adelaide festival time

each year in february/march adelaide goes crazy with festivals and more festivals.

it is overwhelming, and sometimes i just stay away from it all but this year my good friend tom moore is in the adelaide biennial, and i wanted to share some of his amazing work.

 

at the art gallery sa he has a whole huge room to himself

 

it took him weeks to get this installation complete

 

and it showcases some amazing piece of art.

its way better in person but this gives you the idea

 

then top top this off he also has an exhibition on at the botanic gardens

with some more installations

 

exhibition is "watch glass grow" 

there are some really good pieces

 

and then to top it off even more the art gallery also has had some projections created that cover the whole building

 

they are animated versions of toms artworks

 

it was very successful and made the building come to life

 its been great to see his talent celebrated and his artworks being enjoyed by so many people.

GRIT

for the past 6 years there has been a collective group exhibiting in the port adelaide area as part of the fringe festival. deb and i have been a part of it each year. this year the theme of the show was GRIT.

but instead of exhibiting in a gallery space, we ended up exhibiting in the old packing shed of the old flour mill. its a great old space, that just needed some work to get it ready for a public event.

the old walls, peeling with paint are beautiful

 

and some of the shadows and surfaces were artworks in themselves

Aside from cleaning out debris and left over stuff, there was a hole in the floor, with random stuff in it. instead of cleaning it up and filling it with timber Deb and i decided to make an artwork installation

with a thick piece of glass, it safely shows visitors what lies beneath

although that does mean it is very very hard to sell.

then there was this bit of floor along the edge of the room. It was not safe to leave it like this with the public entering the space

 

so Deb and i took photos of the grim and dirt and dust in the gap and then covered the gap with wood. We printed the images from before and had them printed to scale and installed a photo collage on the new timber

 

it looks really great, and was a nice artwork in itself

 

again hard to sell.....

 

and one other bit of floor that needed fixing, again we documented it before covering it up and then created a poster to show what it looked like before.

 

but all those artworks happened once we were in the space and inspired. our original idea was to use the grinding grit we normally use in glass cutting and polishing and make a giant gritter ball.

 

it really is better in person, but the grit sparkles, and of course the disco ball motor keeps it turning. not bad for a over sized beach ball, paper mache and some grit and glue!

more on the rest of the exhibition can be found here.

oh and we won an award, more on that here.

SWAP

tonight there is an opening at the wheatie pub for the annual gate 8 workshop south australian living artists exhibition. this is the annual show that our studio has at our favourite pub each year. 

the idea of the show is that we each pulled a name of one of the artists in our studio out of a hat.

 

then we had the challenge to make a piece that is influenced, or is in the style of that persons work.

 

i got deb, so i started brainstorming on MDF with tape about what i might do.

i decided on using some balsa wood, and spray paint, and made a piece called 2D3D.

 

 the exhibition was installed the other day. and funnily enough i think the 6 pieces sit pretty well together. strange since the work is so different and we all made work that wasn't our own.

the names of the artists for the show have been combined too, on the left we have  Jesra Loha and on the right Debka Jeene

left is Katloz Fresimo and on the right is Cheb Chones (the C is silent)

 

on the left is Loje Simlou and on the right is Racch Hach

here is the overall look of the show installed at the pub. should be a good opening tonight.

knot

deb and i were again part of a group exhibition for the fringe festival. this is the fifth in a series of exhibitions where tony the organiser comes up with a theme/title and all the artists make work in response to that word. this word also relates to the port, which is where the exhibition is held, at the black diamond gallery. there are more images and info for this show here.

the show is called knot. and for this deb and i came up with a large loose timber knot.

we had some timber veneer lying around in the studio and we were able to fashion the layers into the knot and then stitch them in place.

 

best of all the box used to carry the knot also became the plinth!

here are some other works from the show, but for full details please see the link at the top of this post.

 

this tree has a knot tied in the stem of the tree, it is a great piece

this show has won an award best fringe exhibition last week and is now in the running for overall best fringe exhibition. not bad for a loosely curated and loosely organised group of artists that pull the whole thing together as it happens!

one + 3

 i am in a group show that opened yesterday called One + 3. more info on that here.

 

the show includes myself, Kate Sutherland, Andrew Bartlett and Deb Jones. Andrew is the one and we are the three artists he invited to work with him and made some collaborative works.

we installed the exhibition last week.  it was pretty straight forward,

this is the promo on the wall for the show.

there are plenty of people involved in setting up the work and figuring out the layout of the pieces.

 

as well as work collaboratively we also put in some of our own work separately. 

 

this is some of kate's work

 

i made a new wall piece for the show

 

this is the piece as documented by the photographer.

the collaborative piece i made with andrew is this bookcase. he made the furniture and i created the glass panels to sit in the doors.  it was a great project to work on. 

i don't have any photos of the exhibition yet, or professional ones of the cabinet yet. but will post some once i have them.