Opening drinks Saturday 5 May, 3-6pm: Traces in a Landscape: On the Edge of Greta

open from Thursday 3 May at Articulate project space. 
Hours: Thursday - Sunday 12 - 5 pm May 3 -27 2012


Traces in a Landscape: On the Edge of Greta is the culmination of a collaborative project by two Sydney artists, Vivienne Dadour and Elizabeth Ashburn that extended from 2010 to 2012.      

Vivienne Dadour  Stereoscopic Views series 2 #1 2012

 Digital print on Ilford  pearl paper 32.9x 48.3cm (ed of 10) ©

Liz Ashburn Traces #1 2012, Watercolour on board 36x 37.5 cm  

This art project was conceived as a archeological investigation of a site on the outskirts of the town, Greta, in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales. From 1939-49 it was the site for the largest army training camp in Australia. Between 1949-1959, it became known as the Greta Migrant Camp a venue for a massive immigration program for those displaced by the conflict in Europe during the Second World War. Both the involvement of Australian soldiers in international conflicts and the great wave of resettlement of migrants remain significant events in Australian history.

Dadour and Ashburn engaged with examining the present landscape for the residue and remnants of previous actions or occupancy through an active process of art making related to what has survived. They responded individually and collaboratively using photography, watercolour and drawing to express the presence/absence dimension of this landscape. As the occupants of the Greta site were situated on the edge of the town of Greta, Ashburn and Dadour are aware they also are on the edge of the multiple histories of this site. Traces in a Landscape: On the Edge of Greta is a protest against forgetting and aligns with the political sub-texts often found in the work of these artists through their concern in revealing what may have been obliterated, ignored, hidden or obscured.

One implication of their collaboration is that by making aspects of this site accessible to others a reality implicit in this regenerated landscape can now be shared.

www.viviennedadour.com; www.lizashburn.com


press release

Traces in a Landscape: On the Edge of Greta is part of Head On.

          

Flat Pack: Traps of Understanding

Flat Pack: Traps of Understanding
Results Part 1
Follow link to full edit of video documentation April 16-29 2012
http://vimeo.com/40862006

Photographs:
Brett East

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Closing event FlatPack: Traps of Understanding: Sunday 29 April, 6-9pm

You are invited to the last day of Alexander Jackson Wyatt's FlatPack: Traps of Understanding. 

This is the first of a four-part cross-artform project funded by the Australia Council.
Audience interaction with 'traps' provides footage for a film being made as a collaboration between Alexander Jackson Wyatt and Christine Olsen.This film is planned to be shown in early 2013 when the project is complete.

Footage made during FlatPack: Traps of Understanding can be seen projected in the project space.

The space is open from 12 noon.

A closing event will be held at 6-9pm Sunday 29 April.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body

Flat Pack: Traps of Understanding Week 1 Preview

Flat Pack: Traps of Understanding Week 1 Preview

Participant interaction and filming
Sunday 22/04/2012

FlatPack: Traps of Understanding - April 16 - 29

Press release

FlatPack Traps of Understanding calls for participants between 16 and 29 April- contact Alex on a.jackson.wyatt@gmail.com or  0404 950 291 to tell him when you can join him making traps and filming at Articulate project space, 497 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt NSW.

above: audience interacting with Alexander Jackson Wyatt's Enough to store in a storage unit, Damien Minton Annex Space, Friday 14 October 2011. Photo: Brett East 

FlatPack Traps of Understanding is a cross-artform collaboration project and mentorship between emerging artist Alexander Jackson Wyatt and Filmmaker Christine Olsten (producer Rabbit-Proof Fence). This project will follow trajectories such as cinema, architecture and performance. The examination of fields such as cinema’s will look into its ability to ‘capture’ and frame space and spatial relationships.

Looking at architecture, the project interest lies in the building around a gallery's ‘encasement’, the empty space within a seemingly neutral context. The performative role teases out possibilities for the allowance of difference in the formal object / viewer relationships. Taking place during the final two weeks of April at Articulate Project Space, the goal is to document the procedure of the assemblage of a series of sculptural works throughout assisted by a group of amateur theatre performers (TBC).

Assembled by the performers, the artworks will become luring interactive objects and tools of deception (otherwise described as traps, design taken from those used to hunt wildlife), and all structures will use the interior). These will be attached to the gallery architecture, and thus forming a reliance on the building. For these two weeks, the gallery will become part 'film studio' to ensure the unfolding of the project is will be documented using photo, video and audio recording devices.

The Traps as individual units will not be malicious but stand in as question to the traditional role the gallery serves to both artist and viewer. Understanding the gallery as stable neutral environment, which is normally seen as an easily adjustable environment, allowing the work of artists to be accessed clearly, on both a visual and intellectual level. Like a hunter in the wilderness, this project aims to manipulate the gallery environment into to a kind of trap. Using the familiar enclosure to lure viewers, performers and filmmakers alike into a situation that seems familiar and intentionally neutral, but in turn is not what they could have expected. A camera will document how it unfolds.

This will produce footage for a documentary film highlighting the boundaries that separate the gallery environment from an 'exterior' uncontrollable environment, one that is separated only by a front door. The concept of trapping, in the case of this work, is seen as an attempt or device intended to control the often uncontrollable 'natural environment'.

The cross-art collaboration and mentorship aims to grasp the  'filmmaking process' as the best tool to track and visualise the artist's own response to this expected unexpectedness. This project will be reminiscent of works such as those of Bruce Nauman Space Under My Hand When I Write My Name, 1966 (Destroyed) and his other studio video works such as Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square. Both of which pose questions around the relationship between a mythology of the artist's actions that result in the product of the artwork. It asks can the artwork become simply an engagement of the artist and their materials with space and time? Be it a body in space in the studio? In this case we are looking at the concept of the project space, in particular the Articulate project space. The question is posed similarly, but inverts the assumption of the final product as a stable object in a stable environment- and breaks down the interiority of the artist's studio and their actions.

Alexander Jackson Wyatt

April 2012  

Alexander Jackson Wyatt is the first of four young and emerging artists and musicians to be hosted by Articulate project space over the next year to develop mentored cross-artform projects. 

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.