Winter upon us

We woke to the quiet falling of snow. The promise of winter now upon us. Apart from the muted sound of children playing in the street, the usual morning drone of activity remained silent. We drove up the mountain to Katoomba where the temperature was 1 degree and the snow more powdery and thick. The absence of cars noticeable as the highway had been closed from Lawson to Mount Victoria.

I grew up in Jindabyne NSW where the seasonal blanketing of snow was expected, but here in the Blue Mountains, winter does not promise a dump of snow. Today, 30cm fell and I could not resist a photo opportunity.

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Katoomba NSW Photography by James Blackwell

At The Melting Of The Snow by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

There's a sunny Southern land,

And it's there that I would be

Where the big hills stand,

In the South Countrie!

When the wattles bloom again,

Then it's time for us to go

To the old Monaro country

At the melting of the snow.

To the East or to the West,

Or wherever you may be,

You will find no place

Like the South Countrie.

For the skies are blue above,

And the grass is green below,

In the old Monaro country

At the melting of the snow.

Now the team is in the plough,

And the thrushes start to sing,

And the pigeons on the bough

Sit a-welcoming the Spring.

So come my comrades all,

Let us saddle up and go

To the old Monaro country

At the melting of the snow.
 

Melbourne 2015

Busting out of the parochial mountains hub I find myself in is mandatory from time to time not only for inspiration but to widen my view on artists and their practice in general.
Melbourne is the perfect remedy and prescription for the malady of artists block. So many galleries, so little time. It was a 4 day forage, sauntering around Flinders Lane and the arts precinct. As an entrée to galleries on our list, we viewed the famous laneways of street art around the CBD. Not one for too much colour - I found it a bit overwhelming, especially with a throng of tourists bustling with cameras and selfie sticks.

Philip Wolfhagen Exhibition at Karen Woodbury Gallery

Quite by accident, stumbling into Karen Woodbury Gallery, I found myself face to face with my favourite contemporary landscape painter Philip Wolfhagen’s exhibition 'Other Worlds’. What a find!
Wolfhagen’s paintings are juicy, subtle, intriguing, elusive and poetic. Wolfhagen states- 'For me, landscape is a concept rather than a representation of a real topographical place … the emphasis I believe should always be on the act of painting itself, the poetry of its execution, the emotional power of the medium’. 

Philip Wolfhagen The Serpentine Path 2015 (middle panel) Oil and Beeswax on linen.

There is a melancholy within these works which I find reflected in my own internal state as I wander through the vastness of the Blue Mountains where I live. There is a longing to be part of the landscape but I am aware that I am only ever a spectator, filled with a need to know my place in it.  Its timelessness so vast as to knock the mental clutter from my mind.

In stark contrast to the lustre of applied paint in Wolfhagen’s paintings, we came across Anna Schwartz Gallery and the current exhibition by Emily Floyd

'Index, 2015 is a new series of unique state screen prints made in collaboration with Negative Press and representing a catalogue of Floyd’s ongoing library project. Texts are rendered as brightly coloured blocks, continuing the artist’s long term interest in the confluence of Cultural Studies and radical forms of play.

Maxx enjoying Emily Floyd's current exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery Melbourne

Field Libraries, 2015 comprises 11 free standing painted aluminium sculptures stacked with an ever expanding “fair use” library of booklets dedicated to eccentric perspectives on the subject of work, including Zombie Marxism and Feminist Autonomism. Each Field Library incorporates utilitarian paperweights, including a bronze cast facsimile of the final volume of Maxim Gorky’s childhood memories My University, 1922.'

Emily Floyd Field Libraries Installation 2015 Anna Schwartz Gallery Melbourne

Next stop on the culture trail was Flinders Lane Gallery where we encountered the final day of Exploration 2015. 

Exploration was created to provide a platform for emerging artists to successfully exhibit their art within a commercial gallery context. A tightly curated selection of artists practicing across the mediums of painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and video art are presented. I was fortunate enough to be selected as part of the 2014 Exploration exhibition, so I was interested in this years crop of artists. My favourite artist at this years exhibition was Thomas Bowman's intimate sculptures measuring only a few centimetres in height. Having completed his study of sculpture at RMIT between 2011 and 2013, Thomas has since emerged into the art world and has exhibited at a number of galleries. In 2014, First Site Gallery on Swanston St Melbourne, saw 'Miniscule', an exhibition of tiny proportions with almost a dozen tiny artworks consisting of tiny hand sculpted people around the height of 30mm or smaller.

one of Thomas Bowman's miniscule sculptures at Flinders lane Gallery 

Our last day in Melbourne was spent at the Museum. It was a cold, rainy day so it was no surprise to find hoards of children and half of Melbourne wandering around the exhibits. It was my first trip to the Museum and honestly, I think its worth coming back to Melbourne to spend the next four days being inspired by nature condensed into cabinets and dioramas. 

Marina Abramovic

Pier 2 at Walsh Bay Sydney has been the venue for Marina Abramovic’s residence program for the past 12 days.
It is the 30th Kaldor public art project which invited the public to be participants in Abramovic's conceived performance pieces.
I first learned of Abramovic’s art practice after watching the 2012 documentary ‘Marina Abramovic- The Artist is Present’.
It was a revelation to me, as I was someone who did not quite understand concepts behind most Performance Art. Nor did I have an interest in becoming aqauinted with it. 

