sculpture

Endangered Butterflies: Ken Yonetani’s Installation

Posted by hil

I got chatting to someone out at Walker Ceramics in Fyshwick yesterday, who was telling me about an installation that took place in the CSIRO Discovery Centre late last year. Ken Yonetani, a post graduate student working in ceramics at the Canberra School of Art, made 2000 tiles, each 30cm square and only about 5mm thick, fired in the Japanese ‘fumie’ style tradition. The tiles took about 6 months to make, and were white and fragile, with an image of one of 6 different endangered butterflies cast in relief on each one. They were then laid wall-to-wall on the floor in various spaces in the Discovery Centre, and the people who had gathered for the launch were invited in… Within a short time the tiles were broken into tiny pieces. Jeff Doyle’s article in the Journal of Australian Ceramics, ‘Ken Yonetani’s installation at CSIRO Discovery, ACT’ gives pictures and details of the installation, including the reactions as people realised the implicit metaphor involved in the destruction. Cool stuff!

I still like the butterfly alphabet posters that have each letter illustrated by close-up markings on butterfly wings. Apparently they took 24 years to source.

Paulus Berensohn: Deep Ecologist and Crafts Artist

Posted by hil

I’ve been sculpting with clay the last few days, a favourite activity. I love the feel of it, and how malleable yet solid it is. These days it always makes me think about an interview with Paulus Berensohn that I heard a while ago on the ABC’s Earthbeat program. Berensohn is a Deep Ecologist and craft artist, and he is best known for his book Finding One’s Way With Clay. I was taken with some of the things he says in the interview. Here are a few examples:

“But I started in my late teens as a dancer, and was a dancer until I was 30 and then one night in the middle of a performance, at a climax in the dance where we then had to freeze, a voice in my head said, ‘This is dancing on a stage, what does it mean to dance in life?’ And very shortly after that, I was taken to a picnic, and there was a great American potter there, and I watched her throwing on the wheel, and I made that connection that the act of throwing clay on a potter’s wheel was a kind of dancing. And I was just enchanted, and wanted to learn that dance”…

“I mean I personally think that the craft arts isn’t about an alternative way of making a living and filling museums and galleries with gorgeous objects, I think it’s the clay and the fibre and the metals and the wood saying ‘Listen, listen to me. Put your hands on me, and you’ll make contact with a living world.’ “…

“The word ‘art’, if you go back into its etymological roots, it’s not a noun, it’s a verb, it’s a doing, an acting, and it comes from the root for ‘to join’. So one is behaving artistically, one is in a state of intimacy and communion with the activity at hand”…

“We have in our DNA the memory of having fur and a memory of having whiskers that connected us to nature”…

“The first time I ever encountered an Aboriginal Australian, was in New Mexico, and they had invited an Aboriginal elder to come to speak to the native Americans and he was, I wish I remembered his name, he was wonderful. And he came with slides of stones and sunsets and sunrises. He would show a sunrise, and he would say, ‘This is a sunrise in Australia; you must watch the sunrise every day, it is a blessing for Mother Earth’, and then he would show a sunset, and he would say, ‘You must watch the sun set.’ “…

“So one of the things in journals you can do is keep lists, and one of the lists I keep is Who else is here? Who else is participating in this life? So like in these months that I’ve been on Tasmania, yes, here’s one I wrote: 2 Huntsman spiders, one on the lid of the compost toilet. The other was inside a straw hat of Peter’s which he wore for five minutes before he felt something crawling on his head. Luckily he took of his hat before it bit him. It was at least four inches across. Four possums by the side of the road as we drove home late from Hobart last night. Red tide in Nubena threatening the salmon farming pens. Gustav says they are dinoflagellates and that what Peter and I saw my first night here as a phosphorescent tide is the same as the red tide. See, I never knew that”…

“It’s the artist’s work to sing up the earth, to praise and thank and to express gratitude. Well that’s what I think art is. That’s why I think art is a behaviour, to sing up the earth.”

Ron Mueck again : Big Man

Posted by hil

I’ve come across two new links for Ron Mueck since my previous post about his work. There is a very unimpressed review by Adrian Searle in the Guardian in March 2003. Secondly there is ‘A Conversation with Ron Mueck’ by Sarah Tanguy, in the International Sculpture Center’s July/August 2003 magazine Sculpture. Mueck talks about the making of his Big Man sculpture in particular and in detail. There is a really interesting sequence of 6 photos which show the progress and techniques that were used.

Update: I noticed today (30 Oct 05) that the second link about the making of Big Man had been changed since I made the original post, so I have corrected it. I’ve been getting quite a lot of hits here, presumeably because Big Man is on show in Paris, so do take another look!

Patricia Piccinini

Posted by hil

Ron Mueck’s sculpture has reminded me of the Melbourne artist Patricia Piccinini. Apart from her own site, the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery has the best collection of Piccinini’s work online.

Her exhibitions reflect a variety of interests and styles, but I am particularly taken by her sculptures that explore possible outcomes of genetic engineering and technology on humankind. We Are Family: 2003 Venice Biennale is absolutely intreguing and challenging. Take for example The Young Family, the prematurely aging Game Boys Advanced or the Meerman from Leather Landscape. As with Ron Mueck’s sculptures, the realism and detail achieved is remarkable.

