One For The Gels

One for the gels! From my collection circa 1935 Germany Agfa lupex paper

Hipters of the Past

Scottish Cartes de Visites 1860-1889 (front and back) from my collection

©  Anne Bentley

A Visit to the Artists House: Michael Williamson

Last Friday afternoon was an unusually warm Autumn day when I dropped in on "Raw" artist Michael Williamson for a chat about his ceramic work processes.
Raw art (art brut), also known as outsider art  is a loose term for art seen as created apart from the usual or expected norms of mainstream art where we can categorise Michael's work for want of any other term.  He shrugs and is non-committal about any labelling, explaining he was described this way by Steve Fox who showed Williamson's work a number of times at his Mogo Raw Arts and Blues gallery in southern New South Wales.

Michael Williamson's workspace is a room containing a clever protected area that looks like an inflatable swimming pool with two work benches in it - the sides inflate to 3 or 4 feet and protects the surrounds from clay and water.   

Michael's clay sculptures consist mainly of head & torsos; brightly coloured, they are often armless and one-eyed.
Some have amusing titles such as Uncle Dave's Crack-pipe Dreams (pictured at left from my collection) - a 35cm tall one-eyed spotted creature with pendulous breasts that was featured in exhibitions at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery 2011 & Kerri Lowe Gallery 2012.
Other works can be sinister or simply odd but all pieces have various degrees joy about them and are so full of life that belies the often troubled times of this artist.

Meeting Michael outside of his housing commission flat - the "best ghetto in the country" he tells me - next to tranquil harbour water, I find him in a quiet mood and I notice his exceptional good manners.   He lives modestly with a comfortable lounge with an old television surrounded by his statues in various stages of completion.
Unlike other ceramicists, who bisque fire then glaze and fire again, Michael creates his works, waits up to 8 months for them to dry, spends up to 2 weeks painting the glaze and then carries each one down 3 flight of narrow stairs to be picked up for their one and only firing.  Sometimes he does not know whether the work will survive the furnace and his many hours work ends up in pieces.  He is well practiced and it doesn't happen very often nowadays and he tells me that it doesn't upset him as much as people may think and he explained to me that he gets the best results from the glazes by doing it this way, especially over large surfaces whereas a bisque fired piece would look mottled.
He is right - his colours are vibrant and even giving them pop art look.  The sculptures are tactile as well and I can't help but pat them as we talk.

The final product and waiting for the kiln - from the left: The Prisoner, Out of Whack & I am Lucifer - in the background at the right is an as yet to be named piece ready for the kiln

Femininity is next in line for glazing

from the left - foreground is Spaced Out and Handsome; behind: Devil's Haircut;  The Sky is Falling (middle)  and far right, Target

Before heading off, I did a quick head count of the fun group: 6 finished and ready for the galleries with about 15 ready to glaze.  From about 5kg to 15, Michael Williamson's works are collected by many people including a national gallery curator, another collector has close to 20 pieces around a property in NSW and three MW originals reside at my place where they blend in nicely with our collection and receive a pat now and again.
 
  

A nice way to finish the day

I picked this song up on an original 45 rpm record recently (for $5.00!!)

- turn up the volume and be quiet for a moment...

sigh

Megan Yeo - Artist in a Group Show

I met Megan about 12 years ago when I bought a painting that she had on show in a small cafe in Newtown (Sydney).  We discovered we are on the same family tree (from one of the Irish ancestors) and have be the best of friends since.

