I finished my latest art installation. I partially recycled my ‘used installation’ ALL FIRED UP’ as the base and worked a new level of interest and meaning. This piece prompting many levels of interpretation, was mostly inspired by the story told by one of my friends about how her father miraculously survived last year’s Victorian bushfires – loosing everything but his life and grateful for even that – then, returning to where his home had stood retrieved the buried ashes of his long ago deceased wife. It’s a story containing irony, pathos his special humor. Look at the images. I documented the package ready to travel the AGNSW. Surprisingly, it looks to me like a body bag itself! Perhaps it has more chance of being exhibited at the AGNSW – left wrapped! It would befit my current artistic sentiment, too.

Today I went a talk at the Wollongong City Gallery by Dr Dougal Philips representing the 17^th Biennale of Sydney. I am here for this year’s plethora of international and Australian art at 12 locations in the Sydney CBD. Amazing! It will be like Germany’s ‘Documenta 12’ which I attended. Perhaps I will do performance here too. Speaking of which…there seems to be a lot of performance as part of the art offerings this year – a resurge, no doubt. Good fodder for my article for Art Monthly which I should be researching now.

One of the artists, Marcus Coates, is described as a ‘Radio Shaman’. His performance includes wearing the actual real ‘head’ of a dead animal and striking up conversation to consider human response to the animal’s situation. He finds this leads into attitudes people are otherwise out of ouch with….

This gives me a performance idea using my dog’s recent experience….might have to think about it but I am not saying here…

Related Website: frieze

I visited an exhibition called Women’s Work at Project: Wollongong’s Contemporary Artspace. It represented the work of numerous local women artists publicized by Sue Bessell. I liked the double meaning suggested by the title. Interestingly, the ‘domestic domain’ was omitted almost entirely. I would be the last person to expect women have the corner on this topic but neither do many women get away without some sort of response to this important ‘internal area’ – especially women artists! I certainly struggle with being and artist and being a homemaker. Am I alone in this?

Libby Bloxham set a very high standard with her intuitive recycled sculptures