Artsource Newsletter Summer 2014/15

December 2014

newsletter

2014 Bankwest Art Prize

Winner 2013 Bankwest Art Prize, Susanna Castleden Camping Continuum (Indian Ocean Drive WA) 2013 acrylic paint and stencil on vinyl and wood camping tables, Bankwest Art Collection, acorn photo © the artist.

WA sculpture in the spotlight Abdul-Rahman Abdullah • Claire Bailey • Tim Burns • Olga Cironis • Jennifer Cochrane • Kevin Draper Susan Flavell • Simon Gilby • Mark Grey-Smith • Paul Kaptein • Theo Koning • Bela Kotai • Angela McHarrie Bruce Slatter • Jon Tarry • Tjanpi Desert Weavers • Joshua Webb Bankwest Art Gallery, Bankwest Place, 300 Murray Street, Perth Nov 19 – Mar 6, Mon to Fri 9 – 5. Admission free Vote for your favourite artwork to go in the running to win bankwest.com.au/artprize Bankwest, a division of Commonwealth Bank of Australia ABN 48 123 123 124 AFSL/Australian credit licence 234945.

BWB5610-AS-FPC-0312

Fremantle Office

Perth Office

9am – 5pm Monday to Friday Level 1, 8 Phillimore St Fremantle WA 6160 PO Box 999, Fremantle WA 6959 T (08) 9335 8366 F (08) 9335 3886 info@artsource.net.au

King Street Arts Centre Level 1, 357 Murray St Perth WA 6000

Gavin Buckley – Chief Executive Officer Yvonne Holland – General Manager Nichola Zed – Development Officer Martine Linton – Marketing Officer Loretta Martella – Studios + Residencies Manager Ron Bradfield Jnr – Membership + Indigenous Development Manager Vanessa Russ – Membership Services Coordinator Anna Richardson – Membership + Administration Coordinator Tabitha Minns – Artsource Consulting Manager Perdita Phillips – Art Consultant Katy Eccles – Art Consultant Rachel Ciesla – Consulting Coordinator Sabina Moncrieff – Finance Officer

Board of Directors

Note that our Perth office is not staffed full time.

Please direct all communications to Fremantle.

Anthony Hasluck – Chair Mal Di Giulio – Treasurer Corine van Hall Miik Green Paola Anselmi Sue Starcken

Advertising Enquiries Martine Linton martine@artsource.net.au

In this issue…

From the Chief Executive Officer...............................................4 Welcome to the conversation….................................................5 Better Off in Adelaide.........................................................................6 100 years from now…........................................................................9 Penetrating the surface..................................................................13 Light in the darkness........................................................................15 Trace, Marker, Record, Line..........................................................17 From little things…...........................................................................19 Detachment and Connection....................................................20 Artsource’s Business Plan 2015–2017..................................24 Studios and Residencies................................................................25 Ashfield Studios...............................................................................25 Residency Postcard from Paul Caporn in Basel..........25 Residency Reflections – Sebastian Befumo Residencia Corazón, Argentina.......................................26 New Beginnings for the Basel Exchange........................27 Upcoming Fremantle Residency Artists..........................27 Consulting Services...........................................................................28 Artlease/Purchase..........................................................................28 Recently Completed Projects.................................................28 New Commissions.........................................................................29 Artsource in partnership with BHP Billiton for Ignite................................................................30 Artsource in the Pilbara..................................................................31 6x6 at Margaret River.......................................................................31 Fundraising..............................................................................................32 Members News.....................................................................................36 What was discovered: feedback from the symposium..........................................38

Writers + Contributors Annette Davis, Anna Dunhill, Darren Jorgensen, Minaxi May, June Moorhouse, Jack Pam, Richard Petrusma, Sue Starcken, Tony Windberg

artsource.net.au

Disclaimer Statements and information appearing in this publication are not necessarily endorsed by, or the opinion of Artsource. Unless otherwise stated, all images are published courtesy and copyright of the artist(s).

The images and photographs may not be reproduced, without the permission of the copyright holder.

Cover Claire Beausein, Solar, 2014. Ink on hand formed paper, 33 x 33cm

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From the Chief Executive Officer

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Gavin Buckley

ver 220 people attended The Undiscovered: A National Focus on Western Australian Art; our symposium presented in partnership with UWA Cultural Precinct. The purpose of the symposium was to convene artists, scholars, curators, arts administrators, gallery directors and the public to consider the place of Western Australian art and artists within the national and international art worlds. We were almost at capacity and around 65% of attendees were members of Artsource.

I’m grateful to everyone who participated, particularly our speakers and panelists who filled the day with their insights, thoughts and ideas. We could not have done it without our partnership with the UWA Cultural Precinct and I sincerely thank Professor Ted Snell and his team for the commitment and energy they brought to helping us make the event happen.

I would like to thank all our members, our volunteer board, our amazing staff, patrons, clients, funders and supporters for helping to make Artsource the vibrant organisation that is it.

We set out to make The Undiscovered symposium the first of a series. To some extent we were testing the water and, although we are still gathering feedback from attendees, initial views indicate an interest for us to continue the conversation with a similar event each year. We will consider the feedback in detail and, if necessary, work to secure the funds to make it happen in 2015.

In the meantime, you will find some reflections

by Darren Jorgensen and Jack Pam on The Undiscovered symposium in this newsletter and a few more reflections online at artsource.net.au.

The business plan in place for the last three years, together with our related fundingagreement with the Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA), comes to an end on 31 December.

Working in concert with the Board, leadership team and staff, I have made a strong case to DCA, not only for our three-year funding to be renewed, but also for some extra funds to help us deliver a number of important additional activities that will support directly visual artists practicing in Western Australia. At time of writing I expect a decision from DCA in early December.

Of course, our new business plan is more than simply a document supporting a request for funding, important though that is. The plan builds on our 27-year experience and seeks to further develop our work supporting artists in Western Australia. In particular, whist not diluting the essential direct support and services we already offer, the plan includes a number of fresh strategies and actions that are ambitious, outward looking and designed to help foster an environment where artists can flourish. Perhaps the most exciting part of the plan is, subject to funding, a major writing and publishing project, which I speak more of later in this newsletter.

ďƒ§ The Undiscovered symposium, 2014 4

Welcome to the conversation…

June Moorhouse, Editor

The new plan keeps artists at the heart of everything we do, indeed, this is the first of ten values that now underpin all our work. You will find a full list of our values and more general information about the business plan in the ‘About’ section on the website.

Artsource.net.au has a new Magazine section. It already contains all the newsletter features and artist profiles written in the last couple of years, including those in this current newsletter. The intention is to go back further and, of course, to upload new features as they are written. In this way, we will ensure that all this great material is always accessible online. We will be letting Members know, via the regular ezine, when new articles and artist features are added to the Magazine.

Fundraising remains a vital part of our future and we have been working hard in 2014 to build new relationships with friends and supporters. Nichola Zed, our Development Officer has run a number of successful events bringing many new people not only to Artsource, but also to the visual arts, some for the first time. We are also launching a new higher-level group of Patrons, called the Folio Group, to support Artsource and to be aligned with our ambitious writing and publishing plans.

In October we were delighted to secure a five-year lease on a new studio building near the Ashfield railway station in Bassendean. There are 20 studios in the block and we have been receiving applications from artists to take them for the full five years. Recognising the fundamental importance of studio provision, we have been working on a long-term approach to our studios strategy. I look forward to telling members more about this in the near future.

Finally, as we approach the end of 2014, I would like to thank all our members, our volunteer board, our amazing staff, patrons, clients, funders and supporters for helping to make Artsource the vibrant organisation that it is. The opportunities presented by our new business plan are substantial and, working together, I look forward to making Artsource the best it can be for our members. We have an exciting year ahead. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Christmas and the holiday break and, on behalf of the Artsource team, I wish you all the best for a happy and successful new year.

T

ucked in the audience at the lively The Undiscovered symposium in October were two critical listeners who I’d commissioned to use the ideas that emerged throughout the day as a springboard for their own thoughts about recognition of Western Australian artists.

Darren Jorgensen and Jack Pam offer their contribution to the conversation in the following pages, raising questions for continuing thought and debate. Is it the ‘WA born and bred’ in me, or the editor looking for a neat line that wants to characterise Darren as an outsider now operating on the inside? He hails from Queensland but has been working in arts academe in Western Australia for 14 years now. On the other hand, Jack Pam grew up in the bosom of a Perth-based arts family, so is very much the insider, but has continued a family tradition of extensive travel and has spent the past decade living and working in Europe and North America. He was newly returned to Perth at the time of The Undiscovered.

Our artist profiles this issue present a diversity of Artsource members talking about their current practice. In the case of Tony Windberg the talking is direct as it became evident that Tony was more comfortable writing about his own work than being written about. This opportunity for artists to write meaningfully about their practice will increase with the development of the online magazine on the Artsource website.

