TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SAILOR… 100 Years, 100 Women, 100 Stories, 100 Brooches

Kirsten Fitzpatrick has curated an exhibition TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SAILOR… 100 Years, 100 Women, 100 Stories, 100 Brooches – for  Artisan, Brisbane.  The show will be at Artisan from 29.09.11  - 12.11.11 and then it will tour nationally.

The exhibition will feature '100 stories of great Australian women who have broken the barriers in arts, sciences, humanities and sports and 100 brooches made in response to these stories by 100 of Australia's most talented women jewellers, this exhibition celebrates the centenary of International Women's Day.'

I was lucky enough to be one of the artists invited to be involved.  I was provided with a short biography and asked to create a brooch in response.  I was also lucky to be matched up with Sister Elizabeth Kenny.  An extraordinary lady who without formal medical training revolutionised the treatment for Polio.  This was at a time when there was no cure for Polio and when women weren't valued in medical roles other than nursing and certainly not as inventors of treatments.  Sister Elizabeth Kenny was my Great Great Aunt (my Grandmother's Aunt).  My mother while very young met Sister Kenny and I grew up with stories from my mother and my grandmother about Sister Kenny.

Sister Elizabeth Kenny was inspired and outspoken at a time when these were not attributes encouraged or admired in a woman.  She led a very public life and as result her achievements and criticisms have been fairly well documented. She had many detractors including a Royal Commission of Queensland Doctors, but was not deterred from continuing to practice her revolutionary treatment of Polio Victims. I understand she had a strong personality and was an imposing and sometimes fierce woman, but always attentive and tender to patients. I made the brooch as one for her to wear, large as she was a bold woman, shaped to suggest a medal in form, proudly stating her title and including a feminine posy of the Queensland State flower, the Cook Town Orchid. While she did live to receive recognition for what she achieved in her life, most was from overseas, primarily America, not Queensland where much of her work was done.

                                    Photography by Rod Buchholz

Sister Kenny wore a lot of black and I chose silver with pierced out sections to contrast with this.

definitely green wash

My show opened last night; having a solo show is always a little daunting as you can't hide amongst the other exhibitors. The Ranamok Glass Prize was opening at the same time at Artisan, so I did have the benefit of a shared audience.  

It was great to get this feedback today from Damian Buckley (thank You Damian!):

The objects fascinate, intrigue and delight the viewer. They go beyond the realm of mere absurdest objects which can tend to alienate, bewilder and ultimately annoy the viewer. The detailed and precise treatment of the works transforms them into artifacts themselves, melding them seamlessly with the found objects they contain. These artifacts are of another world which has it's own consistent logic and order, even if that order is beyond our current understanding. Like any visit to a good museum, the pleasure for the viewer comes from unraveling the clues of this unknown world that the artifacts have left behind. The fact that there is a healthy 'nod and a wink', thrown into the process adds to the warmth and pleasure of viewing them.

In short, they are "lovely".

I got some other emailed feedback which I'm checking to see if the writers are happy for me to add.  So far I've been enjoying people's interpretations of my work, they give me an insight into a different way of viewing them. After looking at small things closely for a long time, these new perspectives are something I need.  

tool is installed and ready to open

sneak preview

Creative Industries Academy: Concert, Conference and Design Fair

I'll be heading to East Timor soon to speak and participate in the Creative Industries Academy Concert, Conference and Design fair.  I've just received the press release which includes a link to the event program, it looks big!

"Academy of Arts and Creative Industries
Between July 14 to 17 the Dili Cultural Centre – CCD (former Mercado Lama) will host a Concert, International Conference and Design Fair, with the main purpose of launching the future Academy of Arts and Creative Industries of Timor-Leste. The program will start on Thursday the 14th, at 6pm, with a Concert by national and international artists, and a special appearance by HE the Prime-minister, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão. On the the 15th and 16th, an International Conference will take place, featuring sessions on visual arts, music, dance, cinema, television, architecture, design, publicity, crafts, literature, museums, galleries and many more. During these days and until Sunday the 17th, CCD will open to the public, who besides taking part in these events may also visit the Design Fair which will take place in CCD’s gardens. This event is a joint-organisation of the State Secretariat of Culture, the State Secretariat of the Counsell of Ministers, and the Queensland College of Arts, Griffith University, in Australia."

read the press release

crazy wiring Japan 2010

something John Steinbeck wrote in the 60s that is so relevant today

I read this book at the end of last year.  It was a break from reading work related non fiction but weirdly enough it ended up being related closer to my work than I anticipated.

Eventually I had to come out of the tree-hidden roads and do my best to by pass the cities.  Hartford and Providence and such are big cities, bustling with manufacturing, lousy with traffic.  It takes far longer to go through cities than to drive several miles.  And in the intricate taffic pattern, as you try to find your way through, there's no possibility of seeing anything.  But now I have been through hundreds of towns and cities in every climate and against evrey kind of scenery, and of course they are all different, and the people have points of difference but in some ways they are all alike.  American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash - all of them - surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish.  Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much.  The mountains of things we throw away greater than the things we use.  In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exhuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.  Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these thrown-out things would have been saved and used for something.  This is not said in criticism of one system or the other, but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness - chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea.  When an Indian village became too deep in its own filth, the inhabitants moved. And we have no place to which to move. (Steinbeck, John in Travels with Charley in Search of America, p 28-29, first published 1962, this quote from the 1965 Pan London edition)

Tool

finalising the details of my forthcoming exhibition

I have a show coming up in the Crucible space at Artisan, I'll post more details soon...

exhibition opening Wednesday 8 September 2010

 

metro arts