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Twigs for an eagles nest

2009-04-04T10:02:00.006+11:00

Support for art, advice from W B Yeats

TO A WEALTHY MAN WHO PROMISED A SECOND
SUBSCRIPTION TO THE DUBLIN MUNICIPAL
GALLERY IF IT WERE PROVED THE PEOPLE
WANTED PICTURES

You gave, but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence',
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market-place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.

Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would,
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!

December 1912

Coincidently, an exhibition of architecture for animals:

Fritz Haeg – Currently at he Whitney, NY.

W.A.G.E.

2009-03-30T18:07:00.001+11:00

DEAR ARTIST,

SO, I HAVE TO TELL YOU THE CRAZIEST STORY...

A MUSEUM HIRED ME TO PUT ON A SHOW.
SO I WENT TO WORK AT MY STUDIO.
AFTER LABORING FOR 6 MONTHS,
AFTER TWO WEEKS OF INSTALLATION,
AFTER COUNTLESS MEETINGS WITH THE MUSEUM,
I PUT ON A SHOW. A GREAT SHOW!
I SENT THE MUSEUM MY INVOICE.
THEY SENT ME A CHECK MADE OUT FOR A TON OF EXPOSURE.
MY LANDLORD KEEPS ASKING FOR A RENT.
I SIGNED OVER MY EXPOSURE.
TURNS OUT I DON'T HAVE A STUDIO ANYMORE.

MISSING YOU,
W.A.G.E.

re-posted from Art-Agenda

Marcus Westbury Dinner

2009-03-24T00:40:00.002+11:00

Pulling the wool

2009-03-15T10:35:00.003+11:00

For the anonymous knitters and knotters amongst us:

Desert Town

2009-03-15T10:24:00.004+11:00

For those who think of Gosford as a cultural desert, here is how Marfa made culture in the desert.
From last weeks Chicago Tribune.

Marfa makes an art out of quirky.
Josh Noel | Tribune reporter
March 8, 2009
MARFA, Texas—Much like mornings and evenings in this high-desert town, afternoons are sleepy and not much happens. About lunchtime, that makes a faded silver lunch truck blasting tinny 1970s FM hits the town's cultural, social and culinary center. Parked in a gravel lot along Marfa's quiet main drag, the Food Shark offers an unlikely bounty of fast food: homemade falafel, mole-rubbed pork tacos, fresh veggie panini, triple-chocolate espresso cookies baked that morning. The biggest surprise, however, comes in your change. It's a $2 bill. That little scrap of currency is what makes Food Shark unlike so many lunch trucks and Marfa unlike so many towns of 1,887. "I figure when someone is walking around and they look in their wallet and they see that, they'll think of us," said Adam Bork, 38, an artist and musician who started Food Shark with his girlfriend two years ago.
And there you have Marfa, deep in the mountain desert belly of West Texas and three hours from a major airport. It is always performing, always surprising, always subtly weird. Marfa is so subtly weird that it is missing the one thing any self-respecting West Texas town really needs—a dive bar. But it does have a gourmet grocery store, a National Public Radio affiliate, nine art galleries, three contemporary art museums and the most lasting work by the father of minimalism, Donald Judd, planted in the desert at the edge of town. It has the Marfa Lights, an unexplained band of colored orbs that float above the horizon to the east. James Dean's third (and last) major film, "Giant," was shot here, as was " No Country for Old Men," which landed the president of The Marfa National Bank a tiny but memorable role: the gullible hick who gets a cattle gun in the forehead on the side of a highway. In short, Marfa is a strange and strangely charmed town that shouldn't exist. Chip Love, a warm, chatty 51-year-old, was offered the "No Country" role after a friend who knew Joel and Ethan Coen asked him to chauffeur the filmmakers while they scouted locations. He's not sure why they cast him, but he's content that his film career apparently started and ended with a movie that won the Academy Award for best picture last year. "That's the thing about this town," Love said. "You can always be in the right place at the right time. Or even the wrong place at the right time." But the other thing about Marfa is that it's still a blown-out desert town. It's tough to tell which faded stucco buildings are shuttered forever and which aren't. Stand in the middle of town in the middle of the day and you'll see a truck roll by, then maybe another. Then nothing. Then a bicycle, then a car, then more nothing. Most memorable is the wind. It blows through clean and strong and brings the smell of rain from 100 miles away even if the rain itself never shows. For decades, this was a ranching town, pure and simple.

That changed when Judd moved to Marfa in 1973. He was tired of how predictably his art was being shown in New York, so he looked west to integrate his life and his work into a stark landscape. He investigated Baja California and Tucson, Ariz., but settled in Marfa because it was "most practical," a guide told me during a visit to Judd's home, a former military storage complex that doubles as a museum. "He didn't say much more about it than that," the guide said. Judd, who died in 1994, later installed 100 aluminum boxes—each the exact same size but with the space divided differently inside—in an abandoned military garage at the edge of town. He replaced the garage's sliding doors with floor-to-ceiling glass, which makes the desert a backdrop for his silvery boxes and allows golden western light to dance through them. He invited several fellow artists to also install work on the grounds, the whole of which is now a contemporary art museum called the Chinati Foundation. It draws art lovers from around the world. Judd arrived when Melissa Livingston, 41, was growing up in Marfa, her father running a hardware store that is still open. Today she is a desk clerk at the Thunderbird Hotel, a blissfully spare, hip place where guests can check out a manual typewriter or Stack-o-Matic record player—with albums—for their rooms. At first Judd was just "some New York artist," Livingston recalled, but then he built those boxes, which confused a fair number of locals. Tourism picked up, then came the artists and then the galleries. The transition from ranching town to ranching/art town (ranching still comes first) has brought more strangers and makes Livingston less eager to let her children run free. But the growth has been good. "I'm sure some people were resentful at the changes, but the artists have fit in," Livingston said. "At gallery openings, you'll see all types. Some of the ranching types, they like it, and sometimes they're like, 'Hmmm.' " Judd didn't just bring status and art to Marfa; he started a pattern of the art-minded moving to this little Western outpost—or at least buying second homes. What has resulted is a strange little place where you can pass a storefront in the darkened downtown on a Wednesday night and find Julie Speed, whose work sells for as much as $40,000, dragging chalk across an easel. She streaks a few lines, hops back to evaluate, bobs to the music, leaps forward, then does it again. It could be a front-row seat for her next masterwork. One day I drove the dirt roads just out of town to find some locals who were here before the art. The door I randomly knocked on, however, belonged to Vilis Inde, 50, and Tom Jacobs, 52, a gay couple who moved from Minneapolis four years ago to do what people do in Marfa—open a gallery. Their inde/jacobs gallery is housed in an old stucco building near downtown, but a replacement, designed by a Swedish architect, is under construction up the street. It will be one of the few new commercial buildings in town, but there's a creeping feeling more construction will follow—and soon. Inde and Jacobs, who have lived in New York and Chicago, respectively, said they're quite at home in what might be West Texas' most open-minded town. Inde said he "snuck into Texas by coming to Marfa." "I don't consider myself a Texan at all," he said. "Our friends and our conversations are what keep us here. Our lives are interesting. That's the whole point of this place." Most nights there's something going on in Marfa. As in one thing: a reading at the Marfa Book Co., a gallery opening, someone playing music in some living room. The trick is finding it. Locals have their networks. Which is why there's a simple recommendation for making your way in Marfa: Talk to people. Walk up to strangers and say, "Hi, I'm (insert your name) from (insert your hometown). I'm in Marfa for a few days, and it seems cool. Any suggestions about where to eat or what to check out?" You will meet nice people who are proud of where they live. It was the energy of those people that sold me on a town that, frankly, doesn't look like much when you arrive. And the energy shows itself in subtle ways: Europeans crossing the street with the latest New Yorker under their arms, shockingly memorable food, big ideas. Marfa's real reward came from the distance between what you'd expect from a West Texas town of 1,887 and what you get.

The big picture

2009-03-01T21:56:00.005+11:00

To make up for slow postings – here is a longish one.
Via Nettime.

Richard Grayson: Well here we are...the end of Planet Finance
Essay published in Broadsheet, Australia, 2009

Chanel is pulling its flagship sponsorship project for contemporary art. A newspaper story (the Guardian 29 Dec 2008) describes how in the face of fears that the 'supposedly recession proof luxury market' is falling victim to the credit crisis, the perfume and handbag company is not only shedding 200 jobs but bringing its highly publicized global art installation 'Mobile Art' to an early end for fears that this 'quirky marketing operation' has become a luxury that the brand could no longer support.

Architect of choice for the Art World, Zaha Hadid teamed up with Karl Lagerfield and Chanel to create a futuristic pavilion designed to travel for two years throughout Asia, the United States and Europe. The legendary Mademoiselle Chanel herself, publicity reminded us, had
in the past supported the likes of Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky and Jacques Lipchitz, and now twenty contemporary artists including Daniel Buren, Blue Noses - (the 'rascals of Russian contemporary arts' apparently) Sylvie Fleury, Sophie Calle, Yang Fudong, Subdoh Gupta, Yoko Ono and Wim Delvoy, had been commissioned to collaborate with the fashion house to make work where 'all of the pieces will be conceived in relation to one of Chanel's most emblematic accessories - the quilted handbag.' The intention was that 'resulting from their singular points of view - poetic, audacious and as yet unseen - the multiple facets of this mythical bag and its universe are revealed.' An intention that would make it 'a revolutionary event, uniting one of the greatest architects of our time, some of our most innovative artists, and an icon of the fashion world - the quilted bag.' The Project 'reaffirms once more our (Chanel's) devotion to creativity and to the avant-garde' and exemplifies how the company is 'a modern brand' that is 'constantly moving forward, cultivating the extraordinary and its innate sense of the moment, CHANEL is resolutely open to the world and turning towards the future. It is this propulsion that incites CHANEL to perpetually create surprise, from one continent to the next, and to so deeply impact on our collective imaginary consciousness.'

The plug was pulled two stops into the global tour. It had been launched in Hong Kong and took up residence in Central Park New York, but never made it to London and the other global cultural - and financial - capitals of its tour. 'Considering the current economic crisis,' a spokesman said, 'we decided it was best to stop the project.' Instead, 'we will be concentrating on strategic growth investments.' (Vogue Magazine 22 Dec 2008).

'The producers of the abysmal 1998 movie Lost In Space should sue for copyright against the spacecraft, Jupiter II,' wrote Rob Dawg on zahahadidblog after his first sight of the plans for the Chanel building, and Hadid's design does closely echo the weird organic shapes of futuristic alien technologies and flying saucers as imagined by Hollywood. And vice-versa, which is probably a convergence of computer software. And the ship's sudden return to earth makes it an early manifestation of the vast quantities of space-debris that we can expect to crash down around our ears as a result of the spectacular break up 'Planet Finance'. It is a Roswell moment, when Hadid's sci-fi pavilion, its 'propulsion to create surprise' suddenly exhausted, becomes the junk of an alien civilization, stranded, earthbound. Its corpses and culture are laid out in front of us. Inanimate. Dead. And looking sort of weird and fake.

'Planet Finance' is the name given by groovy rightwing academic, Neil Ferguson, to the vast financial sphere that has overshadowed our universe for the last few decades. He describes how in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was some $48.6 trillion, but the total market capitalisation of the world's stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger than the stuff of the world and the total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger ('Wall Street lays another egg' Vanity Fair December 2008). Planet Finance was not only bigger than Planet Earth, it was faster. Every day $3.1 trillion changed hands on foreign-exchange markets and very month $5.8 trillions traded on global stock markets. In its swampy atmosphere (made up, it might be hypothesised, of gaseous testosterone, cocaine, Porsche exhaust and swirly-eyed lip-smacking greed) new financial life-forms evolved. The total annual issuance of mortgage-backed securities, including the seductive new 'collateralised debt obligations' (C.D.O.'s), rose to more than $1 trillion. The volume of 'derivatives' - contracts such as options and swaps - grew even faster and by the end of 2006 their notional value was just over $400 trillion. With its growth the structures and logics of this new planet increasingly became the dominant ones here on earth. 'The Market' became the paradigm that shaped every activity and undertaking. Planet Finance's masters of the Universe became the masters of our world and we lesser beings subservient to their
appetite and needs.

Contemporary Art had a particular and precious place in this new intergalactic culture, and its artifacts have provided a bridge between the previous values and narratives of the older, smaller, planet and the ideals and aspirations of this new stellar civilization. Art has always had an intimate relationship with the rich and the rulers of the world, both temporal and spiritual, and its attraction to our new extra-terrestial masters was precisely its occult intimacy with power that has stretched across different civilizations and periods of human activity. Contemporary art helped validate and sanctify these new electric structures. Art was the
symbol that spoke of the mystical power of the über-commodity: a special sort of object - or action - that transcended the mundane to translate us into glorious heavenly vortexes of Platonic value. Which is why artists - possibly after having been kidnapped, anally probed, and their brains scrubbed clean by space technology to remove primitive ideas of worth and value, not to mention a sense of the ridiculous and the unseemly - found themselves happily making work about a padded handbag in a pavilion designed for space travel.

By some happy numerological quirk of fate, on the same day that Lehman Brothers was collapsing, Sotheby's in London was half-way through a two day event, one of the most notorious contemporary art auctions seen in this (or the last) century. Damien Hirst was selling off 223 new works made by his numerous assistants over the last two years to eager buyers. Shockingly, for the commercial art world, the sale was not through his dealers, which is the normal way of flogging art, with carefully vetted collectors and where contacts are nurtured and developed. Instead it was through an Auction House, where there are far fewer boundaries between the artifact and punters with the desire to 'invest'. When the auction was first planned it seemed a very good time for such an event. From October 2004 onwards, according to ArtTactic research, the 'Hirst market had seen an average increase in prices of 207%, or a 39% annual compound return', and under the gavel, if you have the cash - or credit - you're a player and then it's just a matter of bulking up to have a wad big enough to beat any other person who is also after what you want. The simple logics of the Market prevail to determine 'value' rather than it being arrived at through arcane alchemies by secretive cabals of dealers, museums
critics and collectors. Hirst has a manager called Frank Dunphy whose previous experience was in the world of circuses rather than the art world so he doesn't give a hoot for its structures. He was at one time, gloriously, Coco the Clown's accountant - a job not without honour - and also represented all of the world's jugglers. He and Damien met over a pool table in a London private members' club and he likes auctions because they are so democratic. 'You bring your money along,' he said to Waldemar Januszczak (Times Sept 7 2007), 'you put your hand up and you've got it.' His passion was conceived a few years ago when he decided to auction the contents of Hirst's restaurant, the Pharmacy, which was going out of business, and watched with astonishment as people 'started bidding hundreds of pounds for a used restaurant glass.'

From the artist's point of view, an auction also has a strong attraction, as it considerably reduces the cut of the middleman: a commercial gallery selling a work will normally take between 40 - 50% of the sale price in commission, not so with auction houses. Until brave Damien came along and proved that they weren't worth the paper they were written on, there was an unspoken agreement between the auction houses and the commercial galleries where the galleries would handle the recent work, and the auction houses take care of the older
stuff. The demarcation line between 'old' and 'new' was traditionally defined as being some five years back, but as the markets speeded up it closed to a two year gap. But Damien has abolished even this. It is a sign of how perfectly of his time Hirst is that much of the journalism about the auction focused not on the art but precisely on how he had innovated new financial and commercial structures. 'But like all modern visionaries, Hirst saved his greatest innovations for the marketplace itself,' wrote bloggingstocks.com. He took risks, cut out middle men, maximised returns and presented examples of the best of his signature lines - the animals in formaldehyde, the spotty paintings, the spin paintings, shiny shelves of drugs etc - so maximising opportunity for those wanting to buy into Brand Damien. The auction was widely described in newspaper finance pages in the aspirational, thrusting, frontier poetry of the share prospectus, and it is significant for Brand Hirst that Damien is a boysy stubbly
unaffected down-to-earth-guy, a bit wild, a bit of a chancer, a jack the lad, not a snob or stuck up.

Last year the Cambridge Judge Business School analysed the demographics of City Traders to discover that the person handling billions and billions of funds and making millions in fees was most likely to be a 26 year old white male. These last decades have been built on the actions of young men taking hazy testosterony risks for shed loads of money and Damien is the sort of guy a city culture can understand and identify with. As these 26 year olds get to be a little older they become his market. He makes work about money, and he makes money, and is therefore value embodied. His career has bracketed the period - now ending - that has seen more of these millionaires buy and sell more art than at any other time in history. It is difficult to have a proper contemporary art collection without a Damien, as collections are no longer about individual interest or taste but operate as symbols that prove that you are a possessor of taste, that you like what other people like, are part of a group - a group that shapes and is shaped by the market. So you start off with a little formaldehyde, a dot painting perhaps, and then another, or perhaps get a drug cabinet thingy, then maybe add a Richard Prince Nurse or car, a
Koons, a Nauman maybe and yes we'll have a Gursky.....et voi bloody la ...something to add to the yacht, the blonde and the Bugatti and harbourside waterview apartment.

And buy in they did. There was much sucking of teeth before the days of sale as to how the downturn was going to bugger this up, how Damien was going to become a schadenfreude cropper, but no, the stubble cheeky-chappy shark-pickler pulled through, making even more than had been projected from his sales to secretive Russian Oligarchs, precious plutocrats, shy hedge-fund managers, and no doubt galleries and dealers with a stake in Damien, desperately eager to prevent a slip in the auction value of his work. The sale made the artist some £98
million pounds, a world record for an artist (but a small profit in the financial trader worlds of his buyers).

Slavoj Zizek in his paperback 'Violence', talks of the 'phatic' function of language, which is its use to maintain and describe social relations though ritualised formulae such as greetings, chit chat about the weather. Roman Jakobson, who developed the idea liked to quote this dialogue from Dorothy Parker:

'Well, here we are' he said.
'Here we are' she said. Aren't we?'
'I should say we are' he said."

'The emptiness of contact thus has a propitious technical function as a test of the system itself: a 'Hello do you hear me?' writes Zizek 'The phatic function is therefore close to the meta-linguistic function: it checks whether the channel is working. Simultaneously, the addresser and addressee check whether they are using the same code.

