Holly Pepper

Struktuur 68

2011-06-27T08:56:00.001-07:00

Last week I visited Struktuur 68, a ceramic studio in Den Haag. This ceramic factory specialises in assisting public artwork artists to create large-scale ceramic works. It was very impressive to the scale of some of the works being created in the studio. Some of the sculptures towered almost 3 to 4 meters tall. But the staff reassured me that they just use 15^th century techniques to create their ceramic work. Struktuur 68 has been operating since 1968, providing ceramic assistance and expertise to ceramic artists projects.

I went to check out Tanja Smeets public artwork piece. She is developing a large-scale works of flowing organic, Chinese soup spoons. The original free flowing artwork, developed originally from hand sculpting spoons has been developed into a process based, manufactured work at Struktuur 68. The streamlining of the creation of the work has meant that Smeet can develop the large work with greater speed and accuracy. Firstly the Chinese spoons have been created using 3 dimensional modeling techniques. These foam pieces have been cast, the plaster moulds are then used to stamp out the multiple ceramic versions of the spoons. Smeet then hand joins the ceramic pieces together, of which there are 23 pieces to create for this particular art project.

It was interesting to see the transformation of the working process when working on a large scale. The artistic process becomes more industrial; the artist becomes slightly detached from the creation of the work. However, it is also reassuring to see the same techniques that I use to teach high school ceramic students to create smaller sculptures are still relevant at such a huge scale.

www.struktuur68.nl

The Ice Bar

2011-06-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last week we had the Uranus Culture Lab open day. I was very impressed with the amount of effort that went into making such a great event. There was lots of good food, live music, art auctions and even an abseiling event for kids visiting for the event.

Unfortunately the weather was pretty terrible, so all the different studio's scrabbled togethor at the last minute to pull together big marques to host the event in. As for the ice bar, well the weather worked in our favour. The bar lasted the entire day, just with one minor incident with one of ice buckets breaking apart midway through the day. Anyway, check out the pictures below or visit the Culture Lab webpage to see a bit more of the event. http://uranuscultuurlab.nl/openlab/

Oerol 2011

2011-06-25T12:23:00.001-07:00

The Pepper’s having been getting back to there hippy Denmark roots over the past couple of days. We have taken up residency at the Nature camp in Hoorn, Terschelling. Terschelling is an island off the North coast of the Netherlands. Each year a 10 day performance festival is held in late June called the Oereol Festival.

The island gets so packed out with arts enthusiasts that your only option is to camp. Luckily with a bit of old experience my parents and I managed to cope camping in pretty wet and windy conditions. We entertain ourselves in the Dutch way, attempting to milk three cups of tea out of one bag… saving napkins from the odd café visit for our toilet visits at the nature cam

Camping aside I was most impressed to arrive at the main festival site to find a paddock full of bikes. In Australia you would find a never-ending sea of cars parked in paddocks surrounding a festival. Instead in Terschelling you get lost in the sea of bikes.

Our choices for performances were narrowed down a bit with our lack of Dutch. I have attempted visiting the theatre in Utrecht, seeing a play in Dutch and was absolutely bored shitless, so I wasn’t about to try that one again.

So first show we saw was Propaganda, by an Australian group called Acrobat. It was nice to experience a bit of Australian humour in a circus context. These guys managed to successfully intertwine a serious anti-capitalist message into their show with a dash of humour and with some very impressive circus tricks. I was really impressed with the final scene when both the couple performing in the show changed my impression on a fixed wheel bike. Prior to the show I thought they were the dumbest invention out. However, this acrobatic couple managed pull off some very impressive tricks as the bike circled around the tent.

At the end of the performance the predominantly Dutch audience gave the family circus group a standing ovation… I developed a little sense of patriotism at this moment proud that this group had managed to crack it big time in Europe.

The second show we watched was a interactive audio play. We were mainly attracted to experience Domini Public, by Roger Bernat because this style of show is the next production pending for my sister Zoe. So we thought we would do a little of audience research for her. The play required each audience having a headset, we were asked a number of questions in a public square in West Terschelling, answering the questions required us to move around the space, taking on different poses. Through the sequence of questions the audience were identified as different characters in the show, allowing each audience member to assume a role in the show. Over the course of the hour long show the plot was revealed. However, the lack of theatrical train in the audience meant we did a fairly terrible job and at rein acting the massacre scene that evolved.

Nevertheless a pretty worthwhile show to attend.

We went to one other show called the Peking Opera, which I won’t bore you with the details. It was like going to a Denmark Pantomime. It was an absolutely terrible show that I wouldn’t recommend.

Uranus Culture Lab Open Day

2011-06-15T12:44:00.001-07:00

Kroller Muller Museum- Jan Fabre Exhibition

2011-06-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

I just have two weeks of my internship left. It feels as though I am trying to pack a lot of travel into the last few weeks. In the last two weeks I have been to Venice to see the Biennale and to Sweden to visit a good friend from back in the University days.

I am now in the process of entertaining my parents who are visiting Holland for a few weeks. I have just sent them off on a cycling trip to Arnhem, which is what reminded me that I needed to post about my visit to the Kroller Muller museum

The Kroller Muller museum is a very impressive gallery in the middle of the Hogue Veluwe National park. It is the last place that you would expect to find such a good museum. You can be cycling through some very diverse nature for 15 kilometers or so and then come across this gallery which holds many works of Van Gough’s and Rembrant in there collection. Originally the museum collection was privately owned by wealth art collectors Helen + Anton Kroller. The couple owned a 12,000 piece collection with over 200 paintings of Van Gough’s. However, the came across financial troubles and risked losing there collection to debt collectors. So the couple donated the works and National Park to the Dutch government in1935, who have maintained the collection ever since

Currently the museum is showing a major exhibition of Jan Fabre’s sculptural works in an exhibition titled Hortus/Corpus. Fabre is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist who currently has many sculptural works on display at the Kroller Muller museum. A diverse range of materials are employed in the works. I was most impressed by the large-scale works created from jewel-scarab wing cases. The metallic wing cases, change in colour as you gain a different perspective on the work. Ranging from a luminescent green to a deep royal blue.

Filling the centre of the large sculpture gallery space is a work titled “I had to demolish a part of the ceiling of the royal palace because there was something growing out of it (2008.”

This is a large scale works inspired from the piece developed for the ceiling of the Belgium royal’s. The piece took over 2 million bug shells to create the work. The exhibition piece references the black pages in Belgium’s Colonial history. The scale and realism in the piece, creates a very strong and impacting work.

The exhibition continues on for rooms + rooms and spills out into the large outdoor sculptural display at the national park. The works use materials ranging from glass, steel, ceramics, + gold. Many of the works reference the scarab wing cases, whether it be employing this as a medium or using the shape as an influence on the form of other works.

Anyway, if you are kicking around in Holland I would highly recommend that you visit the museum. It is totally worth the drive.

EKWC Den Bosch

2011-05-30T13:55:00.000-07:00

While I have been in Holland I have been very fortunate to be taken out to different arts events around Holland by Tejo and his partner Tanja. I really appreciate the effort these guys have made to help discover the arts in The Netherlands.

Anyway, a few weeks ago Tanja took me to EKWC, a ceramic artist in residence in Den Bosch, in the South of Holland. EKWC was a very impressive facility. It is equipped with a range of different gas and electric kilns, spray booths, plastering rooms, 3 D printing machines, and very organised Glaze library. On top a of a great facility there are about 8-12 different specialized ceramic technicians who can assist artist in residence with there technical knowledge of ceramics.

Tanja has just completed a residence at EKWC. The residencies are for a three month intensive period. Artists live at the studios and totally engross themselves in developing ceramic objects. Tanja described the obsession she developed for ceramics, during the residency period.

The best bit is you don’t have to know a thing about ceramics before you take up a residency here. EKWC wants there artists in residence to be experimental with the development of there ceramic forms.

So if you are interested in ceramics and looking for a residency experience this may be the place to apply too.

http://sundaymorning.ekwc.nl/

Searching for the Strand Beest

2011-05-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

I don’t get excited about many things, but I was pretty excited about the prospect of going to check out Theo Jansen’s latest kinetic sculpture on the beach. For the past few weeks I have been checking out his webpage at lunch time at work. I bloody hate lunch here. I feel like the biggest dick not being able to partake in the purely Dutch conversation. So instead of trying to look interested in my sandwich, I kept zoning out to the Strandbeest webpage… dreaming of the day I got to see this work in the flesh.

Anyway, the weekend arrived, I was all set for the sculpture viewing, in The Hague. I got to the beach it was pissing with rain. The wind was howling like a dog. I had met this random guy in the city earlier on, I was a bit cautious of him to begin with. But without his help I probably wouldn’t have found the beach. He also had an electric fold up bike, he was very keen to show me, so the wind was a lot easier to battle with his bike. While this poor guy, battled along my rickety old bike, he also had a real hatred of rain, so every couple of kilometers we would travel he would stop and wipe down his jacket with a reem of paper towel.

Anyway, the rain got to much for my mate, so we farewelled each other and I trundled along on my old bike for another couple of hours, pulling into each beach café to asking some random, weather they had seen a sculpture walking down the beach. Did they know where the beaufort scale was sitting at today? Some very random questions.

Anyway, windswept and cold I gave up on my search for the strandbeest.

Stuff Up's

2011-05-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

It is actually quiet refreshing seeing Tejo and Rene stuff up there design jobs. I am continually making mistakes and the studio. Having to remake frames or re-cut objects because they are not the right size. It is all part of the learning curve, but very frustrating at the same time.

To see older more experienced people muck up their design work, lets me breath a sigh of relief. Dad put it well, he said something along the lines of.. The only difference between you young guys is and us old blokes is that we have stuffed up on more occasions and have built up a bank of mistakes which we have learnt from.

