Schedule Outline as it unfolded: We decided to venture out. We wanted to find a stimuli to dream on the ideas that seem to be emerging today out of our conversations.

1. Shingle Inn. Coffee and check in. Steve Gilligan discussion (village/wasteland/journeyman); 'Sluts Walk' discussion (the social and cultural implications of dress code); Butoh (the inner landscape and the external landscape);

2. GOMA: the sustainable garden; Ideas Festival Program; lunch at Tognini's discussing potential value in gallery crawl and speakers in festival.

3. QAG and GOMA adventure: a sharing of images by Brian and Nikki. Margi attended an IDEAS talk about IPADs in education.

its time to meet up again, and we all agree to be at metroarts at 10am, saturday morning on 20th May. i meet brian in the street. he is standing waiting, and we begin to talk while we wait for nikki whose plane is late (isn't that a rule. planes are always late).

We talk about presence and how do we help artists find a presence on stage (I am here. this is where i am. this is who i am. this is what i am doing. what if?). brian talks about a simple yet profound exercise that he uses in his classes to help dances feel capable of continuing class. to help them journey through the awkward moments into more confident flow he asks them to gently and simply outline their bodies, starting at the crown of the head. using the fingers, coming down the sides of the head, to neck. crossing at the back of the neck. going down the back to buttock, down the back of leg around the toe back up the front of the leg, front of torso, head and top of head again. he asks them to continue to repeat that until it is habit. then they can be in the space, engaged with the space and time. this is an internal landscape, which interests me because i like to play in the external landscape. i think that as westerners we live in our head too much, and to move into the relational space quite deliberately is what i want my actors to practice. however i am thinking this would be a valuable exercise to employ first up...then moving into the relational space.

we talked about the construct that i had just read by steve gilligan (http://stephengilligan.com/blog/blog-4/ ) taking me back to the Heroes Journey, and the idea that there are three ways of being: we are either villagers, wastelanders or journeymen. we dreamed this idea on, and brian was thinking that he shifts through all of these states at different times, he observes the villagers, he then moves into the wasteland, journeying to different places, meeting different people, and returns again with stories of the villagers, and the cycle continues

i found this a beautifuil dreaming on of the constuct proposed by steve gilligan: the beaten path of the village/the falling in on despair/the transformational life of the hero. Brian saw how the three sat with each other. We saw an image at the artgallery that seemed to reveal this idea of layers:


sculpture at QAG that seemed to resonate the construct of village/wasteland/journeyman

THREE ACTIVITIES TO STIMULATE THOUGHT:
1. Nikki built on the morning's discussion about the Male Gaze. She found in QAG a sculptural exhibition that seemed to sum up what we were talking about:
Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection

Installation view of 'Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection' | Photograph: Natasha Harth

Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection

This display explores the Gallery’s holdings of figurative sculptures from the late nineteenth century to the modern era and illustrates the evolution of sculptural approaches to form and space throughout a period of great change.
Sculptural works up to the late nineteenth century often drew on neo-classical and academic traditions, echoing the poetry, myth and aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome and the Italian Renaissance. Developments exploring a more impressionistic portrayal of form began to emerge at the beginning of the twentieth century, with volumetric mass seen in terms of space and light, through the simplification and sometimes even the disintegration of form. Despite these later radical developments, figurative sculpture has endured as a robust and well-loved tradition at the same time as having undergone changes in artistic approaches and materials and methods of exhibition, as well as public reception.


looking from the male to female form


Nikki and Brian examine the outward energy of the male form

2. The Fragmented Body: Nikki was particularly interested in this exhibition that was in the hall as we entered the space. I have cut and pasted this from GOMA site:

Ah Xian | China/Australia b.1960 | (Disembodied hand, bandaged in lower register) 1993 | Synthetic polymer paint, ink, oil on wooden board | Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2008 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Lee Bul | South Korea b.1964 | Untitled (Cyborg hand) 2000 | Hard-paste porcelain, slip-cast, fired to 1555 degrees Celsius and with clear glaze | Purchased 2002. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Ah Xian, (Disembodied hand, bandaged in lower register)

Ah Xian, (Disembodied hand, bandaged in lower register)

7 May to 8 October 2011 | Foyer Cabinet, Gallery of Modern Art

This display presents diverse artistic expressions of ideas about the human body, drawn from the Gallery’s Collection to complement the Gallery’s exhibition ‘Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams’ (11 June – 2 October 2011). These works consider the human form physically, culturally and scientifically, providing insights into history, knowledge, and memory.
Works by Eko Nugroho, Liu Jianhua and Wang Zhiyuan offer a critical take on social and popular cultural issues, while Fiona Hall and Greg Semu locate fetishism and sexuality as embedded in culturally located practices. An assemblage by Rosalie Gascoigne and collages by Gary Brotmeyer address the fragmentation used by Cubist, Dada and surrealist artists in the early twentieth century; and Sara Tse, Anne Ferran and Justine Cooper each visualise the body as ephemeral, a trace of existence.

