Madeline Kelly leaves her mark on viewers at Grifftith University Art Gallery

Weight of the world, 2011
from Hollow Mark online catalogue

Hollow Mark at Griffith University Art Gallery is Madeline Kelly’s latest body of work from a successful career that started at Queensland College of Art in 1999. The exhibition includes a light tunnel, several new paintings depicting lone and often distorted, dream-like figures as well as works in lightboxes, sailcloth and fiberglass resin and a wunderkammer of found objects that inspired the show (1).

One of the most striking works upon entry to Griffith University Art Gallery is Weight of the World. As two translucent fiberglass resin panels suspended from the ceiling, measuring three metres each, depict distorted images of a man carrying books. Although the atlas-like figures draw immediate attention, it is the books they carry that convey Kelly’s concern for the environment with titles such as ‘The end of nature’ and ‘Restoring the land’. This concern for nature, our natural resources and the struggle between man and nature has been an ongoing theme throughout Kelly’s work (1).

Ersceinen, 2010
Installation Shot

Continuing on with this concern is Ersceinen (to appear), a tunnel-like structure covered in foamcore which is illuminated from behind by spotlights in order to display pin-pricked, luminous scenes. Although it is unfortunate that the structure appears unfinished on the outside, it is forgotten as soon as one enters the tunnel to view scenes of man and nature, together and separately.

Stucture for Evermore, 2011
From the Hollow Mark online catalogue

As one leaves the tunnel they are met by Structure for Evermore, where sea sponges are suspended behind sailcloth and illuminated from behind by constantly moving lights. The arrangement of the sponges in the form of a lemniscate (the symbol for infinity) can be seen to refer to both the sponge being one of the oldest life-forms on the planet but also one supposes, to Kelly’s hope that nature will prevail and survive the onslaught of man forever. Meanwhile, Plastic Continuity, appears to depict a struggle between nature and man, as a lone girl appears to fight against a storm of nature in a large-scale dreamscape.

Kelly’s description of the exhibition as “interested in the interstices that arrive somewhere between a hollow and a mark; the perplexing arena where figures and half resolved forms, float out from and into” (1) is quite evident as Hollow Mark presents a mixture of myth and fact in an incandescent experience that draws viewers into Kelly’s surreal world.

Plastic Continuity, 2011
From the Hollow Mark online catalogue

By Jessica Row

Hollow Mark by Madeline Kelly is on display at Griffith University Art Gallery, 226 Grey St, South Brisbane, QLD, Australia, from 8 October – 13 November, 2011

(1) From Hollow Mark Exhibition Catalogue, published by Griffith Artworks, 2011. (which can be viewed online at: http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/360988/HOLLOW-MARK-Madeleine-Kelly-GUAG-Catalogue_low-res.pdf) 

Hollow Mark: the empyting out of Madeleine Kelly's new paintings

Griffith University Art Gallery

7 October - 13 November 2011

Review by Nicola Scott

Madeleine Kelly’s work over the past few years has demonstrated a commitment to experimentation, not only in terms of her materials, but in her painting techniques and conceptual concerns. Continuing this trend, her latest show, Hollow Mark, comprises not only new paintings on canvas and board, but also painted fibreglass resin panels, a vitrine of found objects and works on paper, a number of lightbox pieces, and two works on sailcloth. There is also an enclosed corridor-style installation, Erscheinen (to appear), that visitors walk through to observe backlit images Kelly created by making dots and tears in foamcore (this work was previously shown in the exhibition at Milani gallery). To provide a considered review of the entire show would require more words than I have, but a look at her new paintings on canvas raises some potential pros and cons in her evolving practice.

While Kelly’s ongoing conceptual concerns – rituals of labour and consumption, conflicts over finite resources, and the troubled relationship between humans and the natural environment – are clearly present in these new works, her approach to conveying these ideas are now drawn out thematically through the central idea of the mirror (1). As Abigail Fitzsimmons catalogue essay elaborates, this approach to mirroring is three-fold: the doubled, reflected image; anamorphism, which traditionally uses a mirror to create a distortion of the single-point perspectival vision dominating Western history and contemporary visual culture; and a binocular focus that creates a doubled point of view, either in framing the image or within the image itself (2). These references to dualism, self-reflexivity and difference continue Kelly’s allusions to alternative perspectives or voices in history and in contemporary culture, pointing to, “absences, or gaps in knowledge – ideas that are never recorded by the governing powers in history” (3).

