Art on the GreenWay

detail of Freeloader in the GreenWay

Wonderfully for the second year, Leichhardt Council has offered artists interested in Environmental Art a chance to win funds to create a temporary artwork for installation in the GreenWay.  

Art on the GreenWay is a featured event of LOST, Leichhardt Open Studio Trail 2016  - see No. 34 on the LOST map

Works will be on show from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 20 March 2016

Song Dong

Now on at Carriageworks - Chinese artist - Song Dong's Waste Not is a dedication to his late father through family objects kept, stored by his mother. After showing in the World's major art institutes, it arrives via 40lt shipping containers holding 10,000 items and a section of Dong's family home. An amazing work in dealing with grief, remembrance, hoarding, for me - consumerism...and a celebration of life.  A family project, the work is always installed by the artist and his mother and sister. more great images here

A must see -  on until March 17

Happy 2013. Environmental Change...

in the foreground, detail of two sculptures by Gordon Stokes

During December as artist-in-residence in Portland, south-west Victoria, I had the privilege to be involved with curator and artist, Catherine Bailey, in a wonderful group exhibition, Environmental Change - a visual response, at the Portland Art Centre.  The show continues until the end of this month and some of the work can be seen via the fb page here. Most of the works in the show reuse found materials which I find to be a truely inspirational way to make art.... it's economical, environmental and ethical!

Snacks, a few pieces here, depicts remembered threatened animals belonging to the Portland area 

painted on found throw-out food packaging

long-nose bandicoot at Macleay Museum

Carmel Wallace detail of Colony at Brenda May Gallery

I love going to the old world Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney as their collection covers many interesting areas about history and stuff through the stuffed. I often go specifically to view their bird specimens for my art practice and recently spotted the above critter, a long-nosed bandicoot (in the centre).  I do recommend a visit and amongst the permanent displays is their next curated exhibition called Coral: Art Science Life

more posts about the long-nosed bandicoot here and here 

A Curating Cities Project

Slow Art Collective

at Object :

Try This At Home

8 OCTOBER 2011 – 8 JANUARY 2012

In October, Object’s Project Space is transformed into a cosy yet unusual lounge room for Try This At Home, which invites us to consider the way in which we are each designing the future by our everyday actions – from the products we use to the resource-use patterns of our daily life, and the truly confronting notion that the key material we are designing with is time itself. Artists, designers and collectives including CO2penhagen (Denmark), Haque: Design + Research (UK), Magnificent Revolution Australia, Makeshift (Australia) and the Slow Art Collective (Australia) present examples of adaptive practice in which existing resource use is re-directed for more sustainable outcomes.

Margaret Farmer from the National Institute for Experimental Arts curates as part of the Curating Cities project.

Utilising abandoned objects left by local residents for council pick-up, the Slow Are Collective (Dylan Martorell, Tony Adams and Chaco Kato) present an installation made from household refuse and document the hidden world of fellow jumble scouts, who collect and repurpose these discarded items. Some of the result shown above...

read more here and please take a look as Makeshift for example have a few other related projects around Sydney that may tickle your fancy.....

and another interesting show that is touring:         click here for link

Powerful Owl

If you have heard at night a deep Whoo-hoo it could be the Powerful Owl,  Ninox strenua. It is the largest Australian nocturnal bird and is listed as vulnerable in NSW. Birds Australia has a public call out to help locate and monitor breeding pairs and Birds In Backyards will train volunteers. For a lot more detail please use my links and to report a sighting or join in volunteering please go here

As I am not often able to see outside of a book the birds and animals I like to depict in my art I then frequent museums to observe the preserved. A favourite is the intimate and historically important Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney - where presently they have a long-nosed bandicoot on display...  so I strongly encourage a visit! 

They estimate to have 9000 bird studyskins that were mainly collected in the late 1800s. I am currently drawing some of the birds found along the greenway, of course, and here I believe is a not so typically posed tawny frogmouth. It was common that the taxidermists and engravers of the time had also never seen these specimens alive and in real situ.