This year I was asked to take part in a project with eleven other artists. Here’s the skinny:
‘Twelve Australian female artists have been invited to participate in onefourfour which sees them create one work a month for one year. Every artist is assigned a month to choose a theme that all the artists work to, and the results are posted on this blog at the end of each month. The only restriction is that the work is to be 6 x 6″.’
I was recently commissioned to create a mural on a disused wall of Union House at the Parkville Campus of Melbourne University. The site featured a deep purple wall and a maroon vinyl seating across the front. I was asked to work with both. When a site has offered up colours that I have to work with like this in the past, I have toyed with complementing or contrasting, and with ignoring the colour altogether. This time, I attempted to select a colour palette independent of its background colour but with a different tonal value.
The VCA Grad Show took place on in late November. Here are a few shots from the work I made there. It covered a great deal of space, including a long hallway and a small space on the floor below which was connected by the lift, hence the title Fracture Below. The work downstairs was the last work you saw, before taking the lift to the next floor and coming out inside the work.
I attempted to narrow my colour palette in this work. Focussing on a more traditional landscape colours like blues and greens. I found myself still quite attached to the contrasting colours. I perhaps allowed a few too many in, I had wanted to include just a few contrasts but mainly focus on the blues and greens to evoke more of a landscape feeling than before. In my next large scale work, I think I will focus more still on a narrow selection of colours.
The past month has been full of stuff. I completed my research paper and submitted it, which was to discuss the issues present in my work and situate my work within an historical context. It was quickly apparent that five thousand words wasn’t going to allow me delve too exhaustively into all aspects of my work, but I was able to cover part of it. It was a great opportunity to learn about my practice and what drives it. I may post a few excerpts in future posts. Alongside this research paper submission, was my major project. This was a major artwork installed so it could be assessed for half an hour and then taken down. Ohhh the days it took to create for half an hour! Actually, it was probably alive for 3 or 4 hours in total. It now lives on in jpegs. Oh those jpegs! I’m still rather mourning it – it is the occupational hazard of the artist making ephemeral installations.
For quite some time, I’ve been pondering the possibilities of installing work onto glass, thus having no visual barrier between the inside and the outside, but also approaching it as two-sided depending on the site. I was pleased to be included in a recent group show at D11 @ Docklands, an ARI (Artist Run Space).
Applying large sheets of vinyl to glass without leaving creases and bubbles behind can be incredibly difficult. Using a water sprayer liberally (very liberally) usually does the trick, but it’s still very hard especially if you’re doing it with only one pair of hands as I was. So, like any awesome person with lactic acid flooding their arms held aloft, I enlisted the help of my head on more than one occasion. Quite the sight, I’m sure.
The Homemade Festival wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. Dancers/performance artists, visual artists and a photographer came together over the space of about almost a year to develop works for this show. I found the experience fantastic, especially being exposed to how artists in different disciplines (particularly dance and movement) spoke about their work. I was surprised by how similar their creative process was, in many ways, and found even the vocabulary they spoke with was similar too.