Artist Index

1.8.16

Chantal Grech: Reading to the river - remembrance of things…

a project space project by Chantal Grech

Closing drinks Saturday 13 August 5 to 7 PM

This project follows on from a work in the Feminist Archive show (CrossArts Books 2015) where I proposed that an archive which documented a performance could be further worked on or be part of another work in an ongoing organic process of change and renewal rather than remain a static document recording a past moment.



In this work a series of readings again constituted a performance. This was documented in the form of stills and moving images. The readings were short fragments, some autobiographical, others not. A memorial poem, a work by the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and a short series of remembrances were read at different times of the day in one place- the river Seine, on the bank closest to L’IMA, itself an archive of Arabic culture. The documentation of this performance will be used as the basis of an experimental project that aims to see what happens when different systems of representation are used to explore one work. This project shares the subject of readings to the empty space (Articulate 2012), which was about the nature of home and belonging but extends it to a meditation on loss, memory and the personal as a fractal of a larger community.



The performance is a lament for a moment that is gone, for the loss of a homeland that never was and can never be retrieved. The moment of performing is also past but by including it in a real space as part of a current experience the past becomes  part of the continuous present.


Chantal



http://chantalmgrech.com/

24.7.16

TWITCHERS - the works


Linden Braye above L: Wetlands Launch Pad: R: Birdwalk; Below: Ibis



















See Friday Essay: the rise of the 'bin chicken'


Below: Noelene Lucas Incidence of appearance 2016, 6-channel HD video and mixed media







































Anne Graham

Anne Graham Plucked (detail) 2016

Debra Porch My grandfather named all his parakeets Billy (detail) 2016

Juliet Fowler Smith Curleeee 2016

12.7.16

TWITCHERS opens Friday 15 July at 6-8pm

TWITCHERS is curated by Juliet Fowler Smith and Noelene Lucas.

Opening Friday 15 July 6-8pm
Open 11am - 5pm Fri - Sun, Saturday 16 - Sunday 31 July 2016 

INVITATION

TWITCHERS brings together artists who are delighted, amazed, curious and worried about our feathered friends. They are: Linden Braye, Juliet Fowler Smith, Anne Graham, Noelene Lucas and Debra Porch. Most bird watchers prefer to be called ‘birders’ these days, but we still like the word ‘twitchers’ as we definitely feel twitchy about the subject.

Juliet Fowler Smith Curlew pencil on wall 2015

 


























Birds...don't you just love them? Their grace, power, beauty, their songs and behaviour and, for some of us, their flavour!

Our feathered friends can be seen as ‘the canaries in the coal mine’ with their numbers and habitats dwindling as we hog or wreck life’s essentials: forests, clean air, water and wetlands (over 50% of wetlands in Australia have already been wrecked!).

While birds serve as metaphors for the soul, freedom, peace and war as well as symbols of national identity – raptors, for example, can stand for war, aggression and dominance – we also hunt birds for food, trophies and fashion. And we share their predicament as we irrevocably change the planet.

Anthropogenic climate change has caused populations of migratory birds to decline. It is tough for these birds, genetically programmed to think ‘I'm on my way to food and shelter’, to arrive exhausted and depleted at a wasteland, a garbage dump or dried up wetlands. Some birds get called vagrants when they change location and come to the city (the Ibis in Sydney), but they are often desperately responding to displacement, wild populations attempting to survive by adapting to conditions we humans have created. Scientists call this a ‘phenological mismatch’, when food availability no longer matches the birds’ timing for food and reproduction, a mismatch of our making, as we wreck bird habitats and sometimes even regard them as pests.

Some birds are just mind-bogglingly amazing: navigating vast distances, in tune with the climate, winds, currents, searching for tasty titbits and a place to rest and nest. Some demonstrate extraordinary behaviour, others make us laugh, touching our hearts and minds. Their songs lift our spirits and inspire us. Incredibly, more than half the world’s birds and all the songbirds have their origins in Australia. Don't we have some responsibility for their condition, their survival?


3.7.16

The Hidden Gesture - the works

Vilma Bader, The White Space of Mallarmé detail
Vilma Bader, The White Space of Mallarmé in process
Vilma Bader, The White Space of Mallarmé 2013,  Pigment ink on archival paper,
50, each 22.7 x 17.7 cm. 
Clara Chow  Currency II & III
2-channel digital HD video, 2015



Eliya Nikki Cohen
Embrace, silver gelatin print, 2010





Andrew Christie Tears of Joy