Megan had already studied art and been a part of Art Express when we met and decided to attend the college of arts (COFA) despite already having high school & TAFE art study experience.
COFA, I feel, gave her a freedom to concentrate solely on art and explore her ideas.
I am fortunate to have seen her work in many group show since and to have a couple of pieces of her work at home on permanent display for my own pleasure.
I was delighted when Megan said yes to taking part in the group show, Jehanne's Alchemists, which she used to explore a photography side of her art using instant, Polaroid photographs that she then enlarged into an edition of one only:

above: Dairy Queen by Megan Yeo 2012 (SOLD - edition 1/1 Lambda print 27x42cm from original Polaroid-type photograph)

 

Release the Ravens by Megan Yeo (from the exhibition she co-curated: "Queen & Country" Gaffa Gallery, Surry Hills Sydney 2nd - 14th July 09 - mixed media: cross stitch on printed embroidery fabric)

 

Megan in her studio March 2009 (photograph by Anne Bentley)

above: works on paper by Megan from the group show, Kiez: Homely/Unheimliche that showed in Sydney 2009 & Melbourne 2010

The Banality of Evil by Megan Yeo (a COFA award winner), made of many panels, she split it into individual pieces when the time was right a few years later:

(photography, cross stitch on embroidery fabric & watercolour wash)

Linda Brescia - Artist in a Group Show

 Linda Brescia's work features screened fabric model making; painting & photography.  She says she "got the art bug" about 12 years ago and has shown her work consistently since; including the Peter Fay curated Showdown in 2011 (she will also feature in his May 2012 group exhibition, Out of the Blue).  Currently, her work is a part of the Mini Print International prize at the No Vacancy Gallery in Melbourne.   She is also a multiple prize winner along with being awarded a number of grants.
I am fortunate to have Linda agree to participate in my first curated group show.
I first discovered her at the same gallery I am now putting on Jehanne's Alchemists 
 which was a combination of screen print, sculpture models and photography.  There were a number of images that stayed in my mind for a week until I simply had to make contact and ask if I could lay-buy at least one:

I'd rather stick pins in my eyes (Viallat) - Linda Brescia (from Showdown at Sheffer Gallery 2011)

Linda is also interested in the lives of artists & relationships between artitsts:

The de Koonings - Linda Brescia  (from Loop installation at the Stein Gallery 2011)

Secondhand (Marlene Dumas) -  Linda Brescia

Sunday night - already!

I feel like I'm walking through knee-high mud - it's Sunday evening and I'm off, out to dinner and then it's the day job on Monday... AGAIN - and nothing productive to show for 3 days except some notes and enjoyable head-space ideas that began to fruit but need that lovely space of hours & tranquility to form in the real, material way.  
Then again, I've read up on some interesting artists this weekend and probably bought too many books.  And I've done a heap of laundry that is sodden on the clothes line and hung through the house - no flash flooding this time but the rain has been bucketing down all weekend.

A collage I put together a few months ago comes to mind when frustration sets in, kick some bugs!

© 2010 Anne Bentley

of course there's probably something deeper here but today, it's just kicking things - ahh, that's better.
wonder what we'll have for dinner...

Edwina Wrobel - Artist in Group Show

Opening this coming Friday

From the Balmain Watch House Site:

Seven artists are ‘doing time’ this weekend. These ‘prisoners of artmaking’, 3 female and 4 male, however, are hoping for clemency by presenting a very colourful array of their artworks. The inmates are all from Sydney but each with a different cultural background. Brought together by a passion for art and ‘crime’ this is their first collective initiative.

Opening Fri, 29, 6-8.30pm  - runs: Sat 30, Sun 31 October 2010 10am - 5pm 179 Darling Street Balmain NSW

I first came by Edwina Wrobel's (1) work in September 2004 via Irene Schroder who ran Mura Clay Gallery in King Street Newtown for almost 20 years.
The invite card for an exhibition featuring Edwina's work that arrived in the post had a picture of Joy's Birth: for Joy Hester (2), which I liked a lot & kept on display so as not to miss the show.  During the afternoon before the exhibition opening, I chanced by the gallery for what was becoming a regular chat with Irene - we would save the world, change politics or talk about artists & this time was no different except there was an opening that night so we talked about the art - I couldn't talk about much else and Irene agreed the work was wonderful and, with a wink said that they take layby.  I kept coming back to the invitation card work and it was settled.  Laybying "Joy's Birth" cost me more than the rent and more than my weekly wage but I was totally seduced and it hasn't stopped since. 

