New video

Calculator - Chinese Burns from Brad Marsellos on Vimeo.  Check out this great new video by Brad Marsellos.  Great job Brad! Filmed at Dirty Linen. (Great venue for projects like this.) I was delighted to be part of this project.  When do we start on the next one Brad?  C x

Brenda May Gallery

I am just so excited about my inclusion in the Brenda May Gallery group exhibition 'Art + Food - Beyond the Still Life' this October.
It is such a wonderful opportunity to take a work to Sydney a beautiful city...and to Waterloo which is apparently dotted with various galleries.   Rebecca Pearson, a Sydney artist will come to meet me and to see the exhibition.  I have come to know her through her participation in the 'Just Ideas' exhibition held here at 'Dirty Linen'...curated by Clinton Cross.

Rebecca exhibits her beautiful works in Sydney quite regularly I understand.

I may have the chance to meet James Guppy again.  I met him years ago when he came to Bundaberg with Flying Arts.  I have always admired his fabulous works.  It's great to know that he is one of Brenda's artists.

I will be preparing my work for the show this weekend and hope to do a time lapse video of that preparation.

Till soon,

c x

Piled up...stacked up

My new residence is taking shape at last.  Everything is finding its place.  I have cleared out all the unnecessary things.  Pieces of furniture that I will not be  using in the future are stacked up waiting to be sold...or given away.

I will be hanging  some large paintings from the Rhapsody series I produced a couple of years ago. Their rich simplicity will be  most enjoyable I am predicting.

The floor in my new apartment is concrete and has been painted a warm cream colour.  I have decided to paint it with a textured pattern, brownish in colour. I hope it works out.   I will post some pictures when it is finished.

It is so good to be able to go into my storage shed at night.  I have managed to tidy it up a little.  At least you can walk from one end of it to the other now .

 The shed  has an eery kind of serenity at night.

The innumerable dolls piled up there in bags and boxes stare mutely.  Shadows bathe them in a mysterious light.  They wait...patiently. 

Piled up, stacked up...20 years of my life has been stacked up here in this room.  All the various stages of my art practice are here to see.   The good, the bad  the significant and the not so significant. 

I marvel at this process that drives me forward .

c x                                                                                                                   

Fait accompli

Fait accompli...I am in my new accommodation which is quite a joy for me.  I can duck in to the gallery or storeroom as I desire, day or night.  This will be great for my productivity!!  

Today I have to pick up my cabinet from BRAG (Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery).  The show has been very popular by all accounts.

Last Friday I had discussions with an amazing girl, Jessica Wilson - Theatre Director- Producer-Manager-Writer and Consultant, based in Melbourne.

Jessica has delivered outstanding large productions nationally and internationally.

Later this year Jessica will be in the Maryborough community along with another talented girl, Theatre Director and performer, Jodee Mundy.  They will be making plans for a huge production in Maryborough in the next year or two.

The project will be largely delivered by the children of Maryborough!!!!  It will be amazing!

I have been invited, in the early stages to consult in regards to some of the artistic content that will be proposed.  It is going fo be a very special event and I am thrilled to be taking part in it.

Sydney

Exciting news today as the Brenda May Gallery in Waterloo, Sydney has accepted my proposal to be part of a group show this October.I will be exhibiting one of my 'Lifescapes'.

The show will be called:

Art + Food: Beyond the Still Life

Shifting house

Over the next few weeks I will be swapping residences with the people currently living downstairs.  They are needing more space as there is only one bedroom down there and I have been wandering around in my huge 3 bedroom apartment.

This will be a great move for me as I will be able to access both the gallery and my art storage area without having to wander around the dark streets at night.

I'm keen to hang some of my large paintings and bring in some newly renovated  old furniture.  Something of a new start for me!

I also have a new start on my website.  Recent artworks featuring there. 
www.christineturner.com.au

Water Falls

I bought this beautiful old timber ladder at a charity shop the other day. I have fixed a wedding veil to it and it has become an artwork which I call 'Water Falls'. 

(Not as in waterfalls) It is coincidental that I bought the veil from a charity shop in Gympie.   Susan and I, when travelling through there the other day,  noticed that the shop had been inundated with water in recent flooding.  The veil might have been ruined had I not come by and purchased it earlier.

I love to work with bridal veils. They are incredibly evocative.

Artist's talk

I had a great morning in the gallery, with  7 visitors  while I was there to do an artists talk. I was delighted that Helen's Mum, Dalveen, bought some of her family.   We had a great time chatting about all the sculptures and their components and why the sculptures are as they are.  (You may remember that Helen contacted me last year to pass on some biscuit tins for my collection.)