Update: Sam Jinks is the sculptor/maker who has worked with Piccinini on many of her works.

Ron Mueck’s Pregnant Woman sculpture

Posted by hil

One of the recent acquisitions at the National Gallery of Australia here in Canberra is a larger-than-life sculpture of a naked pregnant woman by Ron Mueck. Its an extraordinary thing: 2.5 metres tall, and so life-like in its attention to the minutest detail and colouring that you are compelled to get up close to look, and then suddenly feel as if you have got way too personal. Then again the woman seems entirely in her own world, feeling the enormity of pregnancy in every way, and as if nothing else can impinge on those sensations.

The gallery is also showing a video of the making of Pregnant Woman, which was very interesting to me as a maker. The sculpture is made of fibre glass and silicon, and the video shows the elaborate processes of mold making and casting that was involved. I’m not sure if the video being offered for sale at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, is the same, but it looks from the description as if it might be. One technique that I thought might prove useful is that shellac can be painted on a clay sculpture to prevent it drying out.

Here are some links to some collections of Ron Mueck’s amazing work: again, the sculptures are all superbly realistic except for some twist involving scale:

Dead Dad from the BBC’s The Saatchi Phenomenon . The figure is less than life-size in death.
Artmolds.com. Numerous works.
ABC’s Gateway to Arts and Culture: 49th Venice Biennale: Ron Mueck’s ‘Boy’. This includes a RealVideo walkaround of ‘Boy’ shot by Pollyanna Sutton.
Boy. A couple of pictures.
James Cohen Galleries. Numerous works pictured, and a collection of articles and reviews in pdf files.

‘Arborio’ by Jigsaw Theatre Company

Posted by hil

Arborio, a play by Jigsaw Theatre Company is being performed in schools this year, to coincide with the International Year of Rice. Written by Jonathan Lees and directed by Greg Lissaman, it is a comedy telling the story of Marco and Polo, two characters in an unknown place, holding their last grain of rice. While they play imaginary games, tell stories and squabble with each other about where and when they should plant it, they also tell of the importance of rice as a food, and the part it plays in the history and life of many cultures.

An international theme is reflected in the play. The characters, played by Chrissie Shaw and Bridget a’Beckett, assume different accents. This intregued the kids at the performance I saw. And the costumes, designed and made by Imogen Keen, are suggestive of a number of cultures without being able to be slotted into any one in particular. The clothing is imaginative, and beautifully coloured and patterned. Music adds a zest to the play too, with one character playing accordian, and the other a violin. John Shortis, known for his songwriting and performances that reflect ‘Australian history and politics in a way that is funny, satirical and informative’, is the composer.

The set for the play called for the making of a huge grain of rice, and a small cooking pot. I’ve just updated my site to include pictures of both.

A number of funny comments about the idea of such a big grain of rice were made to me when I was making it. I guess thats why I zeroed in on some stories about the world’s biggest seed, the Coco de Mer, which is produced by a palm tree found in the Seychelles. There are a number of these seeds being grown in conservartories around the world. One is in the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, and another in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.

Mystery of the big foam foot

Posted by hil

A 3′ x 5′ sculpted foam rubber foot has mysteriously been doing the rounds of Westwood somewhere near Boston. In a bigger picture, the finish looks surprisingly smooth and hard for foam rubber that has been carted around, and its puzzling that its described as too heavy for one person to carry. Pretty cool foot though :-).

Howard statue update

Posted by hil

Greg Taylor’s sculpture of John Howard that I blogged about in late February is apparently in storage at the moment until an unveiling at the National Folk Festival over the Easter weekend.

I’ve also found an ABC 666 page about the sculpture, which includes two pictures of the statue being removed from Reconcilliation Walk, and a couple of radio interviews with Greg Taylor at the time. The interesting thing about the second interview is that the joking talk about businesses having to ‘pay ransom’ to get the statue moved from their premises came back to haunt this last week. A local liberal MP claimed that ActewAGL, the company to first to host the statue outside their shopfront, had been blackmailed into making a donation. Both the sculptor and the CEO of ActewAGL dismissed the claims as ridiculous.

Chomick & Meder: figurative art and automata

Posted by hil

Chomick & Meder is a wonderful site detailing the figurative art and automata of Peter Meder and Chris Chomick. Most of the figures are one-of-a-kind doll art, standing between 30 – 50 cm tall, and with heads, hands and feet sculpted from Cernit (something akin to Sculpy, maybe?). The figures are beautifully dressed, too. But its the odd and amusing characters that really draw me in. Take Elvisan, or Baby Dewey, or JouJou L’Amour for instance.

A number of the figures have hand made automata mechanisms. These have been designed and machined by the artist, and consist of ‘an internal crankshaft, which enables the Automaton to operate at varied speed, in forward or reverse. The brass hand-crank mechanism operates a counterbalanced armature, creating a rhythmic side-to-side motion with alternating leg kicks’. In the automata gallery are three monkeys, Cecil and Emo, and the mad scientist Dr. Messmore, MD. With the last, the artist has been developing ‘a programmable automaton using servo electronics controlled by a laptop computer’ enabling ‘customized movements, essentially creating one-of-a-kind moving figurative sculptures’. Its described as an ongoing process, in which the ‘ultimate goal is to have the automaton operate independently of the computer, evolving from an educational tool to an art object desired by collectors of automata’.