Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Brisbane

I can't believe it's taken me so long to post this up - I uploaded the photographs several MONTHS ago, but forgot about writing any words! Luckily I did make notes, as I always do, in my trusty Moleskine notebook that I always carry in my bag, but I suspect that unlike the entry about Venice there will be more pictures than text this time.




Katharina Grosse, Picture Park
site-specific installation in the main
ground floor galleries at the Gallery of Modern Art








Katherina Grosse is, according to the blurb accompanying the exhibition, one of the most exciting and innovative abstract painters working today. Painting with a spray gun, Grosse works in situ, responding to a space’s architecture and ambience by working directly on the walls, floor and ceiling. Having exhibited widely through the United States and Europe, ‘Picture Park’ is Grosse’s first major solo museum project in Australia. The artist has transformed GoMA’s long gallery into an extraordinary environment that confounds conventions of museum display and challenges our expectations of painting'. And I guess that's true.



















































I was very interested in the use of space, and it was useful to contrast the way in which artists use the vast interior of Tate Modern at the Bankside Powerstation... This space, while impressive, is a less coherent structure and the art is more intimate as a result.

I don't know that I really responded that well to the installation. As a whole, viewed from a distance, it looked impressive, but close-up I found it fragmented and incomprehensible. It must have been a lot of fun to do, and I don't think I under-estimate the amount of work and thought that went into it, but I'm not sure what I took away with me apart from impressions of spray-painted surfaces. In particular the gravelly substrate piled up on the floors was disappointing when viewed close-up. It looked scraggy, dirty, disintegrating, and it was interesting listening to a staff-member commenting about how eventually the weight of the spray paint on the loose surface of the gravel causes it to slide downwards, so the exhibit eventually collapses. Is this a deliberate reference to entropy? I've found other explorations of decay more compelling.




Nalini Malani, detail from Sita
A Mylar panels painted from the back using acrylic and watercolour paints and enamel











The Ecstacy of Radha
Mylar panels, acrylic and watercolour paints and enamel





I was interested in Malani's technique, because painting from the back of your matrix can't be easy... How do you know what you're painting? Do you use a mirror? Or do you work awkwardly from the front...? Intriguing!









Anish Kapoor, Untitled 1995







Oooh I've always loved Anish Kapoor's work. I don't know whether he's become a bit pretentious with age, money and reputation, but there's something very compelling about his pieces that gets me almost every time. I'm sure some of the attraction is to do with the surfaces he creates - I love a good surface and it's a preoccupation in my own work - and some of it is to do with beguiling simplicity of form and the intensity of colour. When I see his work I experience a sensory 'shiver' of recognition and excitement. Sad, possibly, but true.










1000 names 1981















Untitled 1997

Enormous blocks of Kilkenny limestone

Part of my engagement with Kapoor's work is that he is concerned with emptiness and intimacy, and their embodiment, and also that his work has a formal quality. They're very polite and quiet, Kapoor's sculptures. They don't scream at you, but talk quietly and if you listen, they draw you in. Further and further in, I find, until I want to touch them - a fact that severely disturbed the gallery attendant at GoMA! Of course I didn't actually try to touch the sculptures - I'm not that stupid - but he was disturbed by how much 'looking' I wanted to do, and also that I wanted to take photographs, even though gallery policy was that I could take non-flash photographs. I think he was used to bemused pedestrians who waited patiently to be allowed through the roped-off entrance to the small gallery in which Kapoor's works were displayed, and who trooped round and walked off again. Someone with a notebook, a pencil, a camera and an inquisitive nose wasn't really welcome and he made my time looking at the sculptures as tense as possible... so I somewhat bloody-mindedly stretched it out for as long as I could, and then came back for a second look with Ella!




Sutee Kunaviychayanont




























This was an intriguing exhibition consisting of wooden desks with Thai symbols and motifs carved onto them. The audience was invited to make rubbings of the carved desks using paper and wax crayons provided. I thought it was great, and so did the rest of the family. Ella had lots of fun making a number of rubbings, and even Michael and Patrick did one each. The idea was a questioning of the shorthand of images about Thailand that have become ubiquitous and trite: noble elephants, traditional costumes, pagodas etc, as a way of revisiting Thailand's culture and history.

Kamin Lertchaiprasert

Problem-wisdom 1993 - 1995

Fascinating stuff: Lertchairprasert read a newspaper every day for a year, selecting one story to make the subject of his art for that day. The remaining pages of the day's newspaper were pulped and used for papie mache which he used to make a hand-sized obejct relating to the 'problem' identified in the selected article. A year later he revisited each of the 365 objects and meditated, inscribing a 'solution' to the problem as it arose from his meditation on the back of each object.


















The resulting objects were displayed as a group, and reminded me of Robert Klippel. I really like the repetitive cycle of actions: reading, meditating and making a sculpture that are a part of Lertchaiprasert's practice. If only I was that disciplined myself...

Eko Nugroho
It's all about the Destiny, isn't it? 2006

I've got no idea what this means, but I thought I'd include the photo just because of the monumental height of the installation! It was begun before the Asia-Pacific Triennale, apparently with the help of local highschool students. Nugroho is described as being 'media-savvy' and 'politicised'. I'm really not sure what his work is about, but it is imposing.

Cai Guo-Qiang

Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: a myth Glorified or Feared 1996 (detail)

This work was created for the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial in 1996. It refers to the Chinese mythological dragon which is associated with water and power, and thus has links with the Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent.

Cai Guo-Qiang
Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: a myth Glorified or Feared 1996

I first saw Guo-Qiang's work at the Arnolfini in Bristol, ages ago, and found his use of gunpowder to make drawings fascinating. The texture of the paper after the explosion has burnt it and deposited ash and singed marks is great! I also like the idea of what making the work must be like: dangerous, unpredictable, exciting and spontaneous... out of control.




Shigeo Toya
Woods III 1991 - 1992






The thirty pillars of wood arranged in Toya's work are dusted with ash and subtle applications of paint as a symbolic recreation of a forest lightly covered with snow. Most of the pillars are carved, some have split. It's slightly eery...




