Blake Gibson — Australia Drawings

Alright, guess it's time for me to step to the plate. My artistic exploration in Australia involved solitary walks into the bush, wilderness, woods...whatever you want to call it. I had been working on small-scale pen and ink drawings based on the natural world prior to my leaving for Australia. I did not know how or if this process would find a place in my work in Australia. But I brought a small pad of paper and pens with me, and most of the time these were the only art materials I carried on my walks.

The works are diminutive and minimal — not Minimalist, that's something different. But they are minimal to me. I was interested in objects or views that had an intriguing appearance, but which also would be difficult to draw convincingly without also including information about their context. So, I drew them by themselves, without much information at all about the area around them. They are de-contextualized (which I sometimes accomplished by doing stuff to the drawings later). Fundamentally, these works came from thoughts about my disconnection from the wilderness and my being with that disconnection alone in the wilderness and quiet for extended amounts of time.

Below are images of some of these 9"x11 1/2" drawings. I've included a couple of details in the mix as well....

Heike Qualitz

Another of our new Australian friends I've been meaning to profile... She always seemed to have her camera and tripod around, and it's a good thing. Many of these photos came from circumstances being what they were and people doing what they do. The images below represent earlier sculptural work, and art photography. Images from Camp Jigamy, including art photos and "highlights" of us I put in the post just prior to this one. Heike sent me a little background info, which I'll relay here.

saturday night on lake mokoan was a work from a field studies trip in 2009. lake mokoan was a wetland in northern victoria that was dammed for a few decades forming a bit of a water feature and fostering recreational sports and was then decommissioned and returned to a wetland a few years back. inside the fuel drum (from a boat motor) is a recording i took (on a sat nite...) of the varied and rich life on the lake - frogs & birds galore and at close inspection a plane overhead. i liked the idea of spatial information and illusion relayed through sound.

solei revisited was made for a group show earlier this year titled solar and celebrating the installation of about 120 solar panels onto the roof of the gallery... the video (a reversed and looped abstraction of a fleeting moment i happened to capture on camera whilst being on exchange in berlin in 2008. its the slanting spring sun hitting a metal chair leg and forming concentric rings around it - a contracting and expanding creature) is projected onto a slowly rotating disc reminiscent of the wooden floor i first witnessed it on, the angle of the disc is referencing the tilt of the earth (~23.4 degrees) the combo of slowly changing image and rotating disc has a peculiar effect too...

Davidson Beach

from Journeys of a Wedding Dress

from Journeys of a Wedding Dress

from Journeys of a Wedding Dress

from Journeys of a Wedding Dress

Nightshade

Saturday Night on Lake Mokoan

Solei Revisited

Solei Revisited (detail)

Solei Revisited (detail)

Heike Qualitz Jigamy Photos

Jigamy Friday Night

Jigamy Friday Night

Jigamy Friday Night

Jigamy Friday Night

Taming the Chi

Yoshimi

Caroline Huf — Back to the Mallee

Here's a work in progress from one of the Australian artists we had the pleasure to meet and spend time with at Calperum Station. Her process is stop motion photography, which has a physicality often lacking in other moving image processes. I think her work has a great sense of play to it as well. Enjoy!


back to the mallee from Caroline Huf on Vimeo.

John Reid — Walking the Solar System, Pt. 2

The statement below from John Reid and a short video of his performance 'Force of Habit' from 2000 sheds more light on his work shown in the previous post (his video from Kioloa can be found there as well).

 

Friday 3 June Late afternoon: The walk onto the rock platform skirting Snapper Point near Kioloa, NSW, is a disorientating sensory experience. The exposed and slightly off-kilter Permian sediments form the headland on one side and, on the other, is the sizeable rolling swell of the Tasman Sea. It brought to mind a performance work that I did in 2000 titled, ‘Force of Habit’ (see Video 01, the only visual compilation to exist). In it my body is positioned horizontally on a gallery plynth. Armed with a briefcase, I assume a posture as if I’m walking to work. By virtue of being at odds with the force of gravity my limbs fatigue in a few minutes, the walking pose collapses and the artwork concludes. The performance derived some formal dramatic tension from the body being under physiological stress. Conceptually, however, the work was in dialogue with Australian artist, Stelarc, and his thesis that the brain and technology are in a mutinous relationship against the rest of the body in order to attain gravitational escape velocity.

John Reid — Walking the Solar System

Those of us from the Land Arts program who came to Australia owe a lot to John Reid, so it is a real honor to be able to show some of his work on this blog. During the month of June, Mr. Reid focused his time on the body of work tentatively titled, "Walking the Solar System." Below is a brief statement about his working process along with images and a video from the series. The video is the one he showed us at Kioloa, which I wrote about in my post "Report from Kioloa."

The idea of imaging the human figure going about everyday life (ie walking to work) as a body in the solar system began with the 2002 performance, 'Force of Habit.' A similar work was performed in 2005. In 2011, several performances were undertaken in the field for the video camera with the production assistance of Bill Gilbert and Frank Thirion. The disconnect between the figure and the ground raises for consideration the locus of the figure orbiting about the sun intersecting with a particular place that is at that point in space but at another orientation and point in time. At issue for the final resolution of these recent works is whether to show only still photographs of ‘the walks’, or only the video of ‘the walks’, which ones of either, and to decide on a title as an entrée to the contemplation of the central idea.

Bill Gilbert — Walking Constellations and Grids

Not enough can be said about Bill Gilbert, co-founder and director of the Land Arts of the American West program at the University of New Mexico. The success of Land Arts has helped generate the Art & Ecology area at UNM and continues to play a significant role for place-based art in the southwest.

In Australia, Gilbert had a unique opportunity to focus on his own projects, which are based on the physical act of walking as a means of experiencing place. Below is Bill in his own words about his work in Australia, along with working images

For each map I use an arbitrary system of navigation to subvert my conscious mind and have a direct encounter with the surface of the planet. In that sense my walking is more in line with the Situationists than the Brits (Long & Fulton): sort of a wilderness Derive. I worked on two series in AU both using absurd systems to determine my paths. At Calperum, I did an Australian version of my "attempts to walk the grid." I've now done them in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas (in the states) and Mongolia and Japan. The ground being fairly flat and obstacles few and far between. I came pretty close this time.

At Kioloa, Jigamy and Calperum I did walks in which I used constellations from the southern Hemisphere's night sky to navigate my way across the land. At Kioloa, I followed Scorpio from coast to rain forest, beach to thicket. This walk will be paired with another Scorpio walk completed at the San Rafael Swell, UT in Land Arts, mesa to river bottom. At Jigamy, I traced Lepsus on the forest floor in honor of the year of the hare and AU's problem with rabbit populations. At Calperum, I walked Hercules through the Mallee Woodlands and met a charming, if flustered, Emu. This walk will be matched with another Hercules path I followed at Otero Mesa, NM again with the Land Arts program.

My current struggle is with how best to translate the experiences to the gallery and/or web. In addition to the maps, I am playing with photos, sound recordings, and plant identification info.

Grid near Calperum Station, SA, Australia

Scorpio South— Kioloa, NSW, Australia

Scorpio North — San Rafael Swell, Utah, USA

Lepsus walking points

Lepsus —between Pambula Lake and the Tasman Sea

Hercules South points

Hercules South in the mallee woodlands in South Australia