Trouble magazine March 2015

trouble 121

CREDITS (in order of appearance): Dabs Myla (Australia) Los Angeles, 2013 Archival pigment print Olek (Poland) New York City, 2012 Archival pigment print D*Face (England) London 2012 Archival pigment print Tilt (France) Stavanger 2014 Archival pigment print Space Invader (France) Paris, 2014 Archival pigment print E.L.K (Australia) Melbourne, 2012 Archival pigment print Reko Rennie (Australia) Sydney, 2012 Archival pigment print Vexta (Australia) Brooklyn. 2012 Archival pigment print Mobstr (England) Stavanger, 2012 Archival pigment print BOOK COVER: Victor Ash (France) (detail) Berlin. 2013 Archival pigment print ALL IMAGES Søren SOLKÆR from Surface (2015), 240pp hardcover, 24x32cms.

Published by Ginko Press, February 2015 - http://artequity.com.au/solkaer_surface.aspx

Taking Centre Stage in Bendigo Launching 2015 Key features include: • • • • •

Largest dedicated auditorium in Central Victoria 960 seat theatre Professional team on site Generous foyers linking to tranquil outdoor spaces Suitable for performance, expos and conferences

For future bookings, general information, technical specifications and status updates please visit our website: www.ulumbarratheatre.com.au Email ulumbarra@bendigo.vic.gov.au Phone 03 5434 6006

CONTENTS (02) SURFACE Søren SOLKÆR (23) COMICS FACE Ive Sorocuk (24) THE MADNESS OF ART Jim Kempner (26) IMAGINING NED: THE STORY OF

NED KELLY AND THE ART HE INSPIRES (36) ARTHUR & CORINNE CANTRILL:

AT THE EDGES OF MEANING

Jerilderie Letter

Klare Lanson

(46) MARCH SALON Mucking Out (52) C.W. STONEKING: JUNGLE BLUES

Stevie Poor

(56) GLEN SKIEN: BIRD IN HAND Penny Peckham

COVER: Vipoo SRIVILASA, Networking 2013, cobalt pigment on porcelain. Photograph: Andrew Barcham. Courtesy of the artist and Edwina Corlette Gallery. Imagining Ned: the story of Ned Kelly and the art he inspires, Bendigo Art Gallery, 42 View Street Bendigo (VIC), 28 March – 28 June 2015 - bendigoartgallery.com.au Issue 121 MARCH 2015 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 CONTRIBUTORS Søren Solkær, Ive Sorocuk, Jim Kempner, Ned Kelly, Klare Lanson, Stevie Poor, Penny Peckham, Ben Laycock, love.

Find our app at the AppStore follow us on issuu , twitter, subscribe at troublemag.com READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!

art comedy series

Season 4, Episode 3: Friends & Family (The CPA) Jim gets nothing but static from his phone and his CPA after “we” didn’t file our taxes on time. It’s a battle between Indiana Jones and Bernie Madoff! visit: themadnessofart.com/

The story of Ned Kelly and the art he inspires

g n i n i g a Im : d e N Bendigo Art Gallery 28 March - 28 June 2015

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Adam CULLEN, Edward’s bag of fruit, acrylic on linen.

Private collection. Courtesy of the Estate of Adam Cullen and Michael Reid Art Gallery. THIS SPREAD: Liam BENSON, Ned Kelly Red Gum; hypercolour 2014, C Type photograph, edition of 5, 50x50cm. Image courtesy of the Artist and Artereal Gallery, Sydney.

Sidney NOLAN, Kelly 1946, enamel on cardboard. Collection, The Nolan Collection at Canberra Museum and Gallery is managed on behalf of the Australian Government.

The Queen v Edward Kelly Dear Sir I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present past & future, In or about the spring of 1870 the ground was very soft a hawker named Mr Gould got his waggon bogged between Greta and my mother’s house on the eleven mile creek, the ground was that rotten it would bog a duck in place so Mr Gould had abandon his waggon for fear of loosing his horses in the spewy ground he was stopping at my mothers awaiting finer or dryer weather.

Mr McCormack & his hawkers also were camped in Greta. the mosquitoes were very bad which they generally are in a wet spring & to help them Mr. Johns had a horse called Ruita Cruta although a gelding was as clever as old Wombat or any other stallion at running horses away & taking them on his beat which was from Greta swamp to the seven mile creek. consequently he enticed McCormack’s horse away from Greta. Mr Gould was up early feeding his horses heard a bell & saw McCormack’s horse for he knew the horse well he sent his boy to take him back to Greta.

