Just keeping y’all updated
I was commissioned by the City of Adelaide to paint a couple of murals on Hindley Street during November 2021.
The first one is outside Gang Gang and Red Robin – down near the Woolshed.
My trusty painting assistant Liz.
It’s hard to capture the full length of it!
The second mural is near the corner of King William and Hindley, outside Harry’s Burger Bar.
Jacqui from the City of Adelaide came down to help us out.
When we were living in Laos I took Loki on a surprise birthday trip to Seoul. We basically ate every vegetarian thing we could find and went to the bath house every day. Loki had been to Japan a few times so he was fairly familiar with the communal bathing thing but it was a totally new situation for me.
We went to the Siloam Spa upon the recommendation of our mate Anou, he was pretty jacked about all the different rooms. He told me a story about some horrible sounding 60 degrees room with foot destroying rocks everywhere and an ice room. I had no idea what he was talking about and the website was baffling but it looked fancy and we are very fancy so of course we went.
When we arrived at the spa were handed two small orange towels, orange fisherman pants and shapeless shirts and sent into our gendered bathrooms. We could reunite on the second floor to visit the rooms in our orange uniforms or head into the same sex bathing areas downstairs. There was also a weird little gym with a rubber band machine that you put around your body and just stand there vibrating. There was also a machine which seemed like it’s sole purpose was to turn you upside down for a while.
I eventually made my way into the bathing area, I wasn’t sure what the etiquette was, some women were fully naked some were partially clothed in their underwear and pretty much everyone had an orange towel adorning their heads. I stripped down to my underwear and loitered around near the entrance to the bathing room trying to see what other people were wearing or not wearing. I noticed the ‘massage’ area which was action packed, women were lying on stretcher beds whilst other women vigorously slapped, kneaded and hosed them down. While one of the elderly attendants shot me suspicious looks I gingerly removed my underwear and crept into the bathing area. It was super wholesome and reminded me of the aquatic centre in Adelaide. Women of all ages were marching around, scrubbing each other and carrying tubs full of toiletries and salt (?). I stood under a shower for a while surveying the scene and eventually decided to get my own tub and fill it up with salt. I carried it around to a few different flavoured and temperatured baths and put one of my towels on my head.
I was really struck by how normal it seemed, everyone was so comfortable, kids were running around, women were scrubbing their elderly mothers and periodically strolling over to the salt station for a refill. I couldn’t get over the colours and perspective of the scene, so many orange towels, square bathing pools, columns and showers in pastel turquoise and dark blue tiles and black hair.
I got in trouble when I left the bathing area and tried to walk back to the change rooms. I wasn’t meant to step off the drying mat until I was dry, I had stepped off the mat and left a trail of conspicuously large wet footprints across the room. The attendant herded me back onto my corner and started mopping up my terrible mess with a towel.
I was compelled to paint a picture, for some reason it had to be a huge picture, so I went and bought a 2 by 2 metre bit of canvas as soon as I got back to Laos. I like small sections of it better than the overall effect, I wanted to keep it fairly under developed but got a bit carried away in some areas. I noticed a lot of art in Wats (temples) around Vientiane used bright orange outlines and really wanted to give that a crack.
When we left Laos I didn’t know what to do with it so I rolled it up and shoved it in a trash fire.
These two crops are my favourite areas, I think these little snippets most accurately capture the vision I had in my head.
Hello hello!
I have a few artworks on display at the Endangered Bodies art exhibition/conference at the University of Lisbon. A digital print and a video that appeared in The Most Beige, two are paintings I created in Laos and four drawings from my recent artist residency. Check them out below!
Beigers is an exploration of bodies, shapes, perspectives and tones. The figures and forms are caught in a balancing act between perfection, unsightliness and absurdity.
A playful examination of how we are expected to maintain and manage our bodies.
It’s done! One month went by so quickly and now I am living one neighbourhood over from Zaratan in the very top room of a four storey building on a hill overlooking Lisbon and working at a fairly prestigious English college. Weird how quickly you can find yourself living in a place.
Kicking off our time in Lisbon with this residency was a fantastic plan. Loki and I feel connected to the gallery and it’s community and it’s comforting to know we can always wander in for a beer or a coffee and check out what’s going on.
