EXHIBITION DATES: 23rd October to 6th December 2015
Noosa Regional Gallery, Pelican Street, Tewantin, Qld, Australia
Dr Tamsin Kerr, Cooroora Institute. October 2015
Opening Speach
I’d like to acknowledge the Kabi Kabi peoples and traditional owners of this land who understand the critical role of art as part of everyday life; who model ways of being in creative partnership with the natural world and its material thinking. We might […]
OFFICIAL OPENING: Friday 23rd October at 6pm All Welcome
DATES: 23rd October to 6th December 2015
Noosa Regional Gallery, Pelican Street, Tewantin, Qld, Australia
The story of the everyday fascinates me, I find beauty and rhythm in my surroundings and ways to use this to record and tell the stories. As art has from the beginning of time, told the stories before me. I use the places and people as inspiration, raising the status and acknowledging the ordinary lives of the everyday.
I choose to use craft based practices, I find this helps make direct links between process and people. The layers […]
An excerpt from my exhibition The Notion of an Ordinary Yarn
Noosa Regional, Queensland, Australia 22nd October to 6th December 2015
The journey to make string has taught me so much about being with plants, and the absorption of process. I have delved into string, cordage, twine a number of times in the last few years. It is a subject that seems to repeat itself in fibre weaving classes. There are many techniques and twists so to speak, and string is as old as civilization, so I guess it goes to prove it is the simple things in […]
“The Planthunter is an online magazine devoted to celebrating plants and the varied ways humans interact with them.” www.theplanthunter.com.au
October 2015 ART Issue #24
theplanthunter.com.au
Read More and while you are visiting their webpage don’t forget to subscribe if you would like to see more of their beautifully selected range of articles and insights.
The beginning
It begins with a tree, I saw it lain down on the side of the road, partly dissected and incomplete. A great glorious tree, now saw dust, leaves and broken limbs fallen from great heights. An urge overtook me, well it took a few days to put this urge into action. I went and found a quiet back path to the place of the fallen tree. I gathered, planning on taking only what I could carry in my bright blue ikea sack, and I sat and photographed, and just was present with the tree for a while.
On a beautiful sunny day we gathered and I facilitated some fast and furious Shibori techniques using local natural dyes. The dyes were prepared in the two weeks prior, I gathered Citrus leaves from a day of pruning, turmeric had just died off and was ready for harvest, a branch of eucalyptus that I had been saving from a storm a while ago, good old faithful red onion skins and Zig Zag wattle seeds.
As this was all about the resist, I really wanted colours that would make it easy for the participants to see what they had achieved. We used Silk […]
Learning new things, and just taking a short time out to play, helps me let go of the shoulds. Its so easy to get caught up in producing work for specific purposes, pre-comitted ideas that have deadlines and external inspiration. Going inside and forgetting all that grown up stuff, making marks and gestures with a medium, giving myself permission to make mistakes.
Kym Barrett’s cold wax workshop at the Noosa Regional Gallery ticked all the boxes, she is a teacher that is firmly grounded in her own practice. Comfortable and confident in sharing the techniques, and for this workshop the refreshing […]
This is the first time that I have been selected for an art prize, so a very exciting and nervous time. Creating the Installation instructions, Packaging and delivering the finished work were all part of the learning curve. Arriving at the VIP opening reminded me of days gone by in Sydney when I lived another life.
Seeing my work beautifully installed, next to Robert Andrews works was a very happy moment. It took me ages before I actually went over and looked at my work, read the statement (as if for the first time), I felt quite shy about being near […]
The Process of Ordinary
Sitting with women making, gathering and preparing materials for work is part of the way I remember my childhood. My mother is a maker, a sewer, a spinner, a weaver, and as a small child, for a few years, my family moved to Arnhem Land, in Remote Northern Australia. This was a traditional island, their connection to culture mostly intact, weaving, carving, bark painting, dyeing fibre, gathering, hunting in season and traditional law were part of their everyday life.
The innate knowledge of art and craft was imprinted in these early years, I never considered the process, it […]
This year has been very full of learning, and with the help of a RADF grant from the local Council I was able to attend a 5 day masterclass with UK artist and basket maker Tim Johnson. This was an incredible experience of learning new techniques and emerging myself in the teachings of a process based artist who has learnt his art from craft based practices, from historical and contemporary teachings from around the world. The level of skill and techniques, a lot from European decent, were translated into Australian materials and environments effortlessly.
It was fascinating listening to the talks […]
