Artist in residence house

The Tanks Arts Centre residence on Collins Avenue is an elevated timber house and has Saltwater creek on one side(the occasional crocodile has been spotted) and the Flecker Cairns Botanic Gardens on the other side. The back veranda is wonderful on a hot day.

Hide nor hair drawings

'Hide nor hair' launch on 6pm Friday 2 August at Tanks Arts Centre Gallery, adjacent to the Cairns Botanic Gardens. These are some details of drawings that I have been working on at the artist-in-residence house on Collins avenue over the past fortnight. I was thinking about the poignancy of Eliza giving birth on board a lifeboat and the baby being resigned to the deep. I used canavalia rosea vine, also known as Beach bean as the vine most likely to have been used by Eliza to cover her loins.

Hide nor hair pre-exhibition

My new exhibition, 'Hide nor Hair' will be showing at the Tanks Arts Centre Gallery from August 2 - 16 at the Cairns Botanic Gardens. I will be one of their artist's in residence for July and August. I've been making work based on the story of the heavily pregnant Eliza Fraser who was ship wreaked on the Great Barrier Reef in 1836. She had a baby boy in the lifeboat in front of 11 sailors. The baby died and was buried at sea. At sea for six weeks, they finally landed on Fraser Island (named after her husband, Captain James Fraser). They swapped clothes for food with the indigenous people. Eliza lived with the aboriginal women, helping collect fire wood and food for two months before a party from Moreton Bay came to find the missing ship's crew and passengers.

grafton regional art gallery

Two of my submissions for Grafton Regional Art Gallery were selected for their Accessible art collection. Jude McBean has asked artists to respond to two dimensional works within the larger collection that can be accessible to people with disabilities such as visual impairment. The work in this photo shows Godwin Bradbeer's moody 'Man in a squared space" and my touchable version for blind visitors to the gallery space. My other work selected responded to a drawing of a netsuke hidden in a riverbed of pebbles by Darren Chard.

Doppelganger

This drawing is called Doppelganger and continues the theme of conjoined twins, evolution and humans place within the natural world. It won a Works on Paper prize at the Coraki Art Prize recently

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The Dragon's Back

We packed up The Dragon's Back show a couple of weeks ago. Tweed River Art Gallery is such a beautiful gallery and has such wonderful staff to help with installation etc. This is one of the pieces which sold called Elements of the Dragon. I modelled parts from the mythical Chinese dragon in stylised form in clay, fired them then used gold leaf.

Clouds and cauldrons

The opening night charm of The Dragon's Back was heightened by the sun setting over Mount Warning during the opening speech by Lyn Cole from Cudgegong Gallery. The clouds were specifically made for this wall in the manner of Chinese shaped clouds with cloud pattern slip.

The Dragon's Back ii

THE DRAGON’S BACK

In Chinese mythology, it is believed that dragons create clouds with their breath. They have potent and auspicious powers over water, bringing rain, causing floods, controlling the tides. The venue for this show lies at the base of Wollumbin ‘the cloud catcher’, a sleeping volcano, a gently breathing dragon. The clouds around it merge, scatter and disappear in an endless cycle over the ancient landscape. Wollumbin is like Fucanglong, the Chinese ‘hidden treasure dragon’, the underworld guardian of precious stones and volcanoes.

Three artists, Sue Fraser, Ruth Park and Louise Fulton have carved, molded, pressed, sculpted, glazed and fired each object. The work has been slowly made by hand using clay with its history far more ancient and widespread that any other art material. The vessels are based on forms built in universal and ancient metaphors of our human origin, the body as container of wishes and desires.

Contemplating on each artwork is a way to touch an existence beyond us like the first puff of opium when the smoker rides ‘the dragon’s back’. The dragon’s breath gives the explorer the raincoat of invisibility, allowing navigation between heaven and earth. Epiphany comes when the metaphorical essence of the artwork is inhaled. We are a container into which art is poured. We understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another. Like food and water, we eat and drink at the banquet table of art.

Chinese language is critical to understanding Chinese culture. The nature of the artwork is a creative engagement with China not just a reiteration of traditional Chinese forms and techniques. The ongoing technical connection with celadon, porcelain and cobalt brushwork show these artists are China literate, not resorting to pastiche or appropriation.

The horses have dragon energy and dragon speed. The gourds are spawn of the dragon. The clouds are dragon’s breath. The fangs drip with dragon blood. The jade jars might contain the dragon’s hot ginger pickle. The moon jars have the beauty of imperfection and the lack of self-consciousness of a lunar landscape.

In seeking the dragon, the artist must take risks to find the pearl, to gain a benefit, to be granted a wish. The creative process is making connections, linking different concepts until the elusive pursuit of resolution is accomplished. Completely ephemeral, the ideas in ‘The Dragon’s Back’ are suggestive then evaporate like a summer cloud. Each piece has escaped the bonds of the artist and is unconstrained. Each piece tells of possibilities and explores the exotic. Each work is a piece of our culture, generation and time. It is something inexpressible and of the heart, something to hold and protect because it is indefinable.

21 March to 6 May 2012
Tweed River Art Gallery
Mistral Way, Murwillambah, NSW
Open: 10 - 4, Wed - Sun