We super charged to be facilitating a round table discussion hosted by NAVA (National Association of Visual Artists) on the pros and cons of being an artist or creative in our regional Toowoomba. We look to create some critical dialogue by enabling our local artists to be heard. Free tickets to the event on December 15th can be booked here and more information on what NAVA are up to can be found here
All are welcome
We have been lucky enough to continue dialogue with Lynne during her month at RAYGUN; asking questions like where she’s at right now in her practice and what influences she is currently paying attention to. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and words with us Lynne.
I find that right now, both in relation to Rocket and more broadly, I’m thinking about movement. And the intersection of movement and visual information. The body navigating space, having a relational experience with its surroundings. It’s the most basic experience any of us can have, and it more or less defines our being.
Whenever I come back to thinking about movement, which happens fairly often, I always come back to a contemporary dance piece that never fails to unglue me. In the Upper Room by Twyla Tharp. While I’m not a choreographer, and I don’t aim to be, this dance piece continues to guide and inform my thinking about movement in my installations. I can’t get enough of this excerpt from the piece:
On Friday night we had a wonderful turn up of new and old faces at the opening of Lynne’s show ROCKET. The pink and white fringed installation was discussed as one of the working methodologies she engages with (different fabrics and materials) as a way to expand the possibilities she finds in paint. Also the idea of nurturing and sharing, conceptual concerns explored in Lynne’s work was embraced both visually and physically. We even had theatre artists engage with it as a kind of curtain from which to play out impromptu dialogue. Lots of fun and although Lynne wasn’t able to fly the distance (NY/AUS) we felt she was with us.
The exhibition will be on display throughout November.
For more information on Lynne’s work here is an excerpt from an interview carried out with Lynne in 2015 for Tarn McLean’s PhD thesis Grubby Mistakes and Beautiful Propositions: The shift of Painting out as a way to look back in
In an interview with Harlow for this research she discusses her works exist beyond the picture frame and explore colour and material through a reduced aesthetic:
I choose to think about painting as a means of generating a visual and physical experience that is rooted in the traditional two-dimensional surface but expands beyond it. This expansion, this departure from Greenberg’s autonomous art object and progression beyond Fried’s concern with theatricality, aims to place painting in dialogue with spatial experience, sound and performance. My work is grounded in art historical awareness. Limitless and Lonesome, an installation I first presented in 2005, is an example of my acknowledgement of historical movements (color field and geometric abstraction) as I explore the intersection of color and music using my specific approach and vocabulary.
Harlow’s artworks are responses to multiple working conditions such as site-specific locations and the resulting spatial arrangements, or her responsive engagement with fabric or Plexiglas. She continues to discuss that while these outcomes are receptive to specific working conditions, they are ultimately derived from the conceptual investigations initially derived from the working space of the picture frame:
There’s no hierarchy among these works. They all address the same questions, interests and concerns. I love being able to move between different media to explore ideas and allow varied materials, spatial arrangements and movement to inform my approach to painted works. I guess what’s most significant is the conversation that’s generated between my different ways of working, the ways in which my engagement with fabric or Plexiglas expands the possibilities I find in paint.
Just before we install Lynne, I have to say we have loved having Sarah Peters at RAYGUN. Last night Sarah Peters and Michael Johnson did a fantastic play reading of ‘Lungs’ written by Duncan Macmillan at RAYGUN, fingers crossed they’ll do it again next year. Sarah is in the process of setting up a play reading culture in Toowoomba. Keep your ears and eyes open, we’ll post more about this soon. I have attached a video of Sarah talking about her play ‘The Third Blister’ on opening night. It’s gorgeous.
On Friday night we had a full house turn up to see the work of Sarah Peters ‘The Third Blister’. Directed by Sarah, three actors were chosen to narrate the intimate and challenging journey Sarah embarked on walking the Camino de Santiago – an 800km pilgrimage across Northern Spain earlier this year. With minimal amounts of props used, just plastic bags and lighting, the audience were taken on a ‘visually’ intimate experience that challenged the audience to consider notions of persistence, perseverance and physical and mental resilience. It was an honour to be able to share the night and watch this experimental work surrounding courageous vulnerability unfold in such a stunning way. We look forward to sharing more of Sarah’s work in the future.
1. What ideas are you examining though your exhibition at RAYGUN?
I had originally intended that Blister would also be a verbatim work, based on the experience of walking the Camino de Santiago – an 800km pilgrimage across Northern Spain. However, I returned after 6 weeks of walking without a single recording. This presented a new challenge for my playwriting practice. Instead of beginning the writing process with an immersion in recorded interviews, I have instead drawn on my own journals and embodied experience as stimulus for the narrative.