Lo and behold they came with two more bags of biscuit tins to add to the  collection, with some stunning older tins included.  I will show you some when I get them home from the gallery.  So kind!

I was totally overloaded today with a suitcase, laptop, tripod, and tote bag to carry on to the train to Bundaberg, so I  have had to store the tins till I pick up the works at the end of the exhibition. (Saturday, 31 March.)

As I showed the ladies around, there was some interesting speculation about the artwork pictured above.  The chair folds out to make a small table with chair. We have never seen anything like this before.  I call it 'The Widow's Seat'. One of the ladies suggested - a telephone table.   Maybe you can tell me what it is???

A friendly local photographer also came to see the works today.    I am such a novice as far as the photography side of things go...there is so much to learn.  He was very helpful providing me with lots of hints to improve my work. I was very grateful.

I had a long trip home on the Spirit of the Outback.   Home at last!!!  Hooray!  Have to do last years tax return before I do one more thing in the studio. I will endeavour to get that done this week.....starting tomorrow!

Till soon   C x

The opening

A small, but ardent group attended my exhibition opening   today. I was really happy with the work.  It looked good in the space and the addition of the Broken Woman series of prints added another dimension.

There has been a lot of people  visiting the  exhibition in the last couple of days and they have been responding to the works very positively.  The works  open up a dialogue about the past, families and the ever-changing role of women.

The curator Tracey,has been encouraging me to investigate the possibility of touring this exhibition, and this would be a very positive outcome.  She has been amazing to work with.  She even  went to the trouble to provide several tins off biscuits for the opening feast!

A print/poster was purchased and is going to a lovely home.

It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next month that the exhibition is installed for. Now I can move forward to my next project.    I will tell you about that shortly.

Thanks for your support and encouragement!

C x

Video of latest exhibition

Attached is a brief video of part of the SG installation.

Preview

Here are a few pictures from my current exhibition 'Suburban Goddess' at Pine Rivers Art Gallery in Strathpine.  The exhibition is open now , but the official opening is on Friday 2nd of March (tomorrow).

Setting up

It was a busy day yesterday. Susan Hutton and I left Cordalba early, in a ute full of 'Suburban Goddesses'.  We had a suprisingly good run through to the Pine Rivers Art Gallery in Strathpine - a Northern suburb of Brisbane. There was not a great deal of evidence of  the latest flooding in  Gympie, just  a lot of dull brown silt  masking the low lying grounds.  Council workers , with their gurneys sprayed the sludge away revealing hints of the green carpets below.

We couldn't stop to see if  the little mossy back tortoises were all right in their murky pond.

When we arrived at the gallery, we saw that half of the digital prints from the 'Broken Woman' series had been hung with magnets.  They looked quite impressive.

Susan's friend Lorraine came to help us set up the installation.  It only took us three hours.  The SG's look great in this beautiful gallery with it's white walls  and floor.

Gallery Curator Tracey Wallace is a very nice person to work with and has made this a very positive experience for me.

Susan and I celebrated a successful day with dinner at a local Indian restaraunt,  then travelled North to Eaton's Hill to stay with Susan's son whose  house is around the corner from mine. (Which is now  leased.)

I will post some pictures Friday!   Hope you can be at the opening!!   Friday March 2, 6pm.

New Suburban Goddess video

The amazing Brad Marsellos has produced yet another quality video. This time about my 'Suburban Goddesses'.   The goddesses will be exhibited at Pine Rivers Art Gallery in Strathpine, Brisbane.  Official opening, this Friday 6pm.  See you there!


A Suburban Goddess comes to life from ABC Open Wide Bay on Vimeo.

Not on the road!!

Not on the road!!!  The Bruce  Highway was cut by floods in the Gympie area...a couple of hours south of here. ( I hope my little mossy back tortoises are okay. They live in the  ponds and lakes in Gympie, and I have been photographing them there lately. ) 

Susan and I may leave as late as Tuesday morning now, depending on the road reports. 

I will have to email the curator at the Pine Rivers Art Gallery, to let her know what is happening.

I took some more photos of the Lifescape installation.  It will be dismantled and reassembled when I get home next week.

Well I hope my exhibition will be opening this Friday!!      

Till soon.   c x

On the road

This weekend will be  spent preparing the Goddesses for their trip to Brisbane. I have them in the studio, where I am checking that they have all their components. There is a photo attached of the SG's  in my studio, viewed from across my latest installation...'Lifescape'.

Susan Hutton will come from her home in Cordalba, in the ute, and we will endeavour to squeeze 21 SG's in to  the tray.  On Monday we will be on the road.