It has been a delight to guide the development of the newsletter over the past three years. In particular I have enjoyed working with the talented, patient and unbelievably efficient Christopher Young from zebrafactory.

Thanks Chris! I look forward to working with Artsource, artists and writers in the new online magazine.

June Moorhouse is an arts business consultant and writer.

She works with artists and organisations to realise their full creative potential. June has a long history of working in the arts across all sectors, in WA and nationally. She is a former journalist, Director of Fremantle Arts Centre, Australia Council Fellow and has been a consultant for 12+ years.

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Better Off in Adelaide Darren Jorgensen

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n a series of essays and talks, champion of local art Ted Snell laments the invisibility of Western Australian artists to national exhibitions and publications.1 Snell blames the tyranny of distance, the way that curators ‘over east’ don’t make the trip to understand what is taking place here. There are also commonly heard complaints that Perth lacks infrastructure, a culture of influence, and an educated public.

Of Australia’s state capitals, one needs only to look to Adelaide and Brisbane to understand how cities can have their own artistic souls.

The difference between Perth and these cities lies in the way that they have come to terms with their own histories, the way that the cities themselves have soul. To gain an artistic soul and all that comes with it, Perth needs to understand the bigger picture, how the city’s history has inhibited the development of the visual arts, and how it is that artists have also failed the city.

Here there are many lessons to be learned from Adelaide and Brisbane.

Art and ethical governments go together … to have an artistic soul, you need to have a soul in the first place.

Let’s turn to Adelaide first, host of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and its pulsing intellectual companion, the Adelaide Festival Visual Arts Program. These events tie together five brilliant galleries that are all a short tram distance across the city, as if AGWA, Curtin, the Lawrence Wilson, PICA and the Fremantle Arts Centre were all bunched into downtown Perth.

Adelaide has the advantage of being both a nicely planned city and one that has both the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australian Museum, with their close ties to the Pitjantjatjara country to the north. Since Hans Heysen towed his caravan into the Flinders Ranges, and more recently since the exhibition of

Pitjantjatjara art at both of its major institutions, South Australia has shown sensitivity to its regions, and to the lived experience of South Australians. The art of Heysen, and today of Pitjantjatjara artists, speaks directly to the region’s history, and of a way of imagining one’s place in this country. Admittedly, South Australia’s colonial history has been a much softer one than here. It was a condition of early pastoral leases that Aboriginal people had access to their lands, and as far back as the 1920s the South Australian parliament did not pass laws that would allow the indiscriminate removal of children. South Australia proves the point that art and ethical governments go together, that to have an artistic soul, you need to have a soul in the first place.

Brisbane offers a reverse model for artistic development, since Queensland was possibly the worst place to be Aboriginal. And just as the truth of Nazi Germany lies not in Hitler’s charisma but in the suffering of the Jews, so the truth of Queensland’s history lies in the voices of those at the bottom of the pile. From a situation of structural and everyday racism, and from a long history of police violence, grew two generations of rigorous conceptual artists in Brisbane. Their peers were not collectors and sycophants, but  Stuart Ringholt, Love, 2001. Woolstores Shopping Centre, Fremantle. Image courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery.

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Aboriginal activists and punk musicians. Usually the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and the spectacular Gallery of Modern Art are used as indicators of Brisbane’s ascendance but even without them, Brisbane would be the biggest influence on Australian art because of artists like Robert MacPherson, Tracey Moffatt and Gordon Bennett to name a few.

Adelaide and Brisbane prove just how badly Perth missed the boat to having a thriving artworld of its own. This is the result of much larger problems that are endemic to the city. The first thing that Perth has been missing historically is an intimate and meaningful relationship with its regions. Much of regional Western Australia might as well be in the Northern Territory, or in Melbourne and Sydney, where you are more likely to see art from the Kimberley. Of course, there are exceptions to this disconnection of the city from its place in the state. While he was Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia in the 1960s, Frank Norton went on painting trips to the Burrup Peninsula, on the north west Pilbara coast. Here he painted the Aboriginal rock art, as if to claim this monument to the longest civilisation in the world for Australian art. More recently, the organisation Form has been building a relationship between Perth and the rest, with a series of exhibitions and complex projects from the Pilbara. These are, however, exceptions to a history in which Western Australia has largely been left to its own devices, as pastoralists and miners have had free reign to reshape the state in their own heroic images.

A second lack is a missing generation of star artists from Perth who engaged in the conceptual art revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

During the 1980s and 1990s Brian Blanchflower, Guy-Grey Smith and Howard Taylor became the canonical Perth artists in the national art press, but their work was hardly conceptual.2 Struggling with their personal legacies of being imprisoned  The Take Off?, Anonymous, c1949. Pastel on paper, 280 x 385mm. The Herbert Mayer Collection of Carrolup Artwork, Curtin University Art Collection

in wartime, these artists pioneered a conservative post-war modernism that is common throughout the world. Beautiful pictures and sculptures, yes, that look to the local environment, but by the late 1970s the contemporary artworld was no longer interested in pictures or sculptures. At the recent The Undiscovered symposium on Perth art, Ian McLean emphasised the way that the international artworld is no longer interested in identity politics.3 But Perth never struggled with its identity in the first place.

The legacy of conceptual art was to use language to free artists from the picture. The most successful conceptual artist from Perth is Stuart Ringholt, whose performance and installation work came to an end here after a local gallery that represented him simply couldn’t grasp what he was doing. They thought his exhibition called Love, constituting a pile of detritus from his period of mental illness, was ‘a bit Fremantle’.4 One of Snell’s arguments is that locals are being neglected by interstate curators but it is also possible to argue

that they are being left out because those who had something to offer the national picture have already left. Those who remain often lack the kind of content that the national artworld thrives on.

If you are an artist who pursues painting for its own sake, you will remain irrelevant to the larger discussions taking place in the country today. If your art is essentially about installing grey statues or sheet metal cut-outs on Perth streets, you will also remain irrelevant to the broader nation.

If Ringholt stands for the missing conceptual artists of Perth, the Carrolup school stands for Perth’s neglect of its own region. While GreySmith and Taylor were comfortably pursuing their art, the stolen generations of Perth were homeless, impoverished and imprisoned, often on the streets and struggling with alcohol addictions. In spite of this, in spite of Perth, these painters mobilised art as a way of getting ‘out of some scrapes’.5 These works, produced over many decades in prison, sold door to door in Willagee, and traded for food on the outskirts of 7

of a city that has not grasped the opportunities it might have had. One opportunity lies in the city’s relationship to the region at large, whether it be the Noongar country of the south west or the state itself. This state is full of art, from the rock art of the north west to the Antony Gormley sculptures on Lake Ballard. A second missed opportunity lies in being a part of the conversation that arose after conceptualism.

Ringholt is symptomatic of a lost generation of artists, whose work was not as well supported as it might have been. Let’s hope that Perth can come to terms with its history so that artists are able to make work that finds a more convivial environment. Yet it is also up to artists to create this environment by demonstrating their capacity to change the way that Perth thinks about itself, to make work that speaks to the very malaise that confronts the city.

Perth has been missing an intimate and meaningful relationship with its regions.

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town, visualise an identity of the south west of the state whose story is of both local and national interest. The Carrolup artists have content to their work that conveys its own necessity.

If these artists have something in common with that of Grey-Smith and Taylor, it lies in the trauma of living here, as the forests were being razed by a resettlement program for war veterans, and Aboriginal children were being taken from their families. While the truth of Perth’s history remains invisible, its artists will have little to work with, little to do, but to make art for art’s sake.

Artists are not going to be supported simply

because they make art. They will be supported, as they are in Adelaide and Brisbane, when they create work that speaks to the deeper traumas and knowledges of the place in which they are made.

Ironically, it is this emplacement that also makes art relevant both nationally and internationally. The Carrolup artists exhibited on Charing Cross Road in London in 1951, a decade before the much historicised Recent Australian Painting because their work is pertinent to the history of the world itself, as they picture the clash of civilisations.

So it is that the conversation around the representation of Perth artists is symptomatic

 On with the Dance, Anonymous, c1949. Pastel and graphite on paper, 281 x 378mm. The Herbert Mayer Collection of Carrolup Artwork, Curtin University Art Collection

The Herbert Mayer Collection of Carrolup Artwork was generously donated for educational and research purposes by Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, United States of America.

1 ‘Why are Western Australian art and artists invisible?’, The Conversation 1 April 2014 at <https://theconversation. com/why-are-western-australian-art-and-artistsinvisible-24888>; ‘Don’t forget the west: mid-century modern and David Foulkes Taylor’, The Conversation 25 August 2014 at <https://theconversation.com/dontforget-the-west-mid-century-modern-and-david-foulkestaylor-3>; ‘Western Australian Art is excluded from the national conversation’, The Conversation 17 October 2014 at <https://theconversation.com/western-australianart-is-excluded-from-the-national-conversation>; ‘The tyranny of myopia: What do we mean when we say ‘Australian’ or ‘National’ in the context of contemporary art in Australia’, talk at The Undiscovered: A National Focus on Western Australian Art, Perth, 20 October, 2014.