It is perhaps this shift in Kelly’s conception of her paintings, as not so much a window onto another realm as a reflecting surface that has produced a shift in her organisation of pictorial space that makes the exhibition title, Hollow Mark, surprisingly descriptive. While Kelly has favoured smooth, flat surfaces before, she has previously created the illusion of a kind of haptic space within or beneath this surface layer- a slippage between near and far, a synthesis of forms, and a complex interplay of thin, glaze-like layers – that creates the illusion of another world in which her signature blend of the mythical and the modern collide. In Hollow Mark this slippage of space and form is largely gone, moving away from the collision of depth and surface that her earlier works depict. The works are larger that Kelly’s previous shows, perhaps to fill the larger space of the QCA gallery, and while a few feature painterly brushwork, in general large fields of flat colour fill the canvases, surrounding a central figure or figures, sometimes anthropomorphised forms – bones, sponges, which are combined in various works with either focus-drawing symbols (a hammer and sickle) or text. While I found this inclusion of symbology a tad disjointed or distracting, the text plays cleverly on ideas of power and use of resources – whether this involves knowledge or the natural environment -  in contemporary Capitalist society. It is the lack of integration between these words or symbols and the other forms and planes of her paintings that I miss in these new paintings, but then this is what I like in paintings generally. Personal predilections aside, Kelly has clearly altered her painting strategies deliberately to emphasise her focus on the mirror, and cleverly investigates her new concerns in a way that is imaginative and unsettling, (“kookily Kelly”, as Rex Butler said) if potentially more didactic or heavy-handed with the symbology in some works.

Above all, and initial twang of disappointment aside, I think the continual evolution of Kelly’s practice is a vital part of what continues to make her work unpredictable, interesting and relevant, both visually and conceptually. It may be shallower spatially, but it is never stagnant.  

1. In conversation with the artist, exhibition opening at QCA Gallery, 7 October 2011.
2. Fitzgibbons, A 2011, 'An Alchemy of Reflection', Hollow Mark exhibition catalogue, Griffith Artworks, Griffith University, Brisbane.
3. Kelly in Fitzgibbons, A 2011, 'An Alchemy of Reflection', Hollow Mark exhibition catalogue, Griffith Artworks, Griffith University, Brisbane.

A Very Dangerous Q&A : QandA Adventures in Democracy : Llewellyn Millhouse

An adventure in democracy, Greg Sheridan

A Very Dangerous Q&A : QandA Adventures in Democracy

QandA on the ABC, 9:35pm Monday 03/10/2011

Guests :
Slavoj Zizek, cultural critical theory academic and Marxist philosopher.
Kate Adie, journalist and former Chief News Correspondent to the BBC.
Jon Ronson, psychology academic, author, and TV presenter.
Mona Eltahawy, Arab and Muslim issues academic and columnist for Canada's Toronto Star.
Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs academic and senior journalist for The Australian.

A Very Dangerous QandA was the title of this week’s installment of the popular ABC television talk show QandA. Taking its guest list and title from Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, A Very Dangerous QandA purported to provide a “dangerous” alternative viewpoint on the topics of suppressed sexual energy, the rewarding of psychopathic behaviour in capitalist economics, the “Arab spring” of democracy in Egypt, and capitalism as cultural evolution.

Panelists performing and having fun

On the QandA website, the ABC promote the goal of the talk show as enacting ‘Public democracy, open dialogue, and transparency…’ suggesting that ‘Q&A is about encouraging people to engage with politics and society.’ (ABC 2011)* By opening up an opportunity for philosophy, politics and culture to be discussed in a non-scripted, real-time, interactive and live situation, QandA represents a radical departure from the homogenous public sphere of mass media. In opposition against mainstream news, where politics and current affairs are aimed safely at passive target audiences, QandA establishes an intellectual discourse that attempts to represent all sides of an argument, instigating debate and popular agreement/democracy through audience jeering. Featuring a panel of experts, journalists and politicians, a live studio audience puts forward topics of discussion through which the panel can perform their expertise and disseminate their political agenda. In this fashion, the structure of the show mimics the structure of the governmental democratic forum. In contrast to this system, the unique value of QandA lies in its occasional representation of peripheral and alternative viewpoints, providing an opportunity through the key medium of popular cultural hegemony to be critical of society and hegemonic values. For this reason, the prospect of A Very Dangerous QandA and the inclusion of the “rockstar” Marxist critic Slavoj Zizek on the panel of experts was very exciting for me.

