ice work

Working in the creek last week was not all wallabies and wombats (and definitely not donkeys!) - I was really down there to set up this piece....

It's a large ice block containing a smaller encyclopeadia at the centre of the block (it was actually tricker than I first thought to freeze a book in a block of ice... but I was really determined to freeze a book in water gathered from my creek - even if I was unsure what the next stage of the work may be - so the book ice block has been sitting in my chest freezer for the past couple of months while I worked out what needed to happen next). I had an epiphany about what to do next as I was walking around the property: of course the creek water needed to be returned to the creek....

I set the piece up early in the morning on a rock in the middle of the sams creek and intended to take pics as the piece slowly melted, the ice melt joined sams creek (taking a little bit of the book knowledge with it perhaps?) and the book was released from the block of ice.

I had no idea what might happen as the ice melted (would the whole thing slide off the rock early in the melt? melt on one side more than the other? melt from the top down? bottom up? and how long would it take for the book to break free of the ice?)

Welllllll it took a LOT longer than I anticipated for the ice to melt - something I shouldn't have been surprised by really, given the size of the block and that it's late winter here at sams creek... the above pic was actually taken in the middle on the following day....

and then by early afternoon on day two....

... there was the book - resting easily on the rock.


All in all it was not what I thought was going to happen (not that I had a clear idea of what might happen...) - nor was the experience totally predictable.... whilst I waited and waited and watched and waited for my book to emerge drip by drip, I spent time closely exploring the immediate area. The creek had changed dramatically some months earlier after a series of dramatic floods so it was a great opportunity to relearn this creek that has been a constant feature for the length of my life. I listened to the small wrens and finches (and traffic thundering over the sams creek bridge some 300m away) not coincidentally I also read from Crispin Sartwell's 'The Art of Living' - his take on art as experience felt absolutely the right book to be reading whilst making a work that at its core is about interaction and experience...






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never work with children or animals....

Whilst working in the creek last week I had a visitor....

Swamp Wallabies are a common sight down by my creek - Sams Creek acts as a valuable wildlife corridor, linking the Kooraban and Gulaga National Parks (and more!) to the Batemans Marine Park - and isolated populations of all creatures are able to mix and move with relative ease and safety. Generally Sams Creek is a reliable water source (not so during the worst drought recorded - 18 months ago my creek ran dry for the first time in European settlement - good rains in February this year meant my creek has returned - albeit in with a very different look - one I'm still learning)

but I digress

whilst I was moving to and from the house up the hill one swamp wallaby made its presence known...

and I thought its appearance and gift to me deserved a return gift...

In the spirit of my previous wombat interactions, I decided to gift the swamp wallaby an encyclopaedia opened to the entry on kangaroo (sub-section wallaby)

I think of this as a reverse of my wombat work (that time I was acting as the initiator of the interaction) in this case the wallaby 'spoke' first..... and quite definitively too I must say....


(sigh..... all the world's a critic...)


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down in the creek....

(art) life has not been all donkeys - I've been working on a couple of things down in sams creek..... I'll reveal what I've been doing in the next short while...(right now the work is still very much in progress)

donkey

Sick and tired of all the electioneering in the lead up to the oz elections this past w.e. I decided to take to the streets of cobargo with a little bit of subversive arrrrt. My paste up of a few hundred newspaper cut-out donkeys certainly cheered me up..... even if most of the town folk were left scratching their heads.....

funnily enough the action has proved quite therapeutic, as I've found myself bogged down by philosophic reading and exegesis writing of late..... sometimes it's good to let go and just have a bit of silly fun.....




read more here




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loooooooong books...... looooong time.....

I have completed another very very very loooooooong coptic bound book structure.....

This one is created from an entire (15 volume) set of childcraft annuals from the 1970s - the final book size is 2.7m (109 inches) 'long' (technically it's 2.7m WIDE..... but I'm not going to try explaining that to non booky people....) I started this piece back in June with this and have blogged in a general way about the whole piece at art and etc in a post title 'I think therefore... I bind'

I'm really pleased with this one.... I think it's the nicest one of my 'serpens volumen' or snake books.

In fact, I so enjoy the process of making these that I intend starting off another looooong book..... and as I like the colour gradation (an indication of my obsessive need to sort?) in this latest book, I think I'd like to find another collection of colourful pages to bind...... I rather like the idea of binding an entire set of encyclopaedias in this manner..... maybe it's time to check my collection for a contender....

I like the idea that I may be working on one or another of these loooong books for the duration of my research project...... (I can readily imagine the myriad ways these may be arranged singularly or together)

I've long appreciated the role these (and other obsessively 'crafted' objects) play in my practice - I am very much a process-oriented artist.... and now I'm understanding that I can use making as a sort of meditation.

I have been swamped over the last few months by research reading - most particularly with philosophy - and am currently trying to find my way through various ideas about Pragmatism (especially as espoused by John Dewey and then how his ideas have subsequently been interpreted and critically reviewed) I suspect somewhere in pragmatic philosophy is a way to move around my dissatisfaction with what I so nicely refer to as $%#@-french-deconstructionist-philosophers!

maybe its just wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that I may find a way of using pragmatism (be it from Dewey, or neo-pragmatism or Zen pragmatic philosophy) to connect the various parts of my project (books and land and permaculture and knowledge and...)

in the meantime I can see a lot of loooong books resulting from my loooooooooong time contemplating all this and more....





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draft plan of the exegesis

Over the past week and a bit I've been starting to nut out a draft plan of my exegesis for codex infiniutum....  and of course that has meant much reading and re-reading of research bits to date and lots of hand wringing and sighing.....

Writing is not one of my strongest skills!