Five years and one month later, I was sitting in Edwina's home listening to her story about really wanting to own a piece of art by a particular artist held in the stockroom of an upmarket gallery and talking them into letting her layby it.

I see Edwina's work as being personal thought that turns a corner only to hit a wall being the intrusion of a sometimes nasty world.  Using her own symbols along with an illustrative attraction to Día de los Muertos after spending time in Mexico as well as the Heide Circle of Australian artists - the later most obvious in Joy's Birth: for Joy Hester. The daughter of avid Australian art collectors, Edwina grew up around Woolloomooloo and was one of The Gunnery group; a squat & artists community that began around 1985 until 1991when they were all booted out so the State Government could refurbish it to become an arts administration building & gallery. 

Objects and art Edwina collects are as interesting as the art she creates including the remains of the famous Kings Cross sign (3) questioning the (suspected) murder of Juanita Nielsen rescued from questionable storage in an outhouse.
It was a treat to visit her & see some of her other works I hadn't seen (image #4).

Edwina often has me in stitches with her anecdotes about people in the workplace, family, past & present adventures and this mixing bowl of feeling: humour, frustration and irony can be seen in her work and for me, Being in the Office (5) says it all.
In her previous group show at the Balmain Watch House her works included disturbing paintings depicting scenes from Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith along with contrasting &, I think, stronger paintings to do with travelling to Broken Hill and relationships (image #6) - needless to say, all the paintings sold out that weekend.

Art makes me happy and feeds my mind - the original Wrobel's in our house delight both me and my partner (AH) daily.

I haven't seen any of Edwina's new work for this coming weekend's group show but I've held off on completely paying AH back my half of electricity bill, just in case I need a layby deposit...

Images as numbered:

1. Ed & Ted (4th October 2009 - photograph © Anne Bentley)
2. Joy's Birth: for Joy Hester 2004 Edwina Wrobel
(oil on tin © the artist - collection of Anne Bentley)
3. Whatever Happened to... Juanita Nielsen (circa late 1970s artist unknown - paint on chipboard - custodial collection of Edwina Wrobel - photograph Anne Bentley)
4. titleTBA - Edwina Wrobel
(oilpaint on canvas © the artist- collection of the artist)
5. Being in the Office 2008 - Edwina Wrobel (Gouache © the artist - collection of Anne Bentley)
6. I Don't Want a Boy Who Won't Hoe Corn 2008 - Edwina Wrobel

(Gouache © the artist - collection of Anne Bentley)

7. Scarred - Edwina Wrobel

(© the artist- collection unknown - I found it on the net)

All photography except image#7 by Anne Bentley.

No surprises are the best birthday presents

Sometimes you have to give yourself permission to buy art - for the pleasure it gives you - first by seeing, then choosing, then buying, and when you bring it home, the pleasure begins again...
if your loved one doesn't know what to get you for your birthday - the usual at our place - suggest something, buy it & get reimbursed.  For one of my gifts, I chose Hosang Park's image of a park in Seoul from the friendly people at 20x200 - a one stop online gallery where art is cleverly priced and the only way we were going to afford one of his photographs.  The one pictured below we purchased in early June but because it was a birthday present, I had to wait until Tuesday this week to make it mine.

Howon (© Hosang Park)

There's more to see with the real thing (heh heh) than the online view.  The print quality is stunning - heavy cotton paper with sharp & crisp definition.

Hosang Park is a Korean artist who has made a series of bird's-eye view park shots -his website has the set (click on "A Square") - totally cool.

THEN!, in the mail a money note from my parents... gosh...and how excellent that 20x200 also has some Beth Dow work available - not quite sold out yet but I got a move on just in case I miss out as I did for a previous edition of hers. 

Check out her website too - she has a large series of formal English & Italian gardens -  including Sissinghurst where the people in the picture could be mistaken for Vita & Harold themselves, taking a morning stroll.

