feeling territorial

I went sailing on a 38 foot boat in Darwin harbour on Sunday. There was a young Irish electrician on board who was a first time sailor. He had red swollen feet and scabs on his lips from burns from falling asleep for two hours in the sun the other day. He got boned up on the lingo such as rope may be called a sheet or shroud or halyard or painter or hawser or bowline or rig or tackle.
The Territory Craft gallery is mine. Andrea bumped out on Sunday arvo and I have started to set up my show.

Dyad - an unnatural selection

My residency at Territory Craft studios coincides with the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’. Charles Darwin was the first person to provide a rational explanation of our human origins, our relationship to the great apes and descent from a common ancestor. My exhibition which opens next Friday has diverse objects celebrating the evolution of creating art and comprises work which met the rigours of survival of the fittest in an unfamiliar environment.
Travelling across the continent via the mining towns of Cloncurry and Mount Isa, I had time to review my internal and external landscape. What does distance from home and my studio bring to thinking and making in a new environment? Does a physical change bring a change in internal creative dialogue and therefore adaptation?
These questions were addressed during my residency as I trialled new ceramic techniques, coped with the zero humidity of the dry season and its effect on greenware and smashed work that failed to adapt to the vagaries of the kilns. I was hoping that the Darwin residency would generate work that had favourable variations which could be preserved. In the end I produced numerous offspring in an evolutionary process of making that led to the natural selection of new species of art forms. The dry season environment in particular determined which forms survived and which unfavourable variations were removed.
The ceramics and mixed media work showing at Territory Craft offers a broad repertoire of ideas and techniques. It consists of pairs or ’dyads’ of objects. I use a variety of scientific source material including micro-organisms which I recombine into repeat patterns which focus on the intrinsic beauty of biological imagery. Pattern and structure helps us comprehend science and the concept of natural variation. In particular, propagation and mitosis carries contemporary resonance in the field of virology with the current problems surrounding H1N1 and Hendra virus. These themes are a recurring motif in the art work in both form and surface decoration. I have also modelled and drawn apes and man/Darwin onto the ceramic forms and 2-D work. I'll have some more images for you in the next few days.

double trouble

I had coffee at 5pm. At midnight I was watching a horrific movie about a drug cartel/satanic sect in Mexico based on a real life story. This morning I was feeling decidedly anxious about everthing. I opened the extra big kiln to find work both under and over fired, depending on the shelf location. Some work is excellent considering it had to be fired four times to get the right effect. I'm going to reglaze some large platters today using stencils and a matt glaze.

fire in the hold

I found a ladder made from reo this morning hanging from a frond in a dense palm grove. I couldn't see any fruit in the palm, was it a leftover from a building site or a mini-ladder for midgets? I arrived at the studio to find an error message on the glaze firing computer screen. It maxed out at 847 degrees and called a halt. This was a disappointment because I had finally fought off my procrastination about glazing and loaded the kiln yesterday. More procrastination today talking with Jasmine Jan and surfing online. However I am progressing with some mixed media work involving bronze wire nests and ceramic protazoan shapes.

beat the drum

I stood with the crowd listening to the DSO percussionists drum up a feast of sound yesterday at the museum. Four men clapped, shooshed and slapped their bodies to a tango beat in one set. It reminded me of the Spanish flamenco dancer in Granada, all machismo and flying sweat. It was the highlight of the day. I went to the studio to find two large protazoan shaped sculptures had irreversibly cracked from drying too quickly. Waking at three o'clock this morning and reading a book on evolution, I had an inspiration to sculpt a monkey climbing over them, so that's what I've been working on today.

monkey business

Overheard at the markets - She said to him "Do you want to go down to Mindil Beach to watch the sunset?'. He replied "No, I saw it last week".

I did some publicity shots yesterday using work in progress.

taro custard

Parap market has the best taro custards baked in banana leaf, slightly sweet, slightly salty, smooth and creamy, they just slip down. I saw a cockatoo this morning carry off a green passionfruit growing on the neighbour's front fence. I then found a wallet on the median strip of Lee Point Road complete with credit cards, but sans money. I rang the owner when I got home, his wife became breathless at the thought that someone had found it and had to turn the phone over to her husband. He wanted to give me fifty dollars as reward. I had an internal moral tussle when he kept on insisting I take it, but couldn't.
My art exhibition scheduled for Sept "Dyad, an unnatural selection" will be pairs of objects using Charles Darwin, small organism shapes and great apes as source material. I finished a pair of protazoan shaped sculptures yesterday using BRT clay and a linocut for surface detail.

Taro Custard Recipe
300mls coconut milk
4 eggs
3/4 cup raw sugar
1 cup steamed and mashed taro (cold)
2 Tbsps rice flour
pinch salt
Mix together and cook gently until slightly thickened. Pour into a tray and bake at 160 degrees C for 30 mins until set.
Serve immediately on banana leaves

For authentic Thai flavour
+ use palm sugar instead of raw sugar
+ gently heat the coconut milk with some pandanus leaf then strain prior to use

territorial chair

My copper red stoneware bowl slipped from the dodgy dishrack this morning and crashed onto the tiled floor, such a pity as it has been my travelling companion for the past few weeks. I've been sitting in the Territory Craft gallery all day working on my protazoan lino cut while people wander in looking lost and asking where the Northern Territory museum is. I have to explain why I'm using lino cuts for ceramic work and then I redirect them through to the museum. I unloaded the kiln this afternoon with only one breakage due to a concave kiln shelf. Ceramics is a life of hits and misses.