When McCormack’s got the horse they came straight out to Gould and accused him of working the horse, this was false and Gould was amazed at the idea I could not help laughing to hear Mrs Mr McCormack accusing him of using the horse after him being so kind as to send his boy to take him from the ruta cruta & take him back to them, I pleaded Goulds innocence and Mrs McCormack turned on me & accused me of bringing the horse from Greta to Gould’s waggon to pull him out of the bog I did not say much to the woman, as my mother was present but that same day me & my uncle was cutting calves Gould wrapped up a note & a pair of the calves testicles & gave them to me to give them to Mrs McCormack, I did not see her & I gave the parcel to a boy, to give to her when she would come instead of giving it to her he gave it to her husband consequently McCormack said he would summons me I told him neither me or Gould used their horse.

he said I was a liar & he could welt me or any of my breed I was about 14 years of age but accepted the challenge & dismounting when Mrs McCormack struck my horse in the flank with a bullocks skin it jumped forward & my fist came in collision with McCormack’s nose & caused him to loose his equilibrium & fall postrate I tied up my horse to finish the battle but McCormack got up and ran to the Police camp. Constable hall asked me what the row was about I told him they accused me & Gould of using their horse & I hit him and I would do the same to him if he challenged me McCormack pulled me & swore their lies against me I was sentenced to three months for hitting him and three months for the parcel and bound to keep the peace for 12 months. Mrs McCormack gave good substantial evidence as she is well acquainted with that place called Tasmania better known as the Dervon or Vandiemans land and McCormack being a Police man over the convicts & women being scarce released her from that land of bondage and tyranny, & they came to Victoria & are at present residents of Greta and on the 29th of March, I was released from prison & came home. Wild Wright came to the eleven mile to see Mr Gunn stopped all night and lost his mare both him & me looked all day for her & could not get her Wright who was a stranger to me was in a hurry to get back to Mansfield & I gave him another mare & he told me if I found his mare to keep her until he brought mine back I was going to Wangaratta & saw the mare I caught her & took her with me all the Police & Detective Berrill seen her as Martins girls used to ride her about the town during several days that I stopped at Petre Martains Star Hotel in Wangaratta, she was a chestnut mare white face docked tail very remarkable branded M as plain as the hands on a town clock, the property of a Telegraph Master in Mansfield he lost her on the 6th gazetted her on the 12th of March & I was a prisoner in Beechworth Gaol until the 29th March therefore I could not have stolen the mare. I was riding the mare through Greta. Constable Hall came to me & said he wanted me to sign some papers that I did not sign at Beechworth concerning my bail bonds I thought it was the truth he said the papers was at the Barracks and I had no idea he wanted to arrest me or I would have quietly rode away instead of going to the Barracks. ...

EXCERPT from the 17-page statement also known as the Jerilderie Letter, apparently dictated by Ned Kelly to Joe Byrne in 1879. Ned Kelly handed the original letter to Edwin Living during the gang’s seizure of the town of Jerilderie. Living promised Kelly that he would pass the letter on to the town printer, but did not do so. The letter did not appear in print until 1930. Eventually Living made the original available to the Criminal Law Branch of the Office of the Victorian Government Solicitor during preparations for the Kelly Crown prosecution case, on condition that only one copy of it was made and the original returned to Living himself.

The full transcript of the Jerilderie Letter can be found at the Public Record Office Victoria website : http://wiki.prov.vic.gov.au/index.php/Jerilderie_Letter Imagining Ned: the story of Ned Kelly and the art he inspires, Bendigo Art Gallery, 42 View Street Bendigo (VIC), 28 March – 28 June 2015 - bendigoartgallery.com.au

Reproduced with the permission of the Sidney Nolan Trust / Bridgeman Images

AT THE EDGES OF MEANING:

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill

at the 2015 Castlemaine State Festvial

by Klare Lanson

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I’ve arranged to meet with two of the most interesting alternative filmmakers in this entire swirling world. Arriving at their home, I am faced with many paths leading to the entrance and I’m hesitant. I choose the one with a hedged arch, I’m not sure why.