Anyway, the other day Tejo was already to pour the concrete into the plastic mould he had been making for an outdoor, concrete seating piece. This piece was pretty well tried and tested, Rene and Tejo making a few of these benches for an exhibition in Miami late last year. Just a few minor changes were made to the volume in the legs and the material used in the upper half of the mould. It had taken him a week of tinkering to get the frame welded, work out the new geometry of the legs on the piece, sew up the plastic liner and prepare the mould ready for pouring.

Anyway, when it came to concreting I got to chip in and help out a bit. We were almost complete with filling the mould with concrete, when the sewn seems started to rip under the pressure of the concrete. Small leaks grew into large leaks. I was running around the studio madly cutting strips of rubber to wrap around the gaping wound. After repairing the rip we still needed to pour more concrete to create a completed piece. So we pushed on ahead and low and behold the seams ripped on another leg and we had another rapid repair job on the mould. The studio was covered in wet concrete. It was a bit of a disastrous pour.

So I suppose I will take comfort in the fact that the learning curve will continue, even until I am considered an old girl!

- 21 Degrees Celsius

2011-05-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

The studio complex where Rene and Tejo have there studio are having an open day on the 19th of June. Each studio has been delegated a different task to work on. Our task is to design a bar. Rene is dead keen on building an ice bar... in the outdoors.. in the middle of the European Summer. It is going to Stone Henge in Ice! He is totally convinced it is a great idea. So we have been running trials in the small freezer and the studio, making locking type mechanisms in ice. Making ice cups, to serve up drinks in etc.

Today we visited his mates factory that stores all the refrigerated and Frozen foods for the biggest Grocery Store in Holland- Albert Hejin. The freezer is the size of a massive industrial warehouse. It sits at a nasty - 21 degrees. We stuck a wheelie bin in the freezer, with a dividing wall placed down the centre to trial out making Stone Henge Blocks.

I think this is the coolest temperature I have ever been in! Thank christ for the boofy jacket.

Searching for some space

2011-05-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

When you live in a place you never usually stand back and consider it’s defining characteristics. We are told that Perth is the most isolated city in the world. Coming from Denmark on the south coast, this was a very isolated place. I never really took much notice of these characteristics until now. Living in remotes places is just a way of life. This remote landscape gives you a sense of freedom and at times can be threatening. These characteristic of Australia have had a massive influence on our art and culture, which I only fully understand now.

It is only now that I am in Holland living in highly densily populated country that I find myself searching for some isolation. I am finding myself wanting to drive for a couple of 100 km’s and not to see any development. I want to find a forest I can wander about in. I am a little hard pressed to find this feeling of remoteness here in Europe.

Today I travelled 2 hours by train, 1 hour by bus and 1 hour by ferry to the Fresian Island, Ameland. I packed a small pack for the night, with a few nuts and biscuits. I wasn’t sure what type of island I was heading to, so I ate modestly and considered that I might be returning from an isolated island fairly hungry. As it turned out there was food on the island and lots of development. But walking along an expanse of sandy beach for 2 hours gave me that feeling I was searching for.

Prototype Number 4

2011-05-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

The concrete chair prototyping continues, we are on to prototype number 4. The wooden clamps are gradually becoming rougher and rougher as the parts to the mould get treated as a ‘work in progress.’ Gradually I am cutting away at the pieces to modify details of the piece. The shape of the piece is becoming refined and the edge finish is being experimented with.

This internship is teaching me to preserver. I generally have a tendency to jump from one idea to the next. This task of refining the concrete stool is a good lesson I can take home and use on my own work.

I am enjoying making the most out of Tejo and Rene’s fully equipped workshop, they are stocked up with every tool you could want. Each corner of the studio you can find a stash of materials. This is another thing that is lacking in my studio at home. I need to start investing in more tools so I have the liberty to diversify the projects that I am working on. Whenever I get cracking on a project at home I am continually faced with the dilemma of a lack of tools, space and the money to invest in materials.

For now I will lap up the use of this decked out studio in Holland!

What is it like to be a bird

2011-05-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

Everyday when I head to work I cycle past this old farmhouse, which is stuck between the freeway to Amsterdam and the canal. The first time I saw the space from afar I thought it had a really erie feeling.

Anyway, this weekend there was an art exhibition at the space. The old stables and farmhouse had been converted into a temporary exhibition space… showing my old favorite… video installations. Anyway, it was quite strange staring at a video project down a hallway, between two horse stables. At the same time as watching a film on chickens I had two horses staring at me. The horses started to get a bit reared up with there company. I wasn’t sure if they wanted a pat or if they wanted us to piss off.

Anyway, the most interesting work I just about totally dismissed. There was a sign asking if I wanted to be a bird. The thought of acting out being a bird, didn’t really sound up alley. All the theatrical talents went to my sisters.

Anyway, on recommendation from someone else at the exhibition I went back to the booth shaped like a birdhouse. This artist Thija van Vuure is a selft taught artist and biologist. Through his work he began to study different bird species calls. He takes sound and video recordings of different Dutch Birds. He then explored the idea of slowing the sound speed of the bird call to a human life length. From this he discovered it was possible for humans to imitate a bird-call. So you head into the small intimate birdhouse booth, feeling like a real idiot you imitate the sounds of the bird call. The artist then speeds these recordings up to the speed of the short birds life span. From this the human bird call is born… for a whole audience on the outside of the booth to watch you make a real dick of yourself making a bird call.

Luckily we haven’t been posted on U-tube… but there are a few others on Thija’s webpage.

http://www.thijsvanvuure.nl

Sammlung Boros Collection

2011-05-11T02:02:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I took a tour of the Sammalung Boros art collection, which is situated in a bunker in Berlin- Mitte. I signed myself up for a one and half hour tour in German. This was slightly painful… but it was my only way to view the contemporary art collection. The three English tours during the day were all booked up. I thought art being such a visual thing than that the context would not matter that much.

The Sammalung Boros collection is a private Contemporary art collection that was set up by communication designer Christian Boros. His collection of art has been situated in the bunker since 2008. The function of the Bunker has often changed in the past. It served as a shelter, prison, fruit storage, techno club and is currently a private art museum.

This coloured history of the building creates a very spectacular area to display art. The compartmentalised rooms give each piece a dedicated and private viewing space. The bombing marks on the exterior of the building and the rustic paint surface on the interior walls gives the gallery space eliminates any austere feeling that the gallery may have.

At the Gallery I was probably most impressed by the work by Olfar Eliasson. The opening work in the gallery ‘Berlin Colour Sphere’ is a spectacular lighting piece made from a number of iridescent glass pieces. The light reflects a sphere of geometric colour into the room. As you move around the gallery seeing the piece from aerial angles the colour of the glass becomes more opaque.

Eliasson also has another installation in an upper room in the gallery. The room gradually transforms through a spectrum of different colours. The beauty in the piece is revealed behind the scrim spanning a good way across the room. Behind the scrim is whole series of halogen lights beaming different colours through their attached filters. These lights must be attached to dimmers, which control the amount of light and alter the mixture of colour in the room.

The Boros Collection has commissioned a number of contemporary artists to create site-specific works. Some of these works have been built to fit into difficult working spaces. Tight prison like cells, have geometric forms crawling between the different rooms.

Arthouse Tacheles

2011-05-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

When I moved into the Midland Junction Studios about a year and half ago, I thought I was moving into the ghetto. It took about 2 days to clean up and make a 20 sqm space look decent enough to call it an art studio.

But I have taken a rain check on Titling the Midland Junction studios a Ghetto after visiting the Tacheles art centre in the centre of Berlin. Everywhere I walked in these studios I got a wiff of old urine. Along the hallway and entrance to the studio was covered in graffitti. Artist who worked in the spaces had taken a bit more effort in cleaning up there spaces, but the whole place had a bit of a grungy, dirty vibe.

The building used to be a part of a Jewish quarter in the city. In WWII the space was overtaken by Nazi administration. The derelict building was overtaken by artist in 1999, there are 20 + artists working from the space.

The studios had a bit of a strange vibe, each artists set there own rules, some charged to enter to have a look at there work, others charged if you took a photograph, and some artists were just happy to have wonder in an check out your work. It seemed like they all needed to make a consensus decision on payment and sit one person at the front of the art centre if they wanted to charge an entry fee. Anyway, I felt like a bit of a tight arse squirming over a couple of Euro when i had been forking out 10 odd Euro for every gallery i entered in Berlin.

As for the artwork, I wasn't totally impressed, maybe the commercialisation of the studios made me a bit weary. But if you are kicking around Berlin it is worth a look.

http://super.tacheles.de

Hamburger Bahnhof

2011-05-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

I never thought that I would fall asleep in an Art Gallery, but I did the other day! I am truly following in my mothers sleeping foot steps, which is slightly depressing. My mother once fell asleep in the middle of a telephone conversation.

Anyway, I was so mesmerized by some video art, and the comfy cinema like setup that I dozed off for a while. I woke up to a much larger audience of viewers and wondered how long I had been there?

Anyway, this all happened on my visit to Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, Germany. Hamburger Banhof is a railway station that has been converted into a massive art gallery. The space is a beautiful setting for a gallery. Big high ceilings has allowed for a spacious display of large artworks. It is worth a visit to this gallery just to see how well the artworks fit in the context of the gallery.

The most impressive artwork for me was an installation by Richard Long, an English artist. The work was made up of a series of natural objects, like stones, mud, decaying wood and pebbles. These various natural objects have been meticulously laid out into geometric shapes. The scale of the works is very stricking.

As for the rest of the gallery, I found it very conceptual. Conceptual art doesn’t exactly float my boat that much. There were so many video installations I went to sleep!

http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de

Abstract Interpretation of History

2011-05-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

Today I visited the Jewish museum in Berlin, Germany. I expected to leave, having a very depressing experience. However, thankfully the curators of the museum had taken an abstract approach to presenting the tragic history of the Jews in Germany.

Daniel Libeskind has designed a very impressive piece of architecture to house this important history. The building is very unconventional; the space has many harsh linear lines running through the building. The space is filled with angled windows, cold harsh concrete and is cladded in a dull zinc alum surface. The ground floor museum space has uneven surfaced floors, there is no such thing as way finding through this museum space.