' Hirst's work shares this emptiness of the 'here we are': each product in the auction represents a line of manufacture in his practice and each line of manufacture serves to sketch out, in the
simplest and most general terms comprehensible even to a young dazed dealer, burnt out hedge-funder or Oligarch's partner, what 'art' (in general) might be 'about': beit 'Death and mortality (pickled thing)' or 'Spinning Colour and Abstract Painting', 'beauty and butterflies'
or 'Big shiny expensive attractive object of no other function'. These prove and test the channels of Value and Exchange, the poetics of marketisation and commodification that are the new code for the machine, the mechanisms that run this new planet. All the diverse operations of the art world over the decades of Planet Finance have ultimately had one end; the glorification of the ideal of Private Property.

That this art in the end represents only itself and the functions of value rather than any complex alternative religious, moral, immoral or political sphere (as art used to claim to) supports perhaps Alain Badiou's proposal that we live in a social space in late capitalism that is progressively 'worldless'. Planet Finance, is without a worldview of its own, and there is not a 'global capitalist civilisation', rather it operates in and across all civilisations: Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, East or West. Its global dimension can only be expressed through the 'Real' of the global market mechanism. Certainly the Contemporary Art now being produced by and exchanged in the new markets of China and India is largely undifferentiated from the global forms of 'Contemporary Art Fair Art.'

Contemporary Art didn't have a good boom and its going to be interesting to see how its going to cope with the bust. When I write that it didn't have a good boom I also need to write that it had an extraordinary and orgasmically brilliant boom, the best boom that it has ever had (But it's still a question as to how its going to cope with the bust). Its boom as bad and good because it got sucked up into this glorious new planet and bathed in a golden shower of cash. It was
feted and lauded and has perhaps never been so desired and valued (even if they didn't quite know why). Art became a locus of aspiration for so many people. And it has sort of lost its head, its sense of its direction, was seduced by the big end of town, the big end of history. After all, before, if you were a member of what was called the avant-garde, it was all going to be cold dank warehouses and the respect of your probably hirsute peers: but in this new world art slowly came to represent models of innovation (models which could not be applied elsewhere but what the heck, that helped keep the damn thing pure) and glamour, and ineffable value. It was housed in American Express Halls, Chanel Pavilions and Oligarchs' hallways. Far nicer places than before with far better food: and let's face it, frequented by a better class of person. And Art has become very comfortable there.

The only 'avant-gardist' movement that the visual arts has generated since the deregulation of the banks has been 'relational aesthetics' with its weedily modest exploration of how 'art' might echo - and aestheticise - operations of capital and consumption in the new electronic economies. Museums and Public Galleries have been the matrix for such undertakings, and have helped validate new product (and movements) through their aura of being disinterested and magisterial arbiters of culture and value which operate in a sphere that lies outside the vulgar material world. Simultaniously - (and in tandem with practically all that which used to be considered the 'public sphere) they have been frantically privatising all their functions and operations, either willingly or through the pressure from government - through the embrace of private sponsorship and donation, the presence of financiers, fund managers, fund raisers,
private collectors and dealers on boards of management and collection committees. Their curatorial expertise has haemorrhaged to the private sector to work for private galleries or advise the new non-knowing collectors on how to build and invest in their contemporary art-
portfolio.

Thus curators and critics from the public sector have ended up shaping the collections of shipping magnates and Greek socialites and they have bought works that have been validated and given provenance and value through being shown in museum and public exhibitions curated by (the same) curators and critics. If Hirst's work has echoed the operations of value and commodity on Planet Finance, the complex incestuous imbroglio of the museums and non-commercial galleries with the commercial world has replicated the labyrinthine complexities and failures of financial regulation that has allowed the extraordinary boom and the unbelievable bust of the financial market model. Like the regulatory finance company Standard and Poors, museums and curators around the world have been issuing the equivalent of top AAA ratings for products that no-one really any longer properly understands. As with the regulators, the valuations have been of direct financial benefit to the people who support and pay the evaluating body. It is a situation where, as one of Standard and Poors' employees wrote, something 'could be structured by cows and we would rate it.' ...Or it would be shown.

For a while, around the time of the Hirst auction (without cows) there were voices claiming an art world exceptionalism, based on the arguments that a) it was 'Art' and therefore above 'all that sort of thing' and/or b) that as 'Art' it was really only of interest to a group of people who were so mega-mega-mega-rich that the fluctuations of salerooms and banks wouldn't effect them. Even though Damien Hirst as the mascot spirit of that age now passing, slipped through, which seems fitting, this doesn't seem to be generally holding true. Sotheby's has just let 120 people go in the USA. In May they sold a Bacon painting for $86 million American to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, their most recent sale failed to shift a similar one at under half the price. Galleries are shutting their doors. It is, as a friend just back from Art Basel Miami said, 'Like someone just turned a tap off.' Things are falling back to earth.

It's early days in what promises to be the long death of a galactic civilization so it is going to be hard to discern how things might reshape themselves under this bombardment, how a re-ordering might be imagined, how art and the art-world might re-articulate new models of
value. The developments of the last few decades suddenly seem to make it redundant. As James Buchan writes, 'In societies governed by fashion and luxury, the public finds that there is almost nothing that it cannot do without.' ('Frozen Desire, an enquiry into the meaning of money.') Looking over the wreckage of the 'Mobile Art' tour, Karl Lagerfield was visited by a strange moment of lucidity, 'Today,' he mused to the interviewer 'everyone can say that something is for financial reasons when they want...for me, artistic reasons are more important. I always thought the building was a sculpture. I prefer it empty.'

See also: http://ensemble.va.com.au/Grayson/texts/WellHereWeAre2009.html
© Richard Grayson 2009

D File #1

2009-02-15T21:44:00.003+11:00

In his notes on Conceptual Art, Sol Lewitt wrote: "Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach. Rational judgments repeat rational judgments. Irrational judgments lead to new experience. Formal art is essentially rational. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically."

A Fine Art

2009-02-15T21:29:00.002+11:00

Students who were at the Ourimbah Campus of the University of Newcastle when the Fine Arts programme was abolished, were no doubt amused by the photo accompanying the campus's promotion by Professor Stephen Crump in the Sun Weekly.

Art's Birthday 2009

2009-01-20T08:18:00.003+11:00

Art's Birthday 2009, Town Centre Complex, Gosford, at the Gosford Art Flux Forum's
IDEA EXCHANGE

Idea Exchange Bureau

2009-01-12T22:43:00.005+11:00

GAFF
Gosford Art Flux Forum

Idea Exchange Bureau

A free exchange bureau, trading in art (and other) ideas, will operate in one of the vacant shops in the Town Centre Shopping Complex, Gosford, from the 17th to the 25th of January, 2009.

On site services.

Idea Exchange.
- Bring in your idea and exchange it for one brought in by another customer.
- Repairs. Customers can bring in old ideas for repair, restoration, redesign or battery replacement.
- Used and pre-loved art ideas recycled.
- Buy Nothing. Get one Free.

Counselling.
- Individual consultations and group sessions available.

Installation - Changing daily.
Visual Archive
Reading Room
Outdoor siting and erection of a 'Big Thing', The Big Idea roadside tourist attraction for Gosford.

Art’s Birthday Party.

On the 17th of January, to celebrate the 1,000,046th international birthday of art, as proposed by French artist Robert Filliou in 1963 - there will be a reenactment of the making of the first work of art.

In the spirit of Filliou’s No-Plays there will be no opening.

No-Play #1

This is a play nobody must come and see. That is, the not-coming of anyone
makes the play. Together with the very extensive advertising of the spectacle through
newspapers, radio, T.V., private invitations, etc. . . .
No one must be told not to come.
No one should be told that he really shouldn’t come.
No one must be prevented from coming in any way whatsoever!!!
But nobody must come, or there is no play.
That is, if the spectators come, there is no play. And if no spectators come, there
is no play either . . . I mean, one way or the other there is a play, but it is a No-Play.
Robert Filliou, c. 1964

Robert Filliou lighting the cake at Art's 1,000,010th Birthday Celebration, Aachen 1973. Photo: Neue Galerie, Stadt im alten Kurhaus, Aachen, from - Robert Filliou: From Political to Poetical Economy, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver, 1995.

Ideas can be brought in in person at the appointed times (TBA) or forwarded via gaff@brownscows.com

Textures of Place

2009-01-12T22:38:00.003+11:00

Textures of Place consists of 4 installations/works in progress which are to be presented in vacant shops (on level one) in the Town Centre Shopping Complex, Gosford, from
the 15th to the 27th of January, 2009.

The exhibition is being ‘facilitated’ by Ccabd (Central Coast Artist Business Directory)
in conjunction with GBID (Gosford Business Improvement District) and Gosford City Council.

Shop spaces have been allocated to:
Peter Baka
GAFF (Gosford Art Flux Forum)
Josephine Laina
Sharyn Walker.

2009

2009-01-01T11:07:00.002+11:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Grow Australia

2008-12-14T22:14:00.002+11:00

7 Plants, 7 Continents

Grow for Australia!!!

www.collectiefmei2007.nl/greenhouse/

Be quick, ends soon.

Heterotopia

2008-12-09T23:30:00.003+11:00

While on the subject of books about urban space and design, there is another good one just out, Heterotopia and the City, Public Space in a Postcivil Society edited by Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter. It "discusses the concept of heterotopia: urban spaces that carry multiple, fragmented meanings. Heterotopia and the City seeks to clarify this concept and investigates the heterotopias which exist throughout our contemporary world: in museums, theme parks, malls, holiday resorts, gated communities, wellness hotels, and festival markets."

"Heterotopia, literally meaning 'other places', is a rich concept in urban design that describes a world off-center with respect to normal or everyday spaces, one that possesses multiple, fragmented, or even incompatible meanings.... The term was coined by Foucault in the late 1960s but has remained a source of confusion and debate since."
The book combines theoretical contributions on the concept of heterotopia, with a series of critical case studies that probe a range of (post-) urban transformations, from the 'malling' of the agora, through the 'gating' of dwelling, to the 'theming' of urban renewal. Wastelands and terrains vagues are explored as sites of promise and resistance in a section on urban activism and transgression. Heterotopia and the City provides a collective effort to reposition heterotopia as a crucial concept for contemporary urban theory and redirects the current debate on the privatization of public space.

In both this and Steffen Lehmann's book, art is assumed a "natural" instrumental or relational role, which needs to be critiqued, as the practice could be seen to have become 'formalised'.

While pondering this I came across this comment by Calin Dan on Nettime.
"Autonomy entitles art to float freely in the interstices of the social fabric, to experiment and to steer in unexpected directions. When experiment and steering relate directly to the fabric itself, the art discourse looses autonomy and gains relational power (in the sense designed by Nic. Bouriaud). Relational art has an increased chance to acknowledgement, but also - naturally - to criticism, coming not only from the comfortable inner circles, but also from the structures to which the respective discourse 'relates'. Needless to say that both concepts (autonomous, relational) have no axiological power; they are not about quality, they are about method.

Back to the City

2008-12-09T23:02:00.004+11:00

For those who found the talk at Art inTent interesting, you might be interested in a publication edited by Steffen Lehmann.

The 'Back to the City' book was launched last week at the office of SUTERS Architects in Newcastle.

It is a very well produced book which addresses many aspects of a form of art practice now well developed in urban contexts. It is good to see that the field is being opened to theoretical examination, even if the $90 price tag will direct it to the design/architecture end of the market.

Details of the book:

'Back to the City. Strategies for Informal Urban Interventions'
Edited by Steffen Lehmann
Contents:

15 essays by leading authors (academic papers, all fully refereed); authors include University of Newcastle academics, such as: Prof. Michael Ostwald, Prof. Anne Graham, Dr Steven Fleming, Michael Chapman, Dr Angela Philp, and others.
The book includes the documentation of 28 site-specific, temporary installations in Newcastle, Berlin, and Brisbane.
The book discusses models of interdisciplinarity, the value of small public spaces, and the potential of temporary interventions as a resource for urban renewal.

Bio.
Professor STEFFEN LEHMANN
Ph.D., AA Dipl.

UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Urban Development for Asia and the Pacific
Chair, School of Architecture and Built Environment The University of Newcastle
Director, s_Lab space Laboratory for Architectural Research and Design
Editor, 'Journal of Green Building'

On the same occassion, the book Temporary and Permanent, by Cida de Aragon was launched. It introduces some of the major interdisciplinary, collaborative works by this Brazilian/Australian artist, who brings her design and architectural background to her work. Cida was also at Art inTent, as you might recall.

They send their regards to those they met in Kibble park.

GRG Advisory Committee.

2008-12-01T21:26:00.002+11:00

There has been some confusion about recent advertisements in the local newspapers calling for applications for community representation on the Regional Gallery Advisory Committee.

Correspondence from Debra Schleger, GCC Arts and Culture Manager, has clarified the position.

A decision of the committee, which some of you know about, to end the committee was not made with a quorum, so has not been enacted.

In response to a recent Council resolution, on November 4th, expressions of interest have been advertised for community representation on the various committees including the Regional Gallery Advisory Group. This is for community not organisational representation.

This means that anyone interested in being part of the committee, including existing community members, will be required to submit an application.

Check the council website for details about submitting an expressing of interest.

Naked or Nude

2008-12-01T21:20:00.003+11:00

Recent controversies about the public display of ‘unacceptable’ prepubescent naked imagery in art, has highlighted the way in which photography is regarded as a special case in its relation to ‘reality’.

Pick the real frog.

Simon Martin. Untitled (2008), a single-screen video installation.
High definition, CAD (computer assisted design) animation.

“In 1998 Martin made a photorealist painting of a strawberry poison dart frog based on a found photograph. Untitled returns to that same source image though here it is rendered in a fully three-dimensional state. The animation of the frog could be seen as a collection of establishing shots, carefully observing the creature and exploring the virtual space of the synthetic image. Moving between stillness and motion, Martin's digital rendering of the photographic image creates an uncanny effect and a self-reflexive comment on the construction of images.”
www.chisenhale.org.uk

This is an Argentinian ornate horned frog.

Bruce Barber

2008-11-18T14:04:00.006+11:00

Before Fiona Woods returned to Ireland, she had a chance to meet up with Bruce Barber and others in Sydney.

Fiona Woods, Anne Graham, Pauline Barber, Bruce Barber, Neil Berecry-Brown, Stephen Mulqueen (NZ artist doing residency in Newcastle) and Patricia Flanagan (foreground)

For any readers who might have been at the Ourimbah campus in 2004, you might remember Bruce who was in doing a residency at Newcastle at the time. And those with longer memories, might remember his great contribution to the Chimera Conference, held in Sydney in 1995, organised by Synapse Art Initiatives.

His exhibition at Artspace, (blurb below via Artspace website), is well worth a visit.

14 November - 14 December 2008
Reading and Writing Rooms
BRUCE BARBER

Image above: Bruce Barber, Kiss, 1973, Slide/sound installation. Photograph: Colin McLaren, Courtesy the artist

"Since the early 1970s Bruce Barber has worked across performance, installation, film, video and photography developing propositional and situational works that engage and question social and political regimes of power. Originally from Auckland where he studied at Elam School of Art in the early 1970s within the highly influential and experimental sculpture and intermedia program, Barber has been based in Canada for three decades, retaining professional ties with New Zealand and Australia.

This major survey project, the largest to date undertaken on Barber’s practice, encompasses the full range of his work from performance actions, found situations and video work of the early 1970s through his multidisciplinary Reading Rooms begun in the 1980s and Squat Projects of the 1990s and beyond, culminating in a new reading room project regarding immigration, identity politics and alterity developed in-situ whilst undertaking a visiting artist residency at Artspace.

Bruce Barber is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he is Professor and Director of the MFA Program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. He has exhibited and published extensively internationally since the early 1970s. He is editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization (1983), Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967–1973 (2001), Condé and Beveridge: Class Works (2008) and co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut and John O’Brian of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State (1996). A new two-volume set of his writings has just been published as Performance, [Performance] and Performers: Essays and Conversations 1976-2006.

Irish Artists at Mangrove Mountain

2008-11-10T16:51:00.006+11:00

We were pleased with the success of our international contemporary art presence, “library from the ground up”, at the Mangrove Mountain Country Fair. Fiona Woods, who has now returned to Ireland after completing her residency with Brown’s Cows, presented the work of the artists’ collective very well, making accessible an emerging form of art practice to people with widely different levels of cultural experience.

Participating artists included:
Astrid Adler, Monica de Bath, Marie Connole, Alan Counihan, Amanda Dunsmore (UK), Maria Finucane, John Hanrahan, Eileen Healy, Emma Houlihan, Patricia Hurl , Tamás Kaszás (HUN), Máirín Kelly, Maria Kerin, Aileen Lambert, John Langan, Clive Moloney, Fiona O' Dwyer, Deirdre O' Mahony, Áine Phillips, Jim Ricks (USA), Therry Rudin (CH), Seán Taylor, Fergus Tighe, Vincent Wall, Fiona Woods.

Perhaps one of the most valuable experiences of the residency was the discussion (ongoing) about art making in a local, rural or regional environment in the context of current art theory and urban practice.

In Belfast on the 17th of December, Fiona will be participating in a debate WHERE ART GROWS GREENER? - art in a rural context.

Thanks to Kiera O’Toole for her assistance with the installation.

Neil Berecry-Brown
President
Mangrove Mountain & Districts Country Fair

2008-11-07T18:01:00.003+11:00

The winner of the Road Works (My favourite Pothole) category at the Mangrove Mountain & Districts Country Fair this year was Sharyn Walker.

It was good to see the development and increasing complexity of Sharyn’s work. She is acquiring a unique language of form and materials, and an idiosyncratic take on socially engaged practices that has modesty, wit and conceptual clarity.

Special awards were made to John O’Toole whose animation was produced at the Mangrove Mountain computer centre, and Laura Kostalas (Junior section).

The Back Page team will be road testing the Pot Hole Covers soon and posting a report.

Thanks to Tim Braham for judging this category in the Art section. (note: at the time of judging John O’Toole’s animation was not available)

Art on the Mountain

2008-09-24T22:47:00.006+10:00

Ground Up Artists’ Collective

A one off opportunity to see this presentation!

Fiona Woods, a member of the Ground Up Artists Collective, and until recently, Regional Arts Coordinator for North Clare, Ireland, will be presenting
library from the ground up
at the Mangrove Mountain Country Fair on the 18th of October.

She will be bringing from Ireland two groups of work - library from the ground up, which consists of books, catalogues, reports, films and documentary material on DVD, soundworks, posters, comics (and a tea towel!) relating to the work of the 26 artists from the Ground Up Artists' Collective, to present the organisation through the members’ temporary public art, community-based research and discursive art events in rural contexts. Fiona Woods has curated a selection of work from the library for the Mangrove Mountain and Districts County Fair, including an exhibition of drawings.