Col Levy
Bowl with orange gift of heaven flash 1981





I put this in because there was a small exhibition of Australian ceramics as influenced by Japanese ceramics, and this wheel-thrown Richmond clay bowl, fired with black wattle in the Bizen technique, was big and beautiful. It was at once a perfect and an imperfect exhibition: perfectly sized and curated, and utterly inadequate in terms of documentation or information. But lovely, nonetheless.



Yayoi Kusama
Soul under the Moon 2002






This was a wonderful installation: a small cabin within the gallery that looked for all the world like a lift from the outside, complete with sliding doors. But inside was a magical space with a walkway hovering over a still pool of water withing mirrored walls and ceiling, hung all around with illuminated spheres and gently lit. The space became infinite as the doors slide closed and you stared around you... up, down and all around. It was beautifully executed - gentle and magical, and very effective. We adults enjoyed it as much as Ella!






Ah Xian







I've seen Ah Xian's work before, and marvelled at the intricacy of the sculptures which use all sorts of traditional Chinese manufacturing techniques - from jade carving to cloisonnee via painted ceramics - and imagery. I suppose the underlying concern is a re-casting of that immense history and knowledge in a contemporary idiom, but constrained in the human form. I find the resulting work very beautiful, and I accept with his work, as with many other artists such as Bridget Riley, whose work I love, that Ah Xian doesn't do all the work himself, but uses the skills of traditional craftsmen around China. This use of assistants doesn't bother me; for all those who say that if the artist doesn't make the whole work himself then it isn't really art, I challenge them to come up with the same visually and intellectually compelling ideas...

The 2007 Venice Biennale

The Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale re-opened after an absence of 8 years, apparently, which seems a bit strange when you're the host country of an art event of international significance! But it seems that this year the pavilion was conceived as a different entity: not a showcase for a display of nationalistic and artistic pride but as a broader opportunity to explore the theme of the Biennale: Pensa con i sensi - senti con la mente. L'arte al presente or Think with the senses - feel with the mind. Art in the present tense, whatever that means... This year's Director is an American, for the first time, Robert Storr. According to the catalogue Think with the senses - feel with the mind "is the result of his look beyond the new frontiers of world art; not only to rapidly developing artistic languages, but also to personalities, countries and trends emerging on all... continents".

Storr's own essay in the 'short guide' to the Biennale says something similar. "Rather than trim the edge or reweave the pattern to neaten it, this exhibition focuses on selected aspects of curent production that hint at what the emerging patterns might be without presuming to map them entirely. No attempt has been made, therefore, to be programmatically 'representative', either in terms of styles, media, generations, nations or cultures. Instead certain qualities and concerns widely found in contemporary art have been used as magnetic poles for gathering work from all seven continents, in all media, in various styles and of all generations now active. Between the poles to which some works have readily gravitated is a force field where many other works hover. The poles themselves have been used like tuning forks, such that the criterion for selection has been resonance or mood as much as subject matter or aesthetic methodology. Among these vibrating points of reference are the immedacy of sensation in relation to questioning the nature and meaning of that sensation, intimate affect in relation to engagement in public life, belonging and dislocation, the fragility of society and culture in the face of conflict, the sustaining qualities of art in the face of death".

So what's it all about then Robert? I don't know if I have a definitive answer, and you could justifiably accuse me of having only scratched the surface of the exhibition (I thought we did rather well taking a 5-year old there at all, but there were obvious limits on what we could achieve and so we were only able to visit a handful of pavilions in the Giardini and saw none of the Arsenale exhibitions, nor any of the peripheral shows around the city...), but I did form a few opinions about the work I saw!

First up was the Italian pavilion, which seemed like a sensible place to start, and it was amazing - so good, in fact, that I was only able to cope with seeing a few of the rooms before I began to feel rather overwhelmed. I took the same approach to the Biennale as I did to my choice of theology courses when I started at university: why struggle to glance over the major world religions and come away with very little more than a postcard-view when you could get up-close-and-personal with your European, christo-judeo-centric heritage? I chose to take my time over the latter course, and in the Italian pavilion I contented myself with long meanderings around the exhibitions of Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Felix Gonzales Torres and Robert Ryman. Believe me, that was heavy enough...





Image by Felix Gonzalez-Torres





Before I came home from the Biennale and started to do a bit more research I have to confess that I knew little about these artists except for their names, which feels like a timely reminder to me that being an artist necessarily involves reading and also looking at art and that perhaps I should be doing a bit more... so anyway, it's been good to do a bit of reading and looking recently.

Gonzales-Torres, I am reminded, was a Cuban who moved to New York via Puerto Rica, and who died in 1996 from AIDS at the young age of 39, six years after the death of his lover, Ross. The best summary of his work that I've found comes from an essay on the Queer Cultural Centre website,

"Felix Gonzalez-Torres combined the impulses of Conceptual art, Minimalism, political activism, and chance to produce a number of "democratic artworks" including public billboards, give-away piles of candies, and stacks of paper available to the viewer as souvenirs. These works, often sensuous and directly audience-centered, complicate the questions of public and private space, authorship, originality and the role of institutionalized meaning... His primary audience, as he explained in an interview reproduced here, was his
lover, Ross... yet his work clearly appeals to a large audience for its combination of formal restraint and emotional lushness. The theme of lovers is co-mingled with themes of mortality, loss and absence which surface in the later work. Always charged with the sensibility of an overtly queer man, his art nonetheless often passed under the radar of the self-appointed moral guardians in both the political and art worlds. Felix Gonzales-Torres was a not-so-secret agent, able to infiltrate main stream consciousness in a most beautiful and poetic way. Activist without being didactic, a catalyst of that rare combination of sensuality and political empathy, he raised the bar on future queer art making, and continues to be one of the most influential artist of his generation"
'Democratic' art by Felix Gonzalez-Torres

An interesting exploration of entropy and place: the stacks are constantly worn down and rebuilt by the museum or gallery, which invisibly replenishes the stacks. The site of the exhibition becomes a non-place, a non-site, where the exhibition both is, and is not, happening

I don't know whether I agree with the final statement but I know that I find Gonzalez-Torres' work very powerful. There's something very poignant to me about the images of the waves and of the lone seagull. In many ways both images have been overused, but in Gonzales-Torres' work, embued with an autobiographical layer of meaning in the life and death of his lover Ross, they become statements about the loneliness of the one in the absence of the double, a constant search for partnership, a joining of souls. Very quiet, very sad work.

