Big Print Install 2

Wow, it's late already. I can't believe how fast time is moving.

Everyone went home a while ago, which meant that we could turn up the music. The space we're in, the Fitter's Workshop, has been tentatively promised to Megalo as a new home to form an Arts Hub with the Glassworks, which is next door, and the Bus Depot Markets, also next door. However, there is a sector of the community which is protesting the idea, saying that the acoustics are too good to waste on art, and that it should be kept for a concert venue. Apparently classical music sounds really, really good in here, and I believe them. Everything we've been playing has sounded superb, and crystal clear from any part of the building, even when the stereo is turned right down.

Right now it's turned right up, and we're listening to Massive Attack's Mezzanine. Earlier we had The Black Keys (OMG, the bass!) and even earlier some Radiohead, amongst other things. The working experience has been completely enriched by the sound quality.

But the space should still go to Megalo.

Anyhoo, things are progressing. We've managed to place the text in ways that enhance the total vision and adds extra layers to what it's trying to say. Byrd's still working on the collage phase, so we give ourselves tasks and do them separately, coming together to discuss placement, tone, and whether I should run out for more caffeine beverages or not.


I made him take the camera at one point, just to prove that I'm actually doing some work and not sitting around just taking photos and blogging.



I'm not sure whether the spraying part of the procedure will be tonight or tomorrow morning; depends on his stamina. We have the key, and have to go through an elaborate locking up process, and then have to be back early tomorrow to let the others in, so we might as well keep working then, and then there's a media launch at 10am, so we should be here then.



Megalo's been very generous, providing dinner and wine and water bottles and whatever else. The party tomorrow night should be ace, if I have any stamina left!

Hold that thought.

Of course, many more photos here.

Big Print Install 1

Hey ho

I'm sitting on the concrete floor of the Fitter's Workshop watching byrd do the underlayers of our joint work. I'm not very good at layered imagery, so it's wonderful to watch his mind at work.

All around me, exciting things are happening. John Loane has just been & gone, installing both his work and Mike Parr's. GW Bot is over the other side of our cube, hanging a lovely long linocut on tapa cloth. Diagonally opposite me, Annie Trevillian is working out how to hang her gorgeous screenprints on fabric.

On the cube next to us, Minigraff has a large screenprint, and around the corner from that, Julian Laffan has a fab series of woodcut blocks in the shape of tools.

This is what we have to work with:



And this is what it looks like so far:



It's just the underlayers, there's a lot to go. Stay tuned.

More photos here.

D-day for installation

That's byrd, doing his research on how to transform this



into a pair of pants and a set of sneakers, coming in or out of our constructed demolition site.

Megalo rang this morning to say that the wall is ready for us, but I have to take the Aged Poet to the hairdresser, and byrd needs to do a bit of paid work, so we can't start until about 1pm. And then it's on, and we have a lot to do!

That top print is fabulous, but it's still wet, because it rained all day yesterday! This is going to be an interesting experience...

I will live blog through the evening, because I've done most of my slog. Now it's up to byrd, and I'll just be his paste-monkey. So stay tuned, and if you're really keen, check the flickr set for more.

have bird, can loll

Padge didn't catch this bird, and I'm willing to bet that he didn't kill it, but he was happy to take the credit.


WHAT??!

He also refuses to accept blame.

Pooter, on the other hand, scarpered, and refused to acknowledge whether he had or hadn't been in the general vicinity.

PRINTing BIG

I keep talking obliquely about printing big and my upcoming exhibition with Megalo. I started really getting motivated today, and decided to document my progress in the same way I did for my NZ residency.



So: a bit of context. Megalo, our fabulous, unique, community-enlivening Canberra print access studio, is moving premises, from its current (shared) location in Watson at the old Watson High School site to a very prominent heritage site in Kingston that will enhance its position in the local arts community: a short walk from the National Gallery and right next door to the Canberra Glassworks and the Bus Depot Markets.

On the weekend after next (15/16/17), the National Gallery of Australia is having its annual printmaking symposium, with the theme of MATERIALITY. If you're interested in any kind of printmaking, it's going to be a good thing to attend. Anyhoo, Megalo has the opportunity to use its new building before the actual move, and so is putting on a gala print exhibition in conjunction with the symposium, and it's called PRINTBIG. Artists taking part have had some teaching connection with Megalo: GW Bot, Robert Boynes, Julian Laffan, Mike Parr & John Loane, Annie Trevillian, Minigraff, Surya Bajracharya, Liam Garstang, and myself.



There's a reason why it's called PRINTBIG: we are all producing printworks to be installed, mounted or printed onto walls that are 3.6 x 3.6 metres or 4.8 x 3.6 metres in dimension... eek! When I was invited, I was only a week or so from leaving for New Zealand, and I didn't have much time to think deeply, so my first instinct was to pick up the phone and ring my friend and casual collaborator, byrd, who scales up his work on a daily basis. I asked him if he'd do s formal collaboration with me.

Often my first gut impulses can be wacky, more often they are quite insightful in ways that I hadn't first realised. In this case, I sat down after the first rush of adrenalin and thought about working with byrd on a wallpiece. I also thought about why I was asked to participate in the first place -- I mean, I'm a book artist. I work quite small scale. I had a show at Megalo last year in which I used the space in an interesting way, and maybe that is what gave Alison (head honcho of Megalo) the idea that I could work with a large space here.

I love collaborating with people, whether they are present or absent -- I know that last word sounds strange, but when I work with text I don't just take the text and mould it into my shape; I research the writer, think about what they're saying, and try to enhance it or pair it with something sympatico, and if they have/had strong opinions, I work with them. If it's a full-blown collaboration, with full participation of all parties, there's a dance that you do to give and take your wants and desires with theirs (this is what I'm talking about at the print symposium, amongst other things). In the case of byrd, I need his experience with scale, and I wanted this to be more than just him helping my upscale my work. I wanted a FULL collaboration.