Fiona is a visual artist whose practice includes curating and writing. Her recent work has focused on issues relating to art and public space in non-metropolitan contexts.
In October-November she will be creating new work on a farm at Mangrove Mountain, NSW, and talking with other artists and organisers also working with art practice in rural/regional contexts.

She devised Ground Up, and Shifting Ground (www.shiftingground.net) and is currently coordinating Verge, an art journal that will engage critically with art in non-metropolitan contexts across the world.

Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland and Gosford City Council.

Inquiries, Neil Berecry-Brown:
nlbb@hunterlink.net.au

Refresh

2008-09-20T21:04:00.003+10:00

New SPRING 08 exhibition at the Christ Church art space, Anglican Parish of Gosford.

The Opening Event for the R-e-f-r-e-s-h exhibition will be held at 3 Mann Street, Gosford on
SUNDAY 28TH September 2008, 7pm - 9pm

More information can be found here.

Image from the WATER exhibition

From Marie Andrews

2008-09-20T20:54:00.001+10:00

Extract from a letter received from Marie Andrews regarding her representations to the Minister for the Arts on behalf of Mr Berecry-Brown.

“Mr Berecry-Brown's suggestions, in particular the number of opportunities for arts development in the Regional City Strategy including an educational/cultural precinct and a cultural centre in the city have been noted.

I understand that Gosford City Council recently made the decision to utilise a building in the city centre as a regeneration hub with the aim of encouraging artists to live and work in the city much along the lines proposed by Mr Berecry- Brown. I have asked that the relevant staff at Arts NSW follow this development and provide further advice.”

It is good to know that our Member for Gosford is working to help the development of art.

Debra Schleger, Cosford City Council Manager Arts and Culture, informs us that she is on the case, but nothing concrete to report at this stage.

In passing

2008-09-06T22:17:00.003+10:00

A quick update.

The Regional Gallery Advisory Committee finally met at the end of last month. It was resolved that the committee be disbanded. Only two members of the community managed to be there. The minuted resolution will be forwarded to Council, as will a recommendation that Council establish an Art and Culture Reference Group to give advice directly to Council.

At the meeting Councillor Drake advised that there has been no progress with the Cultural Spaces and Places Report.

There appear to be no announcements of substance about the arts from new candidates in the upcoming local government elections. The records of those standing again for re-election speak for themselves, and reflect the current state of affairs.

There is a rumour that Gosford Council staff are planning some art activities for Gosford town centre, but nothing more is known by the Back Page.

Road Works

2008-08-21T23:40:00.005+10:00

Road Works (or My Favourite Pothole)

An invitation.

At the Mangrove Mountain Country Fair this year (18th October) there will be a new category in the art section open to all ages and mediums.

We are looking for art made in response to the pleasure of negotiating a way along the road surface of Wisemans Ferry Road, or any other road in the Mangrove Mountain districts, as you experience the impact of a kaleidoscope of colours, materials, textures and topography.

The road is a metaphor as well as a physical, political and economic reality. It has aesthetic values and has been a defining element in the district’s historical development.

The subject can be approached in a wide variety of ways. Already we have people interested in making paintings, digital images, prints, photographs and sculpture.

To make the challenge less hazardous, we have a collection of digital images of the road surface available to work from if required. A CD is available on request.

We would like to invite you to enter. The deadline for works to be delivered to Mangrove Mountain Hall will be in the week leading to the 18th of October. More details will be posted when finalised.

If you need more information, or have any questions, contact:
Neil on 041 1136 145 or nlbb@hunterlink.net.au

There will also be updates at: www.onmangrovemountain.blogspot.com

By coincidence, and as incentive, we record that Huma Bhabha is the recipient of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum's 2008 Emerging Artist Award. She will debut an exhibition of new work at the Museum on September 14th. For this exhibition, she has created Bumps in the Road, a figurative sculpture made of clay, wood, wire, Styrofoam, metal studs, acrylic paint, cast iron, burlap, newsprint, sand, and ash.

A Sense of Place

2008-08-13T20:23:00.002+10:00

The current exhibition at the Gosford Regional Gallery, A Sense of Place, reflects a lack of clarity in curatorial intention and inconsistencies in process. This is a pity as ideas about identity and place are worthy of deeper consideration than was possible given the brief, seemingly to entertain guests of the Sister City Convention.
With curator Tim Braham on sick leave and an urgency to get the shop open in time, some of the artists having been included in an intensive educational process and others brought in at short notice, it is not surprising that the exhibition (including some interesting individual works) was too disjointed to deliver an opportunity to question notions of 'place' more extensively.

The following text was included in the installation can. you. here, and touches on a few concepts that might be of interest.

Place is an imaginative process, a destination.
It is virtual in the sense of its virtuality being an aspect of the actual. (Deleuze)
Beyond topography it is a story, or stories, that need to be told and retold. Topography too is a cultural construct, so place is intellectual property, cultural property.
A location’s particularity exists in a network of differences, so it’s meaning is fluid, relational, and contested.

A sense of place, or consciousness of the particularity of location, with associated emotional responses, requires all the senses. It also needs memory, knowledge and suspension of ego. It is intuitive and creative, involving a complex array of cognitive and perceptual processes. It is assisted by a form of perception sometimes referred to as “allocentric perception” – letting oneself be informed by circumstances – ‘listening’, rather than interpreting situations as opportunities for personal gain.
Understanding of place also can be expanded in the light of changes in technology, in particular rapid transport and digital communications. Of particular interest is what the sociologist Manuel Castells calls “the space of flows”.
The space of flows is best thought of as a myriad of translocal networks, held together by continuous circulation of people, materials and bits. The key element about the space of flows “which justifies us to speak of it as a unique space despite its constitutive fragmentation” is that it enables us to connect distributed entities as if they were in one place, thus fundamentally affecting social geography.
In this environment we live simultaneously in different time ‘spaces’. Amongst these are the slow lived time of social transactions, industrial time of commercial and institutional production and, now of great significance, instant global digital communication.
Distant communications linking people globally is as fast as local connectivity and much faster than ‘on the ground’ transaction. Our sense of place is conditioned by tensions arising from trying to mesh the gears of these different social processes.
Tensions also arise from trying to accommodate what is perceived as a ‘natural” definition of place, that based on physical features and historical identities, with juridical and political-administrative areas. The Mangrove Mountain area, as defined as an entity by geography and history, is divided and administered by three different local councils.
A sense of place is something that must be continually reproduced. It is not something that is solely a result of individual perception of the distinguishing features, but is also the result of the mechanisms that produce collective identity through public and political pedagogy and “learned prosthetic memories”.

Places are distinguished not only for their place-myths, but also for their differences to other places. This is not only the negative understanding of what is lacking in relation to other places, but also what is construed as appropriate for a place; places for this and places for that. Of course the place-myths can also be seen as ways to accentuate differences to reinforce local identity as Levi Straus pointed out in The Raw and the Cooked.
An example of construing or compelling place identity can be seen in the recent state planning strategies, which designated the Mangrove Mountain districts, with an arbitrary eastern border, the F3, as being zoned to protect the potential for extractive industries, with disregard for the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants.
Places are also memory banks for societies. They retain the rhythms of repetition, routine, deportment and gesture imprinted in the somatic memory of individual inhabitants. Many of us can remember where we were when we heard of some significant event taking ‘place’. And we might also recall being ‘out of place’ when our behaviour did not match the prescribed forms.
In this way ‘place’ is causative, it “puts us in our place”, but perhaps this is what we test for in our awareness of a “sense of place”, a feeling of being at home, of belonging, of communion.

Place awareness is an aspect of locality, and is deepened by memories associated with that place, and of previously known places, and personal emotions associated with them. In this way it is an aspect of self-recognition. Matching of this complex individual psychological matrix with the perceived attributes of a place, gives us our nuanced sense of belonging.

No News

2008-08-13T20:14:00.002+10:00

The postponed June meeting of the Gosford Regional Gallery Advisory Committee has not yet been rescheduled.
Likewise there is no news of any progress with the Cultural Spaces and Places Report.
We would ask candidates for the September local government elections about their arts policies, but we don't know who they are.

No Comment

2008-07-25T23:49:00.004+10:00

Was unavailable when asked for a comment about the recent naked attempt at newsworthiness. So offer some pictures instead.

Nudist Zone, FIB-Art '05, Intervention on the beach of Benicassim, August 2005. Via WMMNA

Baa. - Will we bother?

2008-07-05T14:35:00.003+10:00

From its beginnings Gosford has been described as a “sleepy hollow”. While much energy has been expended counting sheep, posts to the Back Page have been slow in coming.

So if you are eagerly waiting for something to happen, perhaps you can relax by counting sheep at the sheep market website (there are 10,000 in case you don’t get finished). The site takes a minute or so to load.

[Thousands of workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk webservice were paid two cents to "draw a sheep facing to the left." Their sheep drawings were collected over a period of 40 days.]

Gosford Art Flux Forum (GAFF) has not been sleeping, but incubating projects and talking with Gosford Real Estate people about a temporary place in Gosford for art. There is little interest in that quarter. There have been some leads followed, but commercial interests in Gosford seem not aware of the importance of art and culture in urban renewal (at least not to the point of sustainable action)

GAFF applied to join Gosford BID (Business Improvement District Association) to contribute expertise to discussions on ways forward for Gosford centre, but the application was not accepted.

In this regard Frank Sartor’s recently released Central Coast Regional Strategy has one or two (that’s about all) mentions about art and culture.
Here they are:

[There are] “forecasted high rates of growth for cultural industries as well as accommodation and hospitality. The Region’s tourism advantages are also likely to increase.

"5.3 Councils are to investigate strategies to ensure sufﬁciently zoned land to enable the provision of comparatively low cost premises for start-up business. Centre strategies should include provision of low-cost ofﬁce and studio space to assist business start-ups for cultural activities."

"Priority will be given to:
• expanding retail and commercial activities in the city centre and ensuring that these functions are not put at risk by residential development
• encouraging and facilitating the development of strategic sites in the city centre that help to achieve the vision for the regional city
• integrating the waterfront with the city centre and developing marina, performance and artistic cultural activities as well restaurants
• requiring a high standard of urban and building design within the town centre
• investigating how through-trafﬁc can be better managed through the CBD or redirected around the CBD."

How many sheep have you got to by now?

No News.
GAFF’s Cultural Grant applications to Gosford City Council were both unsuccessful.
One was to produce a Gosford Art Journal focused on contemporary art, as a pilot for a quarterly publication, and to document past achievements by local artists and groups in the field.
Another was to produce more out-of-gallery projects in the centre of Gosford, including rental assistance for a temporary contemporary art coordination and project place in Gosford centre. The project was a blueprint for a much needed function identified through GAFF research in discussions with practitioners and in the forum at Art inTent.

No doubt there were many worthy projects competing, so for now energies will have to be redeployed and invested where there is a better prospect for sustainable outcomes.

Still on the drawing board.
GAFF Contemporary Art Future Forum
Exhibition by Irish artists (approx 14) coming in October.

Other news.
There has been an indefinite postponement of the June meeting of Gosford Regional Gallery Advisory Committee.

Up at Christ Church, Meredith Brice (merrybrice@hotmail.com) has organised an exhibition, w.a.t.e.r, opening on the 19th of July.

Those of you who know Anne Graham will be interested in an opening of her work (with performance) at the Gosford Regional Gallery on the 18th of July.

A meeting for members of eO inc. is scheduled for the 27th of July to decide about winding up the association.

Meanwhile - enjoy the Sydney Biennale !!!

Number 7,298 is cute.

In the Vineyards '08

2008-06-15T23:40:00.005+10:00

7 October 2008 - 18 January 2009

A massage from Tara:

"I am happy to invite artists to submit a proposals for 2008 exhibition of Sculpture in the Vineyards.

Continuing on from last years success, we hope to put together just as interesting and diverse an exhibition.
Please visit the website for more information and follow the link to the blog for some of last years highlights."

ENTRIES CLOSE ON JULY 31

Tara Morelos - curator
2008sinv@gmail.com

"Artists are invited to submit proposals by Thursday 31 July 2008 for selection be included in 2008 Sculpture in the Vineyards
Set in the picturesque Wollombi Valley, Sculpture in the Vineyards features an innovative array of large-scale outdoor and site-speciﬁc works by local, regional and city based artists. Wollombi, already home to many artists, writers and performers, provides fertile ground for a festival-like atmosphere as a new community of artists come together for the opening weekend.
Sculpture in the Vineyards provides the artist with ample opportunity to showcase their work, engaging visitors over the three month exhibition period by inviting them to enjoy contemporary sculpture amidst the springtime beauty of the Millbook Estate, Undercliff, and Stonehurst Cedar Creek vineyards. Over this time, visitors will also be able to sample unique boutique wines, participate in a creative workshop and join in one of three guided bus tours of the exhibition for an informal and fun day out in lower Hunter Valley."

Art Centre

2008-06-13T22:11:00.004+10:00

It is good to see they are moving ahead with waterfront arts infrastructure in Norway.

New performing arts centre in Kristiansand in Norway

Of course Gosford had a state of the art centre for the arts at one time. The building is still there!

Renewable Energy

2008-06-13T21:49:00.004+10:00

The immanent demise of eO inc. was given greater poignancy with the announcement of an exhibition at Malmo Konsthall, The Hamsterwheel.

“The Hamsterwheel is an exhibition initiated by the Austrian artist Franz West, and was originally presented at La Biennale di Venezia, 2007. The exhibition has since then travelled to the Festival de Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, and Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona. At each exhibition venue the presentation of the works and relation to each other changes dramatically.

The Hamsterwheel can be seen as a playful comment to the wheel of life – the life as an artist. A wheel where we struggle to go forward, to get ahead. That always takes us forward, and still – at the end – nowhere. The exhibition attempts to show art as turbulence.

Having for many years watched, and been part of, many artists initiatives driven by committed, energetic, optimistic artists, that finally collapse under the pressures of a huge voluntary workload with little financial support or return, the “hamsterwheel” seems an apt metaphor.
But is the impassioned energetic activity simply wasted? One suspects that there is a drive mechanism attached to wheel, which, as artists instinctively struggle to go forward, generates power to keep the top heavy apparatus of the art industry lurching onwards.

Replica of a human hamster wheel, used in the 1700s to 'put the sick person back on the right track'. From the Glore Psychiatric Museum.

It is amazing that an activity carried out by a group of people, the majority of whom cannot make enough money from it to earn a living, can give rise to the huge infrastructure of well paid administrators, managers, cultural planners, curators, critics and writers, academics, gallery operators, government officers etc. We are of course grateful for the contribution they make to the industry.

Mourning the Morning

2008-05-29T12:54:00.003+10:00

eO inc., Central Coast Contemporary Arts Initiative, has over the past five years, striven to progress the Central Coast’s Contemporary Arts agenda. Unfortunately, despite the passionate commitment of its members, a point has been reached when they can no longer sustain the energy required to keep eO alive.
Therefore, eOinc. announces that, Shell Collection will be eOinc.’s final exhibition, and the last in a successful programme including f3Xit, col-aberration, re-View and Kvinna-Nainen-Women. Earlier in the organization’s life, it was the agency that sent four Central Coast artists to an Environmental Art Symposium in Korea, and the foundation organization for the Dawn Light Symposium at the Gosford Regional Gallery in 2005.

Central Coast artists Meredith Brice Copland, Sandy James and Maumer Cajic in Cheongju.

Meredith and Sandy proudly display their eO T-shirts

This is not the occasion to detail why it is so difficult for independent artist-directed organizations, or individuals, to be positively engaged in contemporary art in the region. It is enough to say that the art community is diminished by the ending of eOinc. The details are well known, and constitute the hill up which, inevitably, one gets tired of pushing shit.
It is not surprising if artists decide to just get on with their work, and go somewhere where there are more people pushing in the same direction. In these times when the scope of art is global, Gosford needs leading edge artists more than the artists need Gosford.
Engagement is not so difficult if the forms pursued fit the cultural paradigms in vogue, but critical practice will always contest orthodoxy, even in its experimental guise.
Yet despite this, there is a core of contemporary artists who live locally and who would like to see local practice able to participate in the broader intellectual and critical milieu that constitutes contemporary art. It is tragic to see the passion and enthusiasm, the time and effort, the generous community spirit, worn down.
But – don’t be surprised if a few ex-eO members pop up unexpectedly. They might have been pushed to the fringes, but there be a feral and fertile place to play.

The dimming of the Dawn

2008-05-27T22:03:00.004+10:00

eO incorporated is proud to present its final exhibition!

Hanging out

2008-05-18T21:27:00.003+10:00

Berlin street performer Johan Lorbeer

Just hanging about. Don't try this one in Kibble Park, Gosford, Johan. Loitering is prohibited, according to the sign in William Street, with a penalty of $500.
(I thought that was one thing parks were for)

Thanks to Sharyn for the link.

It never rains

2008-05-15T21:34:00.004+10:00

"Rising seas will swamp thousands" (Express Advocate, 14th May) No news there.

Margaret Roberts, who as part of her work in the Dawn Light Symposium in 2005, shows anticipated sea level at the Gosford Regional Gallery.

Cida de Aragon & Steffen Lehmann

2008-05-01T22:15:00.004+10:00

Steffen Lehmann has sent some information about the completion of the work that Cida de Aragon and he have been working on for Brisbane.
This will be of particular interest to those who had the opportunity to meet them both at Art inTent.

Re: *Resilience* - The Women Suffrage Memorial in Brisbane.

"According to the dictum of Adolf Loos, only memorials and tomb stones are worthy of true architectural attention (Loos, A: 'Ornament and Crime', Vienna 1910). 'Architecture is about monuments and graves', said the Viennese architect at the turn of the 20th century.

I am pleased that a small memorial project in Brisbane has come to completion:
The completed artwork by media artist Cida de Aragon in collaboration with Steffen Lehmann is located in close proximity to Brisbane City Hall
and King George Square.

The Women Suffrage Memorial commemorates one hundred years of women's right to participate in state elections. It commemorates the centenary of women suffrage and is a reflective, quiet place where people may walk and sit in the shade. It is a permanent artwork visible from all sides and surrounded by high-rise buildings, so scale was crucial – the memorial needed to be large, with an abstract graphical reading of the historical facts. It therefore uses texts on steel panels and an inserted light box, expressing both resilience and delicacy.

