Art and COVID19

We are all working from home more, and out of home opportunities for Artists have for the moment mostly vanished.

I’ve noticed that this website is sorely in need of update – a good COVID19 iso goal! So watch this space.

Also, SALA (South Australian Living Artists festival) this year is likely to be very different, so over the next few posts I am going to be experimenting with how I might share my work online in SALA style.

I hope to show some of my drawings and how they were made, and how they might then give rise to other work.

As a starter, here is a drawing I made this morning, and if you follow the hyperlink on her name you will see the drawing replayed, including the squiggly play where I was testing out the new unfamiliar app that I was using today.

IMG_6716
Introducing Winnie, my new moving muse and bff. iPad drawing.

 

Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Emma Hack Art Prize exhibition.

My Video Drawing work entitled “DNA” has been selected for the Emma Hack Art Prize Exhibition at the Adelaide Fringe.

Emma Hack’s Exhibition celebrates the work of South Australian Artists, and this year the theme is “Identity”.

The exhibition is in the Festival Theatre Foyer, and officially opens Thursday 11th February at 6pm.

It can be viewed any day from 9 until 5 and when events are on at the theatre, and runs until March 13th.

A winner will be selected by a panel of judges , and there is also a people’s choice award – voting  can be done on line here and works can be purchased online here. A list of finalists can be found here

In my video work, the viewer can “participate” in the drawing transformation of one family member to the next. The unique qualities of digital drawing enable the drawing process to be replayed and preserved.

Our DNA determines in part our unique and at the same time composite identity. This animated series of portrait drawings explores that fascination we have with family likeness.

To see the movie, visit the exhibition at the Adelaide Festival Theatre, Feb 11th until March 13th!

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Gleam – an exhibition

I’m busy finishing off the last few paintings for “Gleam”, my solo exhibition opening in the First floor space at Hill Smith Gallery, Pirie St,  Adelaide on November 1st, and running until 22nd November.

Gleamscape  2014 Oil on plywood 76cm x 59cm
Gleamscape
2014
Oil on plywood
76cm x 59cm

Gleam is a collection of works about just that – the gleam of reflections on water, the gleam of the last or first rays of the sun… and the gleam of the back-lit screen of a digital tablet. Every one of these drawings and paintings has its origin in an observational drawing made “en plein air” on my iPad. Some works are the actual drawings presented on light boxes, backlit just as they are on the iPad. Some are paintings of the original drawings – re interpreted in oil on board. Others are paintings of my finger marks on the iPad – close-ups of cropped digital drawings where slippage begins to occur between “represented” and “representing”. My work is an apologia for the primacy of seeing – the intricate and very human process of perceiving an image of our outside world via the retina and a complex cognitive transformation. It is also a celebration of the effect new technology has, and has always had, on the practice of Artists. I am influenced by many other Artists – notably David Hockney, Richard Diebenkorn, Pierre Bonnard, Èdouard Vuillard and the whole Nabi group, and the wonderful group of “9 by 5” cigar box works at the Art Gallery of South Australia, along with their evocative frames. Which brings me to frames – you will see that the “frames” of these paintings are an integral part of the work. They are inspired by the way drawings appear on an iPad and encouraged by my dilemma with frames, framing and the effect of photography on the way we think we see the world.

En Plein Air

"En Plein air", 2013. Mp4 on digital photo frames, approx 96cm x 100cm multi panel work.
“En plein air”, 2013.
Mp4 on digital photo frames, approx 96cm x 100cm multi panel work.

Today I have finally finished preparing my multi-panel digital work “En plein air” for exhibition in the Fleurieu Water and Environment Prize Finalists exhibition.

The work consists of an array of 12 digital photo frames, on each of which is an iPad drawing (originally made beside the river). The drawings are presented as mp4 files, synchronised to cycle in turn through their making and unmaking. The full cycle takes 7 min and 21 seconds.

It is impossible to show the work other than as a “still” on this page – to see it in its entirety you will have to visit the exhibition!

The exhibition will be at the South Coast regional Art centre in Goolwa, from 26th October until 25th November 2013.

For more information on the Fleurieu Art Prizes click here.