Performance Art always seemed a little out of my depth and understanding. Sometimes I’d react quite negatively to it and dismiss it altogether as being too cerebral or elitist. But art’s influence to open up and broaden our experience of the world and of ourselves should not exclude practices deemed out of our depth, uncomfortable or confronting. All the more reason to dive in with an open mind and willing heart.
Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist living in New York since the 1970’s. She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale, and listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2014. So when my friend Flic asked me if I’d like to join her on the last day of the Abramovic residency program, I thought it could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I waited in line with hundreds of people alongside the historic finger wharf proximate to the Sydney harbour Bridge, eager but a little apprehensive, to be honest, about what I was signing up for.

After depositing all belongings, including my phone into a locker, we were ushered into a ‘warm up’ area with video screens taking you through exercises to loosen you up. It amazed me already how compliant people of all ages became to instruction no matter how silly the exercises seemed to be.
From here, you were given noise cancelling headphones and moved on to the main area of the building. Volunteers approached and silently took you by the hand to one of the performance areas. My first experience consisted of me standing on an elevated box with 20 or so other people motionless, eyes closed in silence.
It struck me how urgently I wanted to know the rules. How long do I stand here? Can I open my eyes? Will someone lead me back off the plinth? Our world is mostly governed by habit and the need to follow rules. Clearly, my discomfort of not knowing the rules was something I’d need to get over to remain open to this experience.
I remained motionless, allowing the mind to settle down and after 5 minutes or so, I slowly moved off the box to witness those that had been standing around me. 

Another volunteer approached me, took my hand in silence and led me to another section of the space. I was led to a chair which faced another and a member of the public sat opposite me with only about 5 feet between us. The exercise is to remain with fixed gaze into a complete strangers eyes. This particular performance 
exercise is what Marina Abramovic has become most notable for -'The Artist is Present'- a 736-hour static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum’s atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her in 2010 from March to May at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. 
When I sat opposite a young woman of about 19yrs, it was obvious to her immediately of my discomfort. Gazing silently into a complete strangers eyes is extremely confronting.
My mind was racing with all kinds of projections. My face flushed with blood in the discomfort and there was a compelling need to avert my eyes. But I remained fixed. I estimate that I sat with her for about 25 minutes. Our performance exercise was interrupted by the fact that Marina Abramovic herself brushed past us to sit in the chair immediately to my right.
In the performance art world, she is bit of a superstar, so to say my concentration was disrupted is bit of an understatement. I wanted to look and found myself questioning the need to idolise and get caught up in the celebrity of the moment. I remained still and fixed in gaze to the young woman opposite me.

After this encounter, I was guided to rows and rows of canvas sleeping swags elevated a foot off the ground where another volunteer gestured for me to lay down. She tucked me in 
like a small child with a blanket. I stared at the ceiling of the wharf at the sunlight refracting from the harbour through glass windows near the roof. The play of colour along wooden beams was enough to quieten down a racing mind. I lay motionless for about 10 minutes allowing the strangeness of a room filled with people in silence become less foreign. 
The final project consisted of walking a length of the wharf at a pace barely detectable. It took approximately 40 minutes to cover a 300 metre lane within the wharf. Slowing down 
to this pace alongside a crowd in unison was strangely hypnotic. A noticeable contrast to the bustle of crowds heading towards the venue an hour before. 
I left the exhibition space in a glow and with a changed attitude toward a genre of arts that had once bewildered me. I felt connected in a city that mostly conspires to have you feel disconnected. 
 

Exhibition Opening: Collectors Edition #2

Where: Blue Mountains Cultural Centre 

When: 3rd- 26th July

The opening of the 2nd annual Collectors' Edition drew a great crowd at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre. This fundraiser exhibition supports the Cultural Centres Collection Acquisition Fund. Many artworks by prominent artists are for sale through silent auction which runs for 3 weeks.

The artworks are all A5 in size and this year the exhibition has 80 works on display. This is an opportunity to acquire an affordable artwork of some of the regions prominent artists including Warwick Fuller, David Middlebrook, Joan Ross just to name a few!

Exhibitions Manager Sabrina Roesner opens the Exhibition

Despite the cold weather, it was great to see so many people come to support the event. Wine & conversations flowed, bidders registered for the auction and placed their prospective bids beneath the artworks. If you're one of the bidders, its advisable to visit the gallery over the 3 week period to see if you're still the highest bidder!

'Armed and Dangerous' by Joan Ross

Thanks to supporters of this event for their sponsorship. A special thanks to Neil Haigh of Hopetree Framing in Wentworth Falls. 

Louise Knox of The Little Flower Shop at Wentworth Falls and Neil Haigh of Hopetree Framing And Art Wentworth Falls

I donated an artwork for the exhibition and titled it  Alpha Penta 1. It is an assemblage work with natural materials on paper. It was exciting to see a few bids on the piece before the night was over.

'Waratah Sunset' by Tohby Riddle

So make sure you visit the Cultural Centre over the next 3 weeks to view this collection of unique and pocket-friendly artworks!

Dr Peter Shepherd and Dr Lindsay Duncan