Melbourne Centerpiece' a trio of ornate gold candelabras. It will be located in an alcove on the Prices bridge and on the steps to the Alexander Gardens. Fingers crossed that there's no rain.

The work is up for 2 days - 28 and 29 May.

Check out the NGV website for more info about what else is on http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/ngv-150-party

Burkowski keeps me company

2011-05-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

Spent Saturday cutting and contacting stencils whilst listening to Burkowski: Born into this, DVD.

Roll the dice

if you’re going to try, go all the 

way. 

otherwise, don’t even start.

  if you’re going to try, go all the 

way.

 this could mean losing girlfriends, 

wives, relatives, jobs and

 maybe your mind.  

go all the way.
 it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
 it could mean freezing on a park bench. 
it could mean jail,
 it could mean derision,
 mockery,
 isolation.
 isolation is the gift, 
all the others are a test of your
 endurance, of
 how much you really want to 
do it. 
and you’ll do it
 despite rejection and the worst odds
 and it will be better than
 anything else 
you can imagine.

  if you’re going to try,
 go all the way.
 there is no other feeling like 
that.
 you will be alone with the gods 
and the nights will flame with
 fire.

  do it, do it, do it.
 do it.  
all the way
 all the way.  

you will ride life straight to
 perfect laughter, its
 the only good fight
 there is

Charles Bukowski.

Photos and Drawings for NGV Journey exhibition

2011-05-23T00:14:00.000-07:00

without a begining

2011-05-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to start this...