Although the hour-long show was entertaining, with Zizek and the other panelists continually contributing interesting criticism and commentary, the overall impression of A Very Dangerous QandA was safety, control and neutralization of criticality. By operating within the medium of television and of performing expertise and self-promotion within democratic debate, whatever critical or dangerous ideas which were addressed fell short on the passive ears of the spectators in the audience and at home. As the function of the television show is ultimately entertainment, whether in the form of intellectual debate or Neighbours-like drama, QandA creates a space in which the spectator can have criticality internalized and made safe within spectacular performance.
‘Is this not what we are doing here, reaching for fetishisation of extreme ideological positions on television…’ (Ronson, 42mins into episode)*
By reifying alternative viewpoints and critical theory (showcasing “extreme and dangerous” ideas and presenting them as happy debate that you can passively watch on television next to or instead of other performed spectacles) QandA makes dangerous ideas safe. Although it is the best show on TV, and despite its appearingly earnest attempts, it cannot escape its complicity with the medium.


* ABC QandA website, about page, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/about.htm
* Episode available for download from above site

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Salior at Artisan

From http://www.artisan.org.au/index.php/component/content/105?task=view

What may have started as a girlhood rhyme to guess at the profession of one’s future husband, is now the fitting title for Artisan’s latest exhibition to celebrate the centenary of International Women's day in 2011. A day in which any profession is available to women. It is interesting to note that it was at International Women’s Day celebrations in 2010, that the seed for this exhibition was sewn for Artisan’s curator Kirsten Fitzpatrick, as Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley urged celebrants to do something special for the centenary in 2011 (1).

And so the concept of one hundred brooches to celebrate one hundred women was born with Fitzpatrick commissioning jeweler and historian Dr Dorthy Erickson the daunting task of selecting one hundred successful Australian women to pay tribute to (2). Meanwhile, Artisan set about selecting one hundred talented women jewelers to represent them  through brooch. A fitting tribute considering the long  history of the brooch as a piece of adornment and its association with women. Several of the jewllers chosen for the show are current or past students and teachers of Queensland College of Art, of which the college and it's community is very proud. 

Fiona Kwong's brooch for Ruby Payne-Scott
From http://www.greatsoutheast.com.au/gsec2cqw/
story.asp?weekID=882&storyID=4140

The layout of the exhibit is simple yet effective, with ten custom-made display cabinets holding ten brooches each, placed around the gallery. On the surrounding walls are didactics, grouped together near to their relevant cabinet with each displaying an image of a brooch, a brief description of the woman it represents and the rational of the jeweler behind the work. Many brooches are easily identifiable as to the profession of the woman it represents before reading its didactic, such as Fiona Kwong’s brooch for Astronomer Ruby Payne-Scott. But it is from reading the didactics that it becomes clear that all the materials and themes used by each jeweler were no accident as each brooch is carefully created from start to finish with its intended woman in mind.  For example, Caz Guiney’s brooch for rebel Beatrice Miles is made from tram tickets in reference Beatrice’s well-known refusal to pay for transportation in Sydney, while Christen Van Der Laan’s brooch for Dr Fiona Melanie Wood used pearls in reference to Dr Wood’s research examining how pearl macre could be used to regenerate and enhance cell growth (3).

Installation shot of Caz Guiney &
Beatrice Miles' Didactic

It seems that every type of profession  has been included in the exhibition, with Dr Erickson making sure to even include one of each profession listed in the Tinker-Tailor poem displayed on the wall of the gallery (2).  Thus proving that any profession is now possible for women on the centenary of International Women’s day.  This is further evidenced by the fact that for the first time, Australia’s Governor-General and Prime-Minister as well as Queensland’s Governor and Premier are all women.  It is therefore no surprise that Queensland’s Premier, Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley, officially opened the exhibition on Thursday 29^th September to a packed crowd (4).