There are clusters of ripening tomato vines, the last of the season, strewn over a bench seat. The autumnal sunshine is magnificent and my boy is happy to settle down with his pencils and paper on the front veranda. I knock on the door and am welcomed by an incredibly generous and vibrant couple. Their films are housed in collections as significant as The Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek (Berlin), Musée national d’art moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), New York Museum of Modern Art, The British Council and the National Library of Australia. I feel as green as the tomatoes as I sit down in conversation with Arthur and Corinne Cantrill.

There are so many competing factors as to why artists begin to investigate themes within their practice, and who they choose to create with. Arthur and Corinne Cantrill immersed themselves in a career of innovative filmmaking from a young age; the intense contrast of the communist background of Corinne’s family history combined with the uneventful true blue Aussie sensibility of Arthur’s was energising. The post war landscape of Australia in the first half of last century helped to invigorate a children’s education movement. The Rivett sisters, Elsie and Mary (Matheson), started the Children’s Library and Craft Movement (CLCM) in Australia and this is where the Cantrills first met. The movement took on the ideas of Herbert Read (anarchist, poet, philosopher and educator) where the emphasis was on creative free expression, the significance of play and supporting children to discover the materials of art as they see fit. This is the kind of art that really cooks my crumpets.

“Mary Matheson was always on the lookout for interesting people,” says Corinne. “… she was looking for vitality, strength, originality and things like that … all the people who worked for the Movement were very unusual people, multi disciplinary, coming from all sorts of backgrounds.”

In this way Mary Matheson seemed not only to have a large influence on art in education in Australia but was also a champion for artists wanting to experiment with new ideas in their practice. Working within a collaborative environment was the springboard for the Cantrills.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Still from City of Chromatic Dissolution 1998 (17.5 min)

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill / Klare Lanson

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In the late 1950s, Mary saw the opportunity to make films about the creative activities at the CLCM’s centres to be programmed by ABC TV in the School Broadcasts and the Children’s programme The Argonauts’ Club. Several tenminute films about the work being done at the Sydney centres were made.

The Cantrills asked to make a series of eleven films about the activities at the Brisbane Centre of the CLCM; activities different to those already filmed in the Sydney centres. Mary Matheson agreed and gave them a contract.

Arthur says, “Fortunately for us, we had no formal training in film production”. It was an organic trajectory stemming from his work in puppetry for children that drove him towards film. After their documentaries on the Brisbane CLCM Centre, they moved into art documentaries and more experimental modes of practice.

Corinne elaborates: “Major themes in our work have been the cinematic process as the subject of the film, our work with the Australian Landscape (and that’s overlapping into indigenous concerns, though not in a documentary way), our work in three colour separation … and of course the other big area has been our film theatre performance works. They’re really interesting because they can’t ever be recorded as works, as such ... that was one of the big drivers for doing what we did at La Mama in Melbourne, all the interesting Avant-garde art scene really. If you weren’t there you missed it.”

Sound is also vital to their work and whilst they commissioned composers for some of their early films, Arthur took on the primary role of making the soundscapes. He worked as a film editor, first at the ABC in Brisbane, and then at the BBC in London after the family left Brisbane in 1965 for four years.

Inspired by the BBC Radiophonic Workshops in the early 60s and also the work of French composer and renowned broadcaster Pierre Schaeffer, Arthur and his contemporaries began to make original sounds, “relating to the needs of the image”. The Australian poet and social commentator Harry Hooton also profoundly inspired him.

On their return to Australia in 1969 to take up a Fellowship in the Creative Arts at ANU, Arthur and Corinne made an experimental homage to Hooton (Harry Hooton, 1970), whose anarchy, libertarianism and association with the Sydney Push of the 1940s/50s allowed ideas to emerge around technology and the ‘Politics of Things’. Arthur sculpted sound using the analogue modes of reel to reel tape manipulation, field recordings and found objects. He created cutting edge works now considered to be significant to Australian electronic music history.

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill / Klare Lanson

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“Fortunately for us, we had no formal training in film production.�

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These works range from restrained environmental soundscapes to abstract electronic and musique concrete, represented in the CD available entitled Chromatic Mysteries: Soundtracks 1963-2009.

Arguably the most pivotal event for the Cantrills was the Expanded Cinema project in Canberra (1969), the start of their multi disciplined performance works.

Corinne thinks back to this time: “That was very important, we were really able to open up whole areas of cinematic investigation through Expanded Cinema.