3. Video installation: in the Hall of GOMA is a huge video installation. I found it disturbing, while the others found it interesting. it was UTube excerpts of popular moments in our culture ( http://youtu.be/_OBlgSz8sSM "charlie bit my finger" video). Nikki talked about the family in this particular clip had to move because their privacy was compromised).

4. A disturbing image that i have seen several times previously, and is now haunting me is the image by Sydney Nolan:


mrs fraser by sidney nolan

This image disturbed me (and is still) because of the juxtaposition of this with our morning conversation about The Slut Walk (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2721208.html ). The idea that women become carcasses. the Male Gaze. http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/faq-what-is-the-%E2%80%9Cmale-gaze%E2%80%9D/

5. Lloyd Rees:

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http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/lloyd_rees_life_and_light

A major gift of early works from the family of Lloyd Rees, one of Australia’s most accomplished draughtsmen and an awarded landscape painter, will be celebrated with an exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery from March 12 to June 13, 2011.

Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said ‘Lloyd Rees: Life and Light’ would show in the Xstrata Coal Queensland Artists’ Gallery and feature more than 100 works created throughout the artist’s distinguished career, including a strong focus on his early drawings of Brisbane.

‘Incorporating portraits, landscapes and street scenes made in Australia and abroad and several of his late mature landscape paintings, ‘Life and Light’ traces the evolution of this important Queensland-born artist’s talent for depicting light and its effects.

‘The exhibition, drawn primarily from the Gallery’s holdings, includes an extensive set of Rees’s early Brisbane drawings recently gifted to the Gallery’s Collection from the artist’s son and daughter-in-law, Alan and Jan Rees.’

Mr Ellwood said Lloyd Rees received the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1950 and again in 1982 for his work, which often focused on the effects of light in its varying forms.

‘The exhibition charts Rees’s career both chronologically and by subject matter. Included are early selfportraits and figure studies, some of which appear to have been made from sculptures now in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection.

‘Brisbane interiors, street scenes and river views feature prominently, along with landscapes and other observations of nature and a series of watercolours, oils and etchings inspired by his time in Spain, Italy, France and Greece.

‘Later works include a suite of lithographs from 1980 depicting Caloola, Rees’s beloved beach house retreat in coastal New South Wales and the stunning Manton Prize-winning The sunlit tower 1986, described by the artist as a “visionary” work, on account of his failing eyesight at the time he executed it,’ Mr Ellwood said.

Lloyd Rees was born in Brisbane in 1895. He died in Tasmania in 1988.

Accompanying the exhibition is a sketchbook-style publication which will be the only book on Rees’s work in print, Lloyd Rees: Early Brisbane Drawings, available from the Gallery Store and australianartbooks.com.au

For more information on ‘Lloyd Rees: Life and Light’ visit www.qag.qld.gov.au

This was my favourite image: it was the last in the exhibition and it communicated spiritual purpose to me...a journey towards the light.

The sunlit tower 1986
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Oil on canvas 107 x 122cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1996 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

The coast near Kiama 1952-55
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Oil on canvas 89.8 x 118.7cm Purchased 1955 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

The fields of Burrawang 1939
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Oil on canvas 60.8 x 76.4cm Gift of the Godfrey Rivers Trust 1941 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Exterior, St. Brigid’s Church, Red Hill 1916
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pen and ink and watercolour wash over pencil on wove paper Gift of John Brackenreg 1965 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Self portrait c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil 13.5 x 13cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1998 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Moreton Bay Fig at Milton, figure under tree c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil 11 x 17cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1999 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

River bank at Yeerongpilly c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil on paper 19.5 x 14.5cm (irregular) Proposed gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation.

Brisbane building under construction c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil on paper 33.8 x 25.1cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Corner of Albert and Elizabeth Streets, looking east towards St Stephen’s Cathedral c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil on paper 34.1 x 25.1cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Themes emerging:
1. what is dress and how does that represent 'who i am becoming'. Very interested in expanding this construct, to see the line between our dress, and our home. Are they are reflection of each other? This makes me think of Nepal, and how we saw young men emerging from small huts with little comfort, yet they were emerging in a suit with a white shirt: the juxtaposition of the poverty of home, and the apparent prosperous nature of the working man image still sits inside my head. That schism interests me.
2. the journeyman, the villager and the desperateness of the wasteland, and how we journey from one to another depending.
3. after reflecting on our day i am realizing that the Lloyd Ree exhibition could be seen as a summing up of the artist's life. beginning small, with little steps, Rees grew his art superbly. in a few minutes the myth of the artist is revealed...and the culmination of the tower left me feeling very satisfied.

We finished with the agreement of meeting at State Library Sunday morning 10am to attend some more of the ideas festival and then moving on to work in the studios.

Process Project

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Challenge 3...the 'no' challenge

Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection

7 May to 8 October 2011 | Foyer Cabinet, Gallery of Modern Art

This was my favourite image: it was the last in the exhibition and it communicated spiritual purpose to me...a journey towards the light.

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