Passage - Levens Hall (© Beth Dow)

This image originates from a platinum-palladium print - hence the excellent tones but it's the way Beth has framed her shot that is also outstanding for me. 

I'm not going to write a film vs digital rave - each has it's place and Beth Dow's work, along with Gordon Undy, Lauren E Simonutti & Filip Przewozny, to name a few diverse artists on my want list, proves that traditional photographic film & hand printing is alive and well (and being drooled over).

As an initiative, the Jen Bekman project; 20x200 is inspired - it makes art accessible and really good fun to be a part of & art lasts a lot longer than chocolate & flowers.

Images here are reproduced with permission - copyright remains with each artist.

Nicolas Collerson - Artist

I’ve wanted to write something this artist & his works that I cohabit with, for a over a year now but it’s not as easy an exercise as I thought. I am not an arts essay scholar but on the other hand, I am an arts fan so on that basis I will tell a condensed, personal story with pictures on how I came to enjoy living with some of the wonderful work of Nicolas Collerson.

At the end of November 2008 on a weekend, my partner was away interstate so I was frolicking about and decided to visit a friend in her shop on Enmore Road, Newtown (Sydney Australia). While waiting for the friend to finish serving a customer, I went next door to have a look at a small group art show closing that night in a walk through room an enterprising fringe dweller has made into a gallery.

The first thing I saw, and I don’t even recall the other artists, was a small set of iconoclastic works by Nicolas Collerson. I knew one or more of them would have to come home with me.

On exhibition of Collerson’s works were 2 paintings, 2 wall sculptures and a standing piece on a plinth that looked to me, like a Jesuit but had an octopus for a head & was holding a black bunny:

Octopope by Nicolas Collerson (2008 - approx 32cm tall. ceramic statue, rubber octopus toy & random little plastic rabbit, acrylic & spraypaint enamel.  photography by Anne Bentley)

His The Glorious Tentacled Host Rinse Out was the one that had appealed to me immediately – finally someone who isn’t only having a go at humans and their Christianity but also Buddhism. It seems so sacred to white Westerners, even non-believers - ya can’t dump on the Buddha. Well, I do! Stupid prayer flags in the wind, probably made by exploited workers using toxic dyes… but they were a bargain… Lazy praying, I reckon – hang a set of coloured flags and you’ll be right for the next life. And, by the way, do you know the Dali Lama, the latest rock star of religion, does not believe in sex for anything other than procreation and does not agree with homosexuality. At a press conference in June 1997, he commented: "From a Buddhist point of view [lesbian and gay sex]...is generally considered sexual misconduct" 1 ).
Gee, he’s a lot of fun...Nicolas’s work belies my stroppiness – it is delightful and has a clever fun play about it.

The Glorious Tentacled Host Rinse Out by Nicolas Collerson 2008 (photograph by Anne Bentley)

Child rearing with an organised religious aspect can have profound effects on a creative and original thinking mind – especially when the child’s thoughts are contrary to elder’s beliefs. Personally, I am often baffled by people having blind belief in a book written generations after its suggested time and interpreted by ego and (mostly) male power circles.

I don’t have to present any further essay on religion & war until my soapbox crumples under me as I can see a fine illustrative rendition of human-made Christianity on the wall:

Saint Sophia The Blessed Selecta (& detail) by Nicolas Collerson 2008 (Mary statue, cardboard, plastic glow in the dark star, felt tip markers, plastic fly & various plastic army soldiers on MDF board)


Being the art junkie I am and knowing that weekend the only cash on hand was our house rent, I pondered calling the artist to make an offer for some of his work for, oh about 10 minutes, raced home, got the cash & organized to meet Nicolas back at the gallery a couple of hours later that evening.

When I arrived at the designated time, the only person there was a man who didn’t look much like the artist I’d spoken over the phone. It turned out he was another buyer and he’s spoken with the woman who ran the place & said he wanted to buy the works…

Really? I asked, when did you speak with her?