The three silver-coloured steel volumes form a cross in plan - symbolizing the cross on the ballot paper of the first state election in1907, when women were allowed to vote. The kaleidoscopic repetition of the faces represents each of the three female pioneers as well as all women of Queensland. The light box shows historical portrait photos and creates a dignified visual presence, while the slanted steel elements (a metaphor for the struggle) create a sheltered space in the urban landscape.

The work deals with the complexity of contemporary memorials and the problem of commemorating historical achievements in the 21st-Century. It acknowledges the contribution of these dedicated and resourceful women, whose legacy, fought one hundred years ago, is still ongoing and unresolved, as even today we find discrimination against women, for instance in the form of unequal pay. With this commission, we could explore some important questions, such as: What is the connection between collective memory and commemoration? What are the challenges of integrating memorials into the urban fabric, and how is the appropriate scale determined.

End of May, the memorial will be inaugurated by the Premier; the project has also just been selected to be exhibited at the forthcoming Architectural Biennale in Venice (Sept. - Nov. 2008), as part of the Australian exhibition."

I hope you have a chance to see the memorial at your next visit to Brisbane's CBD.

Best wishes,
Steffen

Professor STEFFEN LEHMANN
Ph.D., AADipl.

Chair, School of Architecture and Built Environment
The University of Newcastle.
s_Lab space Laboratory for architectural Research and Design
Homepage: www.slab.com.au

Editor, 'Journal of Green Building'

Sharyn Walker?

2008-04-29T23:19:00.003+10:00

If you have not caught up with Sharyn Walker’s latest forays into public space, real and virtual, her recent 'blog projects' were worth a look . She has put them on hold for now, but when they are restarted we will put up a link
The project is a very nice example of open process work, that invites you into the artist’s 'making in-progress' while playing with the illusion that you think you know who that person is. The subtext is an examination of processes of identity formation.
Using the internet as a medium is now a well established art form, but as a strategy it takes on greater significance and political force given the context of Gosford’s lack of material infrastructure for contemporary art. It also gives Sharyn a potential audience of millions. Sharyn has achieved an impressive amount and variety of work in the past year.

A Place of Fear

2008-04-21T14:19:00.005+10:00

Firstly an update on the report to council; on new directions for the regional gallery, on bringing contemporary art to the centre of Gosford, and the benefits of funding Terri Latella’s YAG.
Trevor Drake, who introduced the motion to Council, tells us that he is working on the report behind the scenes with Debra Schleger (who we know has been trying to facilitate a greater art presence in Gosford CBD).

Yes! – we have discovered that the acronym YAG stands for Yerin Art Gallery.
According to the Gosford Library local studies page, Yerin means A Place of Fear (but in the case of its being the origin for the place name Erina, as “a place of fear” it is applied to a place of initiation)

ORLAN: Post-Identity Strategies

Tallinn Art Hall (Estonia) April 16th - May18th. The exhibition produced in collaboration with Michel Rein Gallery, Paris.

"In the Self-Hybridization series (Pre-Colombian, African and the more recent Native American), ORLAN continues and extends her journey through an infinity of possible physical identities. By using various canons of beauty and aesthetics from different times and places, the artist creates “living” totemic figures, “almost tangible in their virtuality, fascinating in their disturbing appearance and seductive in their artificial otherness.”

Orlan is best known for the surgical-operation-performances of the early nineties where she transformed the operating room into an artist’s studio, and appropriated plastic surgery as a creative art form mirroring the mutating paradigm of contemporary art."

Australia 2020

2008-04-14T09:55:00.004+10:00

The issue of arts funding was on the agenda at Belinda Neal’s forum at Erina on Saturday in preparation for Australia 2020.

The session dealing with Topic 3, Towards a Creative Australia, was guided towards consideration for the individual creator by Chris Bearman’s opening address.
Along with the obligatory ‘we have so many talented people here’ (Which other place will not say the same?) the discussion tended to focus on local problems rather than national objectives. In particular, our dilemma, and consequent funding limitations, occasioned by the region being categorised as neither urban nor regional; lack of cohesion and cooperation within the local arts community; a crisis in art education, and the talent drain.
However it was possible to get on record, yet again, the essential component in moving Towards a Creative Australia, that is, adequate financial support and respect for the individual artist and small to medium sized art organizations. I say “yet again” as the research has been done indicating the imbalance between the funding for the primary producers and that of the major institutions and a burgeoning class of arts managers.
It was pointed out that the platform for any hub of creative industries is provided as a collateral outcome of having a dynamic contemporary art scene, that individual and small group art funding is less that 7% of the Oz Council’s arts budget, and that the mean income for visual artists is a little over $17,000 per year. The percentage is even smaller for individual artists, when it is realized that state and local governments concentrate their resources on infrastructure.
Australia needs artists to make their unique contribution to the national debate and cultural environment. This often entails no financial return to the artist. To have a Creative Australia we need to provide greater financial support, to let artists do what they do best -– make art.

It was interesting to see in the session on Topic 4, Future Directions for Australian Economy, that Caroline Veldhuizen concluded her opening address with a Powerpoint presentation that showed four key objectives for the economic development of the Central Coast, and that two of them could have been lifted straight from Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class.
Her graphs showed, amongst other things, the growing importance of the knowledge based enterprises, but still maintained the ignorant categorising of art with entertainment and recreation.

The session on Agriculture was dominated by issues of Intellectual Property rights, something that artists, also ‘primary producers’ and creators of immaterial value, are also grappling with.

Unfortunately I was not able to stay for all the sessions, but regardless of whether the ideas somehow make their way to Canberra, the Australia 2020 initiative already has been useful as a form of dialogue to raise big picture issues, as well as serving as an indicator of how we can reshape political processes.

Logos

2008-04-14T09:43:00.007+10:00

Below is a contribution to Australia’s preparation for the big sports event in Beijing, thought it worth passing on for all those who have not yet seen it. (received from Nina Angelo)

No news on the Report to Council being prepared. It seems that it will be at least a week before the process for preparing it will be addressed. Likewise no one seems to know what YAG is.

Posting has been a bit sparse lately with deadlines approaching. Yes, it is that time again when we artists are reminded of our place in the scheme of things, as we compete for scraps of financial support to keep the practice afloat.

We know where you've been

2008-04-01T23:57:00.004+11:00

Bio reading of the city.

Work by Tuur Van Balen, student of Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London, who, at the work-in-progress-show at RCA, offered tap water (kindly provided by Thames Water) and asked visitors to donate a urine sample along with their postcode. He added the samples and postcodes to a map of London which contained biological information.

He commented “I'm interested in how cities are not as much made up by streets and buildings as they are made up by our behaviour and experiences.
These experiences are heavily mediated by technology, just look at the way mobile communication networks totally reshaped our cities.
We're on the verge of a new area, an area that relies on the understanding of our body and the understanding of our DNA. What does this mean for the cities of tomorrow? Will we have DNA-surveillance and discrimination? Bio-identities and communities? ...

The biological map in the interim show was an 'intervention' using the show as a platform to get feedback on these ideas. By gathering urine samples, I want to make people think about how their biological waste contains information. Pissing in public might become like leaving your digital data up for grabs, spitting in the streets like leaving your computer unprotected on the internet.”

Professional Practice

2008-04-01T23:47:00.003+11:00

Just back, and clearing out the inbox, so thought I would share these snippets from Nettime before deleting.

"I think we need a non-commercial public sphere, as a complement to other proletarian and marginal public spheres which can put pressure on the state and make up for the insufficiencies of formal democratic representation. In other words, I think there should be an anarchic civil-society sphere that produces political confrontation and conflict. I am not naive or bitter enough to think that can be the only dimension of social existence!"

best, Brian

“I visited Glasgow about 18 months ago and was able to sense in a matter of days the attraction the city holds for creative people, and the way the arts are being used to regenerate what was formerly a declining industrial centre."

The complicitness of artists and 'arts professionals' in the instrumental use of the visual arts as propaganda for the rapid neoliberal structural readjustment of the city really could not be more explicit. However, I am bemused by the seemingly prevalent academic spectre of an art "passionately producing alternative visions and utopias for today’s late capitalist society".

Cheers,
Leigh

"What would happen if art stops with relentlessly criticizing the existing state of affairs, or with passionately producing alternative visions and utopias for today’s late capitalist society? What if art would, on the contrary, fully identify with and affirm the prevailing norms, values, practices, etc., even adding some oil to the fire? The latter would, in other words, demand of artists to no longer automatically assume the role of the ‘good guys’, the eternal idealists, dreamers, etc., who always try to make the best out of the current situation, pushing the system to be something other and better than it is. It would, inversely, ask of them to stop protecting society from what it wants and turn it into the worst version of itself, so as to confront it with its own unsustainability and undesirability."
Ned Rossiter on:
Cultural Activism Today, The Art of Over-Identification

YAG???

2008-03-25T23:48:00.002+11:00

A motion was passed at tonight’s Council meeting which might be of interest.

The gist being that a report to council will be prepared on:
1. Developing an indigenous and others cultures gallery at East Gosford;
2. That Council review the purposes and role of the Regional Gallery in the long term, and its relationship to the City Centre and previous plans for its expansion and;
3. Determine the economic benefits of supporting YAG with the development of a gallery and contemporary art space in Gosford, including how it would interact with Gosford City art and culture policies, plans and strategies.

The motion was stitched together by Trevor Drake and Terri Latella.

I do not know what YAG stands for, but it would seem to be a non-profit association currently being cobbled together by Terri Latella, who will be on its executive. A site is already being negotiated at the eastern end of Erina Street.

You know something is going on here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.
(Bob Dylan)

Tactical cartography

2008-03-23T22:52:00.005+11:00

The emotional mapping project at Art inTent is being covered on the Gosford Times blog, for those who have not checked it recently.
When discussion came around to the work of Christian Nold, I was interested to hear from Anne Graham about new work she is doing using emotional responses measured by GSR (Galvanic Skin Response), and the significance memory had regarding the feelings people had about places, which were picked up by the apparatus.

Christian Nold's Bio Mapping is a community mapping project in which, over the last four years, more than 1500 people have taken part . In the context of regular, local workshops and consultations, participants are wired up with an innovative device which records the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of the emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. People re-explore their local area by walking the neighbourhood with the device, and on their return a map is created which visualises points of high and low arousal. By interpreting and annotating this data, communal emotion maps are constructed that are packed full of personal observations which show the areas that people feel strongly about and truly visualise the social space of a community.

Another useful read on the subject is Jessica Clark's The New Cartographers, which contains good links. To quote a little, "In many ways, these mapping tools are re-locating us as the center of our personal universes. We no longer go to maps to find out where we are. Instead, we tell maps where we are and they form around us on the fly, a sensation that can be comforting or stifling. After all, while finding the right map can orient you, having dozens can threaten to tip the signal-to-noise ratio toward cacophony."

"Maps are everywhere these days. The ubiquity of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile directional devices, interactive mapping tools and social networks is feeding a mapping boom. Amateur geographers are assigning coordinates to everything they can get their hands on—and many things they can’t. “Locative artists” are attaching virtual installations to specific locales, generating imaginary landscapes brought vividly to life in William Gibson’s latest novel, Spook Country. Indeed, proponents of “augmented reality” suggest that soon our current reality will be one of many “layers” of information available to us as we stroll down the street."

Finally, there are some examples of mapping as an art of rhetorical engagement; a process where art does not simply reflect upon its context but, as Trevor Plagens says, takes a "position" within what ever matrices of power constitute that reality.
The following quotes are from An Atlas of Radical Cartography, Ed. Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat, Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press, 2007. (Ten essays with accompanying maps)

"There is a Long tradition of making maps that present alternative interpretations of various landscapes and reveal implicit relationships between power, control, and spatial practice."

The essay Tactical Cartographies, by the Institute of Applied Autonomy, which I thought pertinent to our project in Gosford, contained the following:

"Embracing the potential for maps to be used in advocacy is an explicit recognition of maps as rhetorical devices. In short maps don’t merely represent space, they shape arguments; they set discursive boundaries and identify objects to be considered. When individuals make their
own maps, they offer an expression of what they consider important, what they consider to be "of interest," and for what they are willing to fight. In openly acknowledging the rhetorical power of maps and positioning themselves as interested parties taking sides in contentious debates, tactical cartographers offer a direct challenge to the presumed neutrality of mapmakers as mere visualizers of spatial data. Tactical cartographers make claims about
landscapes, but also about their own status as authors of spatial narrative. In creating maps that confront power, tactical cartographers claim their right to set the rules of debate and to provide interpretations of local events with both an authority and a contingency equal to
official representations."

inTent update

2008-03-19T22:22:00.010+11:00

Art inTent update.

An inspiring presentation was given by Steffen Lehmann, Astra Howard catalysed a valuable discussion about local issues, we were joined by artists Cida de Aragon and Anne Graham who contributed insight gained from their extensive practices, artworks by Sharyn Walker and Judy Harris appeared in the Park, people contributed to an intriguing emotional map of Gosford, Councillor Vicki Scott attended representing herself as well as the Mayor, and Member for Gosford, Marie Andrews, opened the event and stayed well beyond her scheduled time to take part in the open forum session.

The forum will continue, and a time will be scheduled soon for this, as the conversation was extremely productive, but had to be curtailed when the tent removers arrived.

Professor Steffen Lehmann – Key Note Presentation.

Matters arising, DVD projections, and further psychogeography outcomes will be presented in Gosford as soon as approval can be obtained for a site.

Unscheduled installation/tableaux by Judy Harris

The mapping project proved popular, and requests for late additions have delayed its display. We expect it to be on the Gosford Times blog within the next couple of days as a work-in-progress.

Liz Wright considers her options.

We must acknowledge once again Marie Andrews’ engagement and interest in the future of art in the Gosford region.

[Images thanks to Sharyn Walker and Fiona Doyle]

inTent forum

2008-03-07T18:57:00.001+11:00

Forum/discussion sessions at Art inTent

Schedule.
Following presentations by professor Steffen Lehman and Astra Howard, there will be a short break after which Anne Graham will address issues arising from her considerable experience as an artist, and I will speak about locality and regionalism in a global context, as well as critique the function of 'art for social betterment'.
Integrated with words from Anne and I, will be round table discussions about local issues in light of the presentations.

The nature of Click Here as a project will be put in the context of related projects of urban intervention occurring around the world in what is becoming a mainstream genre of practice.

The purpose of the discussions is to share our perceptions about the current character of contemporary art and to envision its future in the local context. From this we will move towards some proposals and strategies for the next steps forward in Gosford.

Some recurring topics have emerged from recent conversations with local artists, and we will endeavour to address these as well as issues arising on the day.

Local opportunities for strengthening art milieu (resources and impediments)
Communication and coordination
Locus focus
Financial support
Education, and critical context needed for, contemporary practice.
Action plan

Art inTent

2008-03-02T22:57:00.005+11:00

Art inTent

Announcing the next activity in the Click Here series of art interventions in the centre of Gosford, Art inTent (Ceci n’est pas Baba).

Art inTent is a being organised by Brown’s Cows Art Projects and Gosford Art Flux Forum, who will be joined for this event by eO inc.

Open from 11am, in a tent in Kibble Park on Saturday the 8th of March will be presentations and restagings of past projects in the Click Here series, including the Bloomsday psychogeographic dérive. There will also be an opportunity for people to contribute their impressions to a collective “mapping” of Gosford.

If you missed, the Space Between, Buy Nothing – Get One Free, Astra Howard’s SPI vehicle, Scoop Shadow, or Streaming by Korean group KoPAS, this will be your chance to catch up.
There will also be new works, information about contemporary art groups in the region, and a mini-workshop/introduction to a project by eO inc.

Marie Andrews, MP for Gosford, will be there to officially open activities at 1pm.

The Key Note speaker at Art inTent will be Dr Steffen Lehmann. Art inTent is the next in the Click Here series of art activities being conducted in the centre of Gosford by GAFF and Brown’s Cows Art Projects, assisted by a Cultural Grant from Gosford City Council.

Dr Steffen Lehmann is the Artistic Director of the ‘Back to the City’ project in Newcastle, a new biannual public arts festival about temporary interventions in public space. Its aim is to gain new readings of the city and experiment with innovative forms of collaboration, bringing into focus the revitalisation process of Newcastle's city centre.

“Steffen brings a wealth of international experience and extensive knowledge of curatorship to the exhibition of public art. His practice, teaching and research demonstrates an enduring commitment to involve the local community in excellent exhibition projects about the contemporary city. He is a German-born architect and urban designer and holds the Chair in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle. He is Founding Director of the s_Lab Space Laboratory for architectural Research and Design (Sydney-Berlin).”

In regard to the Gosford Art Flux Forum, Click Here project and Art inTent, he said: “I congratulate the organisers. This exciting initiative is based on a continuing dialogue between the different disciplines, and different worlds will be engaging with each other in this collaborative site-specific endeavour.” – Professor Steffen Lehmann Ph.D., AADipl. Chair, School of Architecture and Built Environment. The University of Newcastle.

Elephants boycott The Room

As with the parable of the six blind men asked to describe an elephant, six topics examining aspects of contemporary art practice in Gosford will make up a framework for open discussions. These hybrid performance installation-roundtable discussions have been designed to facilitate informal conversations. Come along and give your opinion! Neil Berecry-Brown will offer some thoughts on locality and regionalism in a global context, as well as critique the function of 'art as a tool for social betterment' in relation to local practice.

Joining us will be Professor Anne Graham, School of Drama, Fine Art & Music, The University of Newcastle. Anne Graham is an artist and an academic; she teaches performance, installation and sculpture. She has exhibited in the Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne Festivals, the Biennale of Sydney, Perspecta and in many curated exhibitions nationally and internationally. In 2000 she completed ‘Passage’ a major permanent public art work for the City of Sydney. She has recently completed major public artworks for the Tweed River Regional Gallery and the Newcastle City Council. She has worked extensively in Japan and has recently designed a public park for the Second Echigo Tsumari Triennial in Nigata Province, Japan.

Astra Howard, who was in Gosford in December with her SPIV project, will present documentation and ideas about her innovative form of art. Astra Howard is an Action Researcher/Performer working predominantly within public city spaces. She has completed a PhD centred on facilitating communication via performance-based interventions. Her most recent solo works have been commissioned by the City of Melbourne, the Frankston City Council and the Queensland Department of Communities. Astra also works in a crisis accommodation centre in Sydney, designing and facilitating educational programs and professional services for the homeless, marginalised and disadvantaged community.

