ALISON MCDONALD 2018
CHILDREN’S EXHIBITION
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
21 September – 18 November 2018
Publisher
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
Galleries, Townsville City Council PO Box 1268
Townsville Queensland, 4810 Australia
ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au
©Galleries, Townsville City Council and the authors 2018
ISBN: 978-0-949461-28-5
Organised by Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
Jonathan McBurnie Creative Director
Lucy Belle Tesoriero Curatorial Assistant
Claire Griffiths Senior Education and Programs Officer
Sarah Reddington Education and Programs Officer
Nicole Richardson Education and Programs Assistant
Rachel Cunningham Gallery Assistant
Amy Licciardello Business Support Officer
Erwin Cruz Senior Exhibitions Officer
Emily Donaldson Exhibitions Officer
Leonardo Valero Exhibitions Officer
Stephanie Smith Collections Management Officer
Tanya Tanner Public Art Officer
Jake Pullyn Gallery Assistant
Michael Favot Gallery Assistant
Chloe Lindo Gallery Assistant
Wendy Bainbridge Gallery Assistant
Jo Lankester Gallery Assistant
Published
ALISON MCDONALD
2018 CHILDREN’S EXHIBITION
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
21 September – 18 November 2018
Contributing Authors
Dr Jonathan McBurnie
Alison McDonald
Ross Searle
Photography by Andrew Rankin (unless otherwise noted)
Publication Design and Development
Carly Sheil
Image front:
Alison MCDONALD
Sink - Water Bombs [detail] 2018
Recycled plastic bottles, rivets 300 x 400 x 40 cm
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
Cnr. Denham and Flinders St
Townsville QLD 4810
Mon - Fri: 10am - 5pm Sat - Sun: 10am - 2pm
(07) 4727 9011
ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au
whatson.townsville.qld.gov.au
PercTuckerTCC
FOREWORD
In 2016, I found myself in a strange position as the newly-appointed director of Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, in that I had to very quickly cobble together a large-scale funding application for Alison McDonald’s (by then) fully scheduled regional touring exhibition, Wanton, Wild & Unimagined. This was at the time the most ambitious tour Umbrella had ever mounted, booked for 13 venues across Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria, and it felt in part like picking up the baton from my predecessor, Vicki Salisbury, and curator Ross Searle, in a relay and sprinting to the next destination. There was a studio visit with Searle, but by this point it was mere formality, a chance to familiarize myself with the many works that were going to be packed and sent around the country. That is, if my applications were successful.
Fortunately the grants were approved, and we were able to spread Alison’s message of sustainability throughout regional Australia. As I write this, the tour continues, and Alison is still working with the many galleries to support the tour with artist talks and workshops. As you read this, Wanton, Wild & Unimagined will be on display at the Centre, Goolwa, only half way home. This exhibition has been a huge part of Alison’s life for several years now, and so I imagine the change of gears in Immersed to some more personal works, is very welcome to her. The personal aspect comes through in a rigorous artistic deep-dive into the science and socio-politics surrounding water, something which the artist keeps being drawn back to. Water is taken for granted, yet it is situated at the very heart of the entire environmental debate.
There are many that consider art made of recycled materials as being as tired as its name suggests, but I think that such cynicism is just as tired. In a world in which natural resources are constantly being pilfered with no concern for future generations, and our collective attitude toward the built-in obsolescence of digital technologies resembles that of an ignorant, petulant teenager, such critical thinking is a welcome change. Alison is a brilliant ambassador for the merits of sustainable practice. Those who know Alison are no doubt familiar with her clarity and passion in her message, and a blunt-tongued word or two for naysayers; in other words, she is an excellent and tireless advocate for us to improve our habits in caring for future generations through sustainable living. There is still a long, long way to go, but as usual, artists like Alison lead the way. Others will doubtless follow.
Jonathan McBurnie Creative Director, GalleriesIMMERSED
During this current drought and change in climate, I felt compelled to examine my own relationship with water in every minute aspect. As water is such a constant, yet underestimated part of our life, I recorded my usage via a diary to gain a better understanding of how ubiquitous it is. Listing each time I drank, washed, flushed, swam, watered or observed water. This soon became overwhelming. As I became immersed in everything water, I was able to choose selected moments to capture within my artworks for this exhibition Immersed.
Continuing as a Waste Warrior, Immersed evokes my water journey as it traverses a diverse array of reused everyday vessels and consumerist waste that once housed water and their embedded narratives.