We had a lucky break with La Mama Theatre Company too; from 1977 onwards they gave us every opportunity to present five works we called ‘film theatre performance works’ where we were the protagonists; the live actors with our films and slides were investigating the films through a scripted narration, using sound effects and so on … it was very much rehearsed.”

Works over the years at La Mama such as Edges of Meaning (1977), Passage (1983), Projected Light – On the Beginning and End of Cinema (1988) and The Bemused Tourist (1997) created a hybrid approach to presenting their work, extending the cinematic boundaries of the screen to a more physical 3D space. They set up sand filled campsites, multi screen scenarios, object and installative elements and scripted narration to expand their ideas further. The audience now had an active role to play.

The Boiling Electric Jug Film (1970), Calligraphy Contest for the New Year (1971), Passage and The Berlin Apartment (1986) are just a few films that were created specifically for performance. Layered thinking around subverting the illusion of film and the destruction of the screen itself is prominent. Working with multiple screen technology, hand painted film techniques, physical interventions through painting and cutting up of the screen, projecting a film of the subject onto the real thing – for example boiling jugs of water that will inevitably steam up and cloud the imagery on screen beyond recognition – the Cantrills played with the theme of destruction at its most allusive.

There’s also an appealing mathematical basis to their film and sound work, and a sense of beauty in the equation of their films. The process driven practice of the Cantrills is very much embedded in the natural and everyday world, with a real sense of ecological concerns that is both attractive and powerful. “…from the mid 80s we started making films within our house using very slow film stock, picking up fleeting patches of light that were falling on objects around the house.

That was a whole series of work called Illuminations of the Mundane.”

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Still from In This Life’s Body 1984 (147 min) NEXT PAGE: Above Still from Warrah 1980 (15 min) Below Still from Waterfall 1984 (18 min) NEXT SPREAD: Arthur Cantrill, 1967. Photo: Corinne Cantrill

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill / Klare Lanson

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These art projects not only expand the screen but also seem to amplify the ongoing investigation into the more concrete, non-narrative nature of film; their study of object, colour and light has paved the way for much of the contemporary art practice we see today. I see their work as largely poetic, successfully engaging with the materiality of film and extending further into how we choose to live in the world, what we choose to believe is real, and how we value our environment. Calligraphy Contest for the New Year is one of the most popular projects they made, and was able to be fully developed through numerous presentations, stemming from the initial Expanded Cinema performance in Canberra, a three week season for the NGV at the Age Gallery in 1971, and finally as a special event for the 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival. They developed ideas around the destruction of both the screen, the shift into less physical modes of processing film stock, and as an attempt to destroy the illusion of film as narrative and focus whole heartedly on the process of making it. The simple art of projecting light is the key.

As I leave, Arthur and Corinne discuss if there is enough light for getting the winter seedlings into the garden. I find myself thinking about the significant changes the Cantrills must have witnessed during their 50 years of filmmaking, art and travel. They are without a doubt inspired by the structure and process of the mechanics of film, but it’s also the landscape and the sonic texture of our everyday that makes their work so evocative. As we move more deeply into a more technologically driven world, the huge body of work made by the Cantrills seems to gain more and more momentum. The continually changing societal landscapes that we choose to live in seem to be catching up with their work, and this is the sign of true art.

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill consider their 50 years of filmmaking collaboration, including their influences, the various film genres they explored, and the meanings behind their work in At the Edges of Meaning at this year’s Castlemaine State Festival, 13 – 22 March 2015 - castlemainefestival.com.au

Klare Lanson is a writer, poet, mother, performance maker, sound artist, data consultant, arts worker and past editor of Australian Literary Anthology Going Down Swinging. She is also performing at the 2015 Castlemaine State Festival with a multi-arts collaboration called #wanderingcloud, at the Castlemaine Woollen Mill, 19 – 21 March 2015 - castlemainefestival.com.au

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march salon

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1. Paul James KALEMBA and Jhana Pfeiffer-Hunt, The Persistence of Memory – Tales of Daylesford, Vincent Street laneway between the Town Hall and Frangos and Frangos, Daylesford (VIC), 16 January - 10 March 2015 - hepburn.vic.gov.au 2. Darren SIWES, Jingli Kwin 2013, giclée print on Kodak lustre paper, 119.7 × 100 cm, purchased with funds provided by the Aboriginal Collection Benefactors Group and the Photography Collection Benefactors Group © Darren Siwes. Courtesy of the artist and GAGPROJECTS/Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney. Embodiment, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery Road The Domain Sydney (NSW), until 22 March 2015 - artgallery.nsw.gov.au