Installation shot of Christel Van Der Laan
& Dr Fiona Wood's Didactic

'One hundred women, one hundred brooches, one hundred stories' is an inspiring concept that will be traveling throughout Australia for the next two years, showcasing Australia's talented women and craft/design sector (5). Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor is not only a fitting tribute to the  one hundred women represented, but to the one hundred talented women who honored them through their craft.

By Jessica Row

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor exhibits at Artisan gallery, 381 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley
From 29 September to 12 November 2011

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1)    From http://www.craftaustralia.org.au/library/essay.php?id=fitzpatrick-artisan-tinker-tailor-brooches

(2)    From http://www.craftaustralia.org.au/library/essay.php?id=erickson-inspired-brooches-inspired-women-tinker-tailor

(3)    From 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor' exhibition catalogue. Published by Artisan, 2011.

(4)    From http://www.govhouse.qld.gov.au/the_governor/110813_artisan_foreword.aspx

(5)    From http://www.habitusliving.com/play/see-free/tinker-tailor-soldier-sailor

Installation Shot

Installation Shot

 

Terrarium @ love love studios - llewellyn

Terrarium

Kitty Horton & Michael Candy

1/10/11-23/10/11

love love studios

Installation photograph of Light Installation

The challenge for ‘emerging artists’ and art students of self-financing solo exhibitions has resulted in the majority of emerging artist’s presenting their work within the format of split or group exhibitions. Although this method of exhibiting has many favourable effects, such as increased numbers, lower costs for artists, and less egotism, the disparity between different artist’s work often highlights that which is lacking in certain work, as comparison is often an unavoidable immediate response. Michael Candy and Kitty Horton’s Terrarium, currently showing at the ARI Love Love Sudios, serves as an example of just how mediocre and trivial painting can seem in contrast with new media, as one artist’s work entirely overshadows the other.

Michael Candy is a kinetic new media artist whose practice unites kinetic sculptural objects, plants and organic matter, light and sound installation and interactivity. Utilising electricity from batteries to animate and illuminate sculptures and installations, Candy combines the organic and primordial with simple kinetic machinery, electronics, the kitsch ready-made and luminescent materials. Candy’s contribution to Terrarium consists of three major works, Fence (http://vimeo.com/29864558), the interactive sculpture Light Installation (pictured), Laser Installation (video of this can be seen on Candy’s website), and a dozen or so smaller works. In Fence, and many of the smaller works, Candy approaches reconciling the organic and the man-made with a sense of naïve romanticism, glorifying natural material and timber against subtle instances of the human magic of kineticism. Through subtle use of material and carefully placed kitsch artifacts, Candy’s machines/robots are imbued with the sentient characteristics often placed in dichotomy against the mechanical and automated. The delicacy of plant life and a sense of wilderness in combination with technology and electrically driven movement present in these works reflects a Japanese science fiction oeuvre, seemingly referencing the aesthetic evident in Hayao Miyazaki films or post-apocalyptic, environmental utopian visions.

Candy’s Light Installation, as seen in the image above, reacts to sound through a microphone and computerized circuit at the base of the sculpture, circulating a proportionate amount of electricity to the volume of sound surrounding the sculpture through its globular clusters of light bulbs. The illumination which results from this connotes an anthropomorphosis of the sculpture, its rhythmic pulse mimicking the biological functions of animal life such as breath and heart beat. The subsequent radiant warmth emanating from these intentionally organic looking clusters adds to the illusion of life within the structure, the object responding to aural interaction and thus imitating sentience. Laser Installation consists of a collection of ten coloured lasers, positioned around the room to reflect off of ten wall mounted dental mirrors, with each laser’s reflected end point coinciding on a plastic tea cup pot plant, filled with clear plastic rocks and housing a small cactus plant. Adding to this laser-sphere, Enigmatic Rock utilizes an old sewing machine to rotate a rough piece of amber, at which two lasers are projected. As the roughly shaped, semi-transparent rock rotates, refraction within and penetration of the laser light upon the surface of the piece of amber deviate. These works show a particularly sophisticated glorification of material, the lasers in both instances illuminating the combination of the organic and the synthetic not to clarify their relationship but to saturate it with illusion and mysticism.