The concept that led to Immersed began whilst camping out in North West Queensland in 2014. It was extraordinarily hot and we were in the midst of serious drought. The property we have been camping at for the past 12 years had significantly changed. Not only was there less water, there were more weeds, brown dry grass, and more cow pats in the river. Following on, we returned home to Townsville where the heat and humidity combined was horrendous. We were constantly dripping and spent more time swimming or having cold showers. Then straight from that exhausting heat in November, I flew with my good friend Jill O’Sullivan to Shanghai and later Beijing to do my second artist residency with Red Gate and to a shock of adverse weather conditions, where I embarked on the first artworks for Immersed
During the Red Gate Residency I created 19 cut-out cards titled Embark from Goethe advertising cards the previous resident had left behind. The cards reflect my hot North Queensland experience: travelling over the enormous ocean to China; staying in a wet Shanghai; then the freezing Beijing residency. Each card represents a water pattern or buildings to give context to the place where I experienced these.
I brought the cards home with me where the ideas percolated further in my imagination for quite a considerable time. I decided to tell my personal water narratives through associated reused water containers and began with hot water services.
Copper is a material synonymous with water use, carrying, and heating. I divided the Embark cut-out cards into three parts for the hot water services titled Voyages. Firstly the medium-sized hot water service depicted the southern hemisphere of a tropical Australian summer in drought; secondly the small one is the voyage flying over the ocean and what was underneath us; and thirdly the large one portrays our time in the northern hemisphere commencing with a bitter Chinese winter.
I then completed a week long paper cut-out course, which informed me as to the best methods to make more creative use of two-dimensional sheet metal materials where I created River and Scrub. I drew all the cut-out images onto each of the hot water services until they formed a spiralling narrative, then plasma cut, cleaned and filed each window. Using a plasma torch to cut with is an extension of my drawing and just as free formed.
As an alternative to using water in the gallery, I use light. It is as essential and universal as water, continually seeping into our lives. Light and shadow play a powerful and luminescent aspect within Immersed particularly through Voyages, Wash and Boil
My use of materials is indiscriminate; I prefer them to have had a previous life. I also enjoy working with transparent materials like plastic or pierced metals to create windows allowing light to enter. My work often utilises multiples of one particular material, as for me personally, this is a metaphor for humans en masse and how we might behave collectively and powerfully for the better.
Plastics have been employed in Immersed. Some are immediately recognisable, such as the artworks Float, Sink-Water Bombs, Swallow and Blue Lagoon while the rings in Pour use a fraction of the Sink bottles, and are hardly recognisable.
In a car park, I got out of the car and there was a bomb shape. It had been carelessly discarded, run over and squashed: a plastic water bottle. I thought a very apt shape, as litter they bombard our waterways sinking to unseen depths. Sink – Water Bombs was born.
Individually each of these plastic artworks refers to our excessive consumerist behaviour and the impact single-use plastic water bottles have on our waterways. The works are intended to charge your creativity to reimagine better uses for these expensively produced materials.
Brew [detail] 2018
Recycled aluminium coffee pods, copper wire
41 x 91 x 83 cm
The copper and aluminium artworks, Wash and Brew, are where I fess up to my own obsessive habits involving water, my constitutional brew, and necessity for clean clothes. Wash too is created like Voyages, being drawn, plasma cut and filed out, then coloured. Brew, coffee pods are painstakingly squashed, drilled and joined with copper wire. The outer cup and saucer of Brew is a riot of colours, yet on the inside it is calm, serene and sublime, which is how I feel once I have consumed my ritual brew.
As with many of the materials I create from, I don’t use the consumables myself. I am fortunate to have a large community of people who donate their waste to me. The coffee pods have been given by friends. The colourful metallic pods, which designers create in such vibrant hues are an irresistible allure. Boil, Scrub and Drain also involve other daily rituals of cooking and washing up and the astonishing amount of water that is squandered down the drain.
The copper tubes in Course originally spiralled inside the hot water services of Voyages, and heated water. Now they mimic those undecided moments when water meets resistance and changes direction. Course is a tribute to the Flinders River, where my Immersed journey began. Its inspiring sandstone bedrock allows stone to appear fluid, carving away wavy edges and deep washing holes.
We give little regard to water which continually traverses all our lives. My hope is that you too consider how fortunate we are in Australia to have good quality water and this exhibition inspires change towards better stewardship of waste in our waterways and clean Australian water endures.
