EKWC Den Bosch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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