Adjacent to Candy’s minor works, Kitty Horton presented a collection of small, approximately 15cm x 15cm paintings on board. Horton’s paintings were restricted to decorative abstract patterning on flat colour backgrounds, the content and rendering in paint staying consistent in her twenty-five or so works. The immediate sensationalist nature of Candy’s kinetic installations when presented next to these flat, graphic and inert paintings left Horton’s work appearing superficial and derivative. What potentially could have been a competent series of paintings was made to seem like shallow illustration, joining the painfully large body of existing cutesy, delicate, decorative painting work one is likely to see on a clothing store’s shop window or a fifteen-year-old’s blog.

http://michaelcandy.com/ 

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

“I wanted to write you a story about magic. I wanted rabbits appearing from hats. I wanted balloons lifting you into the sky. It turned out to be nothing but sadness, war, heartbreak. You never saw it, but there’s a garden inside me.” Spoken by February, Light Boxes, Shane Jones (2009).

I might very well begin by issuing a word of advice to those reading: go and find yourself a copy of Light Boxes by Shane Jones. It’s a novel as much as it is a window into another world, full of complexities, delightful to behold – it’s difficult to believe it is Jones’ first novel. Light Boxes is a story of a town tormented by the season ‘February’, who also happens to be a person living in the clouds. The townspeople are driven into despair by the endless cold and the disappearance and murder of many in the community, especially children. The people of this ‘town’ of Jones’ creation revel in the glory of flight—spending endless spring days flying kites and balloons in skies with the birds. February, however, bans all flight, extinguishing the hope and spirit of the book’s characters. 

This is where the author places you – in the throes of February’s cruelty, along with the townsfolk, over 300 days after February begun. Initially, the reader doesn’t get the sense of an omnipotent narrator; the chapters lead in with headings of the character in focus – written almost as diary entries. The details can seem misleadingly ‘cute’ or ‘neat’, with descriptions of the mint soup they must drink to ward off February, for example, or the cold air smelling of apples (Jones, p46). These descriptions, though highly prevalent throughout the first half of the novel, fade slowly into more a sinister, cold detachment … at which point, I might add, the reader becomes aware of omnipotent narration. 

At this stage, a font change between ‘worlds’ becomes evident on the pages and the interplay between written/imagined and reality begin to dissever. There develops a delectable incongruity between aspects of the story – mostly resulting in abrupt contrast, playing off binary means of description: honey/smoke; teeth/snow; cold/hot; dream/reality. Jones makes the reader aware of the multiplicity of storytelling without alienating them from the characters. It becomes problematic – this linking of reality into the fanciful – the stability of the world in the book is shaken, albeit the story in no way suffers. On the contrary, the reader is only taken in further into a world of wonder in which Jones exemplifies the power of writing as escapism and proves how thin the veil is between ‘created’ and ‘real’. 

By Dana Lawrie

Marina Rosenfeld

Open Frame Festival, 28 September 2009
Brisbane Powerhouse

On the first eve of the Open Frame Festival, a small and somewhat sedate Brisbane audience was graced with an improvised turntable performance by New York conceptual artist and composer Marina Rosenfeld.  Throughout the performance, Rosenfeld gracefully moved between the two turntables, gently manipulating hand crafted ‘dub plates’ to reveal blips and drawn out electronic, instrumental and vocal sounds.

Rosenfeld refers to her dub plates as ‘a form of notation—musical housing’ in which she composes with, for and through (1). She claims that they have informed her practice as an artist dealing with ideas of tactile technology, sampling pre-existing music and challenging assumptions built around concert performances.

In addition to being an experimental turntablist, Rosenfeld is widely recognised for her interdisciplinary installations - combining what she refers to as ‘materials’ such as technology, musical composition, live performance, architecture and space to create a multifaceted sensory experience.  Rosenfeld has been commissioned by numerous institutions in Europe and North America and her first visit to Australia has been made possible primarily through her recent artist residency and headlining performance at the Totally Huge Music Festival in Perth.  

At an artist talk, held at QUT the day before Open Frame Fesitval, Rosenfeld eloquently spoke about some of her major sound installations and performances. A stand out piece is ‘Teenage Lontano’ a large scale performance involving a teenage choir positioned in a single line and each sharing a set of headphones with one other.  A spinning speaker is suspended from the ceiling, resonating electronic sounds, and the teenagers progress to produce vocal sounds following compositional prompts on the headphones.  The resulting performance is a ‘cover version’ of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Lontano.  Teenage Lontano was first performed as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial and was recreated for the Totally Huge Music Festival, performed by local teens.

