visual art

Glimpses of a Seabird Flying Blind

Posted by hil

I’m really happy and excited that my first gallery exhibition, Glimpses of a Seabird Flying Blind is opening tomorrow, 23 March at the Pinnacles Gallery in Townsville, continuing through to 29 April! It represents almost a year of work, and a new direction for me. The work falls into several groups – The Piano Creatures, The Big Fish (Evangeline), the Shells and Cocoons, and the Secret Cabal of Elders, as well as a few other creatures in an imagined world:

On an imagined shoreline we see disruptions in the natural world. In the shallows are the ghosts of former shells, fragile and colonized or fossilized by synthetic substances. The Piano Creatures, evolved from the driftwood mechanisms of discarded instruments, pick their way across the sands carrying the promise of music and hope. In the deepest ocean a sightless blob fish sucks for sustenance and in the limitless sky the hollow-boned birds continue their daily feat of survival in newly changing times.

The patterns of disruption follow the age-old evolutionary law: diversify, select, adapt. The process is dynamic, relentless, wonderful and dispassionate; and acutely responsive to the footprint of humanity.

Using her experience in making puppets and sculptural forms, and interests in new materials and technologies, Hilary Talbot has created some of the inhabitants of this imagined future as a meditation on the tensions and challenges faced by society now.

I’d love you to drop in and see it if you happen to be up Townsville way in the next five weeks!

A huge thank you to my family, friends and colleagues for all their support, encouragement and enthusiasm and skills in helping me get this up, in particular to Anna Raupach, Tim Raupach, Alex Raupach, Wendy Quinn, Lelde Vitols, Lisa Styles, Imogen Keen, Robyn Campbell, Elizabeth Paterson, Bev Hogg, barb barnett, Chris Hahn, Steve Crossley, Caroline Stacey, Joe O’Connor, and the Pinnacles Gallery team.

Piano Creature No.3. Piano mechanisms, balsa wood, paper mache; 55cm x 56cm x 60cm; 2010

Piano Creature No.6. Piano mechanisms, buckram, paper, cardboard; 50cm x 50cm x 47cm; 2010

The Big Fish (Evangeline) Head detail.  Photograph by Anna Madeleine 2018

The Burden of Stuff No.1. Plaster, foam sheet, acrylic paint, fabric, styrene, recycled wire frame. 68cm x 40cm x 30cm. 2010

Cocoon No.2, Milk bottle plastic; 120cm x 43cm x 32cm; 2016. Photograph by Lisa Styles

Whelk Shell (Fragility). Tissue paper, plaster 90cm x 50cm x 30cm.  2008

Cowry (Paper Thin). Tissue paper, foil, masking tape; 75cm x 45cm x 30cm. 2017

Turtle Shell Sheild (False Promises), PLA plastic filament, wish stones; 60cm x 58cm x 12cm.  2017

Turtle Shell (Moon and Constellations), PLA plastic filament, tissue paper, foil, masking tape; 57cm x 58cm x 12cm. 2017

Wonders of the Deep. PLA plastic filament, recycled sushi fish bottles, fishing line 100cm x 50cm x 45cm. 2017

The Secret Cabal of Elders. Hand puppets. Balsa wood, tissue paper mache, fur fabric, reclaimed decorations. 2017

Falling man street art

Posted by hil

Falling man street art on Cockatoo Island

I was up in Sydney for a couple of days this week, and went out to Cockatoo Island for the first time. It’s a former convict prison and shipyard, now used as a contemporary visual arts venue. This image was one of many painted on the old buildings there.

Now playing – strange trajectories

Posted by hil

Now playing – strange trajectories, the 2007 ANU School of Art Emerging Artist Support Theme (EASS) award exhibition currently on at the Alliance Francaise in Canberra, is featuring the work of Michal Glickson (painting) and Anna Madeleine (photomedia). Anna is my daughter. She has two cool new video art pieces in this exhibition. She has also recently done the album art for Casual Projects new CD, No Rest, and is showing one of those images at PhotoAccess’s Open all areas 2008.