Alison McDonaldBrew [detail] 2018
Recycled aluminium coffee pods, copper wire
41 x 91 x 83 cm
NEW SCULPTURAL INVESTIGATIONS
Alison McDonald’s new sculptural investigations have been triggered by the current drought in Australia which is already being described as the worst in 25 years. The link between drought and climate change has lead Alison to “examine [her] own daily water use in every minute aspect” and to create through her sculpture, a multi-faceted response and a “journey, reflecting our fundamental and essential daily need for water in various forms”.
Perhaps her most autobiographic group of works to date, the exhibition encompasses her life in the dry tropics and links “drought, cooking, gardens, plastic in waterways, a Chinese residency, a book/movie and other daily interactions, which we can often take for granted”. The body of work created through these experiences uses materials that Alison recovers and reuses including copper hot water services, a washing copper, saucepans, coffee pods, an artist book and single-use plastics. What is particularly fascinating are the copper hot water services where surfaces have been sliced through with intricate patterns relating to images of water. These forms titled Voyages are illuminated from within to create culturally nuanced images derived from her experiences in China, North Queensland, and in between. Light and water become a powerful metaphor “that seeps into our everyday life”.
Immersed takes viewers through Alison McDonald’s own personal journey of water use. Often described as an environmental artist, she brings a focus to the complex beauty of recycled materials in an artistic practice that positions her sculpture within a broader debate about consumer culture and the environmental movement. By converting everyday objects into a visually transformative and aesthetically charged new form, Alison’s artworks communicate the optimism in regenerating waste, whilst raising questions about the relationship we have with the consumer economy.
Environmental art in the hands of a skilled artist can be powerfully transformative as it creates or alters the environment for the viewer, as opposed to presenting itself figuratively or monumentally before the viewer. This movement can be traced to the 1960s when sculpture took on social underpinnings. Many of the artists were also ecologically conscious and created works that could offer a new perspective.
In Australia the Mildura Sculpture Triennials and the Australian Sculpture Triennials (held in Melbourne) were the most important exhibitions of sculpture in this country. From 1961 to 1993 the Mildura Sculpture Triennial galvanised a new critical attitude to sculpture and the exhibitions engaged new theoretical perspectives, sought to identify conceptual trends and increasingly included installations as an exhibiting mode. With the demise of Mildura Sculpture Triennials and the final Australian Sculpture Triennial in 1995, there have been no major, regular exhibitions that present a critical, reflexive view of this artform. Recent exhibitions and awards are mainly focussed on outdoor sculpture. As a consequence of this relative lack of a more expanded view of sculpture in recent exhibitions, sculpture as a critically engaged artform is less widely appreciated in Australia.
Sculptors like Alison McDonald are inheritors of this history. Originally from Victoria, she comes from an artistic family that nurtured her creativity from an early age. Her interest in environmental art is long-standing and her influences are multi-faceted. While many artists in Australia work from a position of politically-engaged action, Alison is deeply aware of the need not to grandstand but rather to engage more broadly. Her formally complex assemblages can be seen on many levels and are appreciated by a wide demographic. This is in part due to the many contexts in which her work is presented, including community events such as Strand Ephemera and site-specific installations around Townsville. Clearly audiences delight in the simple materiality and narrative of the work but are also intrigued by the complexity of its construction. There is a powerful narrative surrounding the materiality of her works and she “continually ponder[s] over creative and new solutions for old materials regardless of the material”.
She has included more metal artworks that have stretched her jewellery piercing skills into metal forming and plasma cutting with the copper hot water services titled Voyages and the old washing copper titled Wash. The triptych Voyages has a cut-out narrative winding around each form to reflect the journey from Townsville to Shanghai and Beijing in 2014. In the artwork Brew she uses a similar technique to those in earlier works where she renders flattened aluminium coffee pods into new forms.
Paper cutting is a new component in her artmaking armoury and the exhibition includes three works including Embark, an artist book with 19 pages of cut-outs on card from her Red Gate residency in 2014. The art of paper cutting in China may date back to the second century C.E. and as paper became more affordable, it became one of the most important types of Chinese folk art. Paper cutting connects neatly with the actions of the plasma cutter Alison uses on metal, slicing through the surfaces of materials to reveal delicate and fluid cuts.