If you're interested in more about Felix Gonzalez-Torres it's worth reading the interview with him on the Queer Cultural Centre website, but it's far too long to include here. Interestingly, the interview is with Robert Storr...

The installation of one of Gonzalez-Torres' pieces of 'take away' art in the gallery, with protective cover sheet in the foreground pile and image in the background pile


Another web-essay about Gonzales-Torres talks about another of his 'democratic' works of art, a corner full of licorice candies.

"The museum label describes the dimensions of the piece as "700 lbs. ideal weight." Ideal weight describes a human being in a state of wellness. Being under- or overweight suggests ill health. The candy spills are like beings who, due to constant viewer participation as well as inaccurate replenishment, are never at their ideal weight, never healthy. Candy itself serves as a sense pleaser, a body destroyer or a reward for which we are punished with sickness and dentistry and, in this culture, guilt. Candy is such a compact little metaphor for human desire and repercussion, especially in a culture [the USA] which believes so strongly in punishment".




Series #24 by Robert Ryman









Robert Ryman is another 'name' I know but I don't know much about his work. How I love his paintings, though. A series of frameless squares around the room, painted mainly in white over a monochrome ground. I found them intense, powerful, moving - and yet, if you looked at them, weren't they just daubs of white paint repeated monotonously over black or grey? For me there was a depth, a profundity that comes out of a formalist concentration on a single shape, a single colour. White is somehow more than 'just' white. The diagonal brushmarks of these paintings seem to move over the image and it visually comes to meet you off the wall, and the wall is also a part of the image.





Series #24 (detail)








I notice in my own work that I am drawn to minimalism, although I haven't achieved it yet. There seems to me to be a path drawing me through imagery from realism to abstraction and beyond, to minimalism in a reductive process that doesn't limit the depths of meaning in an image, be it print or paint. Minimalism is what I am striving for but haven't yet achieved, and I think I've got a long way to go! But I think a common thread in Ryman's work and my own is an interest in mark making and surface. Texture is an important part of his work, not in the sense of bringing the canvas into three dimensions a la Brett Whiteley's mummified cat's head, for example (which I saw at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane!), but in subtle ways to do with choices of surface and paint and brushwork. Ryman's subtle manipulations of the white square format set up a tension and a dialogue between the work, the gallery and the viewer. I'm hooked...

There's a good essay about Ryman's aesthetic by Ann Rorimer on the Dia Centre's (New York) website.




Deucalian's Flood (Axial Age) by Sigmar Polke





In ancient Greek mythology Deucalion was a son of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to mankind, thereby earning himself the eternal torment of having his liver eaten daily by an eagle... Anyway, presumably before his agonies began Prometheus warned Deucalion (who is a parallel figure in the mythology to Noah and Utnapishtim: all survivors of a great flood) that Zeus was going to cleanse the land of the savage and cannibalistic Pelasgians by unleashing a deluge. Deucalion was to build a ship and save himself and his wife (not the animals).

I wasn't really 'hooked' by Sigmar Polke's work, although I did find it visually and technically interesting. A room was hung with seven large pieces - a triptych and six separate works - all of which were apparently conceived in Venice. I've read things about Polke but still find that I don't understand much about him or his work! These pieces are large and brooding and, typically, combine elements of photography with painting.

What I liked about the paintings was their dark, brooding quality. They seemed like omens of bad times ahead, and Deucalion's Flood is almost prophetic in a water-bound city on a lagoon in an age of climate warming and melting ice-caps. We've been coming to the Biennale for 112 years, and the UK and USA have raised hundreds of millions of pounds to save the city - what happens when the weather changes?

I wasn't so sure about the 'graphic' inclusions in some of the pictures, but then, perhaps I didn't take the time to make sense of them. Instead I was drawn to the fluid surfaces where layers of varnish or resin built depth into the paintings. There goes my interest in surface again!





Cage 1 by Gerhard Richter










It turns out that I don't know very much about Gerhard Richter either, but the difference is that I can't find out very much about him from the web. I can look at many of his paintings, prints and photographs on a website dedicated to him, but there's precious little in the way of explanation. The only essay I've found on the web, is very interesting but doesn't shed much light. If I've read it correctly the author finds him impenetrable, and suggests that he's managed to find a sort of inner peace that enables Richter to rise above the art world and do whatever the hell he likes without worrying about it. And it's true that he has many apparently different styles of work, and that he swaps between realism and abstraction, photography and painting without making a statement about his methodology. He's enigmatic, and I found his paintings enigmatic too.





Cage 1 (detail)







My notes about looking at the Cage series of paintings in the Italian pavilion were again about technique and surface. At first I found the paintings overwhelming, and the multiple colours and the 'busy' impression of the surfaces jarred slightly. I guess that I didn't particularly want to be disturbed by what I saw; I wanted to be pleased, moved, made aware, and in that sense I found his paintings quite confrontational. Richter doesn't seem to be interested in pleasing, soothing or explaining; there are no helpful titles or curatorial notes. I suppose I could have investigated the official Biennale guidebook, but I have for the most part found translations from Italian impenetrable and I didn't want to spend €70 on something that I couldn't understand!

In the end I had to accept a certain un-closable distance between me and the work and the artist, and come to grips with them in a way that was relevant to me. And so, inevitably, I looked closely at the surfaces and the way in which Richter uses his paint and drags or scrapes it across the surface of the canvas. The detail, above, reminds me of Monet on the one hand - the same sense of reflected water, the same blues and greens as the lilypond pictures - and cinematic images of cityscapes reflected in dirty puddles on the other.

Anyway, I think I decided in the end that I found a room full of the paintings too much to cope with, but that close-up I enjoyed the colour and the technique and the surface.



L-R, Cage 3, Cage 4, Cage 5 by Gerhard Richter



Oh dear, and now I have to talk about Tracy Emin again. Artists are chosen by the participating countries, but in view of Storr's curatorial approach that suggests that this year's Biennale is a democratic look around the world at the state of art in the moment, does Emin's selection as the sole representative of the United Kingdom mean that she is the only 'now' in British art? What does that say about the British?