Tucked in various corners of the museum space are different voids, which gives a visitor a censory experience of the Jewish German History.

One of the voids is a triangulated space that is cold and dark inside. The roof towers 20 meters above you. Halfway up the wall is a ladder, which is unreachable. In the corner of the room at the very top of the space is a small channel of light seeping into the room.

Another one of the spaces is filled with heavy metal dics, with simplified faces cut into the discs. Visitors to the museum walk over the cobbled metal discs, which creates this discordant sound resonating in the void space.

I was really glad I overcome my fears of becoming too depressed at the idea of visiting the Jewish museum. The contemporary approach taken to present this history was very eye opening. So often in Australia, history is exhibited so

literally. The Jewish German history is very well known, it is nice to see a sensitive approach has been taken to present it.

Losing my fan base!

2011-05-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I lost my biggest fan base. Nan has been the biggest fan of her 11 Grandchildren’s artistic achievements. She enthusiastically attended art exhibitions, performances and concerts. Not only was she a supporter she was our best marketing promotions woman around. She would litter her coffee table with newspaper cut outs and proudly tell every visitor to the house about the current projects in the making.

Nan also graciously gave up her house for many an art project. Back in the Summer of 2010 my sculptural piece Spinifex outgrew my studio space. So I took up Artist in Residence at Nanna Shirls place in Darlington for about three weeks.

What a Nan, putting up with her garage being turned into the welding shed. The Back room was the pod threading station. The verandah became the temporary photography studio. As the temperatures soared Nan gradually let the art project creep into the house, getting closer to the air conditioner.

It must have taken a fair bit of tolerance to have a granddaughter come and be your artist in residence. Nevertheless the support kept flowing. At 9 pm at night just before nan popped off to bed, she would come out with a plate of sweets to keep my sugar levels up so I could power on through the night and finish this piece in time for the exhibition.

So after many a cup of tea, conversation and plates of sweets Spinifex was finally complete. We took the piece to Cottesloe and exhibited it for 3 weeks. Unfortunately it has taken until now to sell the work, and Nan has kindly allowed me to turn her back yard into Sculpture park, looking after the work until the right buyer came about.

Anyway, Nanna Shirl is going to be fondly remembered for her support of the Pepper art projects.

Tensioned Concrete mould

2011-05-02T03:34:00.000-07:00

This is the outcome from Friday's concrete pour. The plastic flexible mould was created without any sewing. It was all held together by clamps. This makes the mould reusable.

The piece still needs refinements, but an interesting piece to be experimenting with.

Queens Day

2011-05-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

A sea of orange flooded the Netherlands this weekend. The streets were filled with coloured flags lining the streets. Lots of People made a big effort to dress ridiculously in some sort of Orange outfit. This was all in the name of Queens Day, the biggest annual celebration in the Netherlands.

The streets also turn into one big jumble sale. Queens day is a good excuse to clean out the house and sell all the junk laying around your house. As the selling starts so do the small house parties, which then converges into one big street party. It was an amazing atmosphere I have not really experience before.

Me and my hoarding habits, meant that I couldn’t resist the bargains lining the streets. The first night I picked up a toaster and air mattress to make for a homely environment when my Australia visitors hit town.

Then day two in Delft, I bought some very bright looking sneakers to get my exercise on. I also spotted a very nice pair of cycling shoes for my dad, fingers crossed they fit.

Inflated Concrete Furniture

2011-04-30T00:45:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of days I have been assisting Rene with refining their concrete furniture. Both Rene + Tejo created a series of exhibition pieces late last year created from a method of sewing 3 dimensional moulds out of rubber and plastic and pouring concrete into the mould. The flexible moulds give the concrete an inflated appearance.

Yesterday I was tinkering away most of the day trying to prepare a mould for casting a table in concrete. The mould is very complex and it is so easy to stuff up cutting and punching holes in the mould pieces. Like any intern I regularly slip up and stuff the process up. But this is all part of the learning experience I suppose.

Anyway, we are working towards creating a table, which requires no sewing in the moulds, making the rubber mould reusable for each chair. This requires a lot of clamps, bolts, rubber moulds and wooden clamping pieces.

By the end of the day we frantically poured the sewing free chair. We will see how this piece pops out. It may compromise the organic qualities of the piece having a wooden structure forming the edges of the chair leg.

Just Married

2011-04-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

A stand I forgot to mention from Milan Furniture fair was a group called ‘Just Married’. This was a very fitting name considering these designers had travelled from Brittany in France. Anyway, they showed a lot of enthusiasm and determination to display their work. Three designers towed a caravan from Brittany to Milan, to show off there work. They parked the caravan on a prominent walk-way between exhibitions. In the back of the caravan were a number of different products. One was a cast vibrator with a relief print of Jesus on the cross! This was very brave considering the number of Catholics living in Milan! Anyway, I was just impressed by the initiative the ‘Just married’ design team showed, overcoming the expensive challenge of exhibiting at the Milan furniture fair.

Colourscape

2011-04-24T02:03:00.000-07:00

I am not to good at keeping up with this blogging business I have a back log of stories in my mind to write about, but never seem to find the time to sit down and stick them on the blog.

Anyway, I will start with the most current event. Yesterday I was determined not to be your typical tourist and arrive in the tour bus to see the tulip fields of Lisse. Instead I was determined to slog it out to get there. I made use of a beautiful summers day and cycled about 70 kilometres from Utrecht to Lisse. It took an exceptionally long time on my clunky old Dutch bike. I am guessing I had lots of old people comment in Dutch about the amount of noise my chain guard was making.

Anyway, the ride was pretty spectacular, I cycled through a lot of small towns, following the canals most of the journey. I did exceptionally well not getting lost until I got to Leiden. You would think it would be straight forward finding a tulip field, but not for old Hol. After many stops pulling out the map, asking for directions I found my way.

By the time I made it to Lisse, my knees were creaking and my thighs were aching. All I wanted to do was see a bloody tulip and my mission would be completed.

However, once I found one field I had a lot of inspiration to keep on riding. The wide expanses of colour were almost like an abstract painting. It was a very spectacular scene, seeing such vibrant colours. The cycling pains disappeared into the back of my mind, over taken by a visual feast of flowers.

Tectonic plates

2011-04-19T22:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had our own mini earthquake at the Remy + Veenhuizen Atelier. We were gunning though making another floor mat. We had a nice bit of team work going on. When the whole piece was complete an eruption occurred in the middle of the mat. All the the woolen blanket pieces were curled up under pressure and burst out with a huge crack across the middle of the work.

Anyway, we spent an hour repairing it yesterday, and I am sure there are another few hours to go today to fix the piece.

Open Source Design- Droog Design

2011-04-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

Droog

The most challenging exhibition I visited during the Furniture Fair in Milan was a stand by Droog Design titled ‘ Make Me.’ Droog are renowned for commissioning innovative and conceptual exhibitions. This is basically the reason that I was drawn to working in Holland with Tejo and Rene who are represented by Droog.

The ‘Make Me’ exhibition was based on the idea of Open Source Design. Open Source Design basically capitilises on our global accessibility through web technology. It enables designers to create products, place them on the Internet ‘open source platforms’, then the consumer can manipulate this design to suit their personal needs. The consumer then purchases these plans from the designer. The consumer outsources a local manufacturer to create the piece.

The benefit of this platform for design is that the end user can to some degree manipulate and design there own furniture pieces, it cuts out the large commissions that retail outlets take for furniture pieces, effectively driving the product price down and it reduces the green miles that the piece needs to travel.

It sounds interesting in theory, in practice I was not so convinced. When I visited the Droog exhibition I struggled with the electronic interface to create the work I wanted to make. Even after running around finding someone to show me how the software worked. I still had this niggling frustration, with the program.

A lot of the pieces where CNC cut wooden furniture pieces. The joints in the pieces were generally finger joints, reducing the need for special fixings and screws in the piece. The pieces basically looked like something from Ikea, and lacked the same structural integrity that a piece of furniture from Ikea would too.

I also struggled with the fact that it is hard enough for a designer who has a general understanding of manufacturing processes, the appropriate manufacturing language and the suitability of materials, let alone you average joe, who barely has the handskills to get a bloody alan key out of a packet and follow some Ikea DIY instructions.

There are a lot of logistical matters that keep flowing around in my head that prevent me from being convinced by Droog’s open source design idea.

- -You are basically limited to very sterile products that only employ cnc/laser cutting techniques in the design.

T They suggest that designers could use 3 D laser printers to create more organic work. However, this technology is so expensive it is not really a viable option.

-T There are a lot of inconveniences placed in the consumer’s hands like… negotiating with manufacturers, transportation issues.

- This style of design does not leave opening for the designer crafts person.

- Maybe it is an egotistical reason this concept from Droog is niggling at me. Basically it devalues the skills that a designer develops over time to create work. We develop the knowledge and understanding of materials and processes. We learn to build relationships with manufacturers to easily translate computer generated ideas into real objects. All of these aspects of design will be compromised for the sake of reducing the products price and making different designers work more globally accessible.

As highly critical as I am, I was impressed that I was challenged on day four of design saturation.

Tortona Design Week- Milano

2011-04-14T13:17:00.001-07:00

Today I spent the day roaming the Tortona exhibition area. This was a lot more up my alley than the Fiera Milano. The Via Tortona area is an industrial area of Milano. Spaces like mechanic workshops have basically been boarded up partially and turned into temporary exhibition spaces. People have given up there houses and moved every object out to accommodate for hordes of visitors to walk through a temporary exhibition space.

This style of exhibition reaches out to designer maker crafts people. The exhibition felt much less commercialised than the Fiera Milano.

It is slightly disappointing that there are no really interactive events at the exhibition. I thought it would be a perfect forum to engage in design debates + undertake different workshops. However, it seems as though most stands are purely focused on exhibiting.

I visited the Domus live at Tortona, which is focused on presenting talks, interviews and design debates. However, it seems that the whole thing was really geared towards posting the event on a social media platform. The speakers were position awkwardly close to the camera, preventing the real audience to really watch and listen to the interview. There was no attempt from the organizers to rally up real live crowds of visitors to the interviews.