Previously:

Leunigology

Posted by hil

Boat of faith

(Photo credit: Cheryl Lawrie)

I’m kicking myself for missing Born in a Taxi’s The Boat of Faith street theatre act at Floriade. It was created for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and is based on Michael Leunig’s whimsical cartoon characters Mr Curly and his direction finding duck, old favourites of mine. Bryony Anderson was the designer maker.

Mr.Curly's direction finding duck

(Photo credit: Cheryl Lawrie)

I have found a few nice photos online, though:

Born in a Taxi: a sweet short video and photos under the entertainment tab

The Boat of Faith at Floriade: 6 photos

Leon~’s photos from Floriade: 9 photos

At the Melbourne Festival

Play me something …

Posted by hil

records

My daughter, Anna Raupach, has put some of her cool animations online! They belong to a body of work focusing on youth and music culture which she has been developing during her honours year at the ANU School of Art. As a finished piece, these and others will show on 9 big screens, flowing and interlinking conceptually from screen to screen in various ways. I find them fascinating, inventive and at times challenging, and I have loved seeing them evolve over the year. If you are in Canberra, you can catch some of them and some of her other work in an exhibition she is having in the School of Art Photomedia Centre Studio this week. The opening is tonight at 6pm.

Records
Writing
Bodypaint
Fridge
Driving
Tape

Timothy Horn’s cool jellyfish chandelier

Posted by hil

Discomedusae

I had a few days in Sydney last week, and made a point of visiting the National Maritime Museum, not to clamber on old ships or warships like everyone else, but to see Timothy Horn‘s jellyfish chandelier sculpture, Discomedusae (in the Jellyfish – nature inspires art exhibit). It’s quite amazing: about 2 metres across, based on drawings by Ernst Haeckel, and intricately made of amber-coloured polyurethane rubber:

Discomedusae

Discomedusae

To me it had a distinct feeling of decadence about it – intriguing, but I’m sure I would prefer the translucence of another of his jellyfish, Medusa.

Southern rights

Posted by hil

Whale mural

A cool mural on the side of the Middleton pub in South Australia. These Southern Right whales used to be hunted nearby at Victor Harbor, just out to sea from the place we often stay at at Christmas time. They are endangered, but have been coming back in recent years. I’ve seen humpback whales off Eden on the south coast here, but we’ve never been at Victor in the winter to see these. Michael has, though: a mother and calf close-up, when he was boy, and he and his grandfather were out in a boat off Wright Island. They thought it was a reef at first! It’s a family story now.

The Model Family

Posted by hil

Model family kit

A 1956 family in model aeroplane kit form, Guy Bottroff’s cool sculpture The Model Family, at the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition in Adelaide this last March. A few more photos here.

Model family kit

Advertizing

Posted by hil

rejoice2
This is a cool idea: the Rejoice Giant Comb! According to How advertising spoiled me it was devised by Somak Chaudhury, an art director from Leo Burnett in Bangkok.

It makes me think of Rohinson Mistry’s novel, A Fine Balance, because the story starts with a vivid image of one of the protagonists buying a comb from a combseller on a train in India, and because hair is a recurrent theme. The book totally
mesmerized me when I read it in January – it’s the finest book I’ve read in a long time – and when I picked it up and paged through the first pages again the other day I realized that inaddition to everything else, it’s a perfect circle. I knew it ended
where it began, but everything at the begining resonates once you have read the whole.

I also recently came across an interesting Adidas advertizing campaign that was run in Berlin. The gist of it was to put up big more-or-less blank billboards, wait till they were covered in graffiti, and then paste over the top an outline of sneakers with cut-outs that showcased parts of the graffiti as the design on the shoe. If you want to trace the whole campaign, start here.

But both ads remind me of the ‘witchcraft’ of advertising in Peter Carey‘s Bliss.

Updated links 2015