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3. Exhibition: Unfolding: New Indian Textiles, image courtesy of Play Clan. RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street Melbourne (VIC), 20 March – 30 May 2015 - rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery 4. Jennifer GOODMAN, Delphic 1 2014, oil on linen, 180 x 130cm. Courtesy of the artist and Gallerysmith. Two of a Kind, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, 7-27 Snake Gully Drive, Bundoora (VIC), opening 22 April 2015 - bundoorahomestead.com NEXT SPREAD: Kate SHAW, La-la Land (detail) 2013, acrylic and resin on board, 30 x 70cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne. Synthentica, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Horseshoe Bend Swan Hill (VIC), 20 March – 3 May 2015 - swanhillart.com

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C.W. Stoneking:

Jungle Blues interview by Stevie Poor

You know that terrific scene in Kubrick’s The Shining, where Jack Nicholson is sitting at a bar talking to the smartly dressed ghost of a bartender? C.W. Stoneking’s Aria award winner, Jungle Blues, has that sound.

In the movie Jack’s character, Johnny, has lost his mind and finds this long dead pourer to be his new best friend. There’s a post war thang going on.

Other ghosts appear in the background, mingling and flirting, also dressed to the nines. It’s madness at its most comfortable, and C.W. could have been there too, jiving out on his banjo with them haunted horns backing him up.

Following the title track, Jungle Blues rolls through a collection of delicate blues, ranging in influence from Jimmy Miller to Son House, with a calypsonian dedication to a particular American General. I can’t take my copy out of the stereo, seriously, I haven’t wanted to play anything else. The man has put a spell on me ... I gots da C.W. Stoneking blues.

After returning from a North European tour and a few days rest, Christopher William Stoneking gave yours-part-truly some time to chat about the tale of his lost resophonic geetar in the back of a New York cab, and um, fifteen year old German girls, among other things.

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SP: With your second album, Jungle Blues, just as loaded with your own blues/ calypso sound as your first, I wonder if there was a defining moment or person somewhere along your travels that has influenced your signature direction?

CW: Umm... no, not really.

SP: Not an uncle one night with a bottle o moonshine and a banjo?

CW: No. I guess I’ve always been into the blues. I mean, when I was young I liked country and blues. In my late teens I got into 50’s electric, you know. I thought that was wild for a while. Then I guess I came back to the blues.

SP: You’ve played gigs in London and Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium. What was that like?

CW: Yeah it was great. We headlined a few gigs in England that sold out. We also played a gig that was televised on the BBC. We’ve got plans and invitations to return as soon as possible; we had a good time there.

C.W. Stoneking / Stevie Poor

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SP: And Europe?

CW: Yeah that was great too, but ... we booked a few of our gigs through the internet and it’s kinda bizarre ... places you never been before, and you get there, in a dim lit street, in a dark little club with fifteen year old girls hanging out the front, asking you to play songs yet to be released on vinyl or cd. Yet she knows them all, and what I look like, all from her computer.

SP: To kick off the Australian leg of your tour you play The Governor in Adelaide.

You’ve played Adelaide before, is there much difference between their audiences and Europe’s?

CW: No, not really. It’s usually the same style of crowd, just sitting back and taking in the music. Both here and overseas we get a mix in the age groups that attend.

Maybe we drink a little more over here but apart from that, no. I love Adelaide, we’ve played the Spiegeltent a few times and dozens of shows around town.

SP: The grapevine has it that you have put down the bottle and no longer need to remove excess moisture from your cells. Is it true? And if so have you found it affects your performance?

CW: Yes, yes I’m sober and have been for a while now. How has it affected my gigs? Not much. I used to go on a bit long when I drank and ramble at times, but apart from that, not a lot has changed. My head is focused and I know when something is finished these days, which is great.

SP: Were you a big drinker?

CW: Yeah, I liked a drink. I started to make a career of it. No good.

SP: I heard you lost a priceless Reso-Phonic guitar?

CW: It was priceless to me, but yes I did, in the back of a New York cab. I actually left a beautiful old English banjo in the cab as well. I’m still kicking myself. I’d just played a gig and my head was everywhere and I didn’t get a number for the cab. It was a terrible night.