It just seemed a little bit absurd not to engage a live audience, when you have a captive audience rearing to rest there weary legs from walking to endless exhibition displays.

David Truebridge

Frengo

Milano Furniture Fair 2011- First Impressions

2011-04-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Well I have taken off on another small jaunt across Europe to the Milan Furniture Fair. Finally after studying Italian for six years in primary school I can put the phrases to some use. I am kind of wishing we learnt a few more useful things other than singing happy birthday and hide the la gomma! Anyway, staying with Mamma + Pappa should see some speedy adoption of more Italian phrases.Thank Christ for the Italian/English dictionary, it is doing wonders in translating.

Anyway, today I spent the day roaming around the Fiera Milano site. It is pretty overwhelming being confronted by about 22 jumbo sized sheds which have all been converted into exhibition halls that house displays ranging from Student exhibitions (Salone Satellite), to lighting (Euroluce) right through to office furnishing.

I kicked off the day by visiting the student display, placed at the very rear of all the exhibition spaces. Many of the students stood there hopefully handing out business cards, in an attempt to have their work picked up by manufacturers. It was kind of nice hanging out in this area, most of the students lack the pretention that most of the other display spaces had. But at the same time a lot of the work wasn’t particularly impressive and I wondered why you would blow so much money on hiring an exhibition space/transporting the work and then sitting at a stand for 4 days for some mediocre work.

One of the most stand-out student pieces was from Kirsti Taiviola. She has developed blowen glass globes that reflect different patterns onto the wall surface. They were simple but elegant and you could see them adapted in many different architectural situations.

Then I spent a lot of time wondering around Euroluce.. I haven’t scene so many glass chandeliers. The place was sparkling with diamantes, Euroluce was full of Italian bling. There was a lot of bad taste going on in a lot of these stands.

Moving onto the modern furniture stands I was most impressed by the Zietaprozessdesign a Polish design firm. They had developed a collection of works made from inflated steel. I must say I was pretty inspired by this method of creating organic looking metal works. I think this technique could be adapted into sculptural works. It will just take a dam fine welder to weld .5 sheet metal together, and have an airtight joint.

Zieta

Diamantini & Domeniconi

And the winner of the worst piece of design i saw today, goes to someone that produced some white fur like fluffy panniers on the back of a bike. I can't post a photo because i ran out of batteries on the camera... but it was pretty hideous.

Dutch Illiteracy

2011-04-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

For the past week I have been experiencing being illiterate. Putting little to no effort in prior to leaving for the Netherlands, I have been greeted by a sea of Dutch words, plastering advertisements billboards, signage, newspaper and shopping isles. I have resorted to shopping from pictures.

Friday afternoon I thought I would do the housemately thing. Invest in a carton of beer + a jumbo size pack of toilet paper. Everything you ever needed for an exciting weekend! Anyway, wobbled home, with beer balanced on the back bike rack and the toilet paper in hand

It came time to crack one, so I sat down to my nice jumbo pack, ruffled open the plastic packaging only to find a JUMBO package of absorbent paper towel. Sadly I haven’t got an arse the size of an absorbent paper towel piece that would compensate for this stuff up.

Instead I am considering whisking the package into the kitchen pantry in anticipation of my ‘weekly fry up.’

The experience was very humbling and has given me the kick to start working through the 101 of Dutch language.

Amsterdam

2011-04-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to Amsterdam. It was a cool Metropolitan city, which felt a little like Melbourne, with arty stores lining the streets. Trams continually streaming past looping back and forth to central station to the Museum quarter.

However, Amsterdam had a bit of seedy undertone as well it felt a little bit like a circus at times. The European Bali. It seems like lots of Europeans and tourists flock here to make use of the liberated culture. Smoke dope and shag chicks. This was just one feeling in the city, which i am sure is ripe on the weekends.

Anyway, that aside after a long walk being lost on the complex canal system I made it to the Van Gogh Museum. It was teeming with tourists. But tourists aside I put my headset on and zoned out.

It is pretty striking to see how contemporary Van Gogh was for the times. His strong use of colour and texture creates really intense moods in his paintings.

I was most struck by his works featuring cherry blossom trees. I have not really seen these works in reproductions before. However, the works manage to capture the delicateness of the tree and the atmosphere of Spring.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, with streams of people crawling along the walls of the Van Gogh museum appreciating his works, I felt a tinge of sadness. To think Van Gogh’s work went relatively unappreciated until after his death is a bit disappointing. He was probably just considered a mentally impaired man during his life.

It is a little bit ironic the way the arts scene works!

The Culture Lab

2011-04-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

I am onto day 3 of the internship with Tejo Remy and Rene Veenhuizen. When I arrived at the studio I was very reassured to see a room full of treasurers. A collection of old glassware for lighting projects, bags full of old blankets, a sea of prototypes floating in every spare space.

The sight of the single stitch industrial sewing machine was also pretty exciting.

Anyway, the studio is based out in a very industrial part of Utrecht. The studio has an outlook onto a DHL depot, and the street with lined with lots more factories. It is pretty much on par with the serenity of Midland. Not the type of place you feel like venturing out for lunch in. Anyway, luckily where the studio is housed is a ‘Culture Lab’, basically a whole heap of creative’s have leased this building. Which means lunch often consists of conversa

tion with different architects, painters, set designers or engineers. This makes for a good social working environment.

Over the last couple of days I have been working on an ‘Accidental mat’. The piece recycles old blankets, and turns it into a very organic floor mat. It is nice to see the full working method of making the piece. It is also great to see what was probably conceived as a one off piece be developed into a marketable small production run product. The investment that Tejo, Rene + Tanja have put into developing the first rug has paid off through the development of the piece into a product. It is also reassuring to know that I am not the only designer who invests crazy amounts of labour into her work, the Accidental mats take approximately a week to make.

Comparison

2011-04-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

It is pretty exciting to see so many bicycles being ridden in Holland. Nothing stops the Dutch getting around by bike. There are young women stilettos cautiously mounting their bikes. Groups of Oma’s (Grannies) picking up there shopping. Mums cycling with their multiple children strapped front and back to the bike. Not even a trip to Ikea is an excuse to drive flat packed furniture home. Instead it is planted under the cyclists armpit, and precariously balanced on the handle bars all the way home.

Cycling is ingrained in the culture!

This is very inspiring compared with my recent experience back home. To cut a long story short I work part time as an Art Technician at a Perth High School. Anyway, we were delivered the best professional development session I have experienced a few weeks ago. The session focused on ways the school could become more sustainable in social and environmental aspects of school life. Reading the body language of most of the staff they hesitantly participated! Middle-aged people stuck in their old consuming ways not willing to change their habits for the benefit of the greater environment. By contrast me being the young and enthusiastic person I am, I filled my page with potential changes that could be made around the school to create a more environmental sustainable place.

-Ban all personal use vehicles to the school. Staff must carpool, cycle or catch public transport to the school.

- Ban selling water at the canteen. Students must refill from refrigerated taps around the school.

- Stop selling meat dishes in the canteen.

- Health + fitness should be valued over personal grooming in the school environment.

The list went on, I scrawled the ideas down with enthusiasm. I thought that implementing these initiatives in a small school environment would be relatively easy to organise. It would also be an environment that you would be able to actually see progress. Finally teachers could be valued for their role modelling, leading a green revolution!

Ok so I got a little carried away...little bit to radical in my train of thought. Instead I let the enthusiasm bubble away inside. I got a little distracted preparing for my trip away and never actually managed to try and initiate any of these ideas. However, one other teacher managed to pull finger and started to rally up support for carpooling. First it came with an email…. With no response… then it was brought up at staff morning tea. You could feel the staff role there eyes and silently zone off into the tray of cakes sitting on the table.

So with no luck I boarded my plane for Holland silently disillusioned by peoples’ inability to try new things, to change some aspects of their lifestyle for the common good. So for now I will lap up the Dutch’s enthusiasm for cycling + the good public transport born from high-density living!

First impressions of Utrecht

2011-04-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Studio Open

2011-03-15T21:26:00.001-07:00

Come and check out the Midland studios before I disappear to the Netherlands for four months!

Melville Sculpture Park

2011-02-27T03:48:00.000-08:00

I visited Kadidjiny Park (crnr Kitchener and Curtis Rd) today where the Melville Sculpture walk will be held. It is one funky park that opened in November 2010. It is a sensory play area for kids. If it wasn't so hot I probably would have let loose at the park also.

Anyway, it is just really flukey that my sculpture is going to fit perfectly into the park. I even bought I bright orange to finnish the piece of and blend it into the funkiness of the park.

Anyway, if you are around the Melville area you should check out the exhibition opening on the 11th of March 2011 at 6pm. The exhibition runs until the 9th of April 2011.

The Pod is Growing!

2011-01-08T04:53:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of days I have been kicking about in my hometown, Denmark. It is pretty easy to be overcome with lethargy and not do a lot in Denmark. But finally over the past couple of days I have mustered up a bit of motivation and started working on a large scale public artwork with my dad. The pods are growing at a rapid scale. The piece is about 2 meters in diameter.... and the new scale and material thickness is posing lots of new challenging problems.

You will be able to view the finished product at the Melville Sculpture walk, which opens on March the 11th 2010.

I have also been sussing out sacrificial anodes, to prevent the piece from rusting in an outdoor environment. The Lipinski's recent purchase of ' The Pod' is the first piece to use the experimental sacrificial anode... hopefully it stops the piece of rusting away.

Young People and the Arts Fellowship

2010-12-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

The other day I got some dam fine news. I was awarded a Department of Culture and the Arts Young People and the Arts Fellowship. This means I will be heading across to Europe for three months to work with Tejo Remy a renowned found object furniture maker/ designer. On the way to Utrecht in the Netherlands I will go and visit the 2011 Milan Furniture fair.

It’s pretty exciting to finally have the opportunity to head to Europe and expand my design horizons.