The Purple Virgin 2, 5, 10













I have moments when I like (some, not all of) Emin's work and moments when I'm bored and fed up by it. I feel compelled, sometimes, to defend her because she gets so much sexist, misogynist, patronising shit thrown at her, even as I'm longing for her to present something that ISN'T about her sex life, her relationships, her abortion - again. There is a part of me that is positively shouting aloud with delight at the fact that a woman - unmarried, childless and in her forties - is representing Britain. Being an artist is hard work and Emin has every right to be successful and to be proud of it. Of course, her success and obvious enjoyment in it is yet another sexist brick thrown at her... It gets tiring and confusing, and I just wonder whether Emin is seriously considered by the powers that be in the Royal Academy to be the best Britain has to offer?

My ambiguity about Emin (and it is as much about her self-presentation as the author of her work as it is about the work itself) is nicely echoed in an essay by Melanie McGrath that I found in an on-line version of the Tate Gallery magazine.





Walking around my World





Anyway, there was the renovated British pavilion decorated inside and out with Emin's work, which ranged from neon 'light sculptures' of text to towering constructions of sticks, which seemed to be the most recent pieces.





Tower family












Again very little information was on offer about the work, which was a particular disappointment with regard to the stick towers as they represent a seemingly radical departure from the methods Emin is famous for in making her art: embroidery, painting and drawing. Perhaps the sculptures are part of a hitherto invisible volume of work? I wasn't sure about them in lots of ways. My immediate impression was of childish games of pick-up-sticks and there was a momentary thought, I could do that! But the sculptures are called Tower Family, so perhaps there's a message in that. A lot of Emin's work is around disfunctional relationships. Perhaps stiff, spiky structures with no flexibility and isolated from each other in space are a very relevant commentary about family relationships that comes out of her own experiences? Who knows. They seemed more like space-fillers than anything of depth; I didn't find them particularly impressive and moved swiftly on... Doubtless I'll find some learned essay in due course and realise my mistake!






Sock









I enjoyed the neon 'sculptures' more. Apart from their aesthetic appeal and apparent delicacy (with their trailing wires they remind me of the reverse side of hand-embroidery where the tracery of the stitcher's work is in evidence - a parallel with Emin's stitched paintings) they seemed fragile, vulnerable, truthful. Outside the building on one side of the door was an installation that I think (from the catalogue) is called Sock, and is a neon-drawing of a bird. It echoes a drawing Emin did of herself as a small, scruffy bird and I really like it. I think The Independent offered a ("limited edition"!!! with all that term implies for a printmaker like me!) giclée print of the drawing, and I used it at the time as an illustration of the fact that Emin can, in fact, draw.

On the other side of the doorway and inside are text-based neon sculptures. McGrath's essay highlights the importance of text in Emin's work, and it's an interesting analysis.





Waiting for a Moment














Sky Hands







What I like about Emin's painting is its immediacy. She doesn't seem to fart about wondering if what she's doing looks 'right'; she doesn't seem to agonise about painting or drawing in the way that I do. I really admire that sponteneity and freedom in her work.


Abortion watercolours

I'm not a fan of the Abortion watercolours, though. Freedom and sponteneity, yes, but they're basically doodles painted and drawn on pages from an exercise book that have been lovingly framed. I can accept the idea of them as preparatory sketches or visual 'notes', but I can't understand why they've been presented as a major work in themselves. Emin isn't the only female artist to have painted subjects that are painful or damaging - look at Frida Kahlo - but I think I would have found these drawings more interesting as adjuncts to the rest of the work, like Turner's sketchbooks, displayed alongside his paintings.




Daniel von Sturmer's The Object of Things






Von Sturmer is one of Australia's hosted artists (although a New Zealander by birth), but his was the only art on display in the Australian pavilion. I wanted to see my adoptive country's featured art and von Sturmer's was the only installation I saw, and I left feeling that I came close to an understanding of sorts, but that meaning was shifting just outside the edge of my vision. Once again there was nothing helpful to the viewer at the exhibition itself, so I've been reading up about von Sturmer since I got back.

The artist has his own website with - helpfully - full extracts of texts, unlike people like Robert Rymn whose website references texts but doesn't enable you to read them! Mind you, a couple of the catalogue essays were, to my mind, prime examples of 'art bollocks', but one or two I found really interesting. Charlotte Day's essay Landscape Thinking talks about von Sturmer's interest in space and scale, and the relationships between the internal space of the gallery and the external space of the real world.

The installation on display in the Australian pavilion consisted of a strange wooden construction that snaked over, through and around the two-storey space. Custom-built for the pavilion I guess that it did confound the notion of the gallery as a 'white cube', forcing the visitor to look at the whole - space, installation and projection screens - differently. The viewer was in a physically different relationship with the work viewed. Day says, in relation to other of von Sturmer's work,

"Each object manipulates the space around it in some way – framing it, folding it, flattening it or deepening it. For example, in one wooden bent and twisted frame, a partial dissolution of space is achieved. In another object, a humble short plank of timber laid out in an almost ceremonial fashion, space is flattened... While von Sturmer is not interested in projecting any specific symbolic value onto his objects, nonetheless there is a remarkable sensory
quality in this work".


I really liked the light-screens: a visual essay on the physical properties of light! Starts blank, then coloured translucent squares drop onto it, until the whole screen is black...




We popped into the Japanese pavilion, but only briefly since it was so WEIRD. The artist, Masao Okabe, works in frottage, the process of making rubbings of things using a pencil and paper laid over the subject. His work is underpinned by a strong sense of history and of how the events of the past are inherited into the future. The work at the Biennale is an exhibition of hundreds of frottage drawings (or, in some cases, photos of his drawings, displayed in light boxes) of the paving stones of Ujina railway station and port in Hiroshima before it was dismantled. The stones bear the traces of the atomic explosion of 1945. I think I read somewhere that the rubbings were done over 10 years...













I can see the sense behind the art, and it seems that it is all of a piece with the rest of Okabe's work as he has apparently done rubbings all over the world, for many years, but I found the exhibition itself obsessive and slightly ineffectual. The presentation of the images in such an oppressive, 'library catalogue' sort of way took some of the impact away for me. There was no variation, little information. It was frottage overload...