2 Here I am relying on a survey of Australian art journals made by Ian McLean in the decades to 2000.

3 Ian McLean, Post-National Futures, talk at The Undiscovered: A National Focus on Western Australian Art, Perth, 20 October, 2014.

4 Stuart Ringholt, Hashish Psychosis: What it’s like to be mentally ill and recover. Melbourne: c2006, p. 95.

5 Tjyllyungoo (Lance Chadd) interviewed in Show us a Light: The Artistic History of Carrolup. Dir. Nancy Sokil.

Melbourne: Perth: Blue Moon Film and Video, 1989.

Darren Jorgensen lectures in art history at the University of Western Australia. His most recent essays on West Australian art and exhibitions are in the book, Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction and Arena magazine.

100 years from now…

Jack Pam

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revor Vickers, an artist of obvious and significant talent, introduced himself at The Undiscovered symposium with a presentation that for me was truly inspiring. His earliest important experience and moment of connection to art, as he told it, was a chance encounter brought about by boredom during his lunchtime work break in the Melbourne CBD. He went into the city’s museum seeking a glimpse of the taxidermied Phar Lap. After he had seen the Australian sporting icon, which he observed was “just a horse,” his attention was arrested by a collection of paintings by European master artists. Trevor described how this began a rich and diverse informal art education energetically mined from local and international art galleries, museums, artists studios, important friendships and social interactions.

This was something that resonated with me. Although I did try to go to art school, what I have learnt about art has come more from an accidental series of events, chance encounters and a constant hunger for it. Trevor’s talk left me thinking about how lucky we are that he found his way in front of works that caused a chain of events resulting in his own output of artworks that is now continuing the process of inspiring us.

There was a missing voice amongst the varied offerings at The Undiscovered symposium and that was of a younger generation of artists who are, sometimes very quietly, building, creating

There was a missing voice amongst the varied offerings at The Undiscovered symposium and that was of a younger generation of artists who are, sometimes very quietly, building, creating and exploring.

 Christopher Charles, I Hardly Recognise Your Voice, (2nd Version) 2011/2013. Concrete, rope, steel, telephone books, timber, installation view, dimensions variable 9

Audiences have changed in the 21st century and how events and art initiatives engage with audiences needs to adapt. It is no longer good enough to put on great exhibitions of great art and wait for people to come.

and exploring. Within our city and abroad we have Western Australian artists, curators and writers who are engaging globally. Jackson Eaton, currently based in Melbourne, has progressed from a good photographer to an artist who uses photography as a witness of elaborate performative and provocative ideas. His work has been published widely and exhibited at significant art establishments in Australia and elsewhere in the world. Perth born Eloise Sweetman and Perth educated Jason Hendrik Hansma have lived in Rotterdam for the last few years and currently collaborate on writing, research and visual explorations that have contributed to art initiatives across Europe and the Americas, as well as in Australia. Berlin based Christopher Charles was brought up being pulled across the pacific north west in Canada as well as rural Western Australia and Perth. He has delivered three solo exhibitions in the last 15 months in London, Berlin and Moscow. This list continues and provides an unpredictable and diverse collection of artists and creative practitioners who perhaps don’t fit the stereotype of a Western Australian artist. The important connection between these individuals, both locally and internationally based, is that they are doing it for themselves. They are stealing their own opportunities and they are creating new work that is gaining critical success and admiration from their international peers. I have experienced this first hand living in Europe for the past decade, at first exhibiting as an artist and more recently curating, publishing and writing.

What I miss when I am back in Australia is the everyday nature of art as part of city living and how creative dialogues consistently punctuate normal events. I also miss seeing 10

great pieces of art by masterful, established practitioners, both living and long gone. Most of all I miss seeing these masters in conversation with new creative thinkers. Lisa Slade, curator of the 2016 Adelaide Biennial, spoke at the symposium about recent and upcoming projects that are formulated around this idea. Her lateral approach to storytelling was evident in her curatorial output, exploring ideas across multiple generations of artists and including artworks sourced by unique and novel means. This open framework and inclusive way of thinking breaks down traditional ideas of what art is and how it should be perceived. What I understood from her presentation is that the story within an exhibition becomes the important driving factor in her curatorial process as she pushes young artists through delicate commissions and places their work in a larger demographic and geographic context. Curatorial projects like those Lisa undertakes have the potential to bring a new level of engagement and interest to a larger audience.

It is great to see a curator with this approach working at senior levels in the art industry of Australia but it should not be uncommon for this dramatic sense of storytelling and visual exploration to be evident across the board in the visual arts. An inclusive spirit and the continual act of support to young artists, pitched alongside mid and late-career veterans, can drive the energy of art exhibitions.

Audiences have changed in the 21st century and how events and art initiatives engage with audiences needs to adapt. It is no longer good enough to put on great exhibitions of great art and wait for people to come. The Internet is one of the many ways to extend the life of a

project and to seek out the potential for new audiences for future projects. Respectable standalone online projects exist that have expanded audiences’ online tolerance and understanding of web based art. Projects such as the New York-based New Museum’s Rhizome (http:// rhizome.org), a platform that incubates and showcases new creative methods of maintaining arts discourse online are achieving positive engagements by audiences. The ambitiously large and all-encompassing art wikipedia art.sy (https:// artsy.net) is another example, as is the gentle and expertly curated monthly screening program, vdrome (http://www.vdrome.org). The Internet is definitely not, at least by itself, a way of solving the problems of an undiscovered art scene but it does have some powerful tools to be used and abused by our local practitioners and art sector workers.

It was clear during The Undiscovered and it is clear living here, that there is an art scene in Perth and that it has some brilliant contributors.

However, it appears to be in dire need of combined effort towards a shared goal. This theme repeated throughout the day – “we need to work together!” Initiatives such as San Francisco’s First Thursday Art, Berlin’s Art Week and Carte Blanche rates and deals in Paris allow artists to collectively speak to larger audiences and over time have helped develop and shape thriving art industries.

The steps we take to gaining local, national or global discovery are going to be as unique as we are individual. Our state’s cultural identity will grow when smaller artist run initiatives proliferate and populate the artistic landscape.

Small commercial art galleries, well run public project spaces as well as no-budget artist run

exhibition centres feed an energetic artistic landscape. This increases the volume of artworks being shown weekly and means that within the diversity of outlets, each has a greater understanding, faith and respect for their own individual audiences, borne out of their complete dependency on them.

Perth currently has a range of forward thinking and well run art initiatives forming an archipelago of cultural islands dotted around our urban sprawl.

The process of connecting these nodes and increasing their number and importance appears to have started and needs to continue. This can only be done by us. As was expressed at the symposium, nobody is coming to save the day. For Western Australia’s artists, ‘discovery’ could and should be a natural part of being good at what we do – an important part of an artist’s creative makeup that includes an entrepreneurial and ambitious spirit. We need to stop blaming a national regime for our lack of exposure, especially in today’s globally connected world. Our remoteness is an identifying and very unique factor – not our (black) swan song.

After leaving the symposium and thinking more about the subjects broached during the day, my mind wandered to the 100 Year Starship project currently in development between world leaders, financiers, scientists and creative thinkers. The project has a simple and beautiful aim: to send a human being to another planet that has the possibility of sustaining extraterrestrial life. The idea is based on the fact that we are, at best guess, a few centuries away from having engines that can power a spacecraft close to the speed of light, or at least fast enough that with 50 years of propulsion and 50 years of break propulsion a spacecraft could be landed on a brave new world. This project brings up so many mind bending questions, not the least of which is how do we send a person on a flight taking 100 years, or more to the point, who gets off it? We don’t know what the Perth cultural landscape will look like in 100 years but if we want our artists to gain more exposure and our art scene to have a global impact we must collaborate

 Jason Hansma & Eloise Sweetman, Untitled, 2014.

Lambda print, 21 x 29cm

on processes that will continue through generations, until it is ingrained in our society at large. We are all active participants – artists, curators, journalists, buyers and our ever-expanding idea of an audience – we all play an important role in Western Australia’s cultural identity. This identity faces the challenge of being from an incredibly remote part of the world, a world in a seemingly lonely part of the universe, but who knows what can be progressed in the next 100 years of propulsion?

Jack Pam is a nomadic creative producer working primarily in Europe and the Pacific on projects as diverse as an ongoing travelling handmade bookshop (Tennis Club Bookshop) and the recent international video art biannual, ikono On Air Festival.

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Penetrating the surface Claire Beausein by Annette Davis

“I love the repetition of textures and patterns on all scales … these things speak to me of an overarching design to life.”

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lying in a small plane over the Kimberley, one feels exhilarated to be seeing the earth from this viewpoint. The shapes and patterns in the earth’s skin are mesmerising. It is one of the wonders of the natural world that the patterns and shapes observed from this macro perspective are also found in the smallest elements of nature. This wonder is an ongoing inspiration for visual artist Claire Beausein who lives in Broome, in the West Kimberley.