Escape the Heat

2010-12-26T18:31:00.001-08:00

There is 6 days to go for you to view the Tread Lightly Exhibition at Howard Park Winery. This could be a reasonable enough reason to escape the heat of Perth and trundle down to Denmark.

The exhibition opening went really well down here. I think growing up down in Denmark, people have a genuine interest in seeing how your work has changed over the past few years. There are lots of creative people in Denmark who fostered my interest in the arts from the outset. It has been nice to come back home and give back to the town that was so encouraging from the outset.

Tread Lightly Tour's to Denmark

2010-11-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

Tread Lightly- Virtual Gallery

2010-11-21T22:30:00.000-08:00

If you didn't get a chance to make it to the Tread Lightly exhibition

at the Free Range Gallery, I have just posted a selection of works on my webpage.

Tread Lightly- Virtual Gallery

Tread Lightly Exhibition opening

2010-11-19T03:49:00.000-08:00

Tread Lightly opened last night the Free Range Gallery. Thanks to everyone who came along to the opening, it was a great night. Hopefully the visitors will flow in over the weekend.

The exhibition runs from the 18th- 23 rd November. Open 10-4 pm and on Tuesday 10-12.

Hopefully see you there.

Tread Lightly

2010-10-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Midland Junction Studios

2010-07-20T04:51:00.000-07:00

Go and See this Film!

2010-07-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Exit through the gift shop is one of the best films I have seen in a long time. I left the film inspired by the works of Banksy, I was ready to become a street artist. until I read the notices plastered around the Luna Leederville cinema stating that the film does not endorse tagging in Leederville. The film must of made a big impact on a number of viewers, seeing a spike in graffiti in the area or maybe it was a case of sparking some alarm in a conservative local member.

Anyway just to give you the gist of the story if you haven’t already seen it. Exit through the gift shop tells the story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker spent about 10 years of his life recording street artists undertake there somewhat temporary works. The films served a great purpose in documenting many well renowned street artists works, like Banksy and Shephard Fairey. During the film things take a turn and the relatively uncreative filmer decideds to turn his hand to art. As a result many spectacular outcomes occur and the French film maker becomes famous over night.

The film leaves an artist like myself questioning how popular endorsement and media attention can lead to artist success. It basically outlines that you don’t necessarily need a lot of artistic creativity and skill to become popular artist. Basically it comes down to who you know and who can endorse your work.

Anyway, I found the film very thought provoking and would recommend anyone reading this blog to go out and watch the film for yourself.

Back to REMIDA

2010-07-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

I went into REMIDA last Thursday and was reminded of what a fantastic place it was. REMIDA is a non-for profit organisation that collects industrial Waste for creative re-use. I stopped going for a little as I had a bad habit of loading up the car with lots of inspiring materials and then when I got back to the studio I had no space to store all of these treasures. The Bath that was used for material storage at the studio was bulging. The temporary loft above the garage was spewing with plastic PET strapping. So it was time to take a break from REMIDA.

Anyway, I took a trip back to REMIDA, I was on a mission to find about 4 meters of framing to finish off ‘Progression’ a neoprene acoustic paneling piece I have been working on. Anyway, I found a gem piece of picture framing just the right colour, and not too ornate, it will work really well with finish off the piece.

As well as this I met up with all the enthusiastic staff at REMIDA. They are always interested in the projects their visitors are cooking up and if you get on the right side of Max he will show the sneaky storage space for any large size or excess materials.

Artists Rights

2010-07-15T06:37:00.001-07:00

Working in the arts in Western Australia means you are in a pretty tight social group . Sometimes when you get screwed over for your work, with things like delayed payments, lack of payment or stolen ideas. There is an urge to let stuff like this slide to prevent rocking the arts boat. Being such a small scene you fear that you will burn your bridges for future work or will tarnish your reputation.

However, I would suggest that any artist who is mistreated in anyway, should attempt to go public in an attempt to protect artists rights. To me this story in the West was a bit risky, but from the article half of the subsidy has been paid out and it has given the public a bit of an inside story on exhibiting in Sculpture by the Sea.

SSX falters on artist payment!

2010-06-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a email from Sculpture by the Sea stating that the organisation had not received anymore revenue from the sale of sculptures in the exhibition, since the conclusion of this years Cottesloe exhibition. As a result SSX organisers have breached the artist contract, which states that if artists who are unsuccessful at making any sale at the exhibition, will receive an artist subsidy to assist with the cost of exhibiting.

SSX was relying on receiving a grant from the Department of culture and the arts to provide this subsidy to artists. However, they were unsuccessful at receiving this grant and as a result artist have been left to bare the full cost of showing in the exhibition.

This is the sixth annual Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea exhibition. It is a well established exhibition that should be working towards creating a financially sustainable exhibition that is not totally dependent on funding bodies to pay there exhibiting artists subsidies. SSX has become complacent with there previously successful grant applications to the Department of Culture and the arts. Generally funding bodies assist with establishing new projects and exhibitions.

For myself exhibiting at Sculpture by the Sea was a big financial risk. It took me over 400 hours to complete my sculpture, I contracted a metal fabricator who spent another 100 hours on the project and then there is over one thousand dollars in materials. The artist subsidy was a small token gesture that I was relying on to pay my material bills. It is very disappointing that Sculpture by the Sea is not able to pay this subsidy on the agreed 10 week time line following the conclusion of the exhibition.

I feel that artists will be deterred from exhibiting in future events because of the SSX organisers inability to pay the artist subsidy this year. I also think that it will begin to stifle the type of work exhibited in the exhibition, artists will tend to create commercial work that will guarantee sales, rather than edgy works which experiment with new materials or works that make a political statement.

The piece i created for this years exhibition experimented with the use of industrial waste. The piece I created used recycled plastic, not a traditional sculpting material. This experimentation in the work meant I couldn't guarantee the lifespan of a relatively expensive work to interested buyers.

It is disappointing that artists who basically make the show at Cottesloe have been left to bare the entire expense for exhibiting in the show!

Sydney Town Inspiration

2010-06-20T04:38:00.000-07:00

Over the past week I have been in Sydney with my partner Saj. It was a great week to break up the design work and to scope out art and design in Sydney. We met up with a group of mates in Surry Hills on Crown street for dinner while we were perusing the streets for a good place to eat I came across my mate Adam Cruickshanks Chrysalis Pendant lamp. I was pretty chuffed to see Adams lighting design piece progress from the small paper models from back in the uni days, to a really spectacular feature in this bar in Surry Hills. It is people like Adam who have stuck at there design work over a number of years to develop very marketable pieces , who provide a bit of inspiration for me to keeping pursuing this very challenging career path.

We also went and checked out Carriage works in Redfern. Carriage works is a railway yard that has been converted into a contemporary Art-space for a range of different artists and art forms. On Saturday morning there are bussling food markets, filling the shed spaces with nice foodie aromas. In other railway sheds there are installation artists who have installed massive steel sculptures. At track 8 my sister works away doing some crazy hours at Murrugecko Stalker. A whole heap of art based offices have been created with precast cement panels. This is a quick way to stick up internal walls and fill the large ceiling space in the railway sheds. However, one downfall of the space is that the offices are bloody cold. It is like a house within a house, so no sunlight touches the office space. Maybe the offices should have been positioned on the North side of the the shed with an exposed wall to the sun.

Anyway, to get to the point, this was good food for thought. The space is very similar to the Midland Railway Yards, which is currently being developed my Midland Redevelopment Authority. It also showed an example of a fairly dero suburban location being converted into a really nice artistic space. This gives a bit of hope for Midland in Perth.

Pacific Designs

2010-05-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

Over the past month I have been undertaking some graphic design work for UNESCO. It is pretty amazing that through the technological wonders of the world like the Internet and Skype that you can complete international design jobs.

Basically I was given a brief to create a logo/ visual identity for the UNESCO Apia office which was more Pacific than the international UNESCO logo. Finally 127 emails later, 2 Skype calls and a few meetings in country and the final graphic solution has been developed into a A4 presentation folder, e- signatures and A4 letterheads. For the past few weeks I have been waking up anticipating a flood of emails from Akatsuki the Culture officer at UNESCO who is coordinating the project. She has the difficult job of trying to explain the different designs and to try and get her office over 50 + people to agree on an appropriate logo.

Anyway, I am glad to see the end to an interesting but challenging project. The logo needed to represent 18 Pacific Island Member Nations. It also needed to fit within UNESCO’s international graphic style guide. All of these aspects of the project as well as communicating via email has made for a challenging project.

Midland Junction Opening

2010-03-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Midland Junction Building which has recently been converted into an art studio space is ready to be opened. You are all invited to attend the launch on the 30th of April 2010, Spring St Midland, WA. Hope to see you there!

The Skidstar

2010-03-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

I think the collecting gene was bread into me. About 10 years ago when I was about 14 I was rummaging through the street chuck out in Como. I came across a Malvern Star Skidstar. It is a beautiful bike with a nice arced frame, and to top it off it has a cute little gear stick to change gears.

Anyway, the bike sat in numerous sheds and endured numerous moves from the trail of rentals we have lived in. Finally Nate Nisbet decided to take on the challenge of restoring the bike. What an awesome job he has done, turning a street chuck out item into a work of art. The bike is so nice that i am a bit scared to ride it.

(Just a word of advice if you live in Perth and you are up for the task of repairing an old bike, I wouldn't recommend you deal with Pal and Panther in North Perth. They have been the worst bike shop to deal with throughout the restoration process.)

Midway Message from the Gyre

2010-03-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

On the topic of Plastic on beaches. Here is a pretty tragic consequence of littering our beaches with plastic. Check out Chris Jordans Photographic and film exploration of the plight of Albatrosses on the North Pacific.

Thank You

2010-03-15T03:42:00.001-07:00

I might list my name as the artist to Spinifex. But a large piece like this doesn't happen without the help of so many people. This is visual artists version of the Thankyou credits that scroll out at the end of the film.

Thankyou

John Pepper: The genius who pulled this piece together, with his welding and engineering skills.