Yesterday.

Oh – and this is where a true art junkie shows her worth, But, I said, I’ve already spoken with the artist about some of his works.

Which ones?, he asked

All of them.

This man upon whom I’d already made unfavourable judgment went on to say how he could easily make exactly the same works and probably better. I expected him to finish his spiel with a flourishing flick of hair or his scarf.
The tosser left.

=======

When Nicolas delivered his works - yes, he came by & hand delivered his work to our place on a really hot day, I asked him if he created his work instinctively rather than with a totally mapped out idea as this is how I am seeing his work. He agreed then and recently re-confirmed this saying he is “a bit hesitant in declaring what a work is supposed to be about, I’d rather (the works) be approached like the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)2 in psychology.”


In other words, the viewer tells his or her own story as they see it from before the event of what the image depicts, through to the outcome using only what they see in front of them with no written explanation.

The Warhol as Chthonic Incubus by Nicolas Collerson 2007 (acrylic, felt tip pen, spraypaint on MDF board.  photography by Anne Bentley - hanging in our lounge)

===
Nicolas Collerson is not only a visual artist, he is also well known and respected in Breakcore music circles, having created his own hybrid of Breakcore and Mashup3

Going by the name Maladroit, he is anything but – he’s been creating his own sounds for close to 10 years, starting out in 2001 producing for the now defunct System:Corrupt Collective and has toured numerous times as Maladroit including an extensive tour of Europe including Russia, the Ukraine, Scotland, the UK, Spain and Czech Republic in 2009.


Currently living in Melbourne, Nicolas is considering showing some of his current work in Sydney sometime in the future. I’m hoping for the near future.


1 http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_budd.htm
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_Apperception_Test
3 Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia – Gail Priest - UNSW Press December 2008


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all images and text are copyright

The Queen Comes to Katoomba NSW Australia 12 February 1954

(watching the parade - photographer unknown)

In 1954, the year after her coronation, Queen Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to tour Australia.  The tour included  70 country towns and in Katoomba, an unknown person took photos of the event from the crowd.  These snaps are now a part of my small photography collection.

My Mother was 22 years old and working in a photo development shop in the Blue Mountains with her best friend.  One of the other girls working there, after processing & printing 18 Brownie shots of someone's day during the Royal Visit, printed a set each for her co-workers. 
Mum is good fun when she tells me of slightly naughty things in her younger, pre-marriage years (this week is her 55th wedding anniversary) - normally well spoken, she gets a twinkle in her eyes and with not quite a full giggle tells me stories with the punch line or main anecdote spoken through one side of her mouth, putting on an earlier Australian accent.

The Queen's visit was a huge event for many Australians and remains the most popular Royal Visit to Australia of them all.

A few years ago when visiting my Mother, she showed me the photos and told me about the fun they had at the shop - sometimes there wouldn't be any work* so they'd take corny posed shots of each other, hand to forehead - glamour puss at lunchtime.
Wondering why I'd want those old things that weren't very good anyway, she gave me the unknown photographer's snaps.

One of my activities is restoring old photographs & here is the original scan of the above scene:

It's hard to see all the splotches & scratches here but you get the idea about the exposure & straight-forward development (no dodging, these are direct contact prints from the negatives).  Taking photographs during a bright day in February would always be tricky.

- especially if the photographer appears to be short:

can they see anything? 

* in another shop where my Mother worked in main street of Leura (- she lived midway between Katoomba & Leura -) her kind boss kept her and her friend on the payroll during Winter even though there was hardly any work.  "You could let off a gun in the middle of the main street and you wouldn't even hit a dog"  - on ya Mum

Australia is not a Repulic yet but it may get its independence one day - I do hope my Mother gets to see it happen.

Oh, by the way, none of the photos shows even a tiny glimpse of QEII or even her car!