During the event no harm will be inflicted unnecessarily on elephants in the room, real or imagined.

Details of the discussion section of the schedule will be posted before Saturday.

Double Click

2008-02-12T00:25:00.000+11:00

It seems the "With One Click" post has been ruffling some feathers.

Big Tent Revival

2008-02-08T22:24:00.000+11:00

Big Tent Revival. Second Coming of the Tent to Kibble Park.

Weather permitting, we will pitch the Art Tent,
“Ceci n’est pas Baba”,
on Saturday the 8th of March, 2008.

(Image credit - Banksy)

With a Programme to Edify, Amuse and Provoke.

It will feature:
Presentations and restaging of past projects in the Click Here Series, including the Bloomsday psychogeographic dérive.
Make your mark!
There will be an opportunity to contribute your impressions to a collective “mapping” of Gosford.
Technical wonders!
We will make use of new technical advancements on the Magic Lantern, the Lumière brothers’ Cinematographe, and Edison’s “Talking Machine”, the Gramophone (all demonstrated in the Gosford School of Arts in the 1890s), in the form of DVD and PowerPoint projections.
Live Conversation!
As with the parable of the six blind men asked to describe an elephant, six topics examining aspects of contemporary art practice in Gosford will make up a schedule for open discussions. These hybrid performance installation-roundtable discussions have been designed to facilitate informal conversations. Come along and give your opinion!

During the event no harm will be inflicted unnecessarily on elephants in the room, real or imagined.

Watch this space for updates, schedules and details.

with just one click

2008-01-29T23:37:00.000+11:00

Appearing in the Express Advocate, 30th January, and other places.
Story picked up from the Gosford Times.

Scoop 2

2008-01-28T23:12:00.000+11:00

The installation of a crocheted intervention/restoration in the Memorial fountain in Burns Place Gosford happened on Australia Day, 26th of January, an even more peaceful and quiet Saturday than usual in that part of town.
Congratulation to Sharyn, Betty and Robyn for subtle work, which softly-softly engages in public issues with a positive and generous attitude. The context of the work, both materially and politically, gave it particular relevance.

While crocheting is usually regarded as craft, the use of crocheting in art does not mean it is merely craft in the decorative sense.
“Many contemporary artists are using craft to make diverse and timely political statements. Because creating crafts is so often social and communal, they can play a vital role in the public sphere” from, introduction to the “Crafting Protest” seminar program at the New School, New York, coincidentally also on the 26th of January, 2008.
One might also add that the use of social and communal processes in itself positions the work such that it critiques careerism and the artist-marketing model of practice.
Further information on the eO blog.

Burns Place: Click Here

"Scoop"

2008-01-22T23:43:00.000+11:00

Click where?

Burns Place, Gosford on Saturday the 26th of January.

To be seen this week in Burns Place, Gosford, an intervention by three artists who will install a crocheted replacement part in the vandalised memorial fountain designed by Gerald and Margot Lewers. The crocheted “shadow” is to be a substitution for the missing “scoop” shaped copper part of the original sculpture.
This project was initiated and coordinated by Sharyn Walker with the collaboration of Betty Saez and Robyn Wainman.
Sharyn has been leading a campaign to have the long neglected piece of civic art respected and restored, and its designers duly recognised.
The irony of artists crocheting a cosy, woolly, leaky substitution, in these days of water shortages and global warming, to a fountain turned off due to the mismanagement of water supplies, goes somewhat to slaking our thirst for complex content in publicly engaged work.
It is also nice to see public art that is not intended for entertainment, but woven modestly into the fabric of our urban experience.

This subtle mending, with a view to subsequent proper restoration, reminds me of the Mended Spiderweb series by American artist Nina Katchatadourian. Other works can be seen on her web site.

The following is a quote from Katchatadourian’s site. A bit long but worth it for the way it reveals an open ended dialogical working process that yields to natural processes without the work loosing any of its tension and strength.

“In the forest and around the house where I was living, I searched for broken spiderwebs which I repaired using red sewing thread. All of the patches were made by inserting segments one at a time directly into the web. Sometimes the thread was starched, which made it stiffer and easier to work with. The short threads were held in place by the stickiness of the spider web itself; longer threads were reinforced by dipping the tips into white glue. I fixed the holes in the web until it was fully repaired, or until it could no longer bear the weight of the thread. In the process, I often caused further damage when the tweezers got tangled in the web or when my hands brushed up against it by accident.
The morning after the first patch job, I discovered a pile of red threads lying on the ground below the web. At first I assumed the wind had blown them out; on closer inspection it became clear that the spider had repaired the web to perfect condition using its own methods, throwing the threads out in the process. My repairs were always rejected by the spider and discarded, usually during the course of the night, even in webs which looked abandoned. The larger, more complicated patches where the threads were held together with glue often retained their form after being thrown out, although in a somewhat "wilted" condition without the rest of the web to suspend and stretch them.”

It is to be hoped that the work in Burns Place by Sharyn, Betty and Robyn will similarly result in the repair of the fountain’s original design.

Images from the installation, and background information, will be posted following the installation on Saturday.

It seems that subversive sewing circles and other such seditious activities are slipping social commentary past the surveillance systems (they are watching you Sharyn) in the guise of craft. Susan Hillman’s camouflage sweaters being an example we have covered earlier.

Some more examples can be found in "The history of guerilla knitting", a talk by Rose White at the recent Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.
Also - the exhibition, Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting - Museum of Arts & Design, NYC.

And- David Cole’s “Knitting Machine” project which used two excavators wielding telephone poles as needles to knit a giant American flag in the courtyard of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Lets get immaterial.

2008-01-14T23:51:00.000+11:00

The incredible lightness of art.

Brown’s Cows’ 2007 Click Here happenings in Gosford, the Space Between and Buy Nothing, Get one Free, juxtaposed immateriality of poetry presented as ephemeral illuminated text (light) with the physicality of performed experience (the Body). With this in mind, the installation “Projections” by Jenny Holzer, currently at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, has particular resonance.

In this work text images of lines of poetry are projected from opposite ends of the gallery, flooding the space with poetic illumination. Giant beanbags on the floor anchor people to their physical presence and accentuate discrepancies in scale.
Following the last post on BP which posited Gosford ‘crater’ as a gallery to flood with the poetry of art actions and forms, Holzer’s installation provides a useful metaphor for a way that art might function in relation to the material world, constantly devising and refining a meta-text to succinctly clarify our contemporary “being, doing and becoming”. (As well as being an impressive work in itself).
Art seems to have amnesia for the immediate past and reinvents styles from twenty or so years previous, erasing the intervening forms and practices of artists as the industry pushes to champion "new emerging talent" in the market place. Urs Fisher’s work in the last post immediately recalls Gordon Matta Clark, Richard Long, Robert Smithson and others.

An installation Shibboleth 2007 at the Tate Modern by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo shares the same pedigree, and like Holzer and Fisher the artist has chosen the ‘Art’ space as referent context for meaning.
It might seem perverse, but the element of risk in the works is appealing. Is it a return to the Sublime or simply a reaction to our increasingly designed, controlled and sanitized environment and a desire for authenticity?
It could be argued that the current fad for art performances and installations that restage significant historical events, despite their essentially ironic positioning, also engage this desire.

An example of this form some of you might have seen was the reenactment at Artspace Sydney of Joseph Beuys’ “Coyote” (I like America and America Likes Me, 1974) by English artist Andre Stitt and a dingo.
Andre is interested in doing some work in Gosford with his group from Cardiff in 2009, so perhaps we can talk to him about it then.

Reenactments and projections from Click Here are scheduled for the tent in the Park in March.

Gosford as Gallery

2008-01-09T14:51:00.000+11:00

Kibble Park was selected for the recent Click Here event by KoPAS to amplify awareness of the topography that defines Gosford Town, and the hidden flows that naturally and emotionally effect our sense of place.

[I am using Gosford ‘Town’ rather than ‘City’ as I think it better reflects the reality – not aspirations. A city is such because it has an identity derived from its constituent activities rather than because of a governmental designation and being a jurisdiction of governance.
A place also can be defined by what it is not, in comparison to other places. Here is a list of City attributes. How does Gosford score?
Central research library, museum, town hall, contemporary art centre, botanic gardens, moving image theatre, central park, university, artists studio quarter, quality newspaper.]

The proponents of various town planning strategies for Gosford, and who talk of ‘precincts’, seem unaware that the town is an integrated whole, with movement corridors and appropriate sites for functions geographically indicated.

Gosford Town itself is ONE precinct encompassed by Rumbalara Reserve, Presidents Hill and the Waterfront – and in any case, is too small to be dissected further.

The Click Here project assumes the Gosford ‘hollow’ as its locus operandi, in old art-speak, its Gallery. So it is interesting to hear of the work by Urs Fischer who dug a ‘Gosford’ shaped hollow within a gallery.

Extract from the New York Times:
“At Gavin Brown, Urs Fischer takes a jackhammer to Chelsea its self.
By Jerry Saltz
Urs Fischer has reduced Gavin Brown's Enterprise to a hole in the ground, and it is one of the most splendid things to have happened in a New York gallery in a while. Experientially rich, buzzing with energy and entropy, crammed with chaos and contradiction, and topped off with the saga of subversion that is central both to the history of the empty-gallery-as-a-work-of-art but also to the Gavin Brown experience itself, this work is brimming with meaning and mojo. It was also a Herculean project.
A 38-foot-by-30-foot crater, eight feet deep, extends almost to the walls of the gallery, surrounded by a fourteen-inch ledge of concrete floor. A sign at the door cautions, THE INSTALLATION IS PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS AND INHERENTLY INVOLVES THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH; intrepid viewers can, all the same, inch their way around the hole. Fischer's pit is titled You, and it took ten days to build, costing around $250,000 of Brown's money. (Heaven only knows what his landlord thought of it.) The gallery's ground-level garage doors facilitated the jackhammering and removal of the concrete floor and the use of a backhoe to excavate tons of dirt and debris, after which a crew closed off the space with immaculate white walls. There's also a cramped antechamber, superfluous but well executed: A smaller reproduction of the main gallery, down to the air ducts and electrical outlets, it’s sort of a mini-Me You. Ducking through its pint-size entrance is like going though a door in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. You have to crouch as you enter and watch where you step in preparation for the more precarious and thrilling main event beyond.

Streaming

2008-01-01T09:37:00.002+11:00

Following the performances in Gosford, we will relax with the artists at a picnic on the beach at Terrigal. You are welcome to join us - BYO whatever.

Parallels and palindromes

2007-12-29T00:02:00.000+11:00

At this pivotal time of the year, at the fulcrum, when we are looking both backwards and forwards, I am reminded of the texts by Susan Hillman in the Space Between.
If you enjoyed her moving LED 'palindromes', you might be interested in the paintings 'Rorschach Shopkeeper Works' of Ken Lum, also from Vancouver, currently showing at
L.A. Galerie Lothar Albrecht, Frankfurt.

And a quote from another Canadian, Marshall McLuhan, apropos the road ahead, ‘We drive into future using only our rear view mirror.’

Some hay in the manger

2007-12-21T14:42:00.001+11:00

Very Best wishes for the Festive Season
from the Brown Cows

Click Here, KoPAS

2007-12-21T10:45:00.000+11:00

Streaming

The next in the Click Here series of art activities in the centre of Gosford produced by Brown’s Cows Art Projects and Gosford Art Flux Forum.

Streaming consists of three art performances “in homage to the Common Stream” by members of the Korean group KoPAS, also performing at this years Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland.

River by Baek Ki Kim
Facing against the Wind by Yong Gu Shin
Le Duex by Jae Seon Moon

KoPAS, led by Baek Ki Kim, is one of the leading groups in Seoul, with up to 40 participating artists from all disciplines and art forms. The artists coming to Gosford for Streaming have all performed in many cities around the world. Some Gosford people might remember Yong Gu Shin’s installation and performances in the Dawn Light Symposium in 2005.

See KoPAS at:
Kibble Park in the heart of Gosford
Saturday, January 5th 2008 1.00 pm.

Buried beneath Kibble Park in the heart of Gosford are the old town wells and the streams that once sustained the aboriginal people and early European arrivals.

On this site in January 2008, Baek Ki Kim, Yong Gu Shin and Jae Seon Moon will perform works whose symbolic and metaphoric meaning resonate with hidden currents in the land beneath the streets of Gosford, and take fleeting shape in the invisible streams in the air.

These are performances in poetic form that express through the metaphors of flow and change, and the symbolic meanings of water and air; of the river and wind, our common hopes, needs, emotions and strength.

On the Commons, in the public domain, around the town well, lives merge, as streams become a river. A river of streams survives. Like the common stream, buried but still alive, and the flow of the breathing air, still free.

This project regards water, the natural world and creative culture as a trust in common, and is not sponsored by any global water bottling and fizzy drink corporation. As taxpayers we sponsor them.

Click Here is supported in part by a Cultural Grant from Gosford City Council.

GoG postponed

2007-12-03T20:59:00.000+11:00

The heavy rain on Saturday morning meant that the scheduled artists’ forum, Gaff on the Green”, had to be postponed.

However because of the high level of interest in having a gathering of this kind to discuss the role of contemporary art in the future of Gosford, and of a coordinated Creative Gosford initiative, the event will be rescheduled for early next year.

A fortunate outcome, despite the, rain, was that the Guest Speaker Associate Professor Adrian Hall had a chance to meet and talk to a number of Gosford artists. He has expressed a strong interest in returning to offer whatever help he can. His international expertise in education and contemporary practice will be a welcome contribution to strengthening skills and focusing professional opportunities in the region.

Discussions will be continuing with him regarding his role in the formation of an independent tertiary “contemporary art college” in Gosford to service some of the region’s educational needs locally.

Until the next Gaff on the Green, we will use the time to develop ideas before returning to Kibble Park. If you have some topics you would like to add to the conversation, please email them to us , and perhaps some informal discussions can be arranged soon.

The image is of an art performance by Adrian Hall. It took place at Somersby in 1998 as part of Eco-poetics, an international artists project organised by Synapse Art Initiatives.

Gaff on the Green - speaker

2007-11-28T22:35:00.000+11:00

Gaff on the Green.
Special Guest speaker. 3pm.

Assoc. Professor Adrian Hall (retired) will give the keynote talk at Gaff on the Green.

This is a unique opportunity for us. Adrian, since moving to New Zealand after leaving COFA, has been unavailable for events such as this. For me, and many others, his absence and his past frequent calling to account of art practices lacking critical rigour, has been sorely missed – along with his humour. So it is great to have a chance to hear from him again.

Adrian Hall, as an artist and educator, has been an inspirational and catalytic presence in Australia as well as in a number of countries overseas. He has an uncompromising integrity in his approach to his work and a commitment to the compelling and enigmatic nature of art as a vital process of knowing.

As a key figure at SCA in the 1980s, he has had a lasting influence on students and colleagues alike.

Gaff on the Green

2007-11-25T22:44:00.000+11:00

GAFF ON THE GREEN

We would like to inform you of an event to take place in the centre of Gosford City, and to invite you to join us.

The event is Gaff on the Green, and will take place on Saturday the 1st of December in Kibble Park. It is part of a series of contemporary art activities collectively titled “Click Here” organised by Brown’s Cows Art Projects and carried out in conjunction with GAFF (Gosford Art Flux Forum) incorporated.

We will be joined for Gaff on the Green by eO incorporated, the Central Coast Contemporary Art Initiative.

Gaff on the Green, as part of “Click Here,” is supported by a Cultural Grant from Gosford City Council.

Marie Andrews, member of state parliament for Gosford, will open the GAFF at 3pm.

The directors of Brown’s Cows and GAFF are working to bring art and cultural activities into the heart of the town; to contribute to its regeneration and redefinition as a vibrant regional capital, and to involve local emerging artists in practices and issues at the leading edge of art.

For Gaff on the Green, a tent will be erected on the “hill” in Kibble Park, where discussion groups and forums will take place in the afternoon, with a visually illustrated seminar, “at the Still Point” scheduled for the evening.

Discussions will canvass a number of issues concerning local artists including:

Resources for contemporary practices.
Priorities in infrastructure support planning.
Future art.
Keeping and nurturing emerging artists in the region.
A “Creative Gosford” action taskforce.
The Spaces and Places Framework Report.
The Creative (?) Industries
Provision of education for contemporary art professionals.
Etc. BYO

If you have any issues you would like to have added, forward them to us, or bring them along on the day.
Outcomes from the discussions will be taken forward appropriately.

Schedule at this stage:
2pm. Artists and artists groups Open Discussion.
3pm. Short addresses by Maries Andrews MP for Gosford, Gosford Councillors and Debra Schleger, Manager Art and Culture.
3.15. Key note address. (Surprise guest)
3.30 –4pm. sessions for future plans and strategies as a consequence of ideas emerging from previous discussions and conversations.

In the evening we will hold a “seminar” presentation on the subject of live art; performance, body work, dance and hybrid forms. It will take place after dark so that video projections can be used to complement the discussion.

For further information, contact:
gaff@brownscows.com

Interupted service

2007-11-23T09:05:00.000+11:00

After being out of commission for the past week due to the quality of Telstra’s service (or lack of it), Back Page is operating with a cobbled together dial-up connection and a very long cable to a neighbouring phone.

Sorry for the scarcity of updates in the lead up to Gaff on the Green.
More soon.

Election 07. Liberal

2007-11-23T09:02:00.000+11:00

Liberal’s Arts Policy.
ZERO.
James Larson, Jim Lloyd’s Press Officer, assured us Mr. Lloyd would comment on it when it was released.
That the Liberals have no interest in including the arts in any future plans, they might have, is comment enough.

Election 07. Greens.

2007-11-17T22:09:00.000+11:00

In response to our invitation to candidates for the seat of Robertson in the Federal Election to share their arts policies with us and to comment in relation to the Gosford region, we received the following letter from Mira Wroblewski.

"THE GREENS - ART AND CULTURE POLICY FOR GOSFORD AND THE CENTRAL COAST.

The Art and Culture Policy for the Central Coast should be based on the cultural and artistic needs of our community, its talent and the attraction of tourists to the region. This would entail an integrated approach to cultural infrastructure planning for Gosford. There is a need to embed arts and cultural development into the life of the city and the community. Art and cultural development are a necessary and integral part of the redevelopment of Gosford as the regional capital of the Central Coast.

