ART & SOUL, a monograph recording the ten (10) years of my visual art practice based in Melbourne, is published by the noted art publisher MACMILLAN PRESS. Storage for this book is no longer available at the warehouse. The editor has made me a once-off offer to find good homes for as many of these books as is possible. (In order to keep their well-earned printing reputation, MACMILLAN PRESS does not pass on their books to cut-rate book distributers.)
So, if you would like a FREE copy (RRP $88) or copies for the cost of postage and handling, this is the time to order! After this, they are gone forever! Get some for your Christmas Gift List now!
‘OUT FOR LUNCH’ This is me saying I have a lot of material from DINNER to add to this Blog but currently, I am having trouble seeing the point of being so diligent as an artist! I feel myself tipping toward the slippery slope of ‘whothehellcaresaboutwhatIdoinart’. I have been back from Darwin for two weeks where I presented this fine exhibition – in many formats – with NOT ONE PERSON inquiring about what art happened there. Maybe this isn’t enough for me anymore. I am certain that I do not want to burden anyone with my art rantings and raves. But my art is not about me doing my ‘thing’ in secret because I am driven to do so. It needs an audience. It needs some sort of external validation to continue to develop. I do not know what that would be but it is not happening…after almost forty years of hard labor on my part and, apparently, on the part of everyone who has come into my clutches. Maybe I should cut the losses and leave this vocation now. I do not know OUT-TO-LUNCHwho I would be if I did so..but maybe it is time to find out.
This image is one in a series showing the artist trying to make her way in the vast unknown called life. Don’t worry, she makes her way safely down the slope but hesitates to go back up on the podium again.
My artist friend, Sally Kidall, has a creative son who found on line a 3D Printer program for a mini dinner table ….I was very amazed to see this little table come into being…..
This performance art appealed to me immediately! The guard explained the process to me rather apologetically, it seemed. It must have presented as a bit weird to him. He said that a hot takeaway meal was brought in…as the little sign on the table stated. Then some lucky gallery visitors and a guard or two shared a meal. It happened between strangers in a public place.
The process involved sitting down with an unfamiliar person to eat food – that you haven’t prepared – in a situation that does not feel comfortable. This presents as a difficult dinner party for certain. It is also one I would have liked to have been part of. Still, I have my own party coming up soon. Hope there is someone else – at least one other person – to eat with there…at gallery Nan Giese…in Darwin
What do you do with food made by strangers and eaten with strangers? Many of us do this every day at restaurants or sometimes even in our own home. How much do you know the people you break bread with?
What more appropriate for an on-line exhibition than an on-line review…
http://www.cdu.edu.au/newsroom/Internet-based-art-exhibition-food-for-thought
And a pic of my new Danish artist friend, Steffen Tast, having an impromptu delicious and enlightening lunchtime meal and sharing of ‘trade practices’ at his stable studio on the outskirts of Aarhus.
Instead of sitting at table in my Darwin Gallery exhibition, hosting art there…I was gallivanting about the nation and found myself in Melbourne. Of course it was deliberate as most of my family and I were dining with long time friends who had arrived from South Australia to be introduced to my Godson’s OS girlfriend just in from the USA. That was the first Dinner Party of the weekend. It was DIFFICULT because our children had celebrated many, many Christmases and Easters together over the years found themselves in different corners of the world and expanding. Each of them would travel far in their young lives – physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.Perhaps they would not have contact like this again. And the parents…we have journeys too.
Terry, Marilyn and Nathanial Schmidt with Katie and most Peitsches Dinner Party
The second DINNER PARTY was just as important as it was my son Joe’s 26th birthday and was celebrated with family friends at Jon Westfall’s, another birthday boy, house..in their unheated garage @ 2 degrees Celsius! still, a warm evening and plenty of laughs! It was difficult because whenever you bring people together, you hear their stories….life brings lots of difficulties. It sometimes takes courage to live.
Terry, Marilyn and Nathanial Schmidt with Katie and most PeitschesDinner Party
So, I started with the obvious literal level in the first session and then seemed to move immediately to the next abstraction. I had so much fun that these ideas came next…
20
Small table moving around whole plate
pp – 1 min
21
1/8 and movement around the ‘clock’ with piece trying to get in
pp – 1 min
22
2/8 eating all the bits – 1/8, 2/8, 3/8, etc
pp – 1 min
23
3/8 x 2 in conversation (?)
pp – 1 min
24
4/8 legs are cutlery – running
pp – 1 min
25
5/8 x 2 wobble and fall
pp – 1 min
26
6/8 roll off triangle
pp – 1 min
27
7/8 x 2 birds together
pp – 1 min
28
8/8 cut out bits making patterns
pp – 1 min
29
Creating total pattern with cutlery
pp – 1 min
The trouble is that I will not have time to do create these designs for this exhibition. Next time of course but without the pressing deadline, I am handicapped.
When I look at these images what I can’t help but notice is the symmetry. So, the objects that stand out are the parts that don’t fit with that symmetry. What my son sees is the player controls from a media player like iTunes or Windows Media Player; the plate recording audio, the triangle was the play button, the cutlery pauses the music. In so many areas of culture, especially dinner, we see what we want to see. We see things through the lense of our history.
This idea for an exhibition is the most exciting one that I have had for a while! It was brought about by accidental necessity too. Or some would say that I had the creativity to see it as possibility. As it happened, along with Matthias my son, I was successful in receiving an Australian Artist’s Grant for the planned exhibition in Darwin. It was then that I discovered that it was to be a gallery where…
There is no facility for providing you with equipment.
We don’t usually keep the gallery open while there is a show hanging.
No budget.
At that time there will be nobody around. Students or viewers.
So, what would be better than an online exhibition? It will certainly exist but almost completely in virtual space. Since deciding to do this, I visited the Louisiana Gallery of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark. http://www.louisiana.dk/uk/Menu/Exhibitions/Yoko+Ono I discovered that Yoko Ono is one of first artist to participate in internet exhibitions. ‘Yoko Ono: one Woman Show’ is a straight online exhibition presented on the website of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. http://www.artcommotion.com/Issue2/moca/ This was in 1997!
Still, what would come of these humble bits purchased from Spotlight? I guess I was about to find out. Key to this exhibition is the exposed process of ‘making’. It is a lose collaboration between three creative people…each of us artist in our own medium!