More from my eclectic collection - Lovely, lovely women

Another from my collection- a real 8x10 photo of Julie Christie Sept 1968 - photographer likely Ron Galella* / during the making of the film, In Search of Gregory  - 1969 (do you suppose that's a real cross-your-heart-bra?)

Lovely Julie Christie... Memorable films with Julie Christie playing excellent roles in that I will always watch again: Farenheit 451, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Go-Between & The Return of the Soldier.  I am not discounting other performances but these are the ones I will always see again.

And while I researched the origins of my real (phowr) photo, I was playing some of my small collection of Francoise Hardy 1960s picture cover EPs & 45s like this gem from the same year as the the JC film, 1969:

To my delight, she does a French version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne on this record and this is what I'm listening to at the moment:

Comment Te Dire Adieu (love those 3 dancers at the end)

==

*yes it's that Ron Galella the pioneer of paparazzo, famous for losing his teeth to Marlon Brando's knuckles & having his car tyres slashed by Elvis Presley's bodyguards.  I did not know anything about the Julie Christie photo when I originally bought it - it had no information with it.   (I can only assume Galella was allowed on film sets at one time before he began following people (my pic is from 1968 & he bothered Brando in 1973)

From my collection - One a Penny Two a Penny Hot Cross Buns

One a penny... (photographer unknown) circa WWII

I have a couple of World War 2 photographs in my small photography collection that I can only make guesses about. 
This one is a real favourite of mine and I've just scanned it larger (it's a standard 3x4 inch shot) & have begun to clean it up.
This image has such a story - Airmen between jobs resting - but where? I thought it was a classroom but the chairs tell me different.  The old English Hot Cross Buns rhyme on the blackboard could possibly give away the time of year (originally thought to be Polytheist or Pagan, Hot Cross Buns is also used by Christians & is thought to have first been mentioned in the early 1700s & the 4 squares represent the 4 phases of the moon) - the cursive writing next to the hotxbuns is not in focus.  The clock looks like it's just after 4.30.  The Airmen are reading & resting - the one on the far left looks like he is reading a letter or he could be flipping through photos taken by the person taking this shot. 
I especially like the boot in the window - do you think it's smelly & getting an airing or was it wet...
The hats suggest (and I'm pretty sure here) these are Australians.
It's printed on Velox paper (a standard Kodak paper of the time) but there is nothing written on the photo - I have no names, or providence except I acquired this one in South Australia over 20 years ago.

Germans can be a bit potty (one more from my collection)

And here's the proof




This little photo (only 10cm x 6cm) was created by a Dresden photographer in 1889 to advertise Knapman's "BIG GUN" Tonic Ale.

That's some pretty clever edit work - Photomontage before the Dadaists made it their own...

I've enlarged it for viewing pleasure (click for a bigger view)

I'm liking the top hats (very Fagan / Artful Dodger) but it's the little one with her/his tongue out in the face of the clock at the top that really tickles me.

yes, babies on the pot have a lot to do with beer...

damn, Germans are fun!

No.., they really are.

And I am absolutely bias.



====

Continuing on the loose subject of transport - some photos from my collection - early 20th Century

A favourite of mine - unknown photographer, Australia - early 20th Century
Shamefully, I kept this on a pinboard for many years (cos I used to ride motorcycles a lifetime ago) - this rider is making dust! I always thought he had a cigarette in his mouth but I guess it's just a mark on the negative... wish I had the negative

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Again, no idea - it's one of those make your photograph into a post card from the first 1/4 of last century - It has "post card" in 3 languages so it is from Europe somewhere - I reckon it's from English occupied India - there is one Indian looking fellow (the only one with a water bottle at his waist) and the tanned white boys are all wearing those silly English safari hats - as if wearing one of those will save them in a fall... Perhaps the hard hats are for the sun or really for bullets...

===



Raphael's Motor Car Hire & Repair Company is a photo I've had, I think, the longest -since teen years. Again, photographer and place unknown - most likely Australia (the building suggests Aust)- and date? circa 1920s me thinks