The development of a cultural precinct and a regional cultural facility are crucial to the animation of the city and the generation of local talent and local jobs. There is an urgent need in Gosford to develop a critical mass of arts and cultural development activities and amenities in the city for the community and the greater region. This precinct must be close to the foreshore area and compatible amenities such cafes, restaurants, public open space and importantly, public transport. An emphasis must also be placed on the importance of outdoor cultural spaces. We need to create a vibrant hub of cultural activity that is accessible to the public.

Such a cultural arts and performance precinct must include a mixture of uses to complement the diverse range of artistic and cultural performances and talent we have in our region. A cultural and performance precinct of this kind will invigorate the cultural sector and achieve the cultural objectives that are necessary to create quality living, recreational and social environments that are both appealing to the wider community and visitors. This will attract and stimulate investment around the precinct. Above all else a cultural and performance precinct for Gosford must incorporate the community identity, aspirations and the spirit of place which must include the indigenous community to ground art and culture within an area that allows for the growth of artistic talent and its performance. This place must feel neutral and central to everyone gathering. Such a place will have historical and cultural meaning for the whole community on the Central Coast.

Gosford needs a world class facility as part of a cultural and performance precinct that meets the growing need of art and cultural performances this would include a venue for musical and operatic performances, rehearsal spaces for music and dance, spaces for environment and art. A cultural and performance precinct will allow for and enable the greatest variety of art forms within the region with an emphasis on indigenous culture, community arts as well as 'high' arts such as classical concerts, art exhibitions sourcing local and travelling exhibitions. Drama and dance included.

The emphasis is on a cultural and performance precinct that celebrates our natural heritage and expands on the artistic talents that abound in our region."

Mira Wroblewski
Greens Candidate for Robertson

Many thanks Mira for providing us with the Greens Policy, and for the attention you have given to addressing the specific circumstances facing the future of the arts in the Gosford region.

Some specifics of the overall policy for the 2007 election are available, and we will discuss Gosford issues further in the next week.

As with the state election, the Greens have researched the substance of matters relating to art and culture as they directly impact the community. Their demonstrated commitment to listening to input, and addressing specific objectives, is greatly appreciated.

Election 07. Labor.

2007-11-17T21:47:00.000+11:00

In response to our invitation to candidates for the seat of Robertson in the Federal Election to share their arts policies with us and to comment in relation to the Gosford region, we received the following letter from Belinda Neal.

"Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding Labor's Art's policy.

Federal Labor have release a detailed Art's policy recently launched by the Shadow Minister for Arts, Peter Garrett MP. A copy of this policy can be found at - http://www.alp.org.au/policy/index.php#arts_heritage_sport_recreation_&_tourism

The Central Coast is a unique region with many people choosing to live here to take advantage of the relaxed coastal environment. I am very supportive of measures that will add to this lifestyle and this includes advocating for additional entertainment and increased participation in all forms of Art.

Labor's Arts Policy 'New Directions for the Arts' includes an extra $10 million for the Australia Council over four years, with an emphasis on funding for projects in regional areas, including the Central Coast.

In addition to this Labor has promised to establish new arts innovation centres, of which one may be located on the Central Coast, along with greater financial support for indigenous artists.

I trust this information is of assistance and I am determined to be a strong advocate for our region in a future Rudd Labor Government.

Regards,

Belinda Neal."

We would like to thank Belinda for taking the time to respond, and to note with gratitude her respect for the arts community in doing so at this busy time.
Peter Garrett's policy statement has been discussed already on this site, and details about "innovation centres" has been released. We will talk more about this in the next week.

Common Ground

2007-11-16T22:31:00.000+11:00

One more before we go on.

“Shall we go on?
Yes, lets go.
They do not move.”

Before Shifting Ground.

“Estragon: Recognise! What is there to recognise? All my lousy life I’ve crawled about in the mud! And you talk to me about scenery!… Look at this muckheap! I’ve never stirred from it!
……
You and your landscapes! Tell me about the worms!”
(Waiting for Godot, Act Two.)

Having commented on the relationship, using an overly simplistic dichotomy, between the image and the word in Irish art, it must be acknowledged that even before the Celtic Tiger was a cub, contemporary Irish art was producing leading edge practice, particularly in the field of socially engaged work.

Reflecting this development, in 1995 I invited Ailbhe Murphy (Unspoken Truths Project, Dublin), Marie Barrett (Artlink, Buncranna, Donegal) and Ailis O’Baoill (Catalyst Arts, Belfast) to the Chimera Conference in Sydney. In 1998, Dun Laoghaire, near Dublin, was chosen by Ian Hunter (Projects Environment – now Littoral) and the Critical Access group (Mick Wilson and Martin McCabe, Dublin) for an international conference, Critical Sites: Issues in Critical Art Practice and Pedagogy. This conference, Chimera, and Littoral (Salford, 1994) were important in identifying the new area of practice later to be theorised as Dialogical Art by Grant Kester in his book Conversation Pieces (2004).

Another group in Ireland, Ground Up Artists, has been doing some interesting projects with rural issues and the changing nature of non-urban life.

Fiona Woods - Ground Up Artists Collective.

The rapidly emerging world where urban experience is the default for contemporary life leads to a weakening capacity for people in rural communities to define their own lives and retain their physical and cultural heritage.

Mangrove Mountain, where my family have been farming for generations, and which is still a rural district, is now designated a suburb of Gosford in the City Council planning instruments. At a recent ‘community consultation’ meeting we were asked to describe the “scenery” or “landscape” that defined where we live.
I wanted to tell them “about the worms!”. They did not have the language to ask a question that could be answered meaningfully.

So congratulations to Ground Up Artists for important work (and a great name).
Do check their website.

SPI Vehicle in town.

2007-11-12T23:06:00.000+11:00

On Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th of November, Sydney based artist Astra Howard will be bringing her SPI Vehicle to Gosford city centre. Astra regards her artwork as action-research. She mostly works in public places where she can engage in “conversation” with people about things of interest to them.
So if you see Astra in her mobile SPI Vehicle, she will be very pleased if you come over for a closer look, and exchange some thoughts.

Watch for Astra and the SPI Vehicle in Kibble park, William Street and Mann Street.

Astra is regarded as one of the interesting emerging artists in Australia. She has worked in major urban centres in Australia and overseas, and also worked extensively with homeless people and other marginalised communities. She has adopted a social science methodology in her art practice with a goal of calling for greater recognition of the dynamic and interactive relationship formed between individuals and external urban environments – collectively envisioning a vibrant and vital public space.

Astra Howard’s SPI Vehicle is part of “Click Here”, a series of art projects organised for the Gosford City centre by Brown’s Cows Art Projects together with GAFF (Gosford Art Flux Forum). It is supported in part by a cultural grant from Gosford City Council.

Romantic Ireland Part 1

2007-11-12T22:43:00.000+11:00

Kiera O’Toole’s exhibition “Romantic Ireland’s Dead and Gone” opened last Saturday and gave rise to a few thoughts, as did her accompanying text. Apologies for the length of this post, but it contains a few notes I promised to some of you.

Part 1 this week.

The relation between the written and literary forms of art on the one hand, and that of imagery and the visual on the other, has long been a matter of conjecture in art.

While it is common to have some text or catalogue essay accompany an exhibition, these are often merely explanatory of process and technique, or of the exhibition’s conceptual underpinnings. Frequently they contain gratuitous biography, offering an explanation for the origin of the “inspiration”, and give voice to the exhibiting artist’s self interpretation and theoretical contexturalising - however as Freud warned us, artists are not reliable in representing themselves outside their work. There are exceptions of course, Mike Parr being an example.

Kiera’s graphic images, based on bluebottles, show a refined drawing technique and feeling for materials. The organic drifting shapes are metaphors for the dispersal of the Irish people around the world.

In the exhibition Kiera also uses literary text in a powerful and evocative way. A poem by W.B.Yeats, September 1913, from which the title of the exhibition, Romantic Ireland’s Dead and Gone was taken, is presented together with the drawings, but the relationship is not one of illustration or the expression of parallel concepts, but of a concurrence of values and emotion expanding out from that passionate centre; back into the history of Ireland on the one hand, and on the other, forward into the familiar world of globalised consumer culture and (collateral) forced migration.
Kiera has managed to link Yeats’ dark and cynical view of commerce driven culture and its extinguishing of the heroic and romantic shared Irish cultural identity, with drawings based on the organic forms of bluebottles; those little drifters on the tides of chance and circumstance, who like the Irish and others before and since, have washed up and been grounded on the Australian shore.

Australia, being as it is “girt by sea”, has always been a haven for those displaced and adrift who, like the Irish, are "beyond the pale”. [“Beyond the Pale” was term for those living outside the Pale of Dublin, the fence around Dublin Castle dating from the 14th century within which the English were supposedly safe from the barbarous Irish.]

Perhaps Australia itself could be the ‘Pacific (peaceful) Solution’. 120 different nationalities were represented at the ABC last week to celebrate the diversity of Sydney culture.

'We must tolerate each other or we must tolerate the common enemy,' [Thomas Davis, quoted by John O'Leary]

The Irish are certainly not now beyond the pale in terms of literary reputation, but the question has been asked why the visual arts have been so relatively undeveloped in a nation with such a rich creative culture. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of cultural tradition, given that both (or all) forms of art spring from the poetic imagination (a common language and structuring of thought processing; a unique and recognisable blend of cognitive, perceptual and affective skills).

Could it be that language is more ‘slippery’ and elusive as a means of communication, these being useful attributes in a society, like that of Ireland, that has been in constant rebellion for so long, and that the printed text is more democratic/subversive, being both affordable, mass produced and transportable?

To quote Seamus Heaney in England’s Difficulty.
“I moved like a double agent among the big concepts……

An adept at banter, I crossed the lines with carefully enunciated passwords, manned every speech with checkpoints and reported back to nobody.”

And also from Heaney – “What ever you say, say nothing.”

Many Irish have lived in forced or self-imposed exile yet continued to engage with Irish issues through their words in a way that, in the past at least, images would not have been able to do. Indeed Joyce and Beckett were able to radically change the English literary world from ‘exile’ in France.

Romantic Ireland’s Dead and Gone opened the door for us to the power of the Irish poetic tradition without being overwhelmed by it – the connection between the images and text being almost paradoxical, given the apolitical nature of bluebottles. But the buoyant little bladders adrift in the flux and flow of their watery world, are also grounded in the physical world of pain and death by stranding; a return to the earth.

This connection with the earth, the soil, is a noticeable theme in Irish writing.
To stick with Yeats, he writes in The Municipal Gallery Revisited:

"(An image out of Spencer and the common tongue).
John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought
All that we did, all that we said or sang
Must come from contact with the soil, from that
Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong…."

And Seamus Heaney, (excerpts) from Digging:

"By god, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man."

"The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it."

And in consigning “Romantic Ireland” to the earth in O’Leary’s grave, we come back to Kiera’s quote from Yeats’ September 1913.

(First stanza)
“What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were meant to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

[Ironically Yeats was later a Senator of the Irish Free State and chairman of the Commission of Coinage.]

O’Leary, was a poet and Fenian, sentenced to penal servitude by the English and then exiled to France. He returned to Ireland and died in 1907. He wrote:
“It seems a very simple thing to say that the first thing an Irishman should feel is that he is an Irishman. But, unfortunately, the matter is not so plain after all, and certainly not plain to all, for there are many men, not only born in Ireland, but whose ancestors have been there for generations, who foolishly, not to say wickedly, fancy that they are, after all, only some sort of Englishmen.” These days we might say, in agreement with Kiera’s view as I understand it, that they are some sort of Europeans or consumers of global culture.

Next week – Part 2. Some notes on the Celtic Tiger and Creative Industries.

2007-11-05T23:03:00.000+11:00

Sensibility of Light & Fabric

Meredith Brice and Myung-Sook Chae
Monday 5 November 7:30pm Exhibition OPENING at 'Rewak' The Art Gallery, College of Fine Arts and Design, University of SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates.

A couple of artists known to many of you.
Meredith first met Myung-Sook , when she participated in the Nine Dragon Heads Symposium in Korea. Sandy James, Maumer Cajic and Meredith, as emerging artists recently graduated from the (now defunct) Fine Arts program at the Ourimbah campus, were sponsored to travel to Cheongju for the event.
It is good to see these opportunities leading to new initiatives.
Many will of you will recall Chae, Myung-Sook from the Dawn Light Symposium.

Art spaces and places

2007-11-03T14:51:00.000+11:00

Reflecting the extensive and successful lobbying by FOPAP (Friends of the Performing Arts Precinct), background to the CSPF (Cultural Spaces and Places Framework) report presented to Council for approval focussed on a Performing Arts Centre. Those from other professional art disciplines should take some temporary comfort from the recommendations made by the consultants that any progressing of a performing Arts Centre should be part of an integrated plan including all elements of an Art and Culture Precinct.

The following report (edited) was presented to Council on the 2nd of October, 2007.

“(IR 3873107)
Directorate: Community Services and Organisation Development
Business Unit: Arts & Culture

The key finding from this stage one report is that there is broad community appeal for the development of a performing arts facility as part of a wider cultural precinct, warranting further investigation and consideration by Gosford City Council (ie. moving to stage two of the project).

Should Gosford City Council agree with this finding and proceed to stage two it is recommended that the brief for stage two (key objectives, scope of works and tasks) be revised. The rationale/reasoning for this recommendation is as follows:

• The stage two scope of works (brief) focuses on developing a business case / feasibility study for a performing arts facility in isolation. Whilst it is an important element, stage one findings identify that a performing arts facility and cultural precinct are interrelated and integral to each others development, sustainability and success.
They are not mutually exclusive and as such should not be planned in isolation from one another.

• As such the stage two scope of works should be broadened to be a holistic business case which includes all elements of the proposed cultural precinct. A suggested revised scope would include (subject to Gosford City Council agreement):

- A refined schedule of uses for all activities/elements in the cultural precinct;
- Identification and recommendations on the optimum site;
- The development of a masterplan including design layout/concept plans;
- Indicative capital costs for all elements of the masterplan, including a performing arts complex;
- Potential capital funding mix and the identification of private developer partners (joint venture arrangements);
- The optimum model for governance and management of the precinct and key
facilities.
- A business case for the public elements of the precinct – ie. those components of the precinct such as the performing arts complex owned by Gosford City Council (similar to the existing stage two scope of works).

The key object of the revised stage two scope of works would be for Gosford City Council to understand the total net costs (capital and recurrent) to Gosford City Council to deliver a masterplanned cultural precinct to:

• Achieve Gosford’s cultural objectives;
• Position Gosford as a regional capital offering a diversity of activities to a growing population; and
• Support Gosford’s wider economic and social objectives, in particular the revitalisation of the CBD.

RECOMMENDATION

(A ) That a revised scope of works in the brief for Stage 2, as outlined in the consultant report, be endorsed by Council and finalised with the Project Reference Group.

(B) That Council accept the KPMG consultancy ‘Cultural Spaces & Places Framework – Stage 1 findings’ report and proceed with Stage 2 of the project.

(C) That the revised scope of works in the brief for Stage 2 be fully integrated with any planning associated with the Gosford City Centre Plan, Waterfront Strategy, Gosford Pool, Civic Precinct and other elements considered for the establishment of a regional city and incorporate any changes critical to the seamless coordination of those projects.

(D) That Stage 2 of the Cultural Spaces & Places Framework be integrated though the management committee implementing the Gosford City Centre Plan and that the Sunset Committee be retained to provide further input as required.

(E) That Council approach State and Federal Governments to seek funding for the projects.”

The recommendation was passed with the deletion of “as required” in (D).

Artists and others with an interest in Contemporary Art in Gosford and the region are invited to a discussion about these and other issues concerning practitioners in the area, on Saturday afternoon, the 1st of December.
To manage the location, it would be appreciated if you could indicate your interest in joining the conversation via the Back Page email (see links on this site).

More information will be posted when our invited guests confirm.

Ripples in the pond

2007-11-02T22:15:00.000+11:00

Some ripples in the pond regarding communications between Council and art stakeholders.

Minutes from Gosford Council meeting 30th October.

The following motion adopted:
NM.18 REVIEW OF THE CAROLINE BAY ARTS PRECINCT ADVISORY
COMMITTEE (IR 3934299)

Councillor: Trevor Drake

BACKGROUND

One of the major outcomes from the Visioning 2025 Project is the recognition of the role Arts and Culture has in creating a sense of place and soul for a City.

The Community placed the focus on Arts and Culture as a high priority and this is reflected in the recent support in the Cultural Places and Spaces review for the creation of a Performing Arts Centre.

At the Meeting of the Caroline Bay Arts Precinct Advisory Committee on 19 September the
Committee recognised the important role Arts and Culture will play in the revitalisation of the City Centre and hence the future role of the Advisory Committee in this strategy.

MOTION

A. Gosford City Council to have the Community Services and Organisational Development
Directorate prepare a report on the role and functions of the Art Gallery and Caroline Bay
Arts Precinct Advisory Committee taking into account in the historical function, present
functions and future functions.

B. Whether the Committee remains, disband or reforms into another advisory committee to
assist Gosford City Council in the future cultural development of Gosford City.

C. Gosford City Council to develop terms of reference for any Committee it recommends as a consequence of the review.

The motion was foreshadowed in a previous post on the Back Page but the language of the “Background” is interesting, as is the reference to the Cultural Places and Spaces review. Notable is the use of “Art Gallery and Caroline Bay Art Precinct Advisory Committee,” rather than the old "Gosford Regional Gallery Advisory Committee", which probably indicates a potential role that reflects the changing art and culture geography of Gosford.

And of particular interest is “the support in the Cultural Places and Spaces review for the creation of a Performing Arts Centre” as this is not the remit of the Advisory Committee.
In fact a motion adopting the Cultural Places and Spaces Framework Stage 1 Findings, was accepted at the October 2 Council meeting which made it clear that plans for a Performing Arts Centre should be part of an integrated Art Precinct masterplan incorporating other sectors of the Art matrix.

More on the Cultural Places and Spaces Framework is in the pipeline for Back Page.

Kiera O'Toole

2007-10-29T21:27:00.000+11:00

This looks like one to put in the diary.

Thanks Kiera for the following text:

“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone” W.B.Yeats. September 1913.