Claire has lived in this remote town for over 20 years. A regular exhibitor and award-winner in local and regional exhibitions, she has also been selected for national awards and touring exhibitions, including the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize and the Mandorla Art Prize. Well known for her oils on canvas and watercolours, over recent years Claire has focussed on exploring the two and three dimensional possibilities of paper.

Beausein creates highly textural artworks from cotton pulp, in which she uses her hands

 Claire Beausein, Terrain, 2014. Ink on hand formed paper, 33 x 33cm  Claire Beausein in her studio ARTspace7

to caress patterns and shapes into the wet pulp. Once dry, she sometimes uses inks to bring colour into the work’s surface. “I love the repetition of textures and patterns on all scales, the desert dunes and dry riverbeds from the air and the miniscule patterns in the sand; these things speak to me of an overarching design to life,” she explains.

In 2012 Claire was awarded a Mid Career Fellowship from the WA Department of Culture and the Arts, which enabled her to take up a residency in Basel, at a Paper Mill and at the Natural History Museum. She was able to absorb herself in the Museum’s huge collection and learn from master paper makers, culminating in exhibitions about coral reefs at the Natural History Museum and at Linton and Kay Galleries back in Perth in 2013. In a subsequent solo exhibition, Watermark at Linton and Kay in 2014, Claire focussed on different skins, in particular the pelts of extinct and endangered species, to make the point that humanity’s reliance on animal pelts for protection, warmth and ceremony not

only connects us to the natural world but also to its demise.

Claire’s next adventure is a residency at the Awagami Paper Mill, near Tokushima, Japan, in 2015. She will learn to make washi paper (from the bark of the mulberry) and is keen to experiment with creating texture from washi and using dyes and dyed pulp. The results will be exhibited in Perth in 2016.

Working with paper pulp during the high humidity of the Broome wet season is not easy.

Freight costs from her distant location are also a considerable expense, and Claire spends a lot of time ensuring that works are safely packed for their journey. But these limitations are offset by proximity to the environment she loves.

“Being embedded in this amazing place gives me the opportunity to make work about it at a deeper level than a visitor may encounter. I hope that in some small way my work might remind people of the value of this remarkable environment.”

Annette Davis is an artist and freelance curator. During the past two decades she has managed arts projects in Perth, Kununurra, Karratha and Albany, where she currently lives.

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Light in the darkness VJzoo by Minaxi May

Part entertainment, part art, operating in the overlap of the two…

M

et by the smiles of Kat Black and Jasper Cook aka VJzoo, we connect through our affection for the visual medium, music, film and the art of

the remix.

Influenced by her art teacher Grandma, Kat commenced as a painter, illustrator and lecturer, Jasper in photography. In 2003, studying Fine Art at Central TAFE led to their collaborations jokingly dubbed ‘Gilbert and Georgia’, referencing UK artists Gilbert & George. Once discovered, VJing software became their giant funnel for photography, video, sound, painting and any other medium. Live VJing allowed immediacy and performance – their ‘aha’ moment launching them into pluralism.

Abbreviated by VJzoo to ‘visual jazz jamming’, video jockeying is described as a performance that combines the visual possibilities of filmmaking with the improvisational pleasures of jazz. Kat and Jasper are remixers, sourcing, selecting and, as with commonplace collage, resampling and recontextualising images, seamlessly stitching together voraciously collected visual clips. Movie buffs, they talk about their work as “video painting using nostalgic, niche, retro/vintage material” including excerpts  VJzoo, Curtin Graduation Projection, 2013  VJzoo with one of The Bunnies

of film noir dancers juxtaposed to contemporary beats. They re-assemble for the postmodern audience’s, unrestrained eclecticism. VJzoo know their encyclopedia of over 5000 clips intimately, providing an accessible, synchronised, ephemeral audio-visual experience.

Long time resident VJs at the Llama bar, Subiaco, their nocturnal practices wound up this year. Now, outdoor projections such as the first Western Australian Projections on High (2011) and public art projects have allowed ‘normal’ sleeping patterns. The Bunnies (2013) are four kitschy, bright, super-sized night-lights, which proved controversial when installed for the Key City Worker Housing Project, East Perth. Although designed to comfort the shift worker inhabitants, they sparked debate amongst the public. But, Kat and Jasper buzz in consecutively, “We are fairly medium-agnostic, we have an idea and then go about finding the best way to produce that – we endeavor to have as much artistic freedom in our projects as possible.”

Their projections have increased in scale, such as the 2013 Art Gallery of Western Australia visual canvas Illuminites. Performative events have included cultural collaborations with the West Australian Ballet. Currently, digital interactive work is being completed for the redesigned Princess Margaret Children’s hospital. The pair reflect that public art is “rewarding but different”,

without the immediate high of VJing in clubs, yet encompassing their 1920s European art influences of montage cinema.

VJzoo are both experimental and conceptual innovators. Their themes include memory, the night and a sense of wonder. Part entertainment, part art, operating in the overlap of the two, they prefer their work to be accessible. “There’s something really magical about light in darkness.

Memories of the ship of lights on the Old Swan Brewery are some of the most vivid from my childhood. We’d love people to have similar memories of our work,” says Kat. No stranger to this pair’s magic, for me being reacquainted was to converse like geeky aficionados of film. They are plugged into a supportive, technically efficient, international network of VJs. VJzoo have become leaders of VJing in Perth and have a global network, obvious from the diverse locations on their website track (play) schedule. “We make video art and we also VJ commercially… ARTY and PARTY!” It’s enough to get my dancing shoes on.

Minaxi May is a contemporary artist living in Fremantle.

She returned from Artsource’s Basel, Switzerland residency this year. Minaxi is currently a sessional academic at Curtin University and the Special Projects Co-director at Paper Mountain (ARI). She is in the final throws of her PhD candidature at Murdoch University.

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Trace, Marker, Record, Line Clare Peake by Anna Dunnill

There is a constant back and forth between past and future.

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lare Peake describes the process of mapping as both a record of the past, and a potential for the future. Her practice is concerned with the point in between, the point at which the past becomes the future, how that occurs, and why. With elegant, considered work that moves between drawing and sculpture, Clare has emerged as a clear and resonant voice in Perth’s artistic conversation.

Clare is represented by Venn Gallery, where she held a solo exhibition last year, Comprehension of the Farthest Points. She has also exhibited at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Art Gallery of Western Australia (where her 2011 work Rumours of Strange is held in the state collection), and at Lawrence Wilson Gallery where she was part of Here&Now12. Most recently, she exhibited at Adelaide’s Hugo Michell Gallery in WIN/WIN, curated by Richard Lewer, with fellow Perth artists Teelah George and Shannon Lyons.

Clare’s installation for WIN/WIN, titled Dust, consists of one drawing and a group of small floor sculptures. Using leftover materials and unfinished studio works, her sensitive, poised

 Clare Peake, Dust, 2014. Studio remnants, dimensions variable. Image: Eva Fernandez  Clare Peake in her studio

constructions investigate the process of developing ideas, looking back at significant moments in art history and culture, pinpointing shifts in focus and perspective. As Clare explains, “ …[it also] became about the frustration of trying to make new work and come up with new ideas; and how [to] mark a point of progression, or some moment of progress.”

The process of erasure and remaking, deconstruction and rebuilding, is significant in Clare’s practice. The works in her 2013 solo exhibition were made from old visual diaries, pulped and reshaped into vessels and forms, and pressed into paper for drawings. She describes her graphite drawing in WIN/WIN as having been, “…drawn and erased, drawn and erased, drawn and erased…a trace, a marker, a record of something.” There is a constant back and forth between past and future.

Sometimes resembling rock formations or geometry, sometimes a scattering of graphite dust, Clare’s drawings are ambiguous in scale, “… not necessarily a micro or macro image – it’s something in between, or could be either.” The

same applies to her installations. Whether using clay or glass, papier-mâché or metal, Clare’s sculptures are generally small, reflecting the size and impact of her own body and hands, but multiplied, scattered across a surface, each contributing to the meaning of the next, like words in a poem. Her clusters of objects hum in conversation with one another.

“I like this idea that you can’t use things singularly,” she says. “Nothing exists in isolation so you get a span of things, or multiple sources of information coming together.”

Tracing histories, pushing towards the future, Clare Peake’s practice encompasses her idea of progress being a series of things, rather than one specific magic moment. Indeed, progress is evidently fluid, reversible and metamorphic: a drawing can become a sculpture, a mark can be a speck of dust or a distant point on the horizon.

In terms of her own progress, the next marker for Clare is the Venn Summer Show followed by a lot of time in the studio to pursue new ideas, new horizons.

Anna Dunnill is an artist and writer from Perth.

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From little things…

Vanessa Wallace by Sue Starcken

It is the intimacy of engagement with the book form that she finds so compelling.