I found myself in some way disappointed by the work. I 'got' the impact behind the work, but was visually bored by it. So - interesting, but no more than that.




Christine Streuli's psychadelic screen prints in the Swiss pavilion








Yves Netzhammer's video installation that had Ella enthralled!









So what do I think of the Biennale as a whole? I think I'm not really qualified to comment because I saw so little of it! But what I did see inspired me, on the whole, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of visiting. I was delighted with how well Ella managed the experience too, and I'm looking forward to visiting again in 2009 - with a bit of luck - and perhaps managing to stay in Venice for longer and see more of the pavilions and some of the peripheral shows.

G.W. Bot exhibition, Works on Paper gallery, Sydney

I've had posting an entry about this exhibition on my 'to do' list since December, when I came back from Sydney having visited it!







L-R: Australglyphs deciphered - Mother and Child; Australglyphs I; Australglyphs II
Lino cuts on Magnani paper
92 x 52; 92 x 52; 92 x 52 cms

I've been interested in G.W. Bot's (AKA Christine Grishin's) prints ever since I saw her calligraphic relief prints in a book on Australian printmaking by Sasha Grishin (whom I now know is her husband), which means I've been looking at her work for at least six years. I actually own one of her prints through the auspices of Imprint magazine's annual series of commissioned prints - worth having now that she has been declared one of 'australian art collector's 50 most collectable artists for 2005'! ( reference from the Maunsell Wicks gallery website, although when I searched for the reference on their website I couldn't find it, but then, you can't find G.W. Bot on their website either unless you know the URL of the specific page on which to look!)

The name 'G.W. Bot' is both a pseudonym and a totem, providing the printmaker with anonymity and referencing her adoption of the wombat as her 'emblem'. I'm not sure - and she isn't specific - about whether by quoting the Aboriginal tradition of using animals as clan totems she is also claiming Aboriginal ancestry. Her notes on the Gadfly gallery website simply say, "According to Aboriginal totemic belief, each member of a clan inherits a totemic relationship with a particular plant or animal of the region. I like this idea of oneness with the environment. Where I live wombats are especially prevalent and they have become my totemic animal. The earliest written reference to a wombat occurs in a French source where it is called "le grand Wam Bot," and hence my exhibiting name - G.W. Bot".





Glyphs I
Linocut on tapa paper
60 x 362 cms




I went to see Bot's most recent exhibition Glyphs at the Australian Works on Paper gallery in the Sydney suburb of Paddington just before Christmas. The gallery itself is slightly more interesting than the average 'white cube' gallery space: the timber floor makes the space feel 'warm', and there are various levels up and down around which you have to move in order to see the work, and which give you different 'views' of the pieces. I like the space. It is intimate but not so small that it limits the white space around the works, and the staff are actually friendly and interested! I was positively encouraged to walk around and take photographs and notes - and all of this means that I will actively choose to go back there when I'm next in Sydney.

Anyway, there were over thirty works on show: mainly quite large lino cuts, with some pencil drawings, some watercolours, and one multi-part bronze sculpture in an upstairs room.




Glyphs
Pencil on Colombe paper
73 x 100 cms




G W Bot's use of a pseudonym interests me, for as well as allowing her to retain a certain amount of privacy in her personal life it also reflects a 'veiling' of meaning in her art practice. If I look up her details on the internet I find surprisingly little information about the content and context of her work. I will discover that she lives in Canberra, and that the grasslands surrounding her home provide her with inspiration. I can also deduce from the titles of the series of works that she becomes engrossed in that she is interested in 'the garden' and that she has produced work that in some way reflects the importance of family in her life.

In some ways this avoidance of explanation appeals to me, as I find myself quite uncomfortable talking about the ideas that inform the content of some of my work. While there are clearly personal references in some pieces I would rather bury such intimacy and allow people to draw their own conclusions. I don't want to go through the agony of explaining myself. Perhaps G.W.Bot feels the same? It brings to mind my responses to Tracy Emin’s work. Emin’s work is touching, painful, confessional, personal and reflective of some of my own experiences. But do I want to be as self-revelatory as Emin? With her work I wonder if the searing honesty of it isn’t searing her too: at what point does it go beyond the therapeutic and become damaging? The endless urge to reveal all can become addictive, and as much a signifier of trauma and stress as the original incidents.






An Australian Language
Linocut on Magnani paper
92 x 59 cms








The problem with not saying anything at all is that it can place a barrier between the viewer and the work, as well as the between the viewer and the artist. At some point the relationship between the viewer and the work breaks down through lack of information. Sometimes I come up against a dead-end in ‘reading’ someone else's work if I’m cannot make a connection between the image and my experience and interests, or I cannot reference what I know about the artist’s experience and interests. Art is a vehicle for expressing something: feeling, emotion, knowledge, poetry... all sorts of different things. If it isn’t outward looking it is inward looking: by saying nothing explicit it says something implicit. I guess you can argue with me about the ‘inherent meaning’ of art or whether it is possible for art to say nothing, or whether it’s important that the viewer ‘receives’ something from the artist in the act of viewing a piece of art. But for me it is all about a sense of connection: something in what I am looking at connects with me, and I find it difficult – maybe impossible – to appreciate pieces of art when I find it difficult to make a connection on any level.

Does it matter if I don't have biographical, historical or contextual information about an image? I suppose that for me the answer is, 'No - as long as I'm getting something interesting out of the image, but I can only go so far'. I’m a picky viewer: I want some information, just not too much! I am, in fact, quite happy to make things up and imagine biography/history/context – if there’s enough in the image for me to start with...







Australglyphs VI
Linocut on Magnani paper
92 x 52 cms







So maybe the questions for me about G.W. Bot's work are, 'Am I getting enough out of the images?' and, 'What clues is the artist leaving for me?' The biggest clue left by Bot about the meaning attached to some of her work, at least, is that she is 'particularly attracted by Rupert Sheldrake's ideas on morphic resonances and morphic fields'[1]. Briefly, the suggestion is that all things - organic and inorganic - influence (and are influenced by) "fields" around them, so that if a chemical crystalises in a certain way once, the next time circumstances arise in which the same kind of chemical might crystalise it will crystalise in the same way as its predecessor because the first crystal to do so left a 'morphic resonance' which subsequent crystals pick up on, and so on into the animate world as well as the inanimate world.




