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I invite you to follow the Inter Collective's new project, Trans Continent, which will at this stage exist in cyber space, but eventually in more tangible spaces too, hopefully. (so long blogger, hello wordpress!)

I've started writing for e-zine SixThousand (sign up for weekly newsletters in your inbox, or visit the daily updated site)

and... I made myself a flikr account.

No Knead (Inter Collective) - LIMV Cookbook II Launch, Friday May 8 2009

10 'stations' are set up around the venue, each with a different theme (eg. Safari - rye•chunky relish•cheese•butter [optional]). Bread maker, electric breadknife, camping table, tablecloth, teatowel, butter dish, butter, chopping board, butter knife, topping, paper serviettes. The bread makers are synchronised, baking their loaves, and the timer on each bread maker counts down the synchronised minutes until the loaves are ready. As the night draws to 11pm the smell of bread fills the venue. 10 apron-clad assistants march out of the kitchen area in a line carrying their respective toppings and file out to their respective stations. At 11pm as The Bank Holidays finish their set, the apron-wearers throw fistfuls of flour into the air and pull out their bread from the ovens, shaking the loaves out onto boards and slicing them up with the electric knives. Crowds are gathered around each station, eagerly, hungrily, watching as the first slice is spread with the topping and eaten by the station-man, immediately after which every last crumb (literally) is devoured by the audience.

The No Knead project (a 'live installation') had been a long time in the making. Working with food was something the Inter Collective had been interested in for a while, and so when the Love Is My Velocity Cookbook II was announced, we figured it was the perfect opportunity. The major part of the work happened at the launch of the cookbook, which took place on a Friday night at the Hellenic Centre in Northbridge, with bands playing etc etc. We also had a diagram/drawing relating to the installation in the cookbook, and the installation continued (on a much smaller, single-station scale) after the launch every day at the cookbook exhibition.

The premise for the piece was to provide a multi-sensory art experience, a new experience of the everyday: integrating the ‘art’ within the social setting of the ‘music event’ so that the experience and enjoyment of both are not separate but collapse into each other. One of the major factors determining the success of the piece was that people interacted. We had been hungry for a direct and complete interaction with our work since the laneway project and so in this project, a lot of thought went into how best to make this happen.

Art which demands more from people than simply looking at it on a wall; art which dignifies the viewer/participant to play a part in it, activate the artwork, help it to exist. Categorically speaking, the piece begins from the initial kneading of the yeast, flour and water, and does not end until the bread is metabolically processed and digested.

From our experience, people can find this kind of art somewhat intimidating, particularly when it's interrupting a norm they are used to and comfortable within, or asking them to take part or be involved. It can be a really daunting experience for audiences, and if interaction doesn't really occur, we are left with a mutual feeling of misunderstanding and confusion... which is completely opposite to everything we aim for in our practice.

So, we went about building this project by drawing on the simplest and most familiar elements we could think of. Asking nothing of the audience but that they eat the bread. Bread, the most basic of food items. We took care to make the work visually engaging, so that every detail was clearly intentional, and were conscious not to force people into participating but rather provide them with a set of circumstances so simple and natural that they would take that initiative to be a part of the artwork themselves.

Sometimes it's not always the easiest route to be passive and wait for people to make that action, but it's always the most rewarding, and provides the truest, most genuine interaction.

i can't wait to be... on the road again

a photographic road trip project by 3 x photographers (1 of whom is a friend o' mine). help them! a road trip in the guise of artistic necessity: i'm inspired.

make light

limbs/skin (my favourite)

where black is the colour and none is the number

i want to paint again. big black holes this time. black on white, patterns, stark shapes, bold, simple, all the colour sucked into the centre.

inky swabs.


i've started reading henry miller again. here we go! gives me reason to write and plan and make a life of art. make art of a life.


waiting for BREAD pictures still...


meantime, something else that's sticking in my mind,

"you've got great arms, i've been watching them the whole time, they do amazing things, they're always moving."

(i drank a lot of coffee that day)


i've been to visit AGWA a bit lately and my visits have been strangely exhillerating. my favourite thing to stand in front of is the Jean Arp piece, "Torso of a Giant". i want to hug it. i want it to hug me, actually, it's huge and has amazing crevices and holes and dips. i stood in front of it for ages, sucking it up. i felt tiny, swallowed in by its bigness.
this is the bronze version... AGWA owns the preliminary plaster version, which gives it a different quality entirely.


something else on my mind this week:

Dale Frank.

as my brilliant companion ranted so eloquently: "there is no context, don't try and tell me there's a context. the work is nothing. but it's also everything, at the same time"

this work makes me think a lot about its relation to my own work. our pursuits are similar, our methodology too, the major difference i see is that Dale Frank's work is assertively masculine, virile (which i love about it), and mine is controlled, fragile, somewhat more feminine. circular. in my view this is something i am aware of, but not shying away from. yes, i am female. yes, there will undeniably be feminine influences to my work. but i'm not a feminist. i could go on, but not really feeling particularly wordy today.


and while we're on the subject, I've also been looking at Alex Spremberg's work again:

and he says:
"I consider paintings to be objects, not pictures.
The work is specific in its conception and its physical presence yet it does not pose any conditions on viewers.

When liquid white meets black both interact and find their place on the surface.
This interaction of opposites becomes even more intricate when variables such as gloss, semi-gloss and matte paints are introduced.

I am interested in initiatives that determine their own inherent results.
Painting that is located between intentional activities and unintentional occurrences.
Processes that create their own dynamics, where works are not made but occur as the result of factors that are beyond my control.

I want to be surprised by my paintings."

I think we need to meet. He is having an exhibition in June...

the overall strength of a magnet is measured by its "magnetic moment"

just came in from lying out under the stars. everything is vibrating, like magnets, the poles of magnets: repelling, resisting each other with so much energy. so much quivering expectant energy. out of the corner of my eyes i see little iron filings shifting around between the magnets, tiny movements, but everything is sliding, slipping. a single shooting star: it shocks me, as it would anyone after twenty minutes of non-shooting stars. so dramatic after all this subtlety, it had a long tail (does that make it a comet?), a big fuck off comet to end it all and i come inside.

buckminster fuller had undetected bad vision as a kid, making the whole world a mass of blurry coloured circles, and it wasn't until they discovered it and he got glasses that he realised this wasn't how things actually were. it gave him an entirely different perception of how everything fit together. he said he preferred the world when it was blurry.