Niemansland online
01 July 2014
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Niemansland, a cross-national collaborative work. Artists in regular online link-up to evolve conceptual elements. Project development workshop in Scotland and Germany, first week of October.
Whispering Architecture research
01 April 2014
Found image from Lionel Bawden
No Man's Land : Neimansland
02 March 2014
no man's land : neimansland
No Man’s Land : Neimansland is a collaborative international project which merges the seemingly congruent elements of site specificity and travel in terms of art.
A pair of identical floating concertina walkways are sited on opposing shores of waterways in Australia, Germany, Scotland and Holland. Initially installed in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, the floating walkways will travel to the Duisburg Ruhrort Ruhr district, the Clyde River in Glasgow and Buiksloterham IJ in Amsterdam, all the while accruing the memory of their different sitings and interactions.
The work refers to the impasse, the place no one dares traverse, the gap of fear and uncertainty between two sides of tentative safety –a memory, a metaphor inherited from the impossible stand off of World War 1 trench warfare.
Akin to the varied locations of No Man’s Land : Neimansland is the the multi-faceted nature of the artists and collaborators involved in it’s imagining and manifestation.
Cementa15 - Residency
09 February 2014
Cementa15 Residency - Kandos: Part One (9 Feb – 17 Feb 2014)
THE SHOP RESIDENCY
I was in partial lockdown for a week in Kandos at the shop-residency. I spent my time reading writing, drawing thinking, overheating, swimming, walking, a couple of incidental as well as organised meetings with towns people and generally just being in Kandos as an disconnected outsider. As an outsider one is given the opportunity to observe and see the town from a distance. The anonymity affords one the privilege of isolation to contemplate and become absorbed in the landscape of internal thoughts.
I worked upon a series of quick sketches for possible future artworks. I installed 3 simple inter-related ideas in the shop windows. They explored how we may eavesdrop upon…
1. a conversation
2. lines in a book
3. the sub-conscious while asleep
THE SHOP WINDOWS
The sketches that resonated most engaged the windows as a membrane. This membrane between the inside and outside of the shop, acts as an acoustic diaphragm for listening to the muffled whispers—external sounds of the street or simply a place to ‘eavesdrop’ on the passing community. How do we decipher what is public and what is private?
In front of the residency shop window is a place for bumping into people and the sharing of words. The conversations slip in and out of local reference—speaking about the weather; how someone is feeling that day; about the how the kids are going at school; arrange a time to meet up in the future; about an elderly parent; complain about the weather…a place for simple promises of connectedness. This place or site directs and instigates the conversation between friends, neighbours, family, co-workers and the occasional stranger.
Outside the shop window is a place where communication is shaped by politeness, delight, coincidence, repetition – “echoing between local situation and the general shared spaces created amongst people and how they know one another.”(1)
shop windows
shop windows
LINE OF SIGHT
On entering and leaving the township of Kandos one is greeted by the iconic dome or rotunda. It is not a whispering dome but a landmark place for public and social meeting. The dome structure and the shop residency windows are line of sight, offering an opportunity to transmit wireless communication between the two sites.
(1)B. LaBelle, “Misplace-Dropping Eaves on Ethics.” Hearing Places, ed. by R. Bandt, M. Duffy& D. MacKinnon. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009)
line of sight
Dirt Blood Water - Residency
13 January 2014
ABOUT THE PROJECT - overview film
PUBLIC TALK Sydney Festival: 25 January 2014 Meet the Makers: Can Site Specific Work Tour? 12 noon, Saturday 25 January The Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival Village, Hyde Park, Sydney
Darling Harbour site visit
Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority invites you to a public forum at Sydney Festival with the artists and curators of a bold experiment. Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Urbane Künste Ruhr and Glasgow Life / Merchant City Festival have brought together international public artists Robyn Backen, Andre Dekker, Graham Eatough, Nigel Helyer and Jennifer Turpin, alongside urban planners, sociologists, archaeologists and engineers, to create a stunning and thought-provoking public artwork for the waterways of Sydney, Glasgow and Ruhr.
Brainstorming
Work environment
RESIDENCY: 13 - 23 January, Bundanon
On Monday 13 January, the Foreshore Authority hosted the Dirt Blood and Water Lab at the Bundanon retreat, in southern NSW, where I worked together with internationally-acclaimed public artists Andre Dekker - Rotterdam Netherlands, Graham Eatough - Glasgow Scotland, Nigel Helyer - Sydney, and Jennifer Turpin - Sydney, in a melding of creative minds.
Why Dirt Blood and Water?
We explored these three themes in the context of human connections to waterways, life at the edge of land, and the military echoes of The Great War in these urban habitats. We were joined by experts across a range of disciplines including urban planning, social geography, maritime archaeology and engineering.
During the ten day residency, the artists worked with curators: Michael Cohen - Sydney Foreshore Authority, Katja Aßmann - artistic director of Urbane Künste Ruhr, Germany and Lorenzo Mele - senior arts officer, Glasgow Merchant City Festival.
Camouflage Install
09 August 2013
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Bricklayers John and Robbie
Assistance from Asha Forsyth