Gift of Tongues
Linocut on Magnani paper
70.5 x 100 cms



How might this relate to Bot's work? Well I'm guessing in saying that she detects 'connectedness' in the natural world, seeing the same patterns and forms arising in the grasslands around her Canberra home. I’m a cynical rationalist rather than a romantic idealist and find morphic fields, in Sheldrake’s system, about as likely as the idea that position of a toilet in my house will affect my future wealth, but there you go. I find it more interesting that Bot raises the connection between morphology as a study of the form of living things and in the study of language, because I have always seen her work as very calligraphic.




Glyphographic Drawing
Bronze relief sculpture
708 x 135 cms

I see Bot in the tradition of Fred Williams. The genius of Williams was in what he left out as much as what he put in. So many artists gape when confronted with the Australian landscape, but Williams expressed the vastness and the complexity with minimalist elegance. So I find with Bot’s work. The first image of hers that I came across was a series of black squiggles on a neutral ground that expressed – you could tell from the title – a land after burning. Another artist might have put in more detail, but in fact none was needed: the loops and curls of the lines were sufficiently twisted and bent to suggest scorching and heat, cracked timber and leafless branches, but also a sort of endurance and potential for new life.






Glyphographic Drawing (detail)










In the end, what do I conclude? I find Bot’s work compelling: it speaks to me of a landscape that I have seen. I’m not intimate with the landscape around Canberra although I have driven through it, but I’ve seen scorched trees and seared grasslands, dust storms and twisted eucalypt trunks elsewhere. I identify the restricted palette and the austere marks as essentially Australian, and I place Bot within a visual tradition that encompasses Aboriginal artists and non-indigenous artists such as Fred Williams. Her work speaks to me, but how I wish I knew a little bit more about what it was saying.


[1] Sheldrake, Rupert, Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham, Chaos, creativity and cosmic consciousness, Park Street Press, Vermont 2001, quoted in Klepac, Lou, G W Bot: Morphic Fields exhibition catalogue, Hart Gallery, London 2004

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT © G.W.BOT

Codex 4

Over the last two weeks I've spent several days at Southern Cross University's (SCU's) Visual Arts studios at their Lismore Campus in northern New South Wales, as an invited participant in the Codex 4 event. Codex was concieved initially as a project that would enable SCU graduates to work on collaborative book arts projects, both as a way of giving new graduates something to put on their CVs and as an opportunity for them to experience working collaboratively and to a professional standard on art work that would be exhibited widely. I think the entire thing has been the brainchild of Tim Mosely, and it's been fantastic. Sarah Bodman from my university, the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, participated in Codex 2 last spring, and she paved the way for my participation this time around.

Tim defined a very brief 'brief' for the project, referencing the fact that balloons can cross borders. This led us on to a discussion about the sorts of borders we might like to cross, and I can't remember how but we got onto the subject of Australian detention centres, which led us on to the injustices of immigration policy and the plight of asylum seekers. Initial research had led to internet pages concerned with the construction of 'fire balloons' and solar balloons. Fire balloons refer to primarily Asian customs of making balloons of handmade paper and sending them up with small amounts of fuel. An article in a papermaking journal showed dozens of balloons sailing off into the night sky, illuminated by their fuel payload. Solar balloons are a different idea, using polythene sheets (such as the very thin polythene used for making large refuse sacks) taped together to form a structure, filling it with air, and letting solar heat inflate the structure and send it up.

We made an experimental solar balloon out of three huge refuse sacks split open and then taped together into a cylinder with a closed end. We inflated it from the breeze and tethered it outside the Visual Arts studios and watched the sun heat the air inside, expanding it and causing it to rise up. It wouldn't have sailed away as we hadn't got the surface area:air ratio right, but it writhed around half on and half off the ground like some giant black caterpillar and was quite effective!

Our main focus, though, was to make gored fire balloons, each about 2 feet high, using paper we made ourselves with applied images relevant to the discussion about refugees and asylum seekers and the way in which they are treated by governments, particularly the Australian government.





One of the A1 sheets we made, with pulp printed imagery applied to it.










It was the first time I had properly made paper, and I love the process: mixing the pulp, laying the pulp down on the frame and deckle, couching it, and rolling it onto the walls to dry! I got the hang of dipping the frame and deckle into the pulp and pulling out a sheet of wet fibres but I have to say that I made a right mess of couching the paper onto the wet blankets... I need a bit more practice at that! In all we made over 50 sheets of A1 sized paper of a fineness that I didn't think was possible. Tim was happy to prove me wrong, but I marvelled at it. When we rolled the couched sheets onto the walls outside the studios to dry in the warm air you could clearly see the pattern of the hardboard underneath through the wet paper. Amazing.





Tim (L) and Darren (R) setting up the hydraulic press to squeeze water out of a stack of 16 sheets of paper in their couching blankets







Images were applied to the sheets in two ways. Firstly we used Tim's patented pulp printing method in which images on a silk screen are dipped into coloured paper pulp and then 'couched' onto a wet sheet of paper, in this case, wet paper that had been rolled onto a vertical wall surface. Once the sheets were dry and had been peeled off the walls we then made selections from the available sheets and screen-printed them in the usual way with other images. When dry the sheets were cut into gores using a template.

The cut gores were grouped into 8 per balloon, and all of us 'curated' the imagery for each balloon. This one contains images mostly of the sea and refugee boats, and recalls the appalling conditions in which many refugees travel and the large numbers who drown

The curation process for the balloons was an interesting one, and it took some time before all the balloons - 12 balloons, referencing the number of immigration detention camps in Australia - were 'compiled' from the various gores. Imagery had been carefully chosen: as well as the heart-rending pictures of various refugee vessels, we found text from letters sent by refugees and from Immigration Tribunal findings rejecting applicants' claims, which formed the images that were pulp-printed onto the paper sheets. We also doctored the Federation emblem of Australia, and made various official looking stamps that were screen-printed onto the sheets. Some of the balloons highlighted the stamps and crests, focussing on John Howard's subversion of the idea of what it is to be Australian and his use of 'mateship' in a political context. The balloon I worked on examined the plight of refugees arriving in Australia, many of whom drown. Other balloons referenced the imagery of the detention camp: barbed wire, security cameras and 'keep out' signs





Louise glueing a balloon together, using archival quality gum. The balloons will eventually have 'collars' to weight down the bottom edge and allow them to be inflated.





