O________O: August 2011

Saturday, August 20, 2011

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....

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

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...