Other key works include Float based on an earlier work Shimmer from the 2015 Strand Ephemera where Alison spent many hours gazing into the sparkling reflections off the water. Shimmer reflected its surrounds, the beach, water, and sky, tessellating the image into pointillist dots of contrasting colours. Float is constructed from reused plastic lids, harking back to the many bits of plastic drifting on top of our oceans that the artist sees begin their journey each day on her daily bike ride: from park, and street, into creeks and waterways.
A final work Blue Lagoon takes its cue from a book and movie. Blue Lagoon (the 1908 romance novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole and the later movie), was set in an idyllic tropical paradise with blue water and swaying palms. For Alison McDonald, living in the tropics is not always like movie images of the tropics. This playful work is constructed with blue lids to suggest water and is accompanied by kitsch palm and hibiscus lights on the wall and a choking hazard warning.
Environmental artists embrace ideas from science and philosophy and over the past decade, Alison McDonald’s approach has become more interdisciplinary. The practice encompasses traditional media, new media and critical social forms of production. The work embraces a full range of landscape and environmental conditions, from rural, to suburban and urban, as well as industrial. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, worked out with earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns. Over the past ten years environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions around the world as the social and cultural aspects of climate change come to the forefront.
Alison McDonald is a nationally significant regional artist, whose practice extends beyond the local and engages in questions about sustainability and environmental management, affirming the role that art has in critiquing and engaging with larger global issues.
Ross SearleSink - Water Bombs 2018
Recycled plastic bottles, rivets
300 x 400 x 40 cm
Voyage 3 Red Gate window 2018
Aluminium print
60 x 40 cm
Drain [detail] 2018
Recycled copper, stainless steel, plasma cut
57 x 120 cm
CURRICULUM VITAE
Alison McDonald (b. 1962, Geelong)
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Master of Art & Public Space, 2011 James Cook University, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), Sculpture and Painting, 2005
Northern Metropolitan College of TAFE, Preston, Melbourne, Drawing & photography, 1981
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2016-19 Wanton, Wild & Unimagined, touring exhibition to 13 National Galleries
2015 Beneath, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Vault
2012-14 Triffids, Umbrella Studio Arts & Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery
2012 Urban Legacy – Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville
2011 Flow I – Umbrella Studio, Townsville
2009 DIY-Ville residency, Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville
2008 A Chain Reaction - Umbrella Studio Arts
2007 Diminishing - Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Showcase
2004 Voluptuous Perceptions - Umbrella Studio Arts, JCU, Honours, Townsville
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2017 Strand Ephemera, Sculptor exhibition on the Strand foreshore, Townsville