Alan Morgan: For being a all round help. From digging holes to cutting up strips right through to continually reminding me that the project was still not complete, right up until the night before.

Nathan Nisbet: Thanks for Digging holes

Don: Another sterling hole digger

Saju Abraham: Cheers for spending many hours drafting the plans for the engineering of the piece. And thanks for turning up for a surprise visit from Samoa, it was great sharing the celebration of finally having Spinifex up on the beach.

Jason Goddard: Thanks for making me add so much more steel to the piece to make it structurally sound. But seriously cheers for signing off on the engineering certificate for the piece.

Gabe: Thanks for the many phone calls and brick strap pick ups around Perth

Karli: Thanks for the Strap pick ups.

Nathan Setzinger: Cheers for collecting the straps from Balcatta High Schools paving project.

Shirley Pepper: Thanks for letting me convert your house into a temporary Artist Studio and for all the meals you feed the frustrated artist.

Lisa Fay: Thanks for the honest feedback on Sculpture by the Sea Application. Your critical judgement probably helped me get in.

Michelle Sullivan: Thanks for picking up straps even if we did have to do a midnight drop to get rid of them, because they were steel.

Michael Pepper: Cheers for letting me loan so many tools and trailers from around your place.

Steven Morgan: Thanks for the copper pipe

Newy: The good old Bunnings employ who picked up all the Gem transparent green straps.

Wilma Van Boxtel: Thanks for the mentoring my design project. Sorry I went so off track on the Sculpture by the sea piece.

Fiona Pepper: Thanks for spending an arduous day cutting up strips, you felt the pain as blisters popped up all over your hands.

Zoe Pepper: Great Sangas on install day.

For anyone I have forgotten, Thankyou!

Sea sculptors ask for more help

2010-03-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

I totally endorse this article in todays West Australian Newspaper which calls for the Department of Culture and the arts to increase there funding to the Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea Exhibition (SSX). As the article outlines a lot of artists exhibiting in this event take a lot financial risk to be able to exhibit. SSX gurantees that all artist will recieve $1000 dollars if they don't make any sales during the exhibition. This money is largely provided through the provision of funding from the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts.

I am pretty frugal with my money so I went to many lengths to save money on the project to prevent myself going in to too much debt. This involved making absolutley everything from hand. My motto was that I have time to spare but not a lot of money to spare. Laser cutting was a very tempting option when it came to making 160 lantern shaped spacers, but at $800 dollars I flagged that idea. Instead I have an ingenious father who welded up a cutter to stamp out all of these plastic fittings.

When it came to finding plastic to make the pods. Instead of buying raw material I cruised new housing development sites to find find my treasured brick straps.

These are just a few of my frugal ways which I employed to avoid racking up too much debt.

However, envitablly when you work on a project of this scale you will run up a bit of a debt. I have a $3000 debt for all the new steel and fittings I purchased.

When it comes to labour well the piece took around 400 hours of my own time to create. I was pretty strict at keeping a log book, so that for future projects I have a guide to how long it will take. I also owe my dad for around 60 hours labour, for all the technical advice and welding expertise he brought to the project.

Anyway, I am not writing this blog to rant at how much time and money was spent on the project. But merely to outline that the government expenditure to SSX would basically be a token gesture to cover costs incurred by the artists. It would be great if they come through with the full amount of funding request by SSX.

Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea 2010

2010-03-04T00:04:00.001-08:00

After a nerve racking one hour drive from Darlington to Cottesloe the sculpture made it safely to the beach. We just clipped a few gum trees up in the hills, but other than that everything was ok. When we made it down to the beach I had a stirling install team including Dad, Alan, Saj, Nate, Don and myself. After dragging the sculpture round the sand for a few hours while the curator got the position and angle correct it was time dig the 1.5 m footing in 36 degree heat. After about half an hour of digging and numerous wall caving in events we decided to opt for the easier option and get the skilled digger driver to work his magic. So all in all it was about a 5 hour installation, which was pretty much smooth sailing.

Now it is time to just chill out a bit and marvel at the work while relaxing at the beach!

Perth Festival 2010

2010-02-14T00:29:00.000-08:00

The Perth Festival for 2010 has commenced again. Perthites are treated to lots of inspiring international acts over the course of 4 weeks.

On Friday I attended the Noel Lane Key Note Address. Noel Lane and his family have established The Gibb's Farm, which is a farming property in New Zealand which has been transformed into a spectacular Sculpture park. There are over twenty works at the farm, many of the works are created by world renowned sculptors such as Richard Serra and Andy Goldsworthy.

After listening to this talk my 3.6 m square work paled into insignificance. The scale of the works at this farm are immense. The works range from about 27 m to 40 m sized pieces. The time frame of the work generally stretched for about 5 years from the initial consultation to the final installation. These time frames were humbling, here I was pretty proud of the 6 months I have poured into the sculpture i have just made.

Anyway, if anything this talk gave me some insight into the life of sculpting in the future. There are things to look ahead to like private commissions for sight specific works, five year work time frames and even larger scales to create work at.

Cow Parade 2010

2010-02-02T05:11:00.000-08:00

This is another project that I have been helping out on in my Job as a Art Tech. Julia a Year 10 student at Iona came up

with the design for Doodles the Cow. Julia spent about a month drawing the design on to the cow. Then Lisa ( Julias Art Teacher) and a whole bunch of mates ( including myself) spent many nights painting the intricate details into this cow. The Cow will be shown in the 2010 Margaret River Cowparade.

Thank Christ it is up!

2010-01-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

The Artist in Residence at Nan's place

2010-01-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

Well I have come to the point where I have out grown my studio and I have taken up an artist in residence at my Nanna's place in Darlington. This is the life! Nan reads my frustration at the laborious task of threading pods together and pumping out plastic joiners, she comes out with a cold ginger beer and ice-cream.

What a Nan, putting up with her garage being turned into the welding shed. The Back room is the pod threading station. The verandah has become the temporary photography studio. It must take a fair bit of tolerance to have an granddaughter come and be your artist in residence. Nevertheless the support keeps flowing, at 9 pm last night just as nan popped off to bed she came out with a plate of sweets to keep my sugar levels up.

Anyway, as you can see sleeping and breathing this project has enabled me to make a bit of progress. The frame has been welded up, at a very overwhelming scale. The miniature version for the Sculpture inside exhibition is now complete. It turned out to be not so miniature seeing as though i couldn't fit it into any car.

Hopefully with another week at Nan's the final piece will be near to complete. Dad has decided to mission up to Perth to help put an end to this task. He is the one of the most relaxed blokes I know and he is loosing sleep over the Spinifex screen.

Sustainability in Context

2009-12-14T22:29:00.000-08:00

Sustainability in design is very much dependent on the context in which the designer exists in. Ultimately primitive or indigenous culture is the best examples of sustainable design. However, it is unrealistic to expect the conditioning of Western societies to turn primitive over night. Therefore as designer we need to respond to the environmental and social context that we exist in.

For me a young designer living in Perth western Australia a concrete jungle surrounds me. Perth has an urban sprawl running effectively 100 km from North to South. It is unrealistic for all of inhabitants to abandon there homes and take up living in hollowed out logs, and sport the wears of a mere rabbit skin over the privates. As a designer it is unrealistic for me to start growing Pandanus leaves and weaving mats to feed the consumer habits of Perthites.

Instead I respond to my environmental context, and start re-using industrial waste. I pass sites of generic brick homes going up in generic suburbs and I raid the bin of these worksites and give the brick straps a second life. By using waste destined for landfill, I prolong the short life of a brick strap. The energy that goes in the producing a new raw sheet material is being saved because of the initiative I take. I am working with recycled materials, which may not be biodegrable at the end of there lifecycle. However, I feel that working with recycled materials. This is one way to work in a sustainable designer manner to respond to the consumerist context we live in and make use of our waste.

I work best with recycled materials. When something is free I don’t have hesitation to put my creativity to work. For the time being I have plowed into this project and experienced an overwhelming sense of ideas.

Where as if I work with a 100 % biodegradable fabric which cost 50 dollars a meter I am hesitant to put scissors to fabric. The dollars and cents scare the creativity out of me. However, to some degree this encourages and perpetuates the cycle of consumerism. However, for exhibition purposes I think I may well have to branch out into these fabrics to show a broader understanding of the sustainability topic.

Midland Junction

2009-12-08T17:26:00.001-08:00

Last Wednesday I signed a 5 year lease for a studio at the Midland Junction Building under Artsources management. As I wondered through the rooms I hoped that I wasn't making a bad decision to move in. The place was like a hovel. Lots of dust dirty and marked walls. The chimney running through my room was covered in fat, remnants from the old kitchen cooking. As the room heated up the smell of old fat filled the room. I noticed in the latest newsletter from Artsource they did a feature story on the new Artist space in Midland, but put some very dimly lit images in of the space.

So over the weekend I pulled in the troupes. I had my twin sister and Dad in helping me scrub the building cleaning. Between us I think it took about 30 hours of work to make the studio space come up to scratch. At the end of the days work I was a bit more satisfied that I was making a good decision to move into the studio space. In time with the presence of lots of artists the flaking paint will be barely visible. I can now photograph my studio in brightly lit conditions!

The Magical 64 Pods

2009-11-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Finally after 6 months working on the design and construction of the Spinifex Screen for Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea 2010 I have hit the magical 64 pods, required to complete the sculpture.

Reverse Art Truck

2009-11-22T02:04:00.000-08:00

The other day I was in material heaven. I got off a red eyed flight to Melbourne and then made it my mission for the day to make it out to Reverse Art Truck. Reverse Art Truck collects industrial waste for creative re-use. I was on a mission to look for Cotton Plastic Spindles. I want the flared base of the spindles to use in my Spinifex sculpture. I was pretty fortunate to find about 60 of these random objects. So I filled up a massive garbage bag of these things and then trucked on home via public transport. I received many a curious looks, people commenting that I had a few dead body parts in my mystery bag. Along with the curious looks I also ran into a nice bloke who also tinkers about make sculptures from recycled metals.