I rang a poet friend who lives in Qld, Angela Gardner (who is also a printmaker) and asked her if she had any spare words about, say, chaos or destruction, or societal breakdown or something similarly chunky and interesting. Angela is constantly writing interesting things, and I knew that she'd be up for a bit of textual wallplay. She sent me a long unpublished series of chunks about architecture, and right at the end there was a fabulous bit called Demolition, which I knew was perfect for gelling the wee scraps of idea in my head. Angela was originally going to come down for the symposium and have a play during the installation, but she's had to cancel, so we're just going to pretend she's standing behind us when we're working.


That's my pile of 'sketches', working out what the text means to me, and rough ideas of what I want to text to do. Byrd is doing his own undoubtedly more artistic sketches, of the imagery he and I will create together alongside and amidst the text.

I'm treating our wall as a page spread of a giant book, like a big textual billboard. I'm taking the words of a poet and using an artist to help me bring them to life. That's what I do with books and broadsides, and that's what I'm doing here, and that's how I'm rationalising working at this scale (so that I don't panic).

I did some printing in Dunedin on the last night of my residency, using their wonderful large woodtype letters, and some of their fabulous brown paper (that is so much better than anything I've found in Australia). I've got various bits of brown paper around the studio, and I posted back to myself all the brown paper lunchbags that the college gave me for lunches during my residency. And now I'm using my wood type to print the words I need.







I'm printing a few copies of everything, and working from the top down. It's a very organic process; I'm squeezing as much onto the paper as I can, and will tear down once they're dry. I'm working with the words in a loosely concrete style, using hand-rolling the paper surface to create meaningful texture, such as in the word breakages.



Angela has, bless her, given us complete creative freedom with the text, so the formatting is totally up to me. I have given byrd complete creative freedom with my layout, and we'll be using collaged overprints, stencilling and graffiti spray to hopefully make it come alive.



The trickiest thing about this project is that we only have one night to install. The cubes (each artist in PRINTBIG has a side of a huge plywood cube to work with) won't be build until the afternoon/evening of the 14th of October, and the media launch of the show is on the morning of the 15th. So we're pre-preparing as much as we can, but it will be a big night, working in situ to get the piece finished. Which in itself is apt, since a chunk of the (visual aspect of the) work is about the scuttle of street artists to get into a fresh site at night before it disappears or gets totally worked over.

More photos (ongoing) here. I will try to keep documenting this, but as you can see, there's a LOT to do. It's scary, but this is to date one of the most exciting projects I've worked on.

PRINTBIG is only up for three days. If you can get to it, do... there will be live projection works, fabulous installed art (cross fingers) and also an audience participation piece, making Australia's largest monoprint, right over the weekend. Doesn't it sound terrific?

A perpetuall Light

I was going to call this post Remember to breathe, as usual (well, as long overdue), but then Goebte sent me a link in a comment on the last post that led me to a much better 'To Do' list than mine could ever be.

This is the kind of light I missed in Dunedin.



I'm sure their sky can be beautiful too (I didn't get to see much clear or unrainy sky), and it certainly was a lovely sky over the harbour when we cruised about looking for albatross, but Canberra has such a WIDE and dramatic sky. Judith Wright wrote a poem about Canberra clouds once, and I found it and have since lost it, but I'm going to find it again and do something with it.

One more, then I'm off to the studio to print BIG.



This one isn't the sky, but it made me laugh when I noticed it -- I was looking down instead of up, and saw the Cheshire Cat's grin below me.

All of these photos --and my other ones -- were taken last night from the penthouse apartment of a friend. We sat in the apartment (she moved in 2 days ago), looking at the view with a glass of champagne and wondered at the shifts of fate that brought her/us there.

'Isn't this expensive?' I asked her.
'Yes,' she said, 'but it's cheaper than a mortgage, and I promised myself that when I got old I wouldn't regret a single thing in my life, and I want to have a good fun life.'

Huzzar! That's the spirit.

Slothness abounds

Goodness me, I have to get through this marsh of sludge and start marching!

Blame Canberra; we've had TWO long weekends in a row, and while I work for myself and can ignore such things, having all my loved ones around me in the house and the cats lingering because we're around doesn't really inspire me to go up to the studio.

I had a lovely birthday. I was cooked my favorite breakfast (Eggs Benedict, with some of the wonderful peppery rocket that is going wild in our garden), received some good presents: a brooch that I picked out in Dunedin, tipped off by a jeweller friend who told me that D was the epicentre of contemporary NZ jewellery design; the DVD of an anime called The Girl who Leapt Through Time; a funky rubber duck from my lovely Sasha in Qld, some good books from family (including Barbara Hanrahan's latest biog) and $100 of book vouchers from Colonel & Lady Duck. Oh, and lots of chocolate from the cats. How lucky am I?

Thank you to Lexicon Harlot for pointing out the significance of turning a prime number just after I'd been working on a project called Prime. Lovely.

We had a bit of a picnic in the park near Floriade, our annual flower festival. It threatened rain, so we had a skeleton turnout, but when it did actually rain I had a posse of practical people, led by byrd, who had a tarp to string up over us. Of course, by the time it was fully functioning, we were quite damp and the rain had stopped, but it was a lovely shade cover as well, and a good time was had. Then we went for a walk through Floriade briefly, but the rain returned with a vengeance, and so we ran back to the cars and went home.

Last night Bumblebee went off to the Duck farm for the week, and tomorrow Best Beloved goes back to work, so I will give myself a good long hard look at my 'To Do' list and roll my sleeves up. In the meantime, I'm still being slow and vague. I think I'll sort out the remainder of my holiday snaps.