For the past 10 months I’ve been working on a new body of work: cutouts.
I redraw a section of an installation, a silhouette of grouped brush strokes, or the shape of the vinyl from a previous work. This provides the shape for an aluminium panel to be cut. Then I can react to the non-rectangular shape with my brush strokes.
You may have already heard about my preparations for taking my work to show in Sydney, and if you did miss it, follow along on my Instagram back a few weeks. Now it’s all over and the dust has settled. I even managed to edit video documentation. More on that later…
One day in early July, we loaded up my little Toyota Corolla with art, bags, snacks, and road trip music/podcasts and started the long drive to Sydney. It is far, far away! I am a bit of a novice to long car trips, so that was an experience. It felt like a real achievement when we finally arrived.
I set myself a goal for this year.
…to show my work somewhere outside of Victoria. I’m not a huge setter-of-goals, only informal ones. But I put out a few feelers and much to my delight, my proposal to exhibit was accepted by Gaffa in Sydney!
I’ll be showing an installation of vinyl and 6 works on aluminium panel from 6th to 17th July.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have watched the work unfold. But in case you didn’t catch that, here are some shots (along with a few extra shots) of the work unfolding in the studio.
This has made for a super busy time, I shan’t bore you with words like ‘busy’ – let’s get right down to the pics and the stories of how these came to be. *actually it was exciting!
The exhibitions The Substation Contemporary Art Prize at The Substation and Sheen Slip at Alternating Current Art Space opened on 8th and 9th September respectively. Sheen Slip has been in the works for a few months now and I’ve been gradually preparing for it, working on most of the paintings in the show simultaneously. I like to work that way. For that I can partly blame drying time of enamel and partly just liking to multitask in colour.
The Dirty Dozen is a space run by Creative Spaces (Melbourne City Council) and used to be known as Platform Art Space – a marvelous underground thoroughfare bedecked in heritage listed pink tiles and signs. It leads from Degraves Street in Melbourne’s city underground to the train platforms of Flinders Street Station. And it was mine, all mine, to do art to.
As an artist I love it, love following other artists and seeing what people are making, their process, their workspace; love following design and all sorts of things. So here’s my gift to you, my list of artists you should totally follow on Instagram. I’m pretty loose with the criteria here; they either use Instagram cleverly, post frequently or have really stunning work, or all three!
Enjoy!