2017 Colours of Queensland, Flying Arts Qld, Touring exhibition
2016 T150, JCU Lecturers & Students, Umbrella Studio
2016 Greensmith: Exchange Exhibition of Eco & Ethical Jewellery, Claghorn Gallery, San Francisco
2015 Godre’r Glais, 4 Aberystwyth residency artists, Umbrella Studio, Townsville
2015 Strand Ephemera, ‘Shimmer’, Townsville
2015 North Qld Conservation Council Postcards Art Exhibition, Umbrella Studio, Townsville
2014 Greensmith, Eco and Ethical Jewellery, Artisan, Brisbane
2013 Sculpture by the Sea, & Sculpture Inside, Bondi, Sydney
2013 Strand Ephemera, with architect Stephen de Jersey, Townsville
2013 Innovations, Industrial Waste from Finlay Homes – Studio 2, Townsville
2012 Expanded Field of Printmaking, Print-sculpture collaboration, Umbrella Studio
2012 Open Studio, May, Aberystwyth Art Centre Residency, Wales UK
2012 Seaweed, Part of the Green Series, Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery
2011 Strand Ephemera, outdoor sculpture exhibition – Townsville
2010 Threads: the art of women, Brightspace, St Kilda, Melbourne
2010 JCU Staff Exhibition, eMerge Media Space, JCU Townsville
2010 Red Gate Studio to Umbrella Studio - Townsville
2009 Open Studio, Sep & Oct, Red Gate Residency – Bei Gao, Beijing, China
2009 Strand Ephemera outdoor sculpture exhibition – Townsville
2009 Now and Then Q150 Exhibition, Umbrella Studio, Townsville
2009 Launch – Finalist exhibition for Clayton Utz Scholarship, Metro Arts, Brisbane
2009 Hit the bottle campaign, Newcastle Art Gallery
2009 Art Off the Wall, Melbourne.
2009 Five Senses, Flying Arts, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
2009 Linden Postcard Show, Melbourne
2009 Eco Luxury – Decoration +Design Fair, Sydney – Designer Alena Smith
2008 The Nude – Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
2008 Collectors – Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville
2008 Art Sydney 08 – Art fair front feature wall, Weekend Australian, Sydney
2008 Revivication – Rushcutters Bay Gallery, Sydney
2007 Waste Not - Flinders Lane Gallery Upstairs, Melbourne
2007 Strand Ephemera outdoor sculpture exhibition - Townsville
2007 The Percival - Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville
2006 Angels - Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
2006 Fashioning the Exquisite Corpse - Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville
2006 Percival’s Vestment - Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
2006 Works by COMVAT Lecturers and Post Graduates, James Cook University
2005 Strand Ephemera outdoor sculpture exhibition - Townsville
2005 Perc’s Purses - Perc Tucker Regional Gallery- Townsville
2004 The Churchie - Anglican Church Grammar School, Brisbane
2003 Sheilas from the Shed - Umbrella Studio Arts
2002 JCU 3rd Year BVA Exhibition - Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
2002 Musical Chairs - Pinnacles Gallery, JCU BVA
2001 Achievements, JCU, BVA Selected Works, James Cook University Gallery
2000 Hanging Your Nudes out to Dry - Pinnacles Gallery
PUBLICATIONS
• ABC Sunshine Coast, War on waste. Kylie Bartholomew, 2017
• Goethe Institute, Future Perfect - Lissa McMillan, 2016. www.goethe.de/ins/cz/prj/fup/en15315993.htm
• RMIT University Alumni Newsletter, Sculpture Outshines Coastal Exhibition, 29 October 2015
• Renegade Collective, Plastic Fantastic – Kerrie Davies Issue 6, 2015
• Eyeline Write About Art, Issue 5, 2014, - Dannielle Thorman
• Yew.tv Spotlight Article: Alison McDonald for Surf, Film Festival. www.yew.tv/blog. 29 April 2014
• OUTthere inflight magazine, Bottled beauty, Michael Crump, Issue 90, December 2011
• Art Gaze, Magic Messages – Dr Anneke Silver 2011
• Eyeline, Review - Now & then: 150 years of art making in north Qld, Prof. Ted Snell AM Issue 70, 2009
• Art Gaze, Review – Collectors Pinnacles Gallery 2009
• Townsville Bulletin, Ian Fraser interview January 2009
• The Place - street press, Arts Visual Intelligence, January 2009
• Art Gaze, Profiling local talent, Ann-Marie Lesca, March 2008
• Townsville Bulletin, Mary Vernon, February 2008
AWARDS AND GRANTS
2015 Strand Ephemera Winner – Artistic Excellence
2013 North Queensland Outstanding Individual Visual Artist for 2012
2012 Arts Qld – Career Development Grant
2010 Nominated for Townsville Art Awards - Visual Art Award Individual
2009 Clayton Utz Scholarship Finalist, Brisbane
2008 Art off the wall, Art Fair Sydney – Highly commended
2005 Strand Ephemera 2nd People’s Choice Award
2005 Townsville Art Society – People’s Choice Award & Highly commended
2003 Townsville Art Society – Three Dimensional Award
2002 James Cook University - 3rd Year Painting & Drawing Award
1998 Member - Golden Key Honour Society (Academic achievement)
1982 Goulbourn Valley Regional Gallery, Shepparton Art Society –Honourable Mention
COLLECTIONS & PUBLIC ART
Central Qld University – Townsville Campus
Energy Super – Townsville Office
Warwick Art Gallery for Jumpers & Jazz in July
Catholic Education - Environmental public artwork & trophy
Townsville City Council - Integrated Sustainability Services
Monterey Bay Aquarium - California, permanent collection
Magnetic Island Solar Park - Public artwork
Sydney Royal North Shore Hospital - Kollings Research & Education Facility
Visy Recycling & Education Centre - Townsville
RESIDENCIES
2016 Warwick Regional Gallery, Jumpers & Jazz in July Festival
2014 Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, China for November residency in the Bei Gao Studio’s
2012 Aberystwyth Art Centre residency, Wales for 3 months during Mar - May
2009 Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, China for 2 months residency in the Bei Gao Studio’s
2009 DIY-Ville, Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville, 21 days
2009 Hit the bottle campaign, Newcastle Art Gallery, 5 days
2006 Hughenden State School, Hughenden 5 days