Grow Australia

7 Plants, 7 Continents

Grow for Australia!!!

www.collectiefmei2007.nl/greenhouse/

Be quick, ends soon.

Heterotopia

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

Designed by Swedish physician Gustav Zander in the late nineteenth century