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rchaeological ‘galleries’ on the ground tender ephemeral moments that simultaneously intrude, disrupt and chime to the life and will of an era. Accomplished printmaker, Vanessa Wallace, concerns herself with those traces of existence and deep insights of historical ‘evidence’ that are – mostly inadvertently – left behind. Hers is a near obsessive contemplation of the tributaries of histories on the ground, comprising the relics of footfall past and those remnant marks on pavement, turf and inky tar.

On a foundational premise of printmaking, Vanessa has built an impressive range of skills that emerge from and inform her practice. Memoryladen particles find their way into her stories that are prompted by the honed sensibility of a conservator, the keen eye of a curator and the deft proficiency of the consummate printmaker.

It is perhaps fitting that Vanessa pays close attention to the minutiae of the world underfoot, as she demonstrates a defined empathy for the documentation of historical ephemera. Her Artsource studio in Midland houses an eclectic stockpile of resource material: neat stacks and

 Vanessa Wallace, Negotiate, 2014. Heat transfer and stitch on fabric, 11.5 x 11.5 x 11.5cm  Vanessa Wallace in her studio. Image: Karin Wallace

rolls of exquisite papers, reams of elegantly handwritten text and her kempt tools of trade – pencils, inks, photographs, copperplate, textiles, presses.

Vanessa is emphatically optimistic about the place and relevance of printmaking in a contemporary context, and she relishes the opportunities and initiatives she perceives in this part of the country. Keen to develop her range, she continues her studies and explorations, and she documents her surroundings and experiences through varied means including photography, frottage and text. This research informs sequential, diarised works of the artists’ ‘life-world’ and often takes the format of the artist book. In fact, Vanessa asserts that “books have conversations with prints…[they] are central to my practice”, and it is the intimacy of engagement with the book form that she finds so compelling.

Vanessa Wallace is at the vanguard of contemporary printmaking and numerous awards, commissions, career opportunities and bold digital media forays attest to her capacity for durability and innovation. For now, though, a

consequential milestone highlights the reason for recording the twists and shifts of the world, as a legacy to a future generation in which she is now inexorably invested. Eleven years out of art school and with a convincing arts career well underway, motherhood has generated a new sphere of quiet poetry amongst the chaotic business of life. Importantly, the birth of her daughter has sparked the impetus for work that she describes as “recording the ephemeral moments between parent and child”. This series will see the periodic documentation of the spaces that her daughter traverses, whilst her physical development is reflected in incremental images that relate directly to body height, head circumference and the curiosity-laden life-world of a child. Begun at birth, this intriguing project sees Vanessa creating at her visionary best. Clearly a long-term proposition, the initial works are rich with personal purpose. They relish the prosaic and record the deluge of ‘essential’ information provided to new parents. Importantly, they speak to the lyricism of the everyday and offer pause for the consideration of history.

Sue Starcken is a unit coordinator and lecturer in art at Edith Cowan University as well as Curator of the university’s Art Collection. She is also a practicing artist and writer. Sue is a member of the Artsource Board.

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Detachment and Connection Tony Windberg

With this oscillating dual reality, a major shift in my thinking had begun.

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t is said that the Pilbara stays with you long after you leave. Clichés aside about the red dust that gets into everything, the truth for me is that it can take a fair while for ideas to take effect.

It’s taken a decade for me to follow up a painting, Tempest I, with its ‘sequel’, Tempest II. This time, however, the technique has completely flipped: it’s not about putting paint on, but removing it. The process goes back to a pivotal moment when I was exposed to the ancient rock art on the Burrup Peninsula. I was based in nearby Karratha, that copy-and-paste suburbia in the spinifex. The Burrup, shimmering in the heat haze across the bay, was home to a myriad of images and cryptic signs on countless boulders. These petroglyphs, pecked and chipped into the rust coloured surface, were hauntingly poignant. The marks revealed the lighter rock beneath the dark patina and for me a connection was instantly made, a sudden revelation of applying this to my own art.

I saw a link between this technique and the modern domesticity around me. The kitchen floor had just been replaced, and I seized upon

 Tony Windberg, Tempest II, 2014. Engraved oil painting on oxides on canvas, 76 x 76 cm. Image: Graham Evans  Tony Windberg 20

the left over scraps of vinyl flooring. Beneath the fake wood finish with its embossed ‘grain’ was a white substrate. What would happen if I chipped away the veneer? The experiment paid off. The resulting imagery of my Karratha backyard stood out in stark whiteness, yet importantly, so too did the timber planks in all their wood-look wizardry.

With this oscillating dual reality, a major shift in my thinking had begun. But it was not until well after my move to Northcliffe in the cooler south west of Western Australia in 2005, that investigation into the illusion of the picture-plane took off again, this time into the third dimension with wall mounted constructs. The symbolism of engraving into the veneer made new sense with depictions of vegetation removal and bluegum plantations, the process echoing the subject.

The response to a place is both instantaneous and gradual. After departing Perth in 2002 for Meekatharra, the first thing I did was survey the surrounds from the highest nearby hill, a telling step I repeated in Karratha. These notes and sketches in my visual diaries record the

things in the landscape that struck me, the brazen evidence of our big human footprint. In Northcliffe, in my ninth year here, I’m still making the connection to place, struggling with the concept of ‘regional artist’, but always looking for new ways of telling the story of our impact on the landscape.

With distance also comes detachment.

In Tempest II, my sacrificial scraping back into an earlier oil painting is an act of selective destruction. The painted illusion of great spatial distance – a jet’s-eye view of an apparently benign watercourse cutting through the Pilbara heartland – is shattered. The washed out bridge is engraved into nothing more than paint on red dust on canvas. It is skin deep.

Tony Windberg is a visual artist and part-time lecturer.

He works in an expanding range of media, most recently with digitally modified engravings printed onto glass for a Percent for Art Scheme project. Tony holds a B.A. (Fine Arts) from Curtin University.

Advertorial

Partnering with the WA Arts Community for over 25 Years Words by Richard Petrusma

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ver more than a quarter of a century, PSZ Partners has been motivated by a passion for the arts to develop a specialised service to the arts community of Western Australia.

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In addition to traditional tax returns, we can help you with general business advice, business structure and cash flow management.

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Did you know? been helping with superannuation, SMSF and pensions advice, direct and managed investment advice, estate planning and personal insurance advice for years.

More recently we have expanded our financial services to now include lending and mortgages, leasing and business finance through our association with the newly established Casa Finance. Together, and all under the one roof, you will discover a whole range of financial advice and services that can cater to a wide variety of requirements.

Think of us as your partners in achieving your creative and financial goals.

The art of thinking financially.

For more than 30 years, PSZ Partners has worked closely with Western Australia’s arts community. Our services include business advice and mentoring for artists and arts enterprises, tax accounting, superannuation and self-managed super funds, and financial planning. Not to mention our PSZ Artshelf micro exhibition space!

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PSZ Artshelf Local artists who are clients of PSZ Partners can display their works in our PSZ Artshelf minigallery space and gain increased exposure and revenue through the sale of works.

Business and financial management seminars For years Bob Poolman has conducted briefings to graduating WAAPA students and Artsource members on topics such as Starting Your Practice as an Artist, Understanding Business, Managing Finances and Tax Registration and Obligations.

Look out for opportunities to attend.

Find us at: 243 Stirling Highway, Claremont Phone us on: 6365 9000

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Oxlades Art Supplies 120 years of service in Queensland… one great year in Western Australia!

“I

sometimes wonder if my grandfather, when he first started out, had any notion that it was the beginning of 100 years in business,” reflects Brian Oxlade, the father of current Managing Director, Paul Oxlade. In 1894 George Oxlade began a sign writing business OXLADE & WRIGHT in Brisbane. Four generations, two name changes and 120 years on Oxlades Art Supplies is still a proud, family owned and run company dedicated to servicing the arts community.

From its humble beginnings in Brisbane all those years ago, Oxlades now has five retail stores in Queensland and its first store in Western Australia that opened in Osborne Park in 2013. Now artists from one end of Australia and the other can benefit from the high-quality products, knowledge and service provided by the team at Oxlades Art supplies.

“Oxlades has worked tirelessly throughout the years to evolve with our artists and their practice; stocking the latest cutting edge products, whilst also striving to maintain tradition when it comes to our level of personable service,” says Managing Director, Paul Oxlade.

“At Oxlades Osborne Park, it is our goal to not only provide the materials for all of your artistic endeavours, but to also be an active and encouraging participant within the arts sector,” continues Paul. “Many of the staff at Oxlades Osborne Park are practising artists and have approximately 190 combined

years of experience working within the arts industry.”

Oxlades fully-stocked warehouse and retail shop is situated at 49 Guthrie Street, next to Abacus Education Supplies. Shop staff have worked hard on showcasing a comprehensive range of supplies within the store, with something special for everyone. No matter what your skill level or interests, Oxlades’ staff are sure to be able to help and inspire you with their wealth of knowledge and passion for the products available.