After writing 10mins of script for a play reading in June this year, I have focused my examination on the theme of courageous vulnerability. In that first reading there were three actors who took on multiple characters and presented a collage of stories. Still exploring the theme of courageous vulnerability, I wrote a longer version of the play in a different style for a second play reading – this time experimenting with realism and a unity in time, place and character. The performance at Raygun is the third public showing of my work in progress, and I have taken this opportunity to again experiment with my central theme and narrative by writing it in a different style and specifically for the Raygun space.
2. What are the ideas that surround your work/your practice?
The main ideas surrounding all of my work are curiosity, community and change – curiosity around people, their lives and experiences, their relationships with others, the way they respond in situations, what we can learn about the world through the ‘everyday’ of a character’s life. I believe that theatre and storytelling is a powerful way to engage with a community, share knowledge, entertain and create change. Whether that change be a shift in how we perceive a character from the start of a performance compared to the end, or a change in how we understand ourselves through the resonances and familiarities we witness in a performance.
3. What are your influences/other interests?
I used to tell my high school drama students that drama is about life, therefore everything in life is relevant in drama. I feel like it is the same in my theatre practice. I’m influenced by the work of playwrights I’m reading at the time (recently Alana Valentine and Dorothy Hewett), I’m influenced by my tribe of family and friends and the events in their lives, I’m influenced by my parallel practice of teaching – the students I teach, the content we are exploring, the learning that happens in a classroom or workshop – this work constantly provides stimulus for my theatre practice. Most recently I have had the opportunity to travel, and particularly to do a lot of walking. I have fallen in love with this slow mode of adventuring and am excited to do more.
We are super charged to have met Sharon Louden and be connecting with her at RAYGUN PROJECTS, Toowoomba in 2017. Sharon has recently published a book Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists and next year is touring Australia together with Hrag Vartanian to launch her next publication The Artist As Cultural Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life
We love everything about this amazing woman, artist, writer and cultural producer. Here is a snippet about her writings and what she is putting out into the world. Stay tuned for April 22nd 2017, when she and 3 others visit our shores and speak in depth with our community on what it is to be a culture producer in the second decade of the 21st Century.
“For my second book, 40 artists wrote essays who go beyond what they do in the studio to empower their communities and provide a link to the public, educating the world that an artist is an essential culture producer. There are many artists in my second book who are profoundly making a huge difference in the world in many different ways such as Andrea Zittel, Edgar Arceneaux, Alec Soth, William Powhida,the Dufala Brothers, Wendy Red Star, Steve Lambert and many more including, and most especially, Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi.”
And so now it is time to share what happened on the summit at 12 noon, Saturday 3rd September.
It was an honour to work with these incredible people and we can’t wait to see the final show with all performances together in 2018.
It was our pleasure to spend the weekend with the Ghosts of Nothing, Sean Lowry and Ilmar Taimre and their crew, who together climbed table top mountain to film a performance. The project is an addition to their world tour that started in 2014 and will conclude in 2018. We can’t wait to see the entire body of works, filmed in locations around the world including abandoned music venues, gaol houses and remote wilderness sanctuaries, including our very own Tabletop Mountain. We loved our weekend spending time with this lot and are super charged for their 2018 return and grand finale.
The Ghosts of Nothing, “Children of the Moon (feat. Coleman Grehan)”
Performance at 12.00 midday (sharp), September 3, 2016. Tabletop Mountain (summit), Toowoomba, QLD, Australia (as part of In Memory of Johnny B. Goode: World Tour 2014-2017)
The Ghosts of Nothing are an artistic collaboration between Sean Lowry and Ilmar Taimre. They are currently mid-way through a “world tour” consisting mime-based performances within the conceptual architecture of a “rock opera” titled In Memory of Johnny B. Goode, which has been remedialised as a “play” in three acts:
As part of Act 2 (World Tour of Remote Wildernesses), The Ghosts of Nothing are coming to Toowoomba for a short performance at precisely 12.oo midday featuring Brisbane-based performer Coleman Grehan.
The Ghosts of Nothing seek to illustrate that the omnivorous voraciousness inherent in the world of a work of art is also evident in the world of a rock band. From trashed motel rooms to legendary music venues and fictional mythologies, the conceptual complex of a rock band is capable of accommodating an entire universe of non-musical objects, events and places. Within this project, a pseudo-rock band becomes a conceptual vehicle through which activities performed by a diverse range of perceptual objects (including embodied events) enable the work to be experienced and conceived of as coterminous with its own constantly evolving world—a world of material/immaterial relationships, intermedial translations, deliberate mistranslations, and accidents of circumstance.
RAYGUN 