'Idolatry' at SOMA Gallery

I will have a new drawing in this group show opening Friday night.

Dreaming and planning

I want to go on a big trip next year and I'm starting to think about and research where I want to go. My main aims are the north of Scotland and Norway. I want to be far north. I want to experience long hours of daylight and the change in season. I want to travel to places that historically speak of solitude and experience them as they are now. I want to see the harshness of the landscape and exist in relation to it. I want to live away for six months or so and record my experiences through drawing and writing.

I fondly remember a little drunken conversation I had at a gig in Stockholm in 2013, excitedly realising how I was on the opposite side of the world to Melbourne. My spontaneously-booked month in the Swedish Summer. What a distance to travel to escape bad feelings and refresh my perspective. It feels far away in time but close in my memory. I perceive time to be moving faster.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of routine in my practice. I often work with whims and feelings but I'm finding myself a lot more disciplined with my studio time lately. For some time now I have been trying to figure out my money-work and art-work balance and although it is often stressful or demoralising (thank you, Centrelink) it has meant that I value my time a lot more than what I may have in the past. I generally feel focused and relieved when I enter my studio space knowing that this is the time that I have set aside for my creative work.

I have aims of undertaking a few art residencies. Hopefully a mixture of short and long stays. Solo and amongst other artists. I am very keen to focus my mind in one space for a few months and see what I can produce. Although I often find myself saying that I don't know what I am doing right now, I know that my aim is to dream and plan, and put my head down and work in my studio and earn/save some money to make those dreams and plans happen.

Blyth St Billboard

Eric got Christopher and I to paint the billboards out the front of their house (an old physio clinic doomed to be demolished in the not-too-distant future). Leading up to it I nervously dithered around trying to pick the right pink and gridding-up the image to draw it properly to scale but it turned out to be a quite straightforward and not intimidating process (always tend towards over-preparing myself for things like this). I really enjoyed creating the billboard and I have laughed a few times when they have caught my eye as I pass by.

The same, but different.

Some pages from an old diary

Remember setting myself a challenge to draw one page each hour, on the hour, for a day or two. Not sure what year this was. Maybe 2015. I was more confident riding my bike then (I've gone scared over the past year - need to get back on it...) I remember some of the places I've drawn: my bedroom, the doctor's waiting room, Brunswick Baths, remember that car being somewhere in Carlton (don't remember why I was there though...) It was funny looking at my watch and then stopping in the street to quickly do a drawing. I remember it being a fun activity. I like how it quickly sketches the day and my everyday surroundings. I'm also quite interested in the series of self portraits. They varied a lot depending on my activity, mood, how I felt about myself, whether I was looking in the mirror...

I get a bit precious about drawing. I reckon I need to force myself into these challenges a bit more, just as a way of moving through images and thoughts. Keeping my drawing mind physically active rather than contemplating the perfect subject or rendering.

Thoughts, lately.

Walking to work the other day I was thinking about how I feel constantly in contact with friends through the apps and programs I use. And I wonder if it distracts me from constructing something larger.
I often think about my audience and how to record or share something when it comes to instagram, snapchat, and less so now, but still, facebook. I'm not always creating for an audience but it is something on my mind. Quite instantly I can see if people have liked something or responded. It makes me feel like I have made my way into some sort of private/public echo room where I make a sound and listen for the response.

I've always liked my blog because it is a public space yet it feels private. I like that I don't know who reads it, if anyone. It makes me feel more excited to create and write and share things as it is a space for just my voice and it's not filtered into a newsfeed of a limitless number of other voices. With this blog it is less about the posting and response, but more about recording something I am looking at/listening to/watching/making or articulating a thought or idea. In some ways it is cathartic as I work out an idea or share something and then I don't look to the response, but simply move on.
It bothers me that there are gaps in the archive but I have to remind my librarian-side that I can't streamline all my writings and images to one place. I need to allow creativity to happen in different mediums and trying to catalogue all of these could prove to stand in the way of further workings and developments.

I can become very narrowed down on particular things and it is something I am working on to remind myself that I can do different things and work in different ways.


I was also thinking, on this walk to work, how I used to write more poems. The words of some of my particular poems still resonate so clearly in my mind.
I wonder what I would write about now. 

I used to play around with words quite regularly a few years ago but now the written word is a more rare tool for me. I've hardly written a poem in recent times.

I remind myself that I am not going to act the same as I did five years ago. And remind myself that I have not lost anything and that it is good to be growing and changing. 

But, for example, this year I have witnessed myself drift in and out of activities like maintaining a diary. I'm not sure how to feel about this. I value my older diaries so much and I wonder how my current diaries compare. And I also wonder if I should more strictly be enforcing diary-writing for my own well-being. I guess I am in a place where I don't know how I am recording my life if I am recording at all.

I need to stay in touch with myself and be aware of how I'm feeling and acting.


Been thinking a lot the last fortnight about going back to Blackburn and seeing my Grandpa's old house that isn't there any more. I've never had that desire before and have actively avoided going there.

I'm struggling with old griefs and current frustrations. 

Spent a few months dreaming about moving to Castlemaine earlier this year. Another failed romantic notion, I write with jest. Thinking about that country house where I was going to have a quiet time and read and draw and occasionally feel lonely but be in the company and support of a special friend.
I guess I'm yearning for a familiar, quiet and safe space at the moment. And although I'm trying to fall back in love with my house and I do appreciate it, it serves me differently. I don't see it as a refuge. I'd like to try a different space. But there's a bunch of practical reasons why my current house is good and I don't know how to make my choice.
I like my weekly babysitting gig a the moment. It's very calm hanging out with a well-behaved 11 year old. Time to read and draw. Everything moves slowly and is planned out.


Thoughts continue to flow and I want to make more space to think and write about them. Work my way through the griefs and frustrations and figure out the ways I am recording.

Delia Derbyshire - "Falling", from The Dreams (1964)

Invitation to FREE LOVE HURTS at Mailbox Art Space

FREE LOVE HURTS

Bon Mott - Edward Ounapuu - Caroline Phillips - Jennifer Rooke - Callum Royle - Siying Zhou
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2nd August - 2nd September 2017
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Opening night
Thursday 3rd August, 6-8pm

Council of People's Commissars in Smolny Palace, Petrograd, circa December 1917. Alexandra Kollontai at centre, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin to her right. Image in the public domain, colour by Rachel Pearce.

Curated by Rachel Pearce and Andrée Ruggeri

This exhibition asks seven contemporary artists to respond to the radical early Soviet feminist activism of Alexandra Kollontai.

A sexual revolutionary, an author and a diplomat, Kollontai served as one of the first women in the Bolshevik government's inner circle after the 1917 Russian Revolution. She fought female oppression and argued that women’s emancipation should extend to their sexuality, as well as their traditional roles in society. Kollontai felt that marriage was an unnatural constraint upon human behaviour, advocating ‘free love’ instead.

Within the parameters of their individual practices, the seven artists in this exhibition explore the somewhat marginalised figure of Kollontai, manifesting in artwork that reflects both their research and interpretations. Archival material is threaded throughout the exhibition, further inviting an investigation of Kollontai’s contributions in a contemporary context. A limited edition zine available on opening night presents curator Rachel Pearce’s personal response to Kollontai.

As many of Alexandra Kollontai's policies were overturned by Stalin in the 1920s, this exhibition stands as a reminder of feminism's troubled path, and its powerfully optimistic future.

Mailbox Art Space
141-143 Flinders Lane

Melbourne, VIC 3000

AUSTRALIA

Opening hours:
10am – 5.30pm Monday to Friday
10am – 5pm Saturday
11am – 4pm Sunday