To complement the amazing selection of art supplies, and to help customers get the most out of the products they use, Oxlades also offers a full calendar of product demonstrations and workshops throughout the year – all free!! Sign up to the email list in store or like us on Facebook to be the first to know about these events and fantastic monthly specials.

Oxlades now offers a generous 15% discount on its full range of products to Artsource members on presentation of an Artsource membership card.

Please bring in this advertorial to receive $25.00 off your next in store purchase (offer ending 24th December 2014).

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Artsource’s Business Plan 2015–2017

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rtsource is centered on the visual artists of Western Australia. These artists represent many different perspectives, but we all share a deep commitment to art and a strong belief in the contribution artists make to the world. Our new business plan for 2015 to 2017 has artists at its heart and confidently states our vision of a world in which culture and the arts are valued as vital and where the visual arts flourish.

Our core purpose remains to provide practical, affordable and relevant services.

However, we will now also seek to work with partners to deliver and support other initiatives that lead the way in helping create the environment where art is valued and artists are able to flourish. This additional activity will not be undertaken at the expense of the support and services we have traditionally offered artists.

Indeed, when it comes to studio provision, we are seeking to do more in the medium to long-term.

The external environment continues to change. To meet the challenges and opportunities presented by this and to build on our strengths, Artsource has five key strategies for the next three years: 1. Support artists directly by providing relevant, practical and affordable support services.

2. Contribute to market and audience development helping to foster an environment where art is valued and artists flourish.

3. Developing our reach to further support regional and Indigenous artists and working with others to help us to do this.

4. Focus on issues of collective importance to artists and work constructively and with purpose to influence and achieve positive change.

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We all share a deep commitment to art and a strong belief in the contribution artists make to the world.

5. Commitment to continuous quality improvement in respect of governance, policy and business processes.

The additional actions and activities we are planning are dependent on securing additional funds. We have made a robust case to DCA, not only for our three-year funding to be renewed, but also for extra funds to help us deliver a number of important additional activities. We are also talking to potential partners, foundations, individual patrons and other potential private sector supporters. Activities include more residencies, awards, extending our reach to more artists in regional areas and an annual symposium, which we successfully piloted in 2014 in partnership with UWA Cultural Precinct.

Perhaps the most ambitious and exciting of the new initiatives concerns writing and publications. Our proposed Folio Project is a substantial and groundbreaking publishing project putting Western Australian artists where they belong: front and centre. Over the next three years we are aiming to publish a series of high quality books and catalogues. These unique Western Australian publications, supported by complementary online content, will be of fundamental importance in building the profile and careers of artists and will contribute to the historical record of the visual arts in our time.

These publications will be distributed widely and enable us to operate on a national and international level, targeting key audiences to

promote Western Australian artists; building profile, audiences and careers.

We will be moving the content of our current printed newsletter online to the new Magazine section of the website. Not only will this allow Artsource to provide more timely content, but also it has the potential to considerably increase its reach and longevity. We will continue to commission artist profiles and articles by independent writers and we will be developing more online features and content.

Our new plan is broad and has big ambition, particularly in the area of writing and publications. To help make it happen, we look forward to renewing and growing our funding partnership with DCA and continuing to develop new partnerships with other arts organisations, foundations, sponsors and individual patrons.

There is more information about our fresh business plan on artsource.net.au and we look forward to announcing more as and when funds are secured.

Studios and Residencies Ashfield Studios

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e’re thrilled to offer Artsource members another studio complex on the railway line. Formerly the home of Daimler Chrysler, the Ashfield Studios will offer 20 central spaces to artists, with close access to city amenities.

The even better news is that we will be in the building for at least five years. We look forward to seeing it come alive over the next few months.

If you’re looking for a studio, contact studios@artsource.net.au

 Paul Caporn at Perth Airport, ready to take on his residency. Image: courtesy of the artist.  Artsource Ashfield Studios, Main Foyer

Residency Postcard from Paul Caporn in Basel Paul Caporn, 2014 Basel Exchange Residency Recipient

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he first three months of my residency has involved short periods of travel and research, interspersed with familiarising myself with Basel and meeting fellow artists.

I have undertaken a number of short trips out of Basel for about a week or so to places like Paris, Berlin, Rome, Venice, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf, Innsbruck and Kassel to visit art galleries, museums, theme parks and architecture. I have managed to go to a few Art and Architecture fairs including Basel, Venice, Berlin and Copenhagen art weeks. As you can imagine, I have been engaged in a lot of walking, looking, recording and sometimes a bit of thinking, drinking and writing … a complete cultural tourist for want of another way of describing my purpose and I’m okay with that – there is so much to see!

The last time I was in Europe was in 1989, before the Berlin Wall came down, so going to places like Berlin has been important – seeing the changes, restoration and building of the last 25 years. This idea of restoration has emerged as a bit of a focus. I noticed that 25 years ago a

lot of monuments and historic buildings were under repair. This is also the case today. Unlike many tourists who travel hundreds of miles only to be disappointed by seeing a place covered in scaffolding, I have begun to wish for it. (I’m) enjoying the aesthetic relationship between the relative permanence of the monument or building and the temporary scaffolding, collecting many images of this occurrence.

I am looking forward to the next three months and hope for more monuments under repair.

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Residency Reflections – Sebastian Befumo Residencia Corazón, Argentina Sebastian Befumo, Department of Culture and the Arts Young People and the Arts Fellowship Recipient

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fter spending a few days in Buenos Aires to ease my way into Argentinian culture, I packed my gear and scrambled for the 129 bus to La Plata. I had previously researched a little about La Plata, its structure and history, and was very interested in its memorialisation of events from the 1970s until now and its planned urban design, established in the late 19th century. The city centre is a strict grid design, but with eight diagonal roads slicing through it. Apart from the apparent conceptual basis for this design, the diagonals, if used properly, made for quicker routes, but I found them strangely disorienting.

Once I had arrived in the city, I left the bus at Plaza Italia and started walking down Diagonal 77, one of La Plata’s misleading diagonal roads. After a long walk, doubtful that I was headed in the right direction, I spotted Corazón’s doors. I had seen photos of this place many times and it was surreal to finally arrive. I had never travelled this far or undertaken a residency before, so it was thrilling to finally be entering this space and to meet the directors whom I had been in contact with – and also stalking on their website – for over a year. Being the super prompt freak that I am, I had arrived early. The directors Rodrigo Mirto and Juan Pablo Ferrer had not yet arrived however, I was greeted by two other artists also residing in Corazón. I wasn’t aware, but was pleasantly surprised, that over the next three months I would see six other artists and writers pass through the residency and create work.

This made for fantastic, international networking opportunities and very fun, Fernet-filled evenings.

Once the directors had arrived, I was shown around the residency and the neighbourhood.

The residency is an eclectic mix; ten years’ worth of artist’s works and materials, including those of the directors themselves, left the place loaded. Bedrooms and living areas are awkwardly

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engineered, overflowing with random, colourful objects across the walls. It’s a very lived-in space, full of imagination, colour and warmth. Outside the residency felt much the same. Socially and politically engaging graffiti are strewn across almost every surface reachable at ground level.

Modern and traditional styles of architecture bump up against one another and public spaces, such as the Paseo del Bosque, are filled with activity. Everywhere you look there are signs of life, evidence of how people and the elements have integrated themselves into the physical and historical context of La Plata. It’s a city founded on utopian ideals of order and hygiene, but has been beautifully transformed into something more fluid. It was these observations that served as the basis for new work in La Plata.

My experience of making work and developing relationships far exceeded my expectations. What made this residency particularly dear to me, and the other residents, were the directors and their families. Juan and

Rodrigo have created a space where you feel as if you’re part of the family. Almost every day you are greeted with kisses, invitations to socialise, network, share mate or malbec, organise asados for the weekend or assisted in any way possible with your project. Residencia Corazón is a very social space, but I was also able to intensively create work and reflect on my practice without distractions. These processes were of vital importance to my residency and have enabled new methodologies to develop, (bringing) a new perspective on my practice that will no doubt be beneficial for years to come.

 Sebastian Befumo at Residencia Corazón, 2014.

Image: Rodrigo Mirto

New Beginnings for the Basel Exchange

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ur residency partners at the Christoph Merian Foundation have been busy moving the facilities for the Basel residency into new premises in the Dreispitz-Areal district.

The new home for the international artists’ exchange program is located near the recently built College of Art and Design and features exhibition space, writers’ workshop spaces, and the purpose-built residency studio apartments that will house artists from all over the world.

The seven new residential spaces include five large studios of 85 square metres and two smaller studios of half that size, built around a central project space. We look forward to sending our Western Australian artists to experience this new approach to international residencies. You can read more about the new Atelier Mondial at www.ateliermondial.com

Upcoming Fremantle Residency Artists Joan Backes Joan Backes is an artist based in Massachusetts, USA, working across various mediums to address issues of nature in contemporary society. Her installations focus on the house as image and symbol, and often incorporate site-specific materials. During her two week residency in December, Joan will be working with wood collected from locations in Fremantle and using the found objects to make panels resembling paintings in their simplicity.