Since early dada, fluxus and avante garde experimentations, sound has become increasingly recognised and appreciated as a sculptural medium within the visual arts, more so than in many musical establishments.  Rosenfelds practice continues to break boundaries between music and the visual arts, leading to hybrid forms of installation and performance. She often collaborates with untrained people from whichever community she has been commissioned to work in. This relational aspect to her work further explores boundaries within the visual arts field - expanding the definition of art and going beyond the art gallery context to a much wider audience.  

There is an essence that exists in most of Rosenfeld’s work that distinguishably belongs to the artist, mainly due to the etheral nature of the sounds that she composes.  Her performance at Open Frame Festival carried with it this essence, however I was left wanting more - more space, more resonance, more of the whispy vocals that occasionally surfaced or, simply... just more of Rosenfeld speak so captivatingly of her ideas.

(1) Marina Rosenfeld interviewed by John Cage, New York, 2007

Caitlin Franzmann

Shifting Definitions

A happy merging of art, craft and design is the clever result of a curatorial twist on a reincarnation of the 2010 Jam Factory¹ exhibition Making Waves, recently on show at Fortitude Valley’s Gallery Artisan.² Set within painted walls reminiscent of vibrant turquois seas the collection of fifteen handcrafted wooden surfboards by Peter Walker are now exhibiting under the new title of One True Religion.

Originally curated by Margaret Hancock, the initial positioning of the collection emphasised the functionality of the surfboards in their capacity to act as mediators between man and the kinetic power of the ocean. In the exhibition catalogue of 2010 the foregrounding of fluid dynamics and woodwork techniques³ positioned the works as primarily objects of aesthetic and technical beauty.

Intentionally or not, by repositioning the exhibition under the new title One True Religion, Gallery Artisan shifted the emphasis onto the ideological attributes of the boards. By privileging the namesake of the exhibition which was inspired by the Dave Hickey quote ‘surfing is the one true religion’, the exhibition is contextualised by the notion that beach culture simultaneously encompasses and transcends all religion and religious difference.

Within this context the quirky detailing on the eclectic collection of boards creates a strange and surprising dialog about the undefinable nature of Australian culture. Furthermore the handcrafted aspect of the works adds a dimension to the physical presence which takes the surfboard as an artistic medium in a new direction from similar contemporary pieces such as Philip George’s Inshallah (God Willing) 2009-10, Vernon Ah Kee’s cantchant 2007, and Scot Redford’s Perpetual Abstraction (7066 A.D.) 1997.⁴ 

My personal favourites are those boards detailed by singes from hot rocks, which embody a sense of tension and risk that reflects the sometimes volatile race relations that play out on our beaches. Overall this collection is a wonderfully successful merger between art and life and deserves to be presented as such.

Eileen Abood

1. JamFactory’s exhibition spaces showcase local, national and international work by leading artists, craftspeople and designers. 

2. Artisan is the trading name for Craft Queensland, a not-for profit company supported by Arts Queensland and Australia Council funding. Artisan is aimed at developing markets and audiences to enable a self-sustaining and strong creative sector. Artisan presents exhibitions of high calibre and ilk situating art, craft and design, within our culture, time, and place.

Artisan 2011, ‘About Artisan’ viewed 29 September 2011 <www.artisan.org.au/>.

3. Thomson, M 2010, ‘Fluid and Solid’, PeterWalker Wooden Surfboards, JamFactory, Adelaide.

4.

George Inshallah 2009-10

Ah Kee cantchant 2007

Redford Perpetual Abstraction 1997

Love Me - Zed Nelson by Maggie Bowcock

With trepidation I entered a nursing home recently. They are the invisible places that exist in our communities, but are not part of our everyday life. I was visiting an old family friend in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. I wanted to see her because she had been such an influence in my life that I felt she deserved the respect of a visit, even if she wasn’t aware of my presence. To say the experience was traumatic would be an understatement. Her once beautiful thick red hair was grey and her gnarled fingers constantly pulled at it, as she gazed vacantly around the room. I was expecting confusion, pain, a wasted body and everything that goes with old age and approaching death. What I wasn’t expecting was to see her tall distinguished and still handsome husband of fifty years cradling her face in his hands as he constantly told her how much he loved her and how beautiful she was. It made me ponder the nature of love and being loved, because, in spite of all the sophistication of modern life, the need to be loved  is such an enormous quest for most of humanity. This quest is articulated through the London Based photographer, Zed Nelson and his exhibition, Love Me.