Installation of the works will be on Tuesday.  We will measure out a diamond-shaped grid pattern on the floor and mark the appropriate points upon which each goddess will sit.  Photographs of the sculptures will be placed on each of these spots.    From these photographs, the assistants will be able to construct the works quite easily.  Each piece is stacked up, like a totem pole and there is no glueing or screwing  required.

I am really looking forward to the show.  The Pine Rivers Art Gallery is a beautiful artspace, and the SG's should look great there.  Hope to see you there.

Water Tower bombing

The Water Tower over East was our most recent video bombing target. Brad and I learnt quite a lot from this session.

The high contrast black and white images were the best. There was quite a lot of haziness about some images. I'm not sure if this means the digital files might need to be larger, or that the problem is that the surface of the tower is a dull brown colour. 

Our more succesful bombings have been on white surfaces I think.

I am very annoyed with myself for not double checking the files I had prepared for the bombing.  As it turned out, two of them were not rendered properly, so we had to rely on some previous videos.

We were delighted to have quite a few spectators last night, including Jess and Darling. A couple from Scotland Street came over to talk to us about the projections. and several cars pulled over to park for a while to see what was happening!    All in all....it was another great night in Bundaberg!

Stop motion video

Brad and I remade our 'stop motion' video of one of my 'Suburban Goddesses'. We had made it several weeks ago, but weren't happy with the quality of the video , it's resolutuion and so on.     We took about 200 frames over two and a half hours.  I feel certain that it will have been worth the effort of remaking it.

Brad will edit the video and we should have a finished article today, if we are lucky.  I will post the video when I receive it.

Two screens

I am very excited because I  managed to get my two monitors connected to  my main computer.   Now I can have two separate windows going at the same time.

I can check Facebook while doing my banking and so on!!

Life will never be the same!   Try it, it's easy!

Exhibition

        Hoping you can join me at the opening of my exhibition!    c x

Video Bombing

Brad and I went video bombing around Bundaberg's streets last night.  It  was late night shopping and so there was a lot more traffic than we have usually found. Brad is able to set up our equipment in about 5 minutes flat now, which means we can take in several sites over a couple of hours.  

We projected a short video I had produced on Adobe Premiere elements...A figure study in black and white. The image held up very well, I think, because of it's strength and simplicity.
  

Various other  short videos I had produced for bombing were sadly lacking.  I will have to  rethink and reinvigorate them or start again. 

We tried another couple of sites without success.  We are learning what qualities are needed to make a good site.  Wall, not too distant....quality of the darkness and so on.

The other big success for the night was Brad's bunny video.  The bunny is a striking and intriguing character.   The basically black and white format was very successful on the walls above Noyes Glass. 

The  backpackers  on the other side of the road to us,enjoyed the bunny movie from their adjacent balconies.

Someone rang Brad's partner, Jess, to tell her that there was a video bombing taking place in Bundaberg!!! We felt happy that we were becoming somewhat notorious around town.  But really it's about getting work out there!

c x

Another work

   
    Here is another of the new series of limited edition. digital prints I have been making.

New series

I have started a new digital series of the female form.  These works utilise the same merging techniques I have used before in the works titled  'Broken Woman' .

Jess

My friend Brad is away on assignment to document the king tides in the Torres Strait Islands.   To all accounts, he is having a most interesting time.  He even managed to get involved in the delivery of a baby while offshore in a little boat!

It has been a good opportunity for Brad's partner Jess and I to get the photoshoot done that we have talked about for so long.  I love this photo of Jess.

Good news

It started off as a good day as I had the return of my laptop from the computer repair man.  The laptop, with its new keyboard has no other option now, but to type the letter 'b' whenever I desire it!!!   So I have won a battle this time.

More good news in the form of a comment  that appeared today on my blog.   Lesley, the news editor left a phone number for me to ring regarding promotion of the 'Suburban Goddess' exhibition in the Pine Rivers Press.  I will definitely follow that up.  That is great!

And even more good news after I sent the director Marj Sullivan photos of my 'Lifescape' biscuit tin installation, she is keen to show a similar installation as part of her 'renew' exhibition later in the year.  I will probably use the tins in a series of circles.   I am very excited!  

For one happy dragon, a good start to the Year of the Dragon!

Pine Rivers Art Gallery

Pine Rivers Art Gallery is a beautiful venue for my upcoming exhibition.
Once all its movable walls are put away, it leaves a quite usable rectangular space.

The Goddess sculptures will be setup in their usual diamond shaped pattern.  