C.W. Stoneking performs at WOMADelaide 2015, Botanic Park Adelaide (SA), 6 – 9 March 2015 - womadelaide.com.au/ Jungle Blues and King Hokum albums out through Shock and King Hokum records. For more info cwstoneking.com or shock.com.au

C.W. Stoneking / Stevie Poor

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Glen Skien:

Bird in Hand

Penny Peckham

Glen Skien: Bird in Hand / Penny Peckham >

< Galleria 2009, collage and resin in tobacco tin

Brisbane-based artist, Glen Skien trained in Townsville as a printmaker, but his oeuvre includes much work that falls well outside the realm of the pristine editioned print.

Skien is possibly best-known for his hybrid artist books/box works – small divided boxes that hold a range of mysterious treasures; bundles of tiny prints bound in red thread and fragmentary found objects – though works from across the range of his creative output, from large-scale multi-panel prints to small cut-paper globes reminiscent of old-fashioned dioramas, were acclaimed as far back as 2010 at the extensive exhibition, Room, Letter, Window, Map at Redland Gallery in Brisbane. Oh Bird, a much more intimate exhibition mainly due to the size of the venue, followed soon after, showing at Hand Held Gallery in Melbourne in June 2010. Hand Held was a tiny gallery in Paramount Arcade, off Swanston Street, which specialised in artists’ books and small works. Thus the exhibition showcased a series of Skien’s exquisite tobacco tin works from the series All of the things I could have told you about birds, a title suggestive of the nostalgia that is a constant element of Skien’s work.

Simple forms and objects are repeated throughout Skien’s body of work: a black gentleman’s umbrella, boats, rendered in the simplest terms, and birds. This iconography of simplicity is based upon Skien’s belief that “objects may define us,”1 and in Skien’s hands the simple objects he works with are imbued with nostalgia and layered associations. Birds have become particularly common in Skien’s work, and it seems that their symbolism is significant and personal, as metaphoric expressions of self, perhaps. A large scale multi-panel etching from 2008 bears the delightful title Biography with Spangled Drongoes, and in 1997 he established a print studio in Mackay called Silent Parrot Press.

Glen Skien: Bird in Hand / Penny Peckham >

All of the things I could have told you about birds 1 2010, collage and resin in tobacco tin

The birds represented in All of the things I could have told you about birds include North Queensland sunbirds, honey eaters and crows. In recent years collage and assemblage have overtaken printmaking as Skienâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primary mode of practice and his raw material is the books, postcards, tins and other objects collected from second-hand shops. He is interested in these objects for the history they embody as well as their time-worn aesthetic.

Glen Skien: Bird in Hand / Penny Peckham

“Nostalgia is an inescapable layer of meaning that it is embedded in any materials that have past histories and one could say that the degree of nostalgia is gauged by how old the materials are. Connected to this is the fact of these objects having been discarded. For me, the use of material with existing histories leaves an awareness of the connection to the transient nature of all things.”2 Skien’s method of working is intuitive. He allows the creative process to suggest connections and juxtapositions of fragments and imagery and has compared it to literature’s ‘stream of consciousness’. This results in works that have a sense of mystery as to their meaning and allows each viewer to bring their own interpretations and associations to the works. In All of the things I could have told you about birds old tobacco tins contain fragile birds, cut from old maps, postcards and book illustrations, and sewn or tacked, suspended in resin with the large threaded needle and other fragments. Of the series, Skien has said, “I’m not certain what came first – the bird or the tobacco tin – but somehow they seemed to meet in the studio one morning along with fragments of etchings, piano keys, shoe tacks, old photographs, and other things ... perhaps what they now contain is that space between the reflective moment and endless possibilities.”3 These endless possibilities are one of the most appealing aspects of Skien’s work, evoking in the viewer an intense curiosity about what the details might mean, their histories, the artist’s intention, but finally allowing a personal response imbedded in one’s own history and memories.

Marginalia: print & assemblage works by Glen Skien, Bosz Gallery, Shop 4/9 Doggett Street Fortitude Valley (QLD), 3 – 22 March 2015 - boszgallery.com/ FOOTNOTES: 1. Glen Skien, artist’s talk, Artists’ Book Forum, Mackay 2008. 2. Glen Skien, quoted in Louise MartinChew, Room, Letter, Window, Map, 2010. 3. Glen Skien, quoted on handheldgallery.blogspot.com