 Kate Daw, Old names for old cities, 2013. Fired clay, paint.

Image courtesy Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne  Joan Backes, Cardboard Tree. Made of cardboard boxes sourced from every continent, 2235 x 1676mm

Kate Daw Kate Daw explores issues of authorship, narrative and creative processes and moves between the domestic and the social, the everyday and the imagined. Her practice is primarily a conceptually focused one. It is inspired as much by ideas found in literature, design and culture as the mediums of art she works in. Her work is expansive in the sense that it engages with a community of art institutions, artists, writers and designers on a regular basis. For her residency at Artsource, Kate is hoping to work in the archives of the State Library and the Art Gallery of WA, investigating cross overs between fabric designers and modernist painting in the mid 20th century in Perth. Kate will also continue to research meanings found in her recent Biennale of Sydney work, The Green Lamp, namely the viewing of light across water, port cities and maritime atmosphere.

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Consulting Services

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t’s been a busy and productive year for Artsource Consulting and we are delighted at the creative employment opportunities this has facilitated for Artsource members. It has also left a legacy of inspiring works for the project developers and the Western Australian community. Following is a run-down of the projects, leases and commissions that have been completed recently and others that are about to start.

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Artlease/Purchase

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Recently Completed Projects

Aurecon leased a body of works by Miik Green, Francesca Gnagnarella, Jo Darbyshire, Vania Lawson, Alex Spremberg and Lindsay Harris for their new three-storey office on Hay Street, Perth. Miik Green and Francesca Gnagnarella also took part in an artist talk at the office for the Aurecon employees, discussing their artistic practice, method and the artworks on lease.

Artworks by Jo Darvall, Jana Wallace Braddock and Miik Green were recently installed at ANZ Private Bank on St. Georges Terrace, Perth.

A new work by Andre Lipscombe has been leased for the Artsource Fremantle Office.

Two paintings by Francesca Gnagnarella were purchased by the Perth Diocesan Trust and installed in the lobby of 863 Hay Street, Perth.

Gordon Mitchell’s public artwork for an industrial building façade was recently installed at Hyne Road, South Guildford. The work is comprised of printed glass and powder-coated aluminium relief, referencing the site’s former use as a sawmill.

Britt Salt’s privately commissioned suspended artwork was installed at the Shipping Lane Bar and Restaurant, Leighton, which opened for business recently.

Following on from the success of Telethon 2013, Artsource was engaged once again by the Perth Public Art Foundation to coordinate an artist-inresidence program at Headspace Rockingham. Matthew McVeigh was commissioned to produce a large sculptural work alongside a series of smaller works as part of a workshop program with the young people.

The works were successfully auctioned at the Lexus Ball on Telethon weekend, with proceeds going to support Telethon and the artworks permanently installed at Headspace.

 Artsource staff Rachel Ciesla + Nichola Zed with artists Francesca Gnagnarella + Miik Green at Aurecon Artist Talks, October 2014  Francesca Gnagnarella’s artwork in Aurecon boardroom: Sunshine on the River Suffused in Hazy Golden Light, 2014. 950 x 2650mm

New Commissions •

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Rod Garlett led an artist team with Richie Kuhaupt and Fred Chaney that was selected to create a large scale sculptural work that will celebrate and reflect on the importance of the site to the Noongar community. The artwork will be integrated into the landscaping of Wellington Gardens, a new public open space that will be delivered as part of the Kings Square development in Perth.

Three artwork concepts have been selected for the Kings Square development in Wellington Street, Perth.

• Parisian artist Pascal Dombis in collaboration with Gil Percal and Artplural will create a striking sculptural piece outside the KS4 building.

• Damien Butler has been commissioned to create a public artwork to activate the laneway between KS1 and KS2. The works will enliven the pedestrian thoroughfare leading from Wellington Street into the Kings Square Precinct.

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Warren Langley will deliver a light artwork, to be suspended between KS3 and KS2. The work will be a key lighting feature at night, contributing to the vibrancy of the precinct.

Sharyn Egan, Norma and Les MacDonald, and Ross Daglish have been commissioned to produce a welcome to country artwork for the entrance of the new Ronald McDonald House.

Hayley Welsh, Liam Dee and Darren Hutchens have been commissioned for child friendly mural works for the new Ronald McDonald House.

Tug of War (Jessica Skipes and Daniel Aleksandrow) and Renee Barton will create a series of interactive activity panels for the internal courtyards at the new Ronald McDonald House.

 Britt Salt, Diversiform (detail), 2014. Powder coated aluminium, 350 x 120 x 119cm  Matthew McVeigh, Tangram 1, Telethon 2014

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Artsource in partnership with BHP Billiton for Ignite

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he Artsource Ignite initiative, supported by BHP Billiton, provided vital funding to help professional artists take the next step in their career, or develop their practice through mentorships, major projects and skills development. Artists were able to propose any form of project or process that they believed would extend their career.

The following successful artists will complete their projects by May 2015.

• Katie West will explore her own sense of Aboriginality and how it runs parallel to an historical narrative informed by trans-generational trauma experienced by Aboriginal people in Australia.

• Benjamin Kovacsy will enter into a mentorship with Mark Parfitt to challenge the conceptual and physical nature of his practice as well as build his skills in producing works on a larger scale.

• Eva Fernandez will develop an artist book based on a collection of narratives, anecdotes and new artworks that connect her and her artwork to her family history during the Spanish Civil War.

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Thomas Heidt will enter into a mentorship to assist him in developing a new body of work and to engage a curator to assist his development towards exhibiting in the eastern states.

Stuart Elliott will develop new skills in audio visual art work to complement his practice and transform his work into constructed images, objects and environments that will function in animated and performative dynamics.

Christopher Young will publish his photographic artwork, Small Town.

Olga Cironis will be mentored by a well-known international curator to develop her networks with the aim of establishing herself as an international artist.

 Stuart Elliott, Dressing for the Veud – advanced experiments for the Ignite Project, 2014.

Image: Sue Starcken  Katie West, Untitled, 2014. Digital print, dimensions variable 30

6x6 at Margaret River

A

nna Richardson, Artsource’s Membership Coordinator, hosted a 6x6 artist talk at the Margaret River Gallery during the Here Comes The Future exhibition that was held in November 2014. This event explored the various ways that artists use illustration in their art practice. Kieron Broadhurst, Anna McEachran, Jordy Hewitt, Hyunji Kim, Hayley Welsh and Elizabeth Marruffo shared with Anna Richardson their views on the role of drawing in the contemporary art world, and tackled the illustration versus fine art debate.

 Yinjaa-Barni artist, Aileen Sandy, dictating her story and biography to Jody Fitzhardinge.

Image courtesy of Yinjaa-Barni Art Centre  Artist Elizabeth Marruffo + Artsource’s Anna Richardson at the 6x6 Artist Talk: Here Comes the Future at Margaret River Gallery

Artsource in the Pilbara

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n October 2014, through our Rio Tinto partnership, six attendees from the City of Karratha joined Artsource members in the Artist’s Professional Presentation Pack: Curriculum Vitae, Artist Statement and Portfolio of Images workshop presented by Louise Morrison. Rex Widerstrom from Roebourne Art Group, Jen Hourquebie from Archipelago Arts, Tanya Montgomery from Dampier Art Studios, Carrie McDowell from Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation and Roebourne independent artist Jill Churnside joined other artist members to discuss how they present themselves to their professional arts peers. Tanya Montgomery promptly returned to Dampier and shared what she learned with other artists in the area.

In November 2014 Colin Knowles from Indigenous Community Volunteers (ICV) worked with the Roebourne Art Group (RAG) to assist in planning and development work for 2015. Rex Widerstrom – the manager of RAG and the artists to discuss possibilities for next year and we look forward to seeing what comes of these conversations.

Yinjaa-Barni Art Centre (YBAC) also hosted Jody Fitzhardinge in November. Jody, from Japingka Gallery in Fremantle, is an old friend of YBAC and her work to document and develop YBAC’s artist profiles and stories remains an ongoing and much valued asset.

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Fundraising Artsource has been working hard throughout the year to increase the circle of supporters and the number of arts ventures made possible through new patrons and sponsors.

W

e are delighted to be working with the individuals and companies who have come on board to support Western Australia’s visual artists.

Rio Tinto continues to support our Regional + Indigenous Development work in the Pilbara. This has been a long term commitment from Rio and the partnership is highly valued by Artsource as it highlights our shared understanding of working with artists in a remote community.

BHP Billiton has got behind the Ignite initiative this year, resulting in seven artists having the opportunity to try something new to expand their careers. This proved a very attractive offer with nearly 40 artists submitting compelling arguments for the funding. We’ll be able to see the results of Ignite in June 2015 at an unveiling and celebration supported by Arts Brookfield.