What a journey this show reveals as it portrays, the search for perfection, which feeds according to Nelson a $160 Billion-A-Year Global Industry. The range of images show the pursuit of perfection in the idealization of beauty from images of child beauty pageants, to grotesque and graphic images of a tummy tuck surgery. His work asks the question, ‘ in order to be loved, to be loveable, do we need smaller noses, bigger breasts, tighter skin, longer legs and remain forever youthful?’

When viewing the work, Ox and Angela, plastic surgeon and wife. Rio Brazil. , One is confronted with the shallowness of such a suggestion. A better question might be when does the human being that inhabits that body become worth loving or not worth loving. Nelson has spent 17 years photographing and examining the concept of body image and he comes to the conclusion that ‘if we align our sense of self –worth with self-image, the psychological and emotional consequences are tortuous.

 When viewing the image of the good doctor and his wife (attached) a few questions come to mind; will he still love her in fifty years’ time when her mind or body has possibly broken down? - Is she an object or is she a person? Perhaps she should flee and leave him with the perfect little dogs.

http://www.visuramagazine.com/love-me-zed-nelson

Things My Hands Taught Me – Lunchtime Seminar with Artist Tim McCreight

American artist, Tim McCreight’s lunchtime lecture at Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art certainly gave the students, teachers and associates of the Queensland College of Art Jewellery and Small Objects Studio plenty of food for thought. Arranged to coincide with his Precious Metal Clay workshop at the College, this was a not-to-be-missed opportunity to hear first-hand from the author of everyone’s workshop bible, The Complete Metalsmith.

Along with The Complete Metalsmith, McCreight has written many texts covering subject matter as diverse as knifemaking, casting, jewelry techniques, rendering and design. He has also created a number of instructional videos/DVDs that are widely respected for their clarity and breadth. McCreight runs workshops around the world, believing that teaching and writing is the best way to process information – it’s ‘learning in a fingertip way’.

McCreight first started making items to sell, until he began challenging himself to do things differently. He encouraged the group to look for rich cultural meaning in traditions and history.  ‘Chasing trends is a waste of time and not very satisfying’, McCreight cautioned.  ‘Make more personal pieces that can be passed along and if you’re interested in folk art – do what you like. It’s very liberating’. McCreight also stressed the value in slowing things down in the making.  Planning ahead, sketching designs and working out manufacturing details are OK, but he believes it’s important to leave the door open to opportunities.

McCreight urges questioning of skills and looking for ways to use information, suggesting  we constantly ask ourselves ‘now that I know how to do this skill, what do I do with that information? How can I put it into service of another idea?’  This is evident in McCreight’s penchant for using his metal skills to create and/or modify other items, for example his folding knives. While making the knives was a ‘bit of fun and a hobby’, he emphasised that it provided a sequence of learning skills and mechanisms still within the purview of jewellery-making. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s quote ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are’ is the inspiration for McCreight to look at ways to simplify his methods.  For example, he is achieving a natural patina on his metals by moving away from the ‘pickle’ – an acid compound used to remove oxidized surfaces and flux from metal after soldering – and using steel wool and fingers rather than abrasives.

Telling an astounded audience that he has cut off the legs of his bench to sit on the floor, McCreight also noted he is actively reducing the number of tools used in his practice and working with different materials.  ‘Even though I’m a metalsmith, I don’t have to prove it in every piece’, he said.  ‘Metalsmithing is moving beyond metal, for example with the use of leather’.

His parting advice was to ‘work on a piece with your design brain switched on – interact live and spontaneously with the piece’ and ‘shake up your practice more, for example themed exhibitions give you that slap on side of the head to get you out of your usual routine’.  And so we left to go home to cut the legs off our benches and buy a cushion!

Karen Waddell



Tim McCreight with QCA student Karen Waddell



http://www.thebeadhouse.com/Guest.html

Untitled Brooch, 2009

snagmetalsmith.org