The 20 digital prints  are being prepared at Flash Photobition in Newstead, and will be delivered flat packed to the gallery this week.  I hope all will go well. The prints  will each be 1 metre high, with various widths.

I will talk to Jess from Creative regions tomorrow to see if there is anything else we can do in terms of marketing this exhibition.  She is the expert. I have used Mail Chimp to create an exhibition invitations list. The list has been sent down to Tracey, the exhibition curator.

I think I better start sorting through the storage rooms and bring out the sculptures that will be taken to Brisbane. Attached is one of the images that will be at Pine River Art Gallery - opening March 2, 6pm

Talk soon!  c x

"Lifescape"

Dirty Linen awaits its artists booking in....so in these quiet times I can develop some installations, or whatever  works I fancy at the time.

This last couple of weeks I have been producing an installation of biscuit tins.  Actually, what you see here is really only about half of my collection.  I tried a couple  more complex arrangements, but the piece wouldn't work.  In the end I decided that simplicity was the answer.   I have been getting quite a lot of interest in this work.  Thankyou.

Till soon!   C x

Cabinets of Curiosities

Cabinets of Curiosities is the theme for an exhibition I am part of at BRAG this month.  Various artists have provided works for a show that is sure to be rather special.   Susan Hutton and I are going to see it this week.

My work is called  "For Louise" and is a tribute to  Louise Bourgeois, who is one of my favourite artists. It recalls one of her works I remembered seeing years ago.  A blue cabinet if I recall correctly.  Full of glass objects.

 

I was attracted to its strength and simplicity and the sense of the cabinet being  serenely self contained.

Alone again

Sitting alone again in my empty house.....previously faithful laptop on my knees. The pool filter hums its way into the evening, lulling me into a state of optimism.  "I will not be green in the morning!" it seems to promise.  I  have heard that before!

I can't go home to Bundaberg until I have stabilized it.  I think I am getting closer.

All week I have been wanting to get to the printers to have a test print done for my exhibition next month at Pine Rivers Art Gallery.  I hope to get there next week. I am planning to have the digital prints enlarged to 100cm x 75cm  if there is enough detail. The works will be printed on a pvc material and hung with magnets.

The pvc 'posters' will display the digital images and these images will be available as limited edition prints  on archival paper, limited edition prints on canvas, or whatever is required.

It has been hard to choose the best 20 out of the over 200 images in the series.

The 25 or so Suburban Goddess sculptures will be packed in to Susan Hutton's ute once again for the journey from Bundaberg.  They will be installed very quickly once their floor plan has been marked out. They are not glued or screwed together,  but stacked up like totem poles.

I'm hoping that some of you Brisbanites from the Just Ideas exhibition may be able to come. It would be great to meet you.

Till soon.  Cx

Eatons Hill

I guess you must be wondering where I have been lately.  Well I am  stopping in Eatons Hill  in Brisbane for a week or two while I am preparing my house there for rent.

I sit in the middle of an empty house. My previously faithful laptop is on my knees.   It has decided not to type the letter ' '   ...the one etween 'a' and 'c'. Sometimes it likes to add hyphens to the words I am typing.  It is very erratic.

So to get back to what I was saying.....I am sitting alone in the middle of this empty house.  Previously faithful laptop seems to be gathering objects to itself in contradiction to its original 'raison d'etre'.

Not happy with it's own keyboard, I have had to purchase a second plug in keyboard just to type the letter 'b'.  My laptop also has an object plugged in called a 'dongle'. Not a very elegant word is it?  But without a dongle, life would be hardly worth living.  For those of you who are dongle deficient...the dongle provides my wireless internet access.

Next to the dongle is a tiny plugin that magically frees my mouse from the necessity to have a tail.  I really love this idea...I think it is probably my favourite..

Plugged in on the other side is my usb port  that connects my two terabyte back up hard drives, the odd memory stick and of course my hot pink Lacie 30g mini hard drive that every one covets. Not to mention, my SD memory card from my digital camera.

Finally, there is the power pack which must be plugged in every twenty minutes or so or my laptop will shut down sometimes without even a courtesy to hint that it is about to do this.

The dream was all about portability wasn't it???   And what ever happened to 'user-friendly'??  c x

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my readers.  Thankyou for your support through 2011.   I feel 2012 is going to to be a great year.  I have three exhibitions coming up this year, and a video bombing will be sponsored also.  I do hope there will be more of these video opportunities coming up.  Brad and I are going to have to do some planning when he returns from his trip to Cambodia.

I hope to have some interesting posts for you  this year and I would love to hear your comments.  Happy New Year!!

See below, a picture of the video bombing of the  Dirty Linen Artspace!

Talk soon!   C x