After getting these gems home I woke up to some tight muscles from carting this bag of junk around all day and the thought that these treasures need to make it back to WA.

I have come up with a cunning plan, i have brought my bike across and I can disguise them as "sporting articles".

The Sculpture by the Sea Adventures are never endless!

Let there be light in Movember

2009-11-17T04:42:00.000-08:00

Things have been a bit quite on the Blog front. Well let me explain... I literally feel like I have been working like a factory laborer in China. My hands are all blistered up and strengthening up with some nice callouses. The old industrial scissors are a little archaic to cut up endless meters of Brick Strapping for the sculpture by the sea submission. I think it is pretty humbling as a designer to be subjected to working like a slave on your own project. It means that I have a massive appreciation for people with hand skills and it also means that probably in future I won't be so ambitious when it comes to designing pretty pictures on the computer... because when it comes to the real deal it is a damn sight harder to create.

Luckily I have a very talented Dad who has saved me from RSI and blistering hands. Last week he came up with some more mechanised methods to cut all the plastic strips up. A pair of electric metal shears turned upside down and modified with a few guides has become my saviour.

So it is for this reason there is light at the end of the tunnel this Movember!

To perk things up even further good old Deal extreme is coming through with the goods. A set of LED flexible strip lights just arrived. I am planning on making my Sculptural piece a lit night time sculpture. However, tonight I just rigged it up to the old car battery only to be blinded by light!

On the Sustainable Exhibition design front. Well this week has been the tedious end of year clean up at Iona's Art Department. On my travels I came across a old box of test tubes which Lisa brought in a few weeks ago from a gara

ge sale. I stuck them in the kiln and fused these tubes together but at a temperature which enabled the glass to maintain it's shape and came up with a pretty exciting design idea... I will see were it goes in the next couple of weeks.

Creative Tides Exhibition

2009-11-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

I work as an Art Technician part time to supplement my income as an artist. Creative Tides is a professional exhibition which will be held at Iona Presentation College. It will be the third exhibition I have worked on installing and creating all the marketing materials for in the past year.

Anyway, this is the first opportunity I have to exhibit at the school, so as well as helping put the show together I will also be exhibiting. I would encourage everybody to attend.

Art Trail Exhibition Online

2009-09-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

I am currently a Perth based visual artist. I work from a studio space at the Midland Atelier. Generally I work with creating three-dimensional works. However,

Over the past couple of years I have lead a pretty transient lifestyle. Working on painting and a drawing has meant I can express my artistic creativities anywhere around the globe. I simply role it up and stick it in the backpack and bring it back to my home-town to exhibit.

Through my travels I have developed a fascination with photographing the interesting textural qualities of different rock surfaces. Generally I print these photographs out and develop artwork concept sketchs or on some occasions I just let loose on the canvas.

Through the reinterpretation of the rock surfaces into strong lines, shape and colours, often new and abstract images appear. The works are full of hidden surprises, after hours of sitting around in the lounge room watching these abstract works, different people spot different abstract figures and forms within my works. So I label my works as abstract narratives, if such a classification exists.

Anyway, Thanks for viewing my works in Art Trail 2009. Have fun spotting faces and figures.

Art Trail 09 Invitation

2009-09-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Climate Change

2009-09-12T02:21:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I walked out of RTR Fm, feeling as though I had been sort of some traumatic experience. Over the past two days I have had to put my public speaking to work. I signed myself up to speak on Climate Change and Sustainability over a year ago, after returning home from Samoa But when it came crunch time it turned out to be a bit of a daunting experience for me. I would say I probably average about 20 minutes of speaking per day. Even just in the practise sessions were a I sat in the car speaking to myself, my jaw started ceasing up from talking too much. Then when it came to the big d-days my mind went to mush and all my well thought out ideas didn’t come at as expected. I think all the acting and performing skills were granted to my sisters. So I thought I would use the blog as a forum to pretty much say what I wanted to say but in a more articulated and less nerve racking environment.

I went to Samoa on a mission to have an environmental design experience. I thought by heading out into the Pacific on an island where imported materials are relatively expensive and hard to find, I would have a limited palate of materials to work with which would automatically prompt environmentally considerate design pieces.

Also the experience of viewing an undeveloped nation where traditional crafts and lifestyles are practiced would be a grat source of inspiration.

As it turned out I didn’t get a great deal of time to produce my own design work, but I did have strong sustainable design encounter. Samoans have not had to go full circle like western nations to realise that sustainable lifestyles are the healthiest ways of living. Instead Samoan lifestyles are living breathing and working examples of sustainability. Samoa is small and isolated but culturally the place is still rich in traditional culture. Samoa is has not progressed significantly since the colonisation of the island in the late 1800’s by Germany. The island is a prime example of sustainable living.

Samoans still practice self-subsistence lifestyles. On small ½ plots families farm the necessary foods to supply the re entire family.

Samoans fish in local lagoons to supplement their food sources.

Most people live in open fales. Traditionally these buildings were constructed entirely from locally sourced materials. The structure built from local hardwoods. The roof clad with pandanus leaves. Blinds woven from coconut palms.

Admittedly the infiltration of western materials has seen the introduction of non natural materials into the fale structure such as roofing iron.

The buildings are designed with high ceilings and are very open designs to enable the airflow to move through the building and naturally cool the building. There is no need for air-conditioning.

Homes are furnished minimally; generally a woven pandanus mat will do for sleeping. Samoans homes are not cluttered with a whole lot of material crap.

One of the most striking things in the Samoan culture is the simplicity of people’s lifestyles. This yearlong experience of living in sustainable country has made a massive impression on my life. In some ways I feel that we have indoctrinated these indigenous cultures with the idea that ‘progressive’ development should model the west. Cultures should revolve around consumerism. Instead I think that in the event of Climate Change there is a need for western nations to look at the sustainable merits of indigenous cultures. We need work to protect this culture and empower people respect there indigenous ancestors.

When I returned home, the scale of everything in Australia was the most striking thing. Here in Perth we live in extravagance.

The average home is 227.6 sqm to house approximately 3 people. Compared with the 200 sqm homes of a Samoan that house around 8 to 15 people.

80 percent of Samoans use public transport as their sole form of transport. There are just 18,000 motor vehicles and 120,000 people living on the island that equates to just over 6.6 percent of the population relying on personal motor vehicles.

We have a heavy reliance on motor vehicles. In the 12 months ended in October 2007, 14.8 million vehicles were registered in Australia with a population of 22 million people. This equates to 67 % of the population using motor vehicles as their prime form of transport.

Consumption habits are a bit out of control, we purchase new products by the season. Our lifestyles have become disposable. When comparing the lifestyles of Samoans and Australians it becomes apparent that the Australian culture is very much fossil fuel dependent. This dependence on fossil fuels is creating disproportionate levels in the Carbon Footprint that each nation makes.

Australians produce 50% more Carbon emissions than people living in Kirabati.

However, despite Samoans and other Pacific island nations being role models in sustainable living. These island states, poor developing countries will be hit earliest and hardest by climate change, even though they have contributed little to causing the problem. The international community including Australia has an obligation to support pacific islanders in adapting to Climate Change.

The push and change is not going to come from the pacific. Pacific islanders live in isolated islands in the Pacific, they have very little resources to lobby for high carbon emitters to reduce their emissions. These nations have small political weight in a global context. But this is not to say there is not anxiety being expressed in the Pacific community about the prospect of climate change.

The Samoans are concerned but in a quite humble sort of way. With 90% of people practicing Christians and 700 churches to serve a population of 120,000 a lot of praying goes on to mitigate the islands of Samoa, from the devastation from natural disasters. At the beginning of the wet season a number of church’s hold special church services to pray for the country’s protection from cyclone and storm devastation. Government officials and churchgoers are encouraged to fast for half a day for a week in an attempt to ward off cyclones.

While I was living in Samoa Cyclone Damien hit Fiji in late December 2007 and caused some severe flooding and damage to infrastructure to the island. The cyclone was heading for Samoa and at the last moment diverted off into the Pacific Ocean. There was a bit of pacific rivalry occurring between the Samoans and the Fijians. The Samoans commented that the Fijians musn’t have been praying hard enough. I think the corruption currently going on in the Fijian government was also some of the logic behind, ‘Gods’ decision to hit Fiji with a cyclone.

With all respect I don’t think the Samoans fatalist approach will solve the problems of climate Change or divert storms from the coast of Samoa. However, the Samoans faith expresses their concern with the changing climate in the pacific.

Another aspect of life in Samoa is learning to chill out and take things easy. It is very hard to obviously raise concern and stress in a Samoan.

I worked for a small Non Government Organisation called Tagiilima Handicraft Association. The organisation is heavily reliant on Aid money, and the organisation was having trouble with being reissued with there funding. My work mates get paid the equivalent of 50 Australian dollars a week and they hadn’t been paid for over six weeks. On the sixth week of no payment the Electric Power Company arrived and cut the power to the office. This meant we had no power to work our computers and power tools. In this pretty dire situation my work mates would crack up laughing about the situation. There was no sense of urgency at the office, people just cruised about in the office. However, it was at this point that I lost it, I was fed up with the lack of action at the organisation and I moved onto a new volunteer assignment at the Samoa Museum. Six months later I returned on holiday and the same thing had re-occurred. At the reaction remained the same. People just cruise along in Samoa, the worst of situations are taken pretty lightly.

I suppose it is the fatalist response and the general relaxed atmosphere reaction, which explains why I am writing on the topic of climate change. We westerners are very reactionary. It wasn’t in my nature to chill out on such a threatening topic. Things like climate change get at you and you want to do something about it, take action. So a bunch of volunteers got to together to create a short film on the topic. We didn’t have a great deal of resources at hand. Just a sturdy old video camera and bit initiative saw us undertake the development of the short film Coral Currency takes a dive, Samoan tourisim in a warming world. For me this was a great way to get a better understanding of the specific implications threatening the Pacific Islands. I hope it assists you in putting a Pacific face to the implications of Climate Change.

