Residency Snapshots

We've got a great photographer with us at the Residency, here are some shots he took of me "in action".  

If only for a night

If only for a night / acrylic on canvas / 90 cm x 70cm

Painted during the 2012 Novákfalva international Art Residency.

Art Residency

Between the 4^th and 18^th of September I am one of the invited artists participating in the Novák-falva International Art Residency in Hungary. With artists from South Africa, Himalaya’s in India, and Switzerland amongst others (I represent Australia) this is the fourth (and last) residency to close my year and a half spent in Europe.

This time I veered away from my usual watercolours on paper, and am instead working with acrylic on canvas. I was still determined to achieve the same transparent layers I so love, with a very limited palette.

Here are some shots of my ghosts emerging, revealed from the white fog of the canvas.

A beating heart

Weaving throughout my ghost series will be pale hints of anatomical references – the diagram of a heart; creeping bronchioles like ivy; the glimpse of a skeletal ribcage.

The rhythmic beating of our heart and the constant intake of breath are what keep us alive, and we do these actions automatically, without thinking. My “ghosts” would have lost these vital functions, having passed into flimsy intangibility.

Their mouths gape for the intake of breath that will not come; their ribs guard a hollow shell, devoid of a human heart.

Phasmids and Plankton

Some sketches and quick watercolours completed at various Natural History Museums around Europe.

Traveling Exhibition

During the two months that my watercolours were on display at the Eszterház Palace, I received a lot of positive feedback, trickling through to me via the grapevine. I was always particularly thrilled when an academic or art professor showed particular interest and appreciation. I was lucky enough to catch the attention of an Art Restorator, who I managed to stump with my particular layering technique. Through his recommendation my little show caught the attention of one of the directors at the Nádasdy Castle down in Sárvár – infamous for having been the home of Countess Elizabeth Báthory and her husband Count Ferenc Nádasdy.

My body of work “Elillanó Mesevilág” (A delicate Disillusionment) has traveled to be on exhibit at the Nádasdy Castle for the next three weeks. I was honoured to have my best friend all the way from Australia able to attend the opening reception with me.

I'm about to head off on a week-long caving tour of the beautiful World-Heritage listed Aggtelek caves - so no updates for a while! Take care darlings....

Vienna

Based in the heart of Europe I'm trying to remember to take advantage of the amazing museums (relatively) close by. After the residency, my good friend Laura and I managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Vienna before the opening of my second Solo Exhibition.

We visited the Wien museum to be inspired by the incredible drawings and sketches from Klimt's career. Reminded of just how important drawing everyday is, we pulled out our sketchbooks and began filling them with studies, jotting down ideas and concepts. A good exhibition is like food for the mind, I find myself nourished and brimming with ideas for future projects.

Then we spent an entire day at the unbelievably incredible Natural History Museum. With both of us showing a strong interest in biology and nature, we were simply blown away, and stayed for over 9 hours sketching in this brilliant museums. Minerals and crystals, strange insects and microscopic plankton, fossilized trilobites and amphibians, to species sadly only recently extinct, the pages of our sketchbooks filled with thin hasty lines, eager to capture as much as we could in our time there.

The final day saw us head to "rest" at the Schönbrunn palace gardens, hanging out in the beautiful Palm Greenhouse. Both the Schönbrunn greenhouse and the Albertina Palm-House reminded me of some sort of fantastical Victorian building, taken over by plants and lost in the jungle, rediscovered far in the future.

Filled with new ideas, we headed back to Hungary for my exhibition in the Nádasdy Castle.

More on that later!