As an immigrant to Australia, O'Toole is concerned with the repositioning of Irish Identity in a post modern culture and with issues of negotiating individual identity; the reality of migration; a sense of place and displacement of language and community. Her artwork is an emotive response to immigration and the inquiry into the (pre)conceptions of Ireland and ‘Irishness’.

“Blue bottles, in the Irish imagination, are alien to us. They exist only in exotic places / spaces. They are exquisite in their visual beauty but you can’t touch them. They drift aimlessly, unrooted, uncertain, grouping; gazing in different directions so in case of danger, some can survive. Blue Bottles are not a single organism, but made up of a number of zooids. Each zooid has a specific role and together they function as if it were an animal. These little beings remind me that we all need a safe place/space, physically, spiritually and emotionally.

As an immigrant to Australia, I am establishing new beginnings. The distance both physically and psychologically between the two countries allows me to take “a look at us as Irish people, our displacement, our living all over the world, our history of emigration, our psyche” (Alanna O Kelly). ‘My intention is not fashion sentimentality of a homeland’. (John Moriarty 2007) but to express the private and collective basic emotions common to all immigrants and express my perception of Ireland today.

The poem, September 1913 by W.B.Yeats, is a response to the Lockout of September 1913 in Dublin. Yeats was infuriated by the man who led the lockout, W. M. Martin as he also refused to support Yeats ambition of buying an art gallery in Dublin. Yeats comment in this poem, on the justification of the pursuit of money and the lack of idealism in Ireland is reminiscent of Ireland today.

“What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;”

Over the last twenty years, Ireland has experienced the ‘Celtic Tiger’. (The ‘Celtic Tiger’ is an idiom for the period of rapid economic growth in the Republic of Ireland. (1990s – 2001) During this time Ireland experienced a boom in which it was transfigured from one of Europe's poorer countries into one of its wealthiest which continues to present day.)

Many people in Ireland believe the growing consumerism is destroying Ireland’s culture. Our new economy has created such wealth and affluence that it has desensitized its people. We have, in my opinion, to a large extent, become superficial and depersonalized. Ireland of old, an enclosed, inward looking and conservative country still lies in the underbelly of Irish society. ‘Romantic Ireland is dead and gone’.

Dialogues: Women from Ireland. Katy Deepwell. Published by IB Tauris & Co LTD. P140.
Dialogue: RTE 1. Radio. ‘A tribute to John Moriarty, writer and philosopher, who died at the beginning of June.’ 7th July, 2007.

Moo Media

2007-10-28T23:09:00.000+11:00

Final art post from the Country Fair.

Youngest entrant (18 months) wins $2 First Prize in Pre-School Children's "Other" category.

Photography and arrangement (fridge magnet backing on 'calf cradle ' panel) by Claire Berecry-Brown.

Claire considers how to spend the cash.

Mangrove Mountain Country Fair

2007-10-26T22:32:00.000+10:00

A preview of art at tomorrows Mangrove Mountain Country Fair.

Well done Michael Thompson of Somersby School - too bad about the prize.

On the subject of winners and others. Are the portraits by children at Central Mangrove School an indication of things to come ?

Federal election 07

2007-10-13T22:05:00.000+10:00

Continuing The Back Page practice of canvassing candidate's arts policies at election time, the following letter has been sent to candidates standing for Robertson.

Dear ........

I would like to invite you to outline, for the arts community in the Robertson Electorate, your arts and culture policy for the upcoming federal election.

In the recent state election, candidates were invited to have their arts policy posted on the Central Coast contemporary art blog, backpagefree.blogspot.com

This initiate was well received and we have been asked to do the same for the federal election.

We are interested in the overall party policy, but particularly keen to hear your comments with regard to policy in terms of local needs and priorities for art and culture.

This invitation to candidates will be posted on the website.
Responses will be posted as soon as they are received.
Visits to backpagefree.blogspot.com have been steadily increasing over the last year, but peaked during the state election this year.

Your attention to this invitation will be greatly appreciated, not only because the policies are important, but also because the courtesy shown by responding both builds a sense of community and a feeling for a candidates receptiveness to his/her constituents.

Thank you, and best wishes for the campaign.

Intellectual and animal rights

2007-10-13T21:42:00.000+10:00

Intellectual property and animal rights

In view of the recent IPR debates, we note the post on the Gosford Times blog about American artist Rachel Berwick who taught parrots a lost language, and wonder if a breach of copyright is possible when the means of reproduction is a living organism.

On a lighter note, take elephants. (with a glass of water)

Information received about an exhibition (cancelled).

"Agency presents quasi-things. Quasi-things fall just inside or outside a category, they move from one category to another or they don't belong to any category at all... In short, things that witness hesitation in terms of classification.

On the occasion of the exhibition series "Faire un effort" of NICC at the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels, agency presents quasi-things that are related to conflicts concerning authorship. Some of these conflicts lead to a lawsuit. As opposed to visitors of an art centre, who usually approach things in a subjective way, a judge is expected to make an objective judgement. For the purpose of evaluating copyright, a judge employs the division between categories such as nature and culture, evolution and creation, object and subject, collective versus individual... Many things are difficult to classify as such.

Take for example Specimen 770. This quasi-thing is part of the German TV film “Zwischen Zirkuskuppel und Manege” that was broadcasted by WRD in 1964 (see picture above). The point of conflict is the copyright of a dance of a circus elephant. The judge has to decide whether the film abused the copyright of this dance. The resulting discussion during the lawsuit questions whether the taming of an elephant can be protected by copyright of dance."
[Information from e-flux]

art and/or culture

2007-10-01T22:58:00.000+10:00

Just in passing – a note on art and/or culture provoked by Poli-talk on such matters in election 2007 policy announcements.

“One of the problems with the new administrative reforms both on the Nordic as well as European level, which also resulted with NIFCA being closed in Finland, is that no differentiation is made between culture and arts. All is culture: sport is culture, food is culture, everything is basically culture. Maybe the only thing that is not culture is contemporary art.”

An extract from Between a Rock and a Hard Place – the Possibilities for Contemporary Art Institutions to Function as Critical Political Spaces.
By Marita Muukkonen.
Part of the Public Preparation series for the upcoming Biennale of Young Artists in Estonia, and a document that will form the basis for discussion at Market Gallery in collaboration with variant magazine.

Worth a read.

See also “I reach for my…” tagged posts on Back Page.

Burma

2007-10-01T16:17:00.000+10:00

Back Page posts this message for those who want to act in response to recent events.

Dear friends,
Burma's generals have brought their brutal iron hand down on peaceful monks and protesters -- but in response, a massive global outcry is gathering pace. The roar of global public opinion is being heard in hundreds of protests outside Chinese and Burmese embassies, people round the world wearing the monks' color red, and on the internet-- where our petition has exploded to over 200,000 signers in just 72 hours.
People power can win this. Burma's powerful sponsor China can halt the crackdown, if it believes that its international reputation and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing depend on it. To convince the Chinese government and other key countries, Avaaz is launching a major global and Asian ad campaign on Wednesday, including full page ads in the Financial Times and other newspapers, that will deliver our message and the number of signers. We need 1 million voices to be the global roar that will get China's attention. If every one of us forwards this email to just 20 friends, we'll reach our target in the next 72 hours. Please sign the petition at the link below -if you haven't already- and forward this email to everyone you care about:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/t.php
The pressure is working - already, there are signs of splits in the Burmese Army, as some soldiers refuse to attack their own people. The brutal top General, Than Shwe, has reportedly moved his family out of the country – he must fear his rule may crumble.
The Burmese people are showing incredible courage in the face of horror. We're broadcasting updates on our effort over the radio into Burma itself – telling the people that growing numbers of us stand with them. Let's do everything we can to help them – we have hours, not days, to do it. Please sign the petition and forward this email to at least 20 friends right now. Scroll down our petition page for details of times and events to join in the massive wave of demonstrations happening around the world at Burmese and Chinese embassies.
With hope and determination,
Ricken, Paul, Pascal, Graziela, Galit, Ben, Milena and the whole Avaaz Team

More info at.

Federal Election 2007 Arts Policies

2007-10-01T16:04:00.000+10:00

Continuing the practice started with the State election, Back Page will be covering the arts policies of the major parties and other relevant political organizations in the upcoming Federal election, with a particular focus on local candidates.

We begin with the Labor Party’s Policy and commentary on it by NAVA in their Media Release.

Summary of -
NAVA Media Release
18 September 2007

Visual Arts Positive About Labor’s Arts Policy

Today the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) expressed its positive expectations of Labor’s New Directions for the Arts policy, launched last Friday.

Tamara Winikoff, Executive Director of NAVA said, “Though the detail and financial commitments have still to be revealed, with this policy most of the main issues for our sector are on the table.”

Full text of the statement is available at NAVA web site, which also has a link to the full text of New Directions for the Arts.

Back Page Editor's notes:
The document, despite employing the planners favourite term “Vibrant” on its cover, a word made almost meaningless through overuse, does contain some interesting policy and useful perspectives.

Like Coalition rhetoric in the past, it makes a point of pushing for greater private sector investment and corporate philanthropy in the arts. This is of course easier said than achievable in the current cultural climate in Australia, and of course the Big End of Town is attracted to larger arts institutions and prestige events. We look with interest for measures to support small to medium scale art projects.
There is also a question over the future of AbaF (Australian Business Arts Foundation) under the Labor policy.

It is good to see, in the section 'Supporting Australian Artists', that there is recognition of “the arts as a significant field of endeavour, worthy of support in their own right”, as well as the arts having a purpose in shaping national identity through art production and the arts sector giving “an immeasurable, sustaining dimension to the life of the nation”.

Labor will develop ArtStart programs to assist young and emerging artists, and to harmonise current Australia Council, Centrelink and ATO rules for income earned by artists on welfare. This is welcome, but the commitment to “CONSIDER” adding “‘participation in arts projects’ to the criteria for employment and community participation in work for the dole programs where it is likely that such participation will improve a persons prospects of gaining employment or private income”, sounds like a “non-core promise”. Without the contribution of unpaid work in the arts sector, the artist-directed and run initiatives that nurture contemporary practice, and hence the whole food chain, would die. Therefore it would be a positive move to support, rather than “consider” this addition.

New Directions for the Arts states Labor’s commitment to equity of participation in and enjoyment of the arts, and in this regard emphasises “the development of arts in rural and regional Australia as well as outer suburban areas.”
It makes a commitment to examine ways to develop regional arts, and to work with other levels of government to identify local priorities.
For Gosford and the Central Coast this sounds promising, but the area’s status (not really regional, rural or outer suburban) continues to confound programs of support, even when expressed in such general terms as in the Labor policy.

'Arts Education Policy' section of the policy is good in recognising the importance for individuals of arts education beyond the curriculum categories, and of its instrumental value, but does not mention the intrinsic values of engendering the expansion of cognitive faculties and the “technique” of art as a way of knowing.
The strategy of encouraging “artist in residency” programs in schools and universities is useful.

The topic of “Creative Industries” gets considerable attention. There is recognition, at last, of the importance of this sector of the Australian economy in the global mesh, and makes clear that Labor realises that there is a lot to do to catch up internationally.
While there is considerable attention given to Digital Content and New Media, there also seems to be an understanding that these 'creative' industries are built on a necessary foundation of speculative art practice. To quote: “Creative research is central to the growth of arts and innovation, and increasingly draws across disciplines and incorporates emerging technologies.”
In the policy document there remains the usual blurring of the important differences between cultural entrepreneurship, creative industry and art (there are many who think that art is in opposition to the intentions of the others). But to the extent that the Creative Industry argument feeds art funding, it should be welcomed.

In conclusion, New Directions for the Arts, contains many welcome initiatives, and is worth reading more closely. It also has the sense of in insider’s understanding, so one can assume it was well researched in consultation with art industry folks.

Everyone will discover some shortcomings for themselves, as I did, so we look forward to Policy statements by other parties for comparison.

BACK PAGE WILL BE CONTACTING LOCAL CANDIDATES FOR A STATEMENT ON ARTS POLICY IN RELATION TO THEIR ELECTORATE.

Click Here

2007-09-19T21:01:00.000+10:00

Flash!

Brown's Cows Art Projects have been awarded $10,000 in the recent round of the Gosford City Cultural Grants.
The grant is to conduct Click Here, a series of art activities in the Gosford Town Centre.

In this project Brown's Cows will work together with Gaff (Gosford Art Flux Forum).

Watch this space for more information about the project and activities planned.

Caroline Bay Watch 19th Sept

2007-09-19T20:32:00.000+10:00

Caroline Bay Watch.
Highlights from the Regional Gallery Advisory Committee – 19th September.

After two years of waiting, the catalogue for the 2005 Dawn Light Symposium has been distributed. Problems with the final product have been passed on to Tim Braham for attention.

In response to a paper tabled by Neil Berecry-Brown designed to redress problems with the functioning, roles and responsibilities of the Advisory Committee, it was decided that the following motion be put to Gosford Council by Councillor Drake.

A. Gosford City Council to have the Community Services & Organisational Development directorate prepare a report on the role and function of the Art Gallery and Caroline Bay Arts Precinct Advisory Committee taking into account the historical function, present function and future function.

B. Whether the committee remain, disband or reform into another Advisory Committee to assist Gosford City Council in future cultural development of Gosford Council.

C. Gosford City Council to develop a terms of reference for any committee it recommends as a consequence of its review.

This is a draught of the motion to be put, and may be amended on reflection by the members of the Advisory Committee.

The final form of the Cultural Spaces and Places Report should be available soon, so the reformation of committees will be interesting.

Gosford Art Flux Forum

2007-08-25T22:32:00.001+10:00

“The flux of art is a cultural and intellectual commons, and is the vital foundation for all creative engagement as well as being a playground for imaginative and critical conjuring with possibilities.”

Gosford Art Flux Forum is an initiative of Brown’s Cows Art Projects. Gaff was incorporated to provide a legal entity to facilitate the development of contemporary art within the Town Precinct of Gosford and places within the City’s ambit.

An objective of Gaff is to be a catalytic art presence in the town centre; promoting creative processes of democratic engagement in the production and presentation of socially engaged, collaborative and temporary projects for non-gallery situations where context is integral to the meaning of the work.

Gaff will also operate as a street front venue in the CBD serving as a focus for contemporary art and a locus for the presentation of art projects, the provision of information resources, and a coordination place for work in the public domain,

GAFF will conduct art research through praxis of Gosford itself as a process of contemporary art and encourage projects in which the people of Gosford can be part of the invention of “Gosford”, gaining both understanding of its emergent identity and its place in the world.

We recognise that autonomy is an essential part of the culture of effective contemporary practice and, at the same time, that art can play a role in creating the context in which it functions. GAFF will work to address its context by developing infrastructure for sustainable contemporary art practice in Gosford City through discussions and partnerships with various stakeholders, including all levels of government, artists and artists’ organizations, educational organizations and business.

Gosford Art Flux Forum understands itself as part of an international network of artist directed organizations and groups that share a number of attributes. These include a culture of open enquiry, a sometimes alternative and critical position in relation to civic and commercial art operations, and an interest in playing a catalytic and engaged role in generating an immediacy of experience in contemporary cultural and social issues.

In order to engage with critical issues and new ideas and practices in contemporary art, and to place local artists within the ambit of developments internationally, GAFF will support the development of contemporary art in Gosford by building partnerships, linkages and exchanges with other organizations beyond the region.

Gosford Art Flux Forum seeks to reinvigorate the urban ‘commons’ with imagination, the poetic, and an enjoyment and enthusiasm for contemporary art processes and practices.

GAFF has a program of activities scheduled for 2007 and is currently working on the programs for 2008 and 2009.

GAFF Secretary: leeji@pacific.net.au

Sculpture in the Vineyards

2007-08-25T13:29:00.001+10:00

Opening event - 20th October, 2007.

Dispatch From the Front

2007-08-07T21:42:00.000+10:00

Feed-back from the Cultural Spaces and Places Framework process.

The consultants engaged to make a report to Gosford Council gave a progress presentation to some of the “stakeholders” at the Laycock Theatre on Monday, prior to it also being made to Council today.

The general response to the presentation was very positive, with agreement that the consultants have listened well and integrated most of the community’s comments into their report. It was also clear that they have brought insights gained from other places and situations to balance the pressures from particular lobby groups who understandably are pushing their own agendas.

This “dispatch” is in no way meant as a summary of the multifaceted presentation and workshop at Laycock. The process has many phases yet to go, and while stage one in still not finished, but there were a few highlights that might interest contemporary artists.

Not surprisingly "Performance Spaces" head the list of facilities required, with specifics for a major Concert hall/Theatre of 1,000 seats with rehearsal rooms etc., and a “Black box” multi-functional space of 250 seats accommodating everything from Arthouse cinema to new media, dance, comedy and cabaret.

The next listed “Element of Gosford’s Cultural Precinct as Regional Capital for the Central Coast” is a Contemporary Art Gallery of 1,000 square metres, followed by facilities for Artists’ Studios and Workshops. At this early stage the specific functions of these spaces relative to each other and to existing facilities needs some further work, but it is gratifying, not only make it onto the radar, but to have the critical role of contemporary art presented to Council as a central part of the cultural life of the city, at its own expense.

Given the high cost of building the “Performance Spaces”, and the inevitable squabbles about the Theatre’s siting, it seems to me that it will be a long time before we see any major infrastructure projects funded for contemporary art. So life goes on - “You can stand for a long time on the side of a mountain with your mouth open waiting for a roast duck to fly in”

There will no doubt be modifications to the report before it is completed at the end of the month, and a chance for public comment, but it is shaping as a useful document with Council elections due next year.

There were other areas in the presentation including public art, residential and commercial uses and a 3,000 capacity sound shell, but the purpose of this dispatch was to keep you in the loop about contemporary art issues from a personal perspective at this interim stage, not to make a definitive report.

Cheers
Neil Berecry-brown.

Daniel Dancer video

2007-07-31T23:01:00.000+10:00

For those who wanted to see the video Daniel Dancer made and were frustrated by the lack of information about screening location, you can check it out here.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3443203277495364049&hl=en

"5 Lands Dreaming by Daniel Dancer
NSW Australia, 2007.
This short film documents a yearly event called The 5 Lands Walk
which is a 10 kilometer "walkabout" along a coastal path that knits 5
communities together via art, culture and music in a celebration of
nature at the height of the annual humpback whale migration
northward. This completely non-commercial event seeks to honor and
reconnect with the oldest culture on Earth . . . that of the
Aboriginal people of Australia which dates back 50,000 years. An Art
For the Sky humpback whale was created as the finale for this event
and involved music, dance and movement through the image at a
spectacular location."
Quote from web site.

