What I’m up to this year…
2015:
In April I’m heading to Kandos for CEMENTA festival, presenting Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone there with Louise Curham, in an outdoors setting (report here).
I’m continuing to push on with the Sugar vs the Reef project, with visits to Mackay in Queensland to collaborate with retired farmer John Sweet (details here).
2014:
Yeomans Project rolls on until late January at the AGNSW, and in April at the Redlands Art Prize at the National Art School, with a Field Trip to The Oaks, a Keyline Farm on the outskirts of Sydney.
Louise Curham and I (Teaching and Learning Cinema) do a short residency at Canberra Contemporary Artspace, where we develop and present our first performance re-enactment of Malcolm Le Grice’s Horror Film 1 (1971).
This year, for the first time I’m co-ordinating the first year “Visual Foundations” programme for all design and art students at UOW.
At Big Fag Press, we launch in our new home in Glebe, and print some lovely editions, particularly by Jo Law, and by the Elastic Collective.
With Brogan Bunt and Kim Williams, beginning a new project Walking Upstream: Waterways of the Illawarra.
2013:
From May to August I’ll be in London for an Australia Council residency. I’ll be working with m’colleague Louise Curham on research towards the re-enactment of Malcolm Le Grice’s Horror Film 1 (1971) – more details about the project as it unfolds over here at the Teaching and Learning Cinema website. Throughout the year I’ll be continuing to work with Big Fag Press (we’re starting the year with our Big Fag Press Emerging Artist Residency Programme). And at the end of the year, the Yeomans Project, a collaboration with Ian Milliss, will finally arrive at the Art Gallery of NSW (for which it was originally proposed in 1975). I’ll be working at University of Wollongong all the while, teaching Social Intersections again with Brogan Bunt, as well as guiding our third year media arts students through to the end of their degree.
2012:
Lots of mentoring of young artists going on this year. Besides young Albie May, here are some other youngsters I’m working with… I’m lecturing in Media Arts at University of Wollongong, collaborating with Brogan Bunt on a new subject called SOCIAL INTERSECTIONS. I’m also mentoring Laura Hindmarsh, who won a JUMP programme place for 2012. Plus, for more than a year now, we’ve had our wonderful intern at Big Fag Press, Louise Anderson, helping us out. [Update – in September, Ian Milliss and I won the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award for our Yeomans Project – very pleasing news]
2011:
I’m working on being a dad! Lizzie and I welcomed little Albie May in September.
This year, I’m working with Ian Milliss on Yeomans Project, which exists as a blog, a series of prints made on the Big Fag Press, an exhibition at ACCA, and a series of events (including a bus tour). Until mid-year, I’m continuing with Tending, in collaboration with Diego Bonetto.
July to November 2010
I’m working on an Environmental Audit as part of the MCA’s exhibition In the Balance: Art for a Changing World. The project involves a blog and a series of prints produced on the Big Fag Press, and a whole lotta conversations…
Also in 2010, I’m gardening with my co-digger Diego Bonetto, out at the Sydney College of the Arts in Rozelle, in a project called Tending. Budding gardeners are welcome to come and join in! You can follow the project blog here.
As of the end of 2009 I finished my PhD!
It was a practice-based research project through Deakin University, called Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art. The thesis consisted of 2 blog/art projects, Bilateral Kellerberrin and Bilateral Petersham, and an accompanying exhibition and written exegesis. (An early paper I wrote about Bilateral Kellerberrin, which forms the basis of one of the chapters is here.) If you’d like to read the exegesis, email me and I’ll send you the PDF.
In first semester 2010:
…I was teaching part time Media Arts at Wollongong University. I taught Media Arts 101 (introduction to media arts theory and practice, including audio, photography, and video); and Media Arts 201 (theory and practice of experimental film and video).
And also earlier this year:
…in a rather labour intensive learning experiment, I guest-edited an edition of Artlink magazine, themed “the Underground” – which launched in June…
– – – Older stuff – – –
In July-August 2009:
…I presented my exhibition The Sham at the George Paton gallery in Melbourne.
In July 2009:
… I worked with Louise Curham (Teaching and Learning Cinema) to present (Wo)man with Mirror at Artspace, Sydney (more on that below)…
In May 2009:
…I worked with Astrid L’orange and Nick Keys on a thoroughly documented re-enactment of Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hoffman (originally 1963).
In March 2009:
…I spent a lot of time thinking a lot about goats for the project GRUFFLING, as part of the West Brunswick Sculpture Triennale.
In late 2008:
…I was contemplating going off-line for a year. Sadly for some (happily for others) that project has been postponed for the moment…
Since 2005:
…I’ve been working with SquatSpace on the Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty. SquatSpace has been around since 2000, and also organises the annual SquatFest Film festival. There’s talk about a big “history of SquatSpace and friends” exhibition in 2011…
Every so often:
… I give invited guest lectures and conference presentations on topics such as Blogging as a Form of Art, Expanded Cinema, Re-Enactment as an Artistic Strategy, Relational Aesthetics, Michel de Certeau’s Walking in the City, New Public Art Practices, the work of SquatSpace, Big Fag Press, and of course the obligatory vanity speeches about my own artwork.
On an ongoing (very slow) basis:
… I collaborate with Louise Curham with our collaborative project, The Teaching and Learning Cinema (The TLC). In 2009, we re-enacted Guy Sherwin’s Man with Mirror (1976) – our version is (Wo)man with Mirror, which we presented for the first time at Artspace, in an exhibition curated by Anneke Jaspers called Imprint. In 2007, we re-created the conditions for the experience of Anthony McCall’s Long Film for Ambient Light (1975).
[The TLC is a development from the Sydney Moving Image Coalition (SMIC). As SMIC, we also toured Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone to various cities around Australia. I have contributed an essay on the TLC’s re-creation of Anthony McCall’s Long Film for Ambient Light (1975) for a (very long time coming) forthcoming book entitled Perform, Repeat, Record: A Critical Anthology of Live Art in History, edited by Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield.]
Since 2005:
I’ve worked with the Big Fag Press (Sydney’s artist-run offset printing co-op). Astoundingly, a print I made on the Press won the Marrickville Art Prize in 2007. It was a map of all the garbage I found on a traffic island in Adelaide.
Recently, several members of Big Fag Press joined forces with various artists, activists and zinesters to purchase a RISOgraphic stencil press, called the Rizzeria.
Between 2006 and 2008:
I dabbled in creative writing, hammering out occasional stories for Barbara Campbell’s 1001 Nights Cast. (By the way, you might also like to check out some of the wonderful stories by Tim Wright and Vanessa Berry as part of that project.)
A while back now:
I collaborated with Lisa Kelly on Feedback Sessions (a model pilfered from the Clubs Project folks in Melbourne). My involvement has been limited recently, and the group (sans moi) has since evolved to “The Free Association“, involving a wider range of enthusiastic participants.