The project isn't finished yet. By the time I left on Friday afternoon, having glued three balloons together and with a 3-hour drive home ahead of me, the balloons were half way to completion. But the idea is that we should 'instal' them somewhere such as a beach, at night, and inflate them by lighting a fuel payload under each one - but as we don't want to lose them they will be tethered (possibly to Law journals!) and the installation will be documented.



Liz finishing her balloon and inflating it to test the seams




Once documented the balloons will be deflated and folded along the seams of the gores. By carefully folding them down this way they become a multi-leaved 'book', and the idea is to bind them with a colophon detailing the project and recording the installation. 5 of the 'books' will go to Southern Cross University for exhibition and possible sale, and each participant will keep 'their' balloon.

Unfolded the balloons allude to freedom and the ability to cross borders: the very thing that refugees seek and that is compromised in the Immigration Detention Centres; folded the balloons reference the shape of the refugee boats

We hope to meet up again in February to install the project and then complete the bindings.

The Historic Houses Trust and the Caroline Simpson Library

This morning on the way in to the Mitchell Library (I was somehow reluctant to have an early coffee in the Library cafe!) I dropped into the Historic Houses Trust for a look round, and by chance saw a notice advertising the 'Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection'. I can't explain it any better than the Trust's own brochure, so here's an extract:

'The Historic Houses Trust (HHT) has approximately 48,000 objects in its collection, distributed across all its properties. The collection’s strength lies in its reflection of 19th and 20th century domestic interiors in New South Wales. This derives from the relationship between the house museums where many of the objects are displayed and the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection which the HHT has developed to support research into building conservation and the history of Australian houses, their interiors and gardens. The Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection covers a variety of formats: – 19th and 20th century architectural pattern books, design drawings, trade ephemera, photograph albums, manufacturers' trade catalogues, wallpaper sample books, paint colour charts, furniture pattern books, gardening and domestic manuals and decorators' personal papers. There are also wallcoverings and floorcoverings, soft furnishings, garden ornaments and architectural fragments, mostly provenanced to house in New South Wales. It is the only specialist collection of this type in Australia.'

So out of nowhere I have found another resource for my research, and if I had my druthers I'd probably camp in there for weeks at a time... As it is, having been made very welcome by Matt Stephens, their Reference Librarian, I shall spend a happy holiday looking through their on-line catalogue. Interestingly the building - about which I know virtually nothing - is, Matt Tells me, prefabricated...

A close shave...

I've spent the last couple of days in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. It's part of an historical sandstone building with a steel-and-glass annexe, and between the two of them is a courtyard cafe, enclosed by buildings on three and a half sides. Yesterday I went there for a coffee and an early lunch and nearly didn't come back!There I was, peacefully drinking my latte and eating an early sandwich underneath a large 'cafe umbrella' before burying myself in the archives, when there was a huge gust of wind that twisted through the gap between the buildings surrounding the cafe. I wasn't paying any attention until suddenly all five cafe umbrellas were jerked upwards, their poles dangling, by the wind. The umbrellas lifted vertically out of their bases until they were about ten feet off the ground and then the poles started waving around - and, as the only customer sitting outside in the sunshine, I was underneath! I was cowering in my seat as these bloody great poles waved around me, and then they came crashing down. The umbrella under which I had been sitting descended six inches away from my head, with an almighty BANG as it hit the ground, and I'm very glad it didn't land on me. I felt a bit shaky after that...

Ideas #1

I wonder what would happen if I buried some of my copper plates on the beach at Korora and 'weathered' them? The tidal action in Korora Bay is very strong... I might do that when I get back there!

Mitchell Library #2

Hallelujah, I'm in the library again! I have three precious days on my own in Sydney, staying with friends, and free to spend as much time in the archives as I please between their opening and closing hours of 9am to 7pm. And what a joy it is! Mind you, I've set myself relatively easy tasks simply because I wasn't sure what I would be able to achieve in my time here, given my unfamiliarity with the collection. I outlined my aims to Michael on Sunday evening: to upgrade my membership category from the ordinary 'blue card' to the slightly more specialised 'gold card' (which allows me to look at the rare books and manuscripts collection); to find a book about women's decorative arts edited by Ann Toy that I'd failed to obtain in Coffs Harbour through the inter-library loans scheme because the only copy is in the Mitchell collection; and to familiarise myself with the card indices and catalogues here. So far I've achieved two out of those three aims, and managed to do some shopping in Sydney as well!

What is interesting me - apart from the act of doing the research itself - is how feminist my subject seems to be: blindingly obvious to some, I have no doubt, but obscured to me. As I look through bibliographies and lists of source materials, I come up against the notion of homemaking as a woman's occupation - part of the 'right order of things', and the activities described - embroidery, decoration, feminisation of the home environment - are all 'women's work', perceived as part of the Puritan desire to employ women's hands so that they couldn't make mischief. Women embroidered, tatted, knitted, crocheted, painted, decorated not exclusively for their own pleasure or as an expression of an inner compulsion to 'make art'; they did these things mainly because the social order in which they lived expected them to do so as a way of keeping them in their place, cementing their position in the social hierarchy, and expressing their commitment to their male relatives and their families.

Some of my inept description can no doubt be argued with, but I think it is basically true that as women could not/should not earn a wage for their work, they were only allowed to become gifted amateurs at their occupations. Their artistic output was usually for the private audience of family and friends, or was distributed as gifts with no inherent value apart from sentiment. A few women made a decent living from their skills, such as the botanical illustrators the Scott sisters, but they were a rarity and described themselves as amateurs. And this isn't a historical tendency: I do it myself. How often have I downplayed my skills? Given things away rather than charged money for them? Referred to my own art practice as a hobby rather than as a passion? Only now, at the rather late age of 40, am I beginning to reinterpret my own behaviour and reassess the world around me - thank you, Jules, for three years of conversation that have subtly opened my eyes!