To view the film follow the link to the Oxfam Website.

Souther Art Trail 2009

2009-09-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

If anyone is feeling like a trip to Denmark in the up coming weeks than here is a good excuse. On the 26th of September 2009 a number visual art spaces will come alive with a number of different local exhibitions opening for a month long period. Karli Dore and myself will be exhibiting a series of paintings at the West Cape Howe Winery. We are currently in the process of organising an opening on Sunday the 27th of September 2009... so keep this weekend free.

You can download a copy of the Art trail booklet for all the information on the exhibition venues and artists. Visit the Art South Wa site

Please disregard the Artist blurb on myself, it has been totally cocked up. It should read... Holly Pepper's abstract landscapes are inspired by rock faces.

Reel Change Film Festival

2009-09-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/climate-change/take-action/reel-change-films.php#6

Sculpture by the Sea 2010

2009-08-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

For a long time now I have dreamt of exhibiting in the Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea Exhibition. So I got cracking and spent a good 12 hours pumping out the design work to represent my concept. I am not usually a last minute person but I purposely left it to the last minute on this occasion; I have a tendency to spend way to long on these submissions. Days can slip away when you refine and refine the submission content.The rate of knock backs an artist gets means that you can’t become too attached to your design concepts. But at the same time you have to have enough love and logic invested in the design idea that you can pull it off later down the track.

Anyway, to cut to the chase my sculpture concept has been accepted by the Sculpture by the Sea selection committee. I will be one of the 60 exhibitors at the beach side exhibition in March 2010. To put things mildly I am over the moon about my selection in the exhibition. This is one big break for an emerging artist like myself. The sculpture by the sea team expects over 140,000 visitors to the event over the 3 weeks, so surely the exposure from this event will be beneficial. But I think above all the nicest part about exhibiting in this exhibition is that it is fun, it is an exhibition that makes art accessible broad target audience.

Working with a Mentor

2009-08-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

As a young and emerging artist I feel it is pretty important to establish a mentor relationship with someone who can support you through the duration of an art project. For the next six months I will be mentored by Wilma Van Boxtel, who operates her own industrial design business Desos Designs.

Basically Wilma is my sounding board for ideas and she acts as my sustainability consciousness. Wilma has a strong ability to pear the wild art and design ideas back to the original design brief ensuring that the products fulfill the criteria of good eco design principles.

Choosing the right mentor is really important. I have attempted this mentoring on many occasions, without a great deal of success. Finding someone that is genuinely keen to help out is always a bonus. Someone that you feel comfortable calling up for advice is a step in the right direction.

Wilma and I work in different ways, Wilma is very much into working in 3D modeling programs from the conceptual stage right through to the final design. Whereas I loathe working in this manner, I like to work in hands on manner, working the material itself. Despite our differences in design practice, I feel its is important to expose myself to as many different design professionals to work out a suitable practice for myself which suits my skills, interest and abilities.

Wilma has a good knowledge of marketing I think this will be of great assistants for this specific design project. One of the personal aims I have for this project is to start to get some exposure to my work. For too long now my pieces have been lovely objects, which adorn my household, it is time for me to break out and show people my talents. As well as this there is always a sense of mystery to a designers work, and a general lack of understanding of what a day in the life of designer comprises of. Hopefully with a bit of assistants from Wilma I will be able to break into the Western Australian Design scene. Having a mentor is one step in the right direction, associating yourself and seeking out professional advice which can set your work and practice on its way.

Green Drinks

2009-08-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

Green Drinks

UWA University Club

Date: Tuesday 8 September
Time: 6pm - 8pm
Venue: Case Study Room and Club Cafe
Price: Free Event!

At this event I will be screening a short film called 'Coral Currency takes a Dive, Samoan Tourism in a warming world.' During my volunteer assignment in Samoa a group of volunteers including myself, embarked on a developing a small short film that explored the impact of Climate Change on Samoa's tourism. The film was screened at the Pacific Climate Change Film Festival in Fiji and at The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań. I thought I would take this opportunity at Green Drinks to share the film with a Western Australian audience, to enable them to gain a small insight into the impacts of Climate Change on our Pacific Island neighbors.

The Film Blurb-

Pristine beaches, swaying coconut palms, turquoise waters: the images of Samoa that are conjured in the minds of people the world over. Samoa relies on it's natural beauty to attract visitors from overseas, and these visitors are vital to the country's economy. But climate change has the potential to greatly impact on the natural environment, the very thing that is so important to attracting tourists to the region. This documentary examine these potential impacts, and the effects they may have on the livelihoods of the Samoan people.

Come along to Green Drinks to view the film and have a small open forum discussion on the topic.

Please RSVP the UWA University club on +61 8 6488 8770.

Trash catchers Robot

2009-08-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of months while I was waiting for the announcements of grants and arranging my studio space I started working on the Trash catchers project. Trashcatchers is a community arts short film project which is being run by the YMCA in Leederville. The film is going to communicate the messages of recycling, reducing and reusing in a 5 minute short film. Over the past 15 weeks a group of about 10 young people have been tinkering way at writing scripts, performing and designing costumes. My main role in the project was working out of REMIDA with Jen and Poppy to produce a Robot costume. The E-waste Robot, emerges out of the bin, and breaks out some funky dances moves in an attempt to encourage us to dispose of our e-waste responsibly.

The E-Waste robot encourages us to recycle our e-waste responsibly, by taking your old electronics to a certified dumping zones. This ensures that all the heavy metals contained in the electronics don't end up in landfill, instead they can be dismantled and sorted into there different metals and plastics.

Thanks to Poppy Van Ord for her lovely pics of the E-Waste Robot

2009-08-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

Material Reuse

2009-07-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of weeks I have been tinkering around in my workshop space with lots of PET plastic straps that wrap around packs of bricks. I have developed an eagle eye for worksites and skip bins. There have been plenty of occasions lately when I am cruising the streets of Perth on my bike and I spot a special piece of material on a roadside chuck out, so I rig up a novel little contraption that enables to cart the material and make my way home. Findi

ng these roadside treasures fills me with a lot of inspiration, the endless possibilities of creative uses makes my

mind tick..

I have also been visiting REMIDA a facility, which collects clean, light industrial waste for use in creative projects. REMIDA is based in West Perth, a little too close to my home. I feel like I am in material heaven at REMIDA. I am regularly scooting back to collect more treasures. I have had to gather some restraint, to prevent my studio space from overflowing from material. Slowly my studio space grows and grows with stacks of re-usable materials.

Siapo Making in Samoa

2009-07-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

Today I visited Makulata a local Samoan Siapo maker. Makulata lives in a remote village named Siutu in Savaii. Through the help of Samoan socialite Steve Brown, I was able to track down a lesson on Siapo making. Siapo is a natural fabric or paper fiber made from mulberry bark. At the conclusion of a skillful two-hour session session of scrapping and beating the mulberry bark a surprisingly long length of fabric appeared approximately 1.5 meters by 5 meters.

Today Siapo is just used for decorative purposes, or as tourist souvenirs that travelers purchase. However, back before the missionaries arrived in Samoa, Samoans would dress in Siapo, completely natural and biodegradable clothing.

Once again another inspiring sustainable design experience. You really have to praise the work of cultural preservationists and historians who assist in documenting and preserving these traditional practices. It is traditional practices like Siapo making that I am attempting to learn from.

Seeking Samoan Inspiration

2009-07-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

I don’t need to read glossy design magazines for my inspiration. Instead I would prefer to go more primitive and get amongst traditional cultures for inspiration to my design work. For the past three days I have been cycling Savaii, an island in Samoa. Savaii is 300km round trip covered in lush tropical landscape

, with pristine oceans surrounding it’s shores. I am back immersing myself in Samoa for a short holiday, ten months on from undertaking a long term volunteer placement here.

On this relatively small and isolated island you still see a lot of traditional Samoan culture practiced today. People source there food by practicing self substance farming, running small scale farms to provided the family home with fresh food. A lot of S

amoans live in fales, open grass hu

ts made from various hardwoods and coconut palms. Traditionally you eat from woven coconut leaf plates. Fruit and Vegetables are transported and are sold in hand woven coconut baskets.

These guys are living, breathing examples of Eco design and sustainable living. The Despite being colonised by Germany over one hundred years ago the Samoan lifestyle has not progressed or should I say regressed to full blown western consumerist culture, traditional life lives on. Samoans humbly plod away at their sustainable lifestyles without the hype at which we acclaim for adopting sustainable practices in our western lives.

So basically living in Samoa as a volunteer over the past year has had an enormous impact on how I practice as a designer. I spent a few months questioning the need for more designs and products in our world after returning home, when in Samoa things haven’t really progressed, the genius designs have been born from tradition and the primitiveness of the culture. But when you are born with a making gene it is just inherent and you can’t stop making things, it is the process and materials that I employ that I am attempting to alter to positive sustainable design solution.

It is through this design project that I want to try to express the impact this year has had on me, exploring Eco Design solutions, which re-use or recycle. So far it has been weaving plastic straps from the jungle of masonry that surrounds me in my home context.

Midland Atelier

2009-06-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

The Midland Atelier is housed in the Pattern shop, one of the many buildings in the old railway workshops, based on the outskirts of Perth. The surroundings are pretty inspiring. Down below are 12 designer makers, working away at there individual businesses. My studio sits above the hive action downstairs; I am based in the Water tower, away from the dust of all the wood creations.

Since moving into the space I have managed to fill one pretty large space with all sorts of collected treasures. I have traveled to Denmark to collect all of my precious objects, which have been stashed away in storage.

Whilst working out at Midland I aim to develop a new body of work to exhibit in my first solo exhibition in early 2010. I will focus primarily on developing a range of sustainable designed floor mats handmade from recycled materials and/or environmentally sustainable certified materials. Throughout the production of these prototypes I will be mentored by Wilma Van Boxtel an award winning, Western Australian based designer who has a strong philosophy and experience in sustainable furniture design.