Meanwhile our individual patrons have responded enthusiastically to some special events this year. The Art Crawl held in September

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was a particular hit, reaching capacity within five days of invitations going out. It inspired new patrons to join the Artsource circle and all are eager to do it again soon. The Crawl started with Friday evening drinks at Linton & Kay Galleries on St Georges Terrace before walking to Venn Gallery on Queen Street to enjoy more great art and good company. Both galleries had sales on the night and were able to encourage patrons in their collecting, answering questions and offering advice to the range of people enjoying the positive excitement of the event. Gage Roads Brewing Company and Swings and Roundabouts Wines also sponsored the Crawl.

We have two more Art Crawls planned for 2015 and these will become our signature events for patrons new to collecting. We will also be hosting catered visits to artists’ studios and sundowners to give patrons some ‘behind the scenes’ experience and increase their understanding of the art context.

These opportunities are also proving popular

and a great way to develop young buyers and arts patrons.

Artsource hosts these events to foster a buying audience for Western Australia’s visual artists and to raise funds to underpin initiatives such as Ignite or the Go Anywhere residencies that have been so appreciated by artists. This support allows Artsource to design programs that respond directly to our members’ needs, free from the limitations that artists sometimes encounter with externally sourced funding.

Along with planning an active program for patrons in 2015 we are negotiating with sponsors for larger projects that will expand our ability to meet members’ needs. The enthusiasm of our patrons and sponsors in 2014 has inspired us to maintain the momentum into the new year so look out for more action coming your way!

 Art Crawl 2014 at Linton & Kay Galleries.

Image: Carlo Dalziel

Elisa Markes-Young: Central Institute of Technology, Artist in Residence Oct â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Dec 2014 Elisa Markes-Young, The Original Place #46 (2014), ~550mm x 550mm. Paper Cut, Handcut Stamps, Cotton and Gold Thread on Belgian Linen.

Mark Tweedie: 2014 Kilgour Prize Finalist Mark Tweedie, Lost my way (detail), 2014.

Oil on canvas, 92 x 122 cm

Stage your own show at Kidogo Arthouse on Bathers Beach in Fremantle. info@kidogo.com.au 0401 333 309

KidogoArthouse

The Majestic An exhibition by Merrick Belyea 8 November to 14 December Opening Night: Friday, 7 November 6.00pm to 8.00pm

Heathcote Museum and Gallery Heathcote Cultural Centre, 58 Duncraig Road, Applecross.

Gallery Hours: Tues to Fri 10.00am to 3.00pm Sat and Sun 12noon to 4.00pm T 9364 5666 or E heathcote@melville.wa.gov.au

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Members News EXHIBITIONS LYNNE BOLADERAS, Way to Walcott, Kidogo Art House, February 5-11, 2015.

GAYLE MASON, MARISA TINDALL, Connection, Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, 16 January – 2 February 2015.

JOEL SMOKER, Way Out West and Kimberley Series, Rose Freycinet Gallery in the Shark Bay World Heritage Centre, Denham, early 2015.

AWARDS JO DUFFY was awarded the First Prize at the Royal Agricultural Society of WA Art Award for her piece The Exchange.

 Jo Duffy, The Exchange, 2014. Oil on Belgian linen, 115 x 115cm

ARTAWARDS

2015 West Australian artists are invited to enter works and be in the running for over $16,800 worth of prizes.

Entries close Wednesday 25 March 2015 Exhibition Open 16 May to 14 June 2015 For more information call 9405 5920 or email arts@wanneroo.wa.gov.au

wanneroo.wa.gov.au 36

CAROLINE MARINOVICH received a Highly Commended award for End of Play in the York Society Art and Craft Awards. She was also awarded the Open-Acquisition prize at the Kondinin Art Prize.

PERDITA PHILLIPS won the runner-up award in the City of Joondalup Community Invitation Art Award.

ANNA LOUISE RICHARDSON was awarded the Emerging Artist Award at the Busselton Art Awards.

PUBLIC ART AND OTHER COMMISSIONS JO DARVALL received a commission from the Water Corporation for a large mural painting.

MONIQUE TIPPETT and PAVEL PERINA received the Winter Garden Sculpture Commission at the new Perth Children’s Hospital under the Percent for Art Scheme.

BRITT SALT completed an undulating suspended sculpture for The Shipping Lane restaurant, now open at Leighton Beach.

TONY WINDBERG completed a Percent for Art Scheme commission, installing three digitally printed glass panels for the Year 7 Facilities, Cape Naturaliste College, Vasse.

IRENE OSBORNE has completed a painted and mosaic contemporary landscape mural commission from the Town of Port Hedland for J D Hardy Youth Zone Mural – South Hedland. She also completed a Centenary mural project for Watheroo Primary School.

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Artsource_vertical1-3page_Summer2014-15_dates_MundaringA

What was discovered: feedback from the symposium

MUNDARING ARTS CENTRE

‘T

hank you for starting the conversation that Western Australian artists need’ and ‘Another one please!!!’ convey much of the enthusiasm expressed by those who attended The Undiscovered: A National Focus on Western Australian Art, at the University of Western Australia in October. The symposium was presented in partnership by Artsource and UWA’s Cultural Precinct and attracted over 200 participants who spent the day in discussion about the visual arts in Western Australia.

Feedback from the follow-up survey suggests overwhelming support for continuing the symposia and offers many ideas for improvement. What comes through is the value of bringing people together to focus on the visual arts and share their ideas for the future.

The specific topics for discussion and how that discussion should be shaped vary widely in people’s minds, but there is a consistent view that getting together to listen to each other is vital.

Some survey respondents view a forum like The Undiscovered as an opportunity to organise collective action or to determine who needs to do what. Some expressed disappointment that the day did not push in this direction while others felt this was a good start to an ongoing conversation, from which solutions or actions may or may not emerge. Another thread through the feedback was frustration with what was perceived as a negative tone to the discussion.

Of course there were many different ideas of follow up discussion topics, preferred formats, preferred speakers and potential solutions to the challenges under consideration. There is clearly plenty of support for continuing the discussion, summed up by another person’s feedback, ‘It was a positive experience with some good ideas and a great chance for the visual arts industry to voice views and share knowledge.’

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14 Nov to 21 Dec

EXPOSITION

International fibre & textile artists in association with Fibre Arts Australia CATHY RANKIN Artist in Focus BETTY MCKEOUGH Artist in Focus

25 Dec to 12 Feb

MUNDARING ARTS CENTRE will be closed for summer

13 Feb to 22 Mar C

COMMUNITY ART

M

Y

EXHIBITION AND AWARDS Calling emerging and professional artists Over $10,000 prize pool to be won

CM

IN-MATERIAL

Curated by Ricky Arnold An exploration of materiality by exceptional craft artists for the Shire of Mundaring Art Acquisition

27 Mar to 10 May

MY

Entries close 9 Febru ary

CY

2O15

Enter now, categories include: Oils – Acrylics – Watercolours, Pastels, Pencils and Pens – Digital Media – Mixed Media – Sculpture – The City in Focus – Local Artist – Youth – People’s Choice 6 – 13 March 2015 Lyal Richardson Hall, Agonis Building, 2232 Albany Highway, Gosnells www.gosnells.wa.gov.au

CMY

K

WATCH THIS SPACE

The latest crop of graduate creatives from Perth art institutes

MUNDARING ARTS SHOP Supports the work of WA artists

LOCATION

7190 Great Eastern Highway (corner Nichol Street) Mundaring WA 6073 T: +61 8 9295 3991 www.mundaringartscentre.com.au

VIEWING TIMES

Open Tue to Fri 10am - 5pm Sat & Sun 11am - 3pm Closed Mondays & public holidays

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

14th - 29th March 2015 Sculpture at Bathers returns again in March 2015 following the highly successful inaugural exhibition two years ago.

This

uniquely

Western

Australian

event

will

showcase the work of over 70 sculptors and extend across the historic site at Bathers Beach Art Precinct and Kidogo Arthouse in Freo’s West End. For exhibiting artists this will be an opportunity to rekindle friendships and networks. For collectors Claire Bailey ‘Horse Moves’ 2013

there will be affordably priced new works. For the

Supporting Partners:

public there will be the exposure to a body of work not often seen in such favourable conditions and artists old and new to become acquainted with.

Join us in celebrating Western Australian sculpture at its best. For more information visit our website: www.sculptureatbathers.com or contact Kidogo Arthouse - 0401 333309 info@kidogo.com.au

2014 City of

Albany Art Prize Winners $25,000 Major Acquisitive Prize + studio residency Self Portrait: the Devil’s Tale

by Amanda Davies (TAS) $2,500 Commendation Award Confluence and Influence

by Nicole Slatter (WA) $2,500 People’s Choice Prize Pyrenees Landscape #VII - Winter

by Karen Standke (VIC) Entries for the 2015 City of

Albany Art Prize open February www.albany.wa.gov.au

The Jack Family Charitable Trust

Amanda Davies, Self Portrait: the Devil’s Tale, (2013), oil on linen; winner of the 2014 Albany Art Prize.

Photo courtesy the Artist.