Lawn mowing, anyone?

Good News

Two great things have happened, on successive Fridays, so I wonder what will happen next week? First my print Rusty Wharf, Murano got into the Focus group show in Coffs Harbour, at the Bunker Gallery. Then it was purchased! How lovely it was to walk into the gallery at the private view and see a red 'sold' sticker on the label... As a result of that sale I hope I will be able to explore the possibility of a show at the Regional Art Gallery in early 2008, AND I've made contact with someone who might be able to help out with studio space.

Then today I've been talking to Tim at Southern Cross University about the possibility of a residency in January 2007. The timing couldn't be better: just before I go back to the UK. So it's been a good week!

Plane pictures

Mitchell Library

I've had a fun-packed afternoon wandering round the archives at the State Library of New South Wales, and I now have a basic reader ticket, but I'll have to come back with a different form of ID in order to get the 'gold' card which will enable me to use some subscription databases and also to handle rare materials in the reading room.

It was interesting to note some of the subtle differences between the Mitchell Library and the British Library, although they aren't attempting to do exactly the same thing: in the British Library you have to sit in designated seats in order to use a laptop and woe betide you if you aren't in the right place (as I have previously found out to my cost...). In the Mitchell Library you simply have to locate a seat with a plug and if you can't find one then you can - with the Librarian's permission - go and sit in the otherwise exclusive 'rare books' section. And I haven't yet found a British Librarian who is prepared to come out from behind their desk to show you the catalogues. On the other hand, the British Library's catalogue is much better and you don't have to search in three places to find things.

Anyway, I guess the overwhelming impression I was left with was that I've got a lot of work to do in order to find a 'hook' that will enable me to start searching in the collection, because right now I haven't got a clue where to start.

Where am I?

I don't know why I thought I would feel any different on the aeroplane as opposed to anywhere else, except in so far as I'm travelling First Class for the first time! So I've been lying here, trying to sleep on my fully-reclinig seat, examining my thoughts and feelings and failing either to sleep or to discover anything very deep going on...

The only slightly odd thing relates to Marc Auge's theories about place/non-place - something I'll have to read up about. I started reading one of his texts, as recommended by Iain, but got sidetracked by a necessary investigation of the meaning of the word chthonic on page 2, which made me realise that a primary problem for me in starting this PhD is that I don't 'speak the language of scholars' on the subject, and that I have a pressing need for a dictionary section in this website (see the right hand side bar!). I also have to overcome a certain amount of prejudice in that we (Michael and I!) commonly refer to the more scholarly/circular/incomprehensible pieces of text that we find as art bollocks - an entertaining phrase that I may have to ditch in favour of achieving something closer to an open mind...

Anyway, back to the subject: where am I? There are all sorts of answers: I am in the forward section of an Airbus 340 (I think), in seat 2A - or 3A, depending on Ella's caprice. I'm one of a group of over two hundred people elevated 33,000 feet in the air in a moving vehicle which happens to have wings. I'm approximately above the surface of the Indian Ocean to the north-west of Australia's Northern Territories. And there are doubtless plenty of other ways in which I could describe where I am.

There are also a few practical problems with these statements. For a start, I'm moving so I'm nowhere specific for more than a nano-second. So you can't pinpoint my position on a map now, you can only say with a reasonable degree of accuracy (I assume that we are being tracked by radar and/or satellite) where I have been. You can't map me, you can only plot my trajectory.

Also, in this placeless place, I am not anywhere. I am flying through international and national air spaces, but I wonder under what jurisdictions the space within this aircraft comes? Are we subject to the rules of the United Arab Emirates whence we departed; the Civil Aviation Authority; or perhaps Australia, where we're headed? Or are we bound - as our luggage compensation claims are - by some convention, such as the Hague, Warsaw or Geneva?

Or does it really matter? At the moment we're a disparate group, with certain familial or friendship ties, but with most in common through the shared experience of being moved through space on the same vehicle. Perhaps the issues of place only really come into play when something happens: an accident or a catastrophe, when core human characteristics such as selfishness or a desire to help come to the fore. Perhaps one of the defining characteristics of this placeless place is that it is also somewhere (nowhere?) where nothing happens - as soon as something does happen, such as an air crash, then the incident also marks out a place: the aircraft came down in the Siberian tundra, close to...

There is another interesting facet of this flying experience, and that is the process by which we make our immediate surroundings 'home'. I am very far from home and few of my things are here, but I have undertaken actions of familiarisation that are themselves so familiar as to have become invisible rituals. I have read information cards, looked in drawers and cubby holes, tried out all the buttons to do with moving parts of my chair and the TV. I have raised and lowered the window blinds, adjusted the lights and make myself comfortable both by familiarising myself with the unfamiliar and by personalising it, if only in the sense of disposing a limited number of possessions on surfaces.

I often don't notice myself doing it, and yet it's obviously important and I am aware that I also feel the need to do it for Ella. I pre-emptively packed things in our hand luggage that would make her feel 'at home', such as cuddly toys and activities. A clear part of the rationale for doing so is to remove fear: what I want to avoid, both for her and for me, is the experience of her fearing the space she is in for such a long time because she doesn't like it or want to be in it. And let's face it, she doesn't have much choice about coming along with me for the ride!

I have very ill-informed notions about what our so-called primitive ancestors did in their caves, but I imagine that what I have done in my First Class cabin is not much different to what I would have done thousands of years ago in my cave: arranging dry bedding and furs, cooking utensils or tools, or perhaps painting something on a cave wall.

Arachne

I think I shed my skin somewhere over Belgium
a brittle undercarriage falling from 30,000 feet.
I felt the tearing on my belly as it dropped away,
new scars over old scars.

Eye pits sense only light and dark,
fill with tears.
Pink flesh, not hardened yet, flinching from new light
warmed and blinded at the same time.

Forty years of webs, practicing. Sorrow sometimes
hung like dewdrops, cold beads, a weighty necklace on
winter mornings.

Now I take my children with me, free falling, only
a thin silk line
to cast out as we drift and hope we catch in something
soft.

Dawn is warmer here. One leg delicately stepping onto
the grass. One hand cuts open the box and takes out the loom.