ben johnson and nickk hertzog : residency

Ben Johnson and Nickk Hertzog of ACAB Collective held a studio residency at Blindside Gallery this summer. The resulting installation was created using materials from all over the city and the Nicholas building and explored the complex relationship between place and context in the studio. The studio echoes the logic of spatial peripheries - it is a complex and organic whole. To remove a garbage bag is just as incongruous an action as removing a painting. The work was indelibly linked to the edifice of the studio. Ben Johnson and Nickk Hertzog’s assemblages cohere into a sort of DIY post apocalyptic desert island, where accumulation and entropy have become implicit in the studio space.

past performance works

Have finished uni for the year and am planning some new performance works that I'll be making over the summer. For now, here's some photographs of past work made during 2008 and 2010.



Steak, 2008




Translucence, 2008




Translucence, 2010




Delta of Venus, 2010





Composition (Orange), 2010

(dis-)array at light projects

Upcoming exhibition featuring the ACAB artist’s book.

The book was created at Monash University during (dis-)array, a series of transdisciplinary workshops that focus on making practices public through through the form of the artist’s book.

Opening drinks: 6-8pm, Friday 30 September 2011

The exhibition may be viewed:

Friday, Saturday & Sunday, 12-5pm, or by appointment

176 High Street, Northcote

www.light-projects.com

end zone (always do the bad thing) a performance by blaine cooper

Went to a really great performance at Blindside last week:


End Zone (Always Do the Bad Thang) is a new performance work by Melbourne-based video and installation artist Blaine Cooper, in collaboration with guitarist Nicholas Lam. Get set to see the artist running (via treadmill) from a wall of cinematic explosions, with wailing blasts of electric guitar highlighting the contrast between the always energetic, indestructible screen hero and the reality of a sweaty mess trying desperately to escape imminent destruction.


The performance went over a two hour period with Blaine Cooper running on the treadmill and Nicholas Lam playing more or less continual awesome classic guitar solo. As it went on the room (gallery 2) became heavier and drippier with airborne sweat. There was Guns n Roses, Kiss and cheap beer....it was the ultimate cheesy manly man action movie experience. Blaine was dressed (as most men in action movies) in leather shoes, trousers and a white singlet, clothing at odds with the act of running on a treadmill. As it went on the details became more and more interesting.....droplets of sweat beaded and dripped in his eyes and drenched his clothing; the heat emanating from his body doused the room....I felt like I could smell the leather of his shoes with the heat of continual movement. By the end he looked grey and exhausted.

nausea's reprieve winter carnival at topshed

Installation at Topshed, a warehouse in Fitzroy. The work was part of a night of theater, music and drinking with sounds by Pikelet and Rat vs Possum; video installation by us and Projector Obscura; and performances by the cast of Nausea’s Reprieve an absurdest comedy by James Khoo.
There was also vodka punch. Funsies!

unmeasuring time : blindside

I've recently been involved in this exhibition, Unmeasuring Time, at Blindside Gallery.



Curated by Zinzi Kennedy, the exhibition includes the work of three female artists; Zinzi Kennedy, myself and Bonnie Lane, with each of us engaging with duration, video and performance in different ways.

"Within screen based installations time becomes spatialized and put on display providing an opportunity for stimulating recognition by spectators of the proportion of formulaic linearity that pervades media experience demonstrating that subjectivity is itself experienced as durational. Viewers of screen-based installation are avowed with the ability to determine their own durational experiences, as they at will autonomously dictate the amount of time that is spent with each work. Video installations have the ability to generate the impression that they are perpetually taking place, even in the absence of spectators they continue, an 'ongoing object.' This perception invites viewers to enter works at any point in the cycle of projections and to explore the illuminated environment at a length of time that they judge as appropriate rather than that decision being made in totality by the artist, artwork or institution. Each artist in this exhibition deals with durational experience uniquely from directly recording a live performance to utilizing the relentlessness of continuous loops. Juxtaposing the video artworks in 'Unmeasuring Time' demonstrates differing approaches to time whilst elucidating videos ability to generate immersive temporal impulses."

-Zinzi Kennedy


I feel like it has been a really successful show. Whilst sitting the gallery over the past few weeks I've gotten some feedback about the work from people visiting the show. Some people were really positive, others disgusted, ambivalent, intrigued..... it's just nice to hear responses anyway. Setting up the show was challenging (as it always is) and by the time we got it all together I was well and truly ready for a glass of wine. Here's some photos from the setup and opening drinks....

food porn

While aimlessly flicking through yet another food blog I was reminded of a performance I went to a while back that I really enjoyed. It was a one man show at Hares & Hyenas on Johnston Street by Matt Fennell....



The songs were hilarious.....it was a tribute to all things food.....dinner parties, menus, the cult of the celebrity chef, childhood memories, recipe books, magazines and the way that sex and nourishment intermingle....
There were odes to Maggie Beer, Julia Childs, verjuice, afternoon tea, Nigella Lawson....and Sara Lee.
I'm reminded of some collages I made while in Italy in 08, an amazing place for food imagery and consumption....












"Food rules and moves the world. Food is necessity, pleasure and power."

For a vast majority of women in the First World, food is a fetishized matter. From a young age, girls are taught via media and advertising that they should crave and desire food, as they should crave sex, but that they should ultimately deny themselves the pleasure of both. Chocolate bar commercials show women sneaking away to consume a chocolate bar in secret, much in the way one would meet for a sexual liaison. Ice-cream commercials show women sensually buried in Magnum ice-creams, (should I consume the woman as well as the ice-cream?) And in many magazines, sumptuously photographed food is featured alongside size six fashion models. Many women, to some level of extremity have a complex or uncomfortable relationship with food.

While I have moved away from this as a sole concern in my artwork, I have been very interested in the way advertising imagery and social attitudes fetishize female relationships with food. Desire, denial, guilt and secrecy seem to often play a role, with the ultimate goal to be thin and desirable whilst feigning an insatiable, desirous attitude....


At any rate, Matt Fennell will be performing in Melbourne next week. I will certainly try to make it again for a glass o wine and some serious laughs...

Downstairs At Alma's (The Alma Sports Club), VIC

8.00pm, Fri 05 Aug, 2011