The Midland Junction Studios

Go and See this Film!

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

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

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!

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

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

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.