Style Magazine May 2008

Studio 24 April 2008

I've had a big week making small works. I struggle with them. Here are some that survived.

Last Week

once again Leaonard Cohen sums it up

taxes

children

lost pussy

constipation

the living poet

in his harness

of beauty

offers the day

back to g-d

Leonard Cohen. The Book of Longing. McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 2006.

Fiona Banner

I love Fiona Banners work. The idea of taking movie dialogue and returning it to written form while imbuing it with spacial/visual form is so exciting. And I am (preditably) delighted by the beautiful shifting patterns which are formed........makes me want to let loose on a wall.

Finalist 2008 Pine Rivers Art Competition

Her Arrival. 2008. Mixed media on Canvas. 1500mm x 1050mm.

The Memorial Gun

                                              The Gun. 2007. Giclee Print with ink additions. 21cm x 29.7cm.
This is the gun that seduced me. In 2006 I stayed in Sydney for a week and I could see this gun from my room. I would some times look at it for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. It mesmerized me and yet, people walked past it all day without even noticing it. It was a memorial to those who had lost their lives at war. But how and who did it make remember?I took a few pictures but not enough. I cant wait to go back to look at it again.

From Homer

A generation of men is like a generation of leaves; the wind scatters some leaves upon the ground, while others the burgeoning wood brings forth - and the season of spring comes on. So of men one generation springs forth and another ceases.

Homer, the Iliad

This quote accompanied the article on Jane Hammond's work. Very poetic but somehow misses the point when the trees are being deliberately destroyed! 

In Memoriam

Jane Hammond. Fallen, 2004-ongoing, recto and verso color inkjet prints from digital files, matt medium,jade glue, sumi ink, acrylic paint, gouache, fibreglass strand and handmade cotton rag.

Jane Hammonds work appears in Art in America April 2008. 

I am interested in memorials and how we chose to remember by listing and also (and I can't work out why!) displaying captured artillery. Hammond's creation of a permanent record of the ephemeral is very interesting. 

My interest in documents of identity extends to the way in which they are used to identify and control those who are alive and to provide records of those we chose to record as dead. 

I am particularly interested in the choice of the US government not to provide a count or a list of those civilians who have died since the occupation of Iraq and of the reluctance of the media to name victims. How do we make a memorial for them. I am currently working on a series of works 'portraits of the unknown' which explore these ideas. 

Random Readings from Leonard Cohen

You comfort me

incorrigible betrayers of the self

as I salute fashion 

and bring my mind

        like a promiscuous air hostess

handing out parachutes in a nose dive

bring my butchered mind

to bear upon the facts.

from Disguises, Cohen, L., Poems 1956-1968. Jonathan Cape. 1974.