Wind Prayer/Brides of Khan

2007-07-27T22:32:00.000+10:00

A couple of artists, familiar with some readers, will be performing at the Ku-ring-gai Art Centre on the 17th August, 6.30 pm. Jieon Lee will be dancing, and Boyd (with Sam Golding) will be playing.

Wind Prayer is a production of
Brown's Cows Art Projects,

with support from
the Korean Culture Foundation,

Gaff
Gosford Art Flux Forum
Contemporary Art Gosford Incorporated
and
The Ku-ring-gai Art Centre

Stretegic development space 2

2007-07-27T22:18:00.000+10:00

Update, and response to Jillian’s comment in the previous post.

The visit was a field trip by Kim Spinks in order to be shown around the Central Coast to assess the arts and culture situation.
At least that is what I could glean from her comments at an afternoon tea she had with the Regional Gallery Advisory Committee. Her intention is to write an internal report.
It seems that she spent most of her time with local government people (Wyong and Gosford Council employees) as well as holding some meetings with groups organized by Christine Bramble (Wyong Council). Contemporary art groups were not amongst those included.
The report will not be public, but will be available to local government staff.
Her take home message was that a Central Coast arts strategy will not come from ArtsNSW, but that they would support a unified, and politically backed, strategy if one could be developed in the region.
The impression I had was that ArtsNSW preferred to deal with local government as the representatives of the community. It will be interesting to see how the Councils move forward, if they do, given that they have no communicative structure with contemporary art groups at this time.

As it was, so it will be.
In contemporary art it is “D.I.Y. or Die”, as a New York group recently put it.
(Remembering the positive aspects of autonomy in this statement)

These are just my personal observations of the meeting.

The next official “Arts Futures” event will be feedback to stakeholder groups meeting, on the 6th of August, by the consultants employed to carry out the “Cultural Spaces and Places Framework” report.

Neil Berecry-Brown

Stretegic development space

2007-07-21T15:12:00.000+10:00

There is some progress to report in the campaigns to implement strategies for developing sustainable contemporary art practice in the region.

Kim Spinks from Arts NSW will be in town on Monday in relation to the development of a regional arts strategy for the Central Coast.

However given the speed at which strategies are developed, and then maybe implemented when and if funds are available, we will continue to work at filling the space rather than watching it.

Caroline Bay Watch

2007-07-21T14:55:00.000+10:00

The prize season is with us again!

Gosford Art Prize 2007 exhibition “the highlight of the exhibition year” (GRG copy), opening Friday the 3rd of August.
This year GRG is offering a guide to the art prize industry from the Gallery’s perspective. Explaining how to use the competition to promote, market and win, how to chose which competition to enter, and the judging processes. Unfortunately it will be held (on Tuesday 28th August) after the opening of the exhibition, but it is good to see GRG start to address some of the issues in its programming. We hope it will be more than a “how to”. Contact GRG (4325 0056) for information.
One could start with:
The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value by Jim English. (review)

Young artists at NAIDOC market. No prizes, just for fun.

Prize to GRG for committing programming to indigenous culture and reconciliation.
The NAIDOC market event on the 8th of July was fun.

Also announced from the GRG is Wamberal to Wagstaffe open studio tour scheduled for the 8th and 9th of September. In the running for art tourism/business advancement Prize.

Prize for the worst coffee.
The coffee shop at Caroline Bay must serve the worst coffee, at the highest prices and with the slowest service, anywhere on the Central Coast.

The Masque of Zero

2007-07-09T22:03:00.000+10:00

We welcome a new era for Performance Art in Gosford with the installation of state of the art equipment by Gosford City Council.

Launched last Friday the video equipment and installation, costing $320,000, makes possible forms of practice previously associated with larger cities abroad.

Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup, using what now seems primitive equipment, made some ground breaking work in the UK as early as 1993, and the Surveillance Camera Players in New York (and now San Francisco, Italy, Sweden, Turkey etc.) are synonymous with the genre.

Game on.

Image – Fiona Romeo, Curator of the Science of Spying exhibition currently at the Science Museum, London.

Daniel Dancer

2007-06-24T15:17:00.000+10:00

Daniel Dancer’s work at yesterdays 5 Lands event, prompted some extension of thoughts begun with the Watanobbi post; his is work in which the central conceptual concern is with engendering a transformative experience for participants. The aesthetics of the final production, as art, is important only so far as it gives authenticity and authority to the process.

Terrigal, June, 2007.

Making large scale interventions in the landscape as art, was pioneered by the Land/Earth artists of the 1970s, such as Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Richard Long etc., and James Turrell, who, like Daniel Dancer, is also interested in the sky, although his Roden Crater Project is infinitely more enduring physically. (Watching video of Daniel photographing his 'drawings' from a plane, also conjured up associations with Smithson who died in similar circumstances – The Icarus myth is a recurring theme in the artists’ psyche).

Daniel Dancer’s projects are concerned with accessing insight (sky sight) through direct bodily experience, possibly reflecting his education in Child Psychology, and do not address themselves to modernist and post-modern, questioning of the of meanings of form, process and theoretical context.

Big Horn Sky, Bishop, CA 2005 - 950 Kids and Teachers.

The form of his imagery is ancient; transcultural. Like many Land Art projects, it raises questions about the phenomenology of perception, which I think have been insufficiently interrogated in contemporary practice. This situation seems to be changing however, as the advent of GoogleWorld, the ready availability of GPS technology, ubiquitous CCTV and the 'Mobile Phone That Ate the World' have opened our eyes anew (while blinding us).
Daniel asks us to understand that we need to see the “Big Picture” if we are to make decisions that will give the world a future. Working often with children, he keeps the message simple, but the cognitive principle is sophisticated – although perhaps more accessible to the imaginative young mind of children (and other playful people). It means that we must reawaken our ability to experience the world from two places at the same time – to experience the material world, earth and body, while seeing the view from above – the “sky sight”.

In April, 2007, the Community Independent School in Pittsboro, North Carolina formed this nearly extinct bird in a pasture near their school with 100 participants and lots of clothes.

This reminds me of what has been told to me about how aboriginal people always live in a geography that is simultaneously the material world, and a “Big Picture” of story and myth by which to “make decisions that will give the world a future".
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
But perhaps this intelligence is an ability we are born with, and sometimes lose, and rather than focusing on surviving the dissonance we could think of a creative synthesis. This seems to me the paradigm Daniel is working with.
The Art for the Sky projects each produce a video for presentation and so live on as representation. They do not critique the Society of the Spectacle as put forward by Debord, although they want to give primacy to the immediate experience – perhaps it is impossible to avoid the S.O.the S. However to some degree it could be argued that many of the threats to the environment that Daniel Dancer seeks to change by resurrecting an holistic ‘living with the world’ are contributed to, if not largely caused by, the alienated, consumer driven S.O.S.
Any ambiguity of the position does not diminish the contribution he makes, anymore than the commercial compromises to the Burning Man event completely negate the power of the experience felt by attendees.

Eyes in the sky - Terrigal.

Perhaps we will see Daniel again, lets hope so – his arriving by balloon would be nice.

And lets hope next time that Gosford is a bit better organised. Preparation looked rather underdone on Saturday, and although Daniel will be presenting the video on Monday (tomorrow), no one knows where.

[Images 2 & 3 above are from Daniel Dancer's web site, Art for the Sky, linked above.]

Watanobbi (Y with a W)

2007-06-21T20:55:00.000+10:00

Recently there was the, still to be adequately explained, closure of an exhibition at the Gosford Regional Gallery as a result of complaints to someone in Council, now we have a few individuals taking it upon themselves to have a work of community art, dubbed the big “W”, removed at Watanobbi.

Sharyn Walker has drawn our attention, on The Gosford Times blog, to the derelict condition of the fountain in Burns Place, Gosford (also, no acknowledgement of the artists on the information plaque), the Charles Sturt sculpture in Rumbalara Reserve has been cruelly vandalised, and we all know the saga of the Wondabyne Stones.
It is unfortunate but not uncommon for public art works, and most other things, to be vandalised, and it is understandable that not all individuals in a community will share the same taste in aesthetic matters, but there is a responsibility on the part of civic authorities to respect, protect and nurture the endeavours of artists to enrich the culture of the Central Coast.
If we respect the unique skills and creative abilities that artists contribute to the community, and exhibit their work, or commission them, and by doing so put trust in their artistic integrity, we owe it to them to stand by that commitment.
Controversy is never far away from art in a conservative community, but even so it has been surprising that the work has caused any fuss.

It seems that a local resident, who did not like the big “W”, started a petition to have the poles removed, as reported in the Wyong Shire Sun. In a large community project there will always be a few who feel excluded from the process for some reason, this is almost impossible to avoid given the complexities of social, political and personal characteristics.

So what is it that has riled the resident?

I quote the Wyong Shire Council Press Release:

“Four timber ‘totem poles’, shaped like a W, with a native bird habitat box at the top, is being built near the approach to the town, north of Wyong. It’s part of Watanobbi’s Community Art Project, developed by Wyong Shire Council; the local community centre; residents; schools and a host of local organisations. More than 300 people, under the direction of community artist, Margrete Erling, helped create the habitat boxes, which are decorated to reflect local history, indigenous heritage, and Watanobbi environmental issues. The aim of the community art project is to foster community pride; promote closer relationships between local organisations and schools; and highlight the work of the Watanobbi Community Centre.”

While community art projects are sometimes difficult in terms of process, and questions of authorship and aesthetic control, they can be very powerful tools of community building regardless of what one thinks of the “art” outcome. At the time of writing I do not know about the process from inside the project, but as an artist with over thirty years experience, and a university lecturer in art for about the same period of time, I think the big “W” is a credit to Watanobbi and to its many creators.

I sympathise with someone who has to look at art that they do not appreciate, but if it is really the art that is the problem, I think there is plenty in this work for someone to learn to appreciate and enjoy.

I also sympathise with the 300 or so people who gave their time and creative enthusiasm to the project. Participants in such community art project become emotionally invested in the work they make for others, and it can be cruel to trash their best efforts. It is hard enough for professional artists to endure heartless criticism, no matter how well intentioned, but that is part of their vocation, we need to build esteem not undermine it in community art projects.

I have heard that the placement of the poles is a bit of a conundrum for some, as the configuration is not seen simply as a big “W”, but from certain angles could be an X, a couple of Vs, or maybe something from an “alien” alphabet. I would have thought that this was a dynamically interesting aspect of the work, being a constantly changing tension between potential and resolution, and therefore an interesting metaphor for continuous community development. This flipping between focus and dispersal is an aspect of the mature work of American sculptor David Smith, whose metal sculptures in the 1950s were notable, and now part of the Art History cannon, for the way they set up relationships between the component parts of the works as well as the setting, moderated by the viewer’s trajectory.

Although I have not seen the Watanobbi work yet, the idea of it changing perceptually and in interpretation, as a result of movements by the viewer, would suggest an addition to the mystery and ambiguity that every successful art work needs.

A decision was made to have an art piece, and that is what they got. If they would rather have a conventional sign, and a society governed by the ethics of commerce, profit and prejudice, free from the humanistic values transmitted through culture, good luck to them, they will need it.

Perhaps something similar to a recent work erected in China could be suggested as an alteration to the disgruntled Watanobbi resident.

The 30ft totem, named Sky Pillar, stands at Longwan Shaman Amusement Park in Changchun City, China.
"It is a totem of Shamanistic culture, which originated in this city," says the president of the park, Cheng Weiguang. Shi Lixue, director of the China Folk Culture Association said: "It symbolizes our ancestors' pursuit of happiness and prosperity."

Wollombi

2007-06-15T13:01:00.000+10:00

From information received:

Wollombi Valley Arts Council Inc

is pleased to invite entries from all emerging artists of any age, in any medium, to the
2nd EMERGING ARTIST AWARDS
6th to 12th July 2007

First prize $1500
Second prize $750
Under 18s $250

Entry deadline: Friday 29th June 2007.
Details available from their website.

And a reminder that entries for Sculpture in the Vineyards close on June 30th.
See their website via "labels" below.

-and congratulations to the artists and organisers in Wollombi for what they are achieving!!

places of denial and desire.

2007-06-15T12:35:00.000+10:00

The electricity is back on at the Back Page!!!

Tomorrow is International Bloomsday and seven artists will be at-large in Gosford on a psychogeographic dérive.
At a time when Debord's ideas about the Society of the Spectacle are under review, it will be interesting to see what eventuates; and what places of denial and desire are encountered.

"I wouldn't start from here"

"and the wilderness is paradise enow"

Buy nothing, get one free

2007-06-03T16:44:00.000+10:00

Urban insertion

Buy nothing, get one free, an open-ended cumulative “urban insertion” , part of Click Here, has been running for eight days, 24 hours a day, in Mann street Gosford.

Further live activities and projections are scheduled for next week.

Cows LED back to Mann Street

2007-05-28T20:47:00.000+10:00

Brown’s Cows LED back to Mann Street Gosford

An urban screen/performance/public engagement has been corralled in the Imperial Centre Mann Street shop front.
Following on …the Space Between… this installation consists of a changing series of LED texts and performances by Brown’s Cows in collaboration with people in the CBD.
It is part of “Click Here”, a long-term strategy of deploying contemporary art projects in and around the township of Gosford; and configuring Gosford itself as a contemporary art research project.
The electronic signs will be reprogrammed each day, beginning the 23rd of May 2007.

buy nothing, get one free
there is nothing you can’t buy
our loyalty program costs you nothing
nothing beats a good brown cow
we make our art for, and about, nothing
art is nothing to believe in, and nothing is real
no really, its nothing

wander wonder
wonder wander
wander wonder
etc.
art is nothing to believe in
and the cow jumped over the gate

.......to be continued

The balloon goes up.

2007-05-17T23:45:00.000+10:00

In the Society of the Spectacle - is resistance possible?
What spaces of resistance will be encountered in Gosford on the 16th.

Odilon Redon
Eye Balloon, 1878

The theoretical formulations presented by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle, take on a new relevance in this age of blogs, surveillance, MySpace, and technically mediated relationships.

CARNICERO Y MANCIO, Antonio
Ascent of the Balloon in the Presence of Charles IV and his Court. c. 1783

“If there's a "surveillance society" or a "society of the spectacle", I would submit that it's about informatics, and not primarily about the visual spectacle. These artifacts above are only a few instances that indicate how Things that can perform identity surveillance, tracking, tagging and wrangle some database informatics are what matter nowadays.” research.techkwondo.com/blog/julian/193

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." This condition in which authentic social life has been replaced with its image represents, according to Debord, that "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life." The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity. "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes. "rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."
(Wikipedia)

Ours is a world of Biennales, Art Prizes, Blockbuster Touring Shows and Festivals in which art is seen by many as an industry that provides entertainment services and boosts tourism; where its support is premised on its audience generating quality.

Art in the Gosford region will have a short life if it is based on a festival (spectacle) led “recovery”. It requires commitment to a creator based development rather than a secondary creative Industries strategy, which depends on the essential creator (artist) environment.

In describing the development of the Society of the Spectacle, Matt Kavanagh of McGill University writes:
“We live in the society of the spectacle. In the era of blogs, 24-hour news channels, and the instant celebrity of reality television, this probably goes without saying. But what does it really mean? Contrary to the list just enumerated, the society of the spectacle is not of recent invention, nor is it limited to pop culture. Instead "the spectacle" serves as a shorthand description for structural transformations in advanced capitalist societies during the post-1945 era. We might think of this as a broad shift from the factory-based industrial system of the early part of the twentieth century to the immaterial economy of today. Manufacturing has been replaced by service work and the trades have given way to symbolic labour (journalists, bureaucrats, academics) as the prevailing face of the middle-class. The key to this realignment is the increasing mediatization of society.

Most recently, the rise of the “Creative Class” as an economic force, and rapid promotion of the “Creative Industries” globally, together with knowledge-based enterprises reinforces Debord’s analysis.

What goes up...

Sakiko Yamaoka - New Work

2007-05-09T20:34:00.000+10:00

New work by Sakiko Yamaoka.
As you might know Sakiko was a contributing artist to the recent Gosford project …the Space Between…
This new work “We are elegant” was part of Perfurbance #3 in Indonesia, the performance festival directed by Iwan Wijono.

"The photo is my performance-work in the cemetery with village people and some artists participated in the festival."

“Perfurbance art Festival is a performance art festival on public spaces referring to growths of urbanized society and its complication as an effort to understand a dialectical of its cause and effect. Hopefully, the festival will allow society to understand and anticipate the negativity of urbanization growth, which certainly has impacts on our growing society and environment.
When earthquake took place on Jogjakarta and Central Java last May 27, 2006, artists have joined volunteers in gathering help for victims.”
- mahatma anto

Iwan Wijono performs internationally as well as in Indonesia. He contributed to the Eco Poetics Symposium, organized by Synapse Art Initiatives, held at Somersby in 1998, as did Sakiko.

On that occasion, at a time of political turmoil in Indonesia his work was performed, to his script, by Australian artists.

Performer carrying pole (with bells), Scott Foster.

Gosford dérive

2007-05-05T23:07:00.000+10:00

Image by Banksy, London street stencil artist (from artofthestate blog) More of Banksy at his site.

Further to the renewed interest in the Situationists and their contribution to methods pertinent to the circumstances facing artists now, is a post by Shawn Micallef, on Spacing Wire, a Toronto urban issues site, about his experiences wandering the city of Dublin. Although not writing specifically about art, he makes a link between Joyce's litterary work and the idea of the dérive.

"I was told to look out for the feet and arrows above, as they are there to evoke Leopold Bloom wandering around the city in Ulysses."

Spacing Wire also has a sample of Toronto urban intervention art.

More "walking" projects can be found on the Walking in Place site including
A PERIPATETIC INVESTIGATION OF PLACE

It seems at this time that there is a great deal of interest by artists, particularly in New York, with the art of lived-space and of reclaiming the "commons" through live interventions. Creative Time has a long history of projects of this kind. Example are two projects scheduled for the near future, Situational Drive: Complexities of Public Sphere Engagement (Conference), and Six Actions for New York City, including work by Spartacus Chetwynd who is currently showing at Artspace in Sydney.

A meeting to talk over aspects of the June 16th wander in Gosford, will be held soon.