Gemma and Jose decided to keep our (mine and the Italians) exhibitions up for an extra week which was nice. I think they didn’t expect it to be so annoying to install (hello 6.5metre drawing sorry everyone) so they thought they should get as much out of it as possible.
This residency helped me to understand and value my practice and process. Doing an artist talk made me feel a lot more confident in myself and validated in my creative choices. Gemma offered gentle guidance and helped me conceptualise my work in new ways.
Below are the artworks we ending up showing in the exhibition and a couple of drawings that we ended up cutting.
And there was the performance ‘By-product’ on the opening night. The video was then screened at the gallery.
So yeah, I’ve done an artist residency now! I can’t wait to do another but it will be awhile because I’ve joined the ole workforce again. In the meantime I’ll see how I settle into working life and think about getting a studio space with a couple of mates.
In other news, we are in a lovely apartment in Bairro Alto and there is a VERY tiny and cute mouse called Ferguson who keeps scooting around. He needs to get out of here though because he has been getting a bit big for his boots and ran across a pile of mushrooms as I was cutting them up on the dining table. FERGUSON! Plus there are actually two Fergusons AND then I had a dream that there were like, 80 Fergusons, so we are considering catching him in a box and putting him in a garden somewhere.
I have some work showing at a conference this week, Endangered Bodies, and they will be screening my video Beauty Makeup which is exciting. It will be nice to hang around at a university and pretend I work/study there.
Here is the video of my performance By-product in the form in which it was live streamed on September 27, 2018. By-product explores the perception of bodies and social behaviour by turning a potentially sexy attitude into something grotesque.
Music
‘Horses’ – Workhorse
‘Beige II’ – Mannix Flowerday
Livestream/video/effects/nicolas cage courtesy of Zaratan Arte Contemporânea
Final residency post coming soon!
OPEN STUDIO OPENS TONIGHT!
That there is the poster.
We hung the show over the past two evenings. When I say ‘we’ I definitely do not count myself as a useful team member. I always forget how much I struggle with hanging until I step into a gallery with a pile of random shit I’ve made and someone asks my opinion on something. I usually just stand there pretending to think about it but really I am just wondering if I can just arrange everything on the wall in a vaguely symmetrical shape and be done with the whole thing. I also am absurdly bad at things that require precision – ie hanging something level on a wall. I literally broke my foot trying to level a painting a couple of years ago.
Luckily, Gemma and Jose (the Zaratan team) are great at what they do and also very patient with the likes of me. Laying all my work out on the ground I was surprised by the links and stories they were able to draw from things I was used to seeing haphazardly blue-tacked around my studio in no particular order.
Here is Gemma trying to find a way to make these little weirdos work together.
It was surreal to see people treat my work with such care, like they were precious objects. I don’t know if that is indicative of my not valuing my work enough or perhaps just the nature of my work. One of my pieces was a 6.5 metre painting that I hadn’t quite intended to be so long! It proved fairly difficult to hang, and had it been left to me would have probably ended up crookedly pasted in an ill-fitting corner. Here is the offending item –
Gemma has really helped me to understand the value of my process and the freedom with which I can just make and make and make. What I tend to see as a bunch of weird experiments can actually all come together and tell an (almost cohesive) story. I remember one of my illustration teachers at UniSA telling me that if you create something very quickly or very simple that doesn’t mean that it is worth any less than something time consuming or detailed. Which I liked at the time because it was relevant for me but the truth of it still hasn’t entirely sunken into my brain.
Here is everyone working on hanging yet another inconveniently large piece of my work whilst I stand idly by.
In other news, back home it was my grandpa Scott’s funeral today. I really wish I could have been there but am also relieved that I didn’t have to cry all day which is what I would have done. My dad suggested that I draw something to distribute at the funeral – here is one of the images I sent him – 
Scottie’s passing is bittersweet. As he grew older his memory deteriorated but he maintained an incredible optimism that inspired those around him. If you were to ask him how he was on any given day, he would likely tell you that he was ‘very well’ and assure you that if he wasn’t very well he would soon forget about it. He looked forward to each day and savoured simple pleasures like dancing in the supermarket, discussing languages, eating a piece of fish, contemplating characteristics of wool samples, going to the bank and hanging out with his best mate Alwyn (my grandma).
My final news is also very bittersweet. I got some great new shoes for work, those who know me well will understand that that a lot of thought was put into purchasing the correct size. Despite 45 minutes of wandering around the store googling Doc Marten sizing charts and different shoe lasts, I haven’t managed to escape the dreaded Doc Martens breaking in blister.
Seeya later drongos!
It is TIME FOR AN UPDATE!
First I recommend listening to this song because I can’t stop but I can guarantee that youtube will then deliver lots of 90s and early 2000s hits as a follow up. When I was in high school and made a new hotmail email address every week I was inspired to make disco_lemonade@hotmail.com (though I think I spelt disco with a ‘q’) but no one else seemed to think it was cool so it didn’t stick. I suppose I just used it to troll people on MSN messenger.
A LOT has been going on over here. Firstly there was the artist talk, which was nerve wracking and time consuming to prepare BUT very valuable in terms of making sense of my process and my work. The video of the talk is here.
Then Loki and I were NOT DJS, which was great fun. The gallery also hosted some performers that night, we had the pleasure of watching these two wild cards doing some boogin’ and casual box cutter holding. Video available here (the second half is footage of Loki and I playing sweet tunes with Australian animal noises over the top).
On a sad note my grandpa Scott passed away the night before the artist talk. It doesn’t quite seem like a reality because I am so far removed from my family at the moment. I think that it is something that I probably won’t fully realise until I go back to Adelaide for Xmas.
On a good but annoying note, I got a teaching job at a fairly prestigious language school. Annoying because I have a week of orientation that infringes upon my artist residency but good because I managed to bumble my way into a great opportunity. Also, I have a residence card now!
This week I tried out my performance piece, which now has a name – “By-product” and will be performed live this Thursday at the gallery. It will be live streamed also.
I have also been working on some things inspired by the performance but I won’t post any pictures yet because they will be unveiled in the open studio on Thursday.
In the meantime, here are the fruits of recent labour.
I had just discovered that a SPECIAL FRIEND in Melbourne had arranged for me to receive fresh new canvas for my birthday! (ONE THOUSAND THANK YOUS). So I started trying to come up with cool ideas, gone are the days when I can paint over the discarded canvases of students past, I didn’t want to waste it. So I drew the above image – I’ve being doing some more collage and it is inspired by some of the figures that I have been playing with.
But, I wasn’t into it, I didn’t want to waste my canvas on that picture. So I changed gear and did some selfie studies.
I was feeling a bit flat. I liked these studies but still couldn’t bring myself to touch the canvas in case my weird mood wrecked it somehow. So I painted on a big piece of wood Gemma fished out for me in the first week of the residency.
Not quite finished yet. Sometimes painting from a photograph drives me absolutely nuts and I can’t stop finding errors and redoing bits. But sometimes it’s really meditative to just paint in a more realistic style. I tried to use lighter colours than I usually do – I usually end up with dark purple and bright yellow skin tones. Every couple of years I seem to bust out a self portrait like this and then move on so I guess I was due for one.
OH BY THE WAY I AM 31 TODAY!!!!!!! WHAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Here is a brief overview of the current exhibition, Ponto I Ponto at Zaratan.
My only prior knowledge was that it was going to be ‘heaps of dicks’. Mine and Loki’s imaginations went pretty wild. We were like ‘is there going be actual dicks everywhere?’ It was actually a lot more slick than the haphazard dick fest we were imagining.
We have been eating A LOT of bananas. The Italians made a banana cake today and it is all gone but I dearly wish I had more. I really like how bright the bananas look up against the black and white. There is also a video compilation of lots of different videos where people have drawn or made or referred to dicks at inappropriate times. It’s very enjoyable.
Tonight Loki and I went to a performance art festival called (Re)union and watched a piece called Fletcha (arrow) by a Brazilian artist called Luara Learth. It took me by surprise, I really enjoyed it. She moved ultra-slowly and covered her face in read paint, it looked like it was oozing out of her face because she was so slow. Then she turned into gremlin and created lots of really intense and amazing tableaus. At one point I felt really sick because she kept moving her eyes and her face looked like burnt flesh and it just got to me. It was great though, I sent her a facebook message afterwards to let her know that I really liked it, and she told me she was glad I liked it.
It was always a bit of a red flag for me as an art teacher when a student mentioned that they wanted to make Disney art (university students by the way). It usually meant I’d have to get pretty brutal with the student at some point in an effort to get them to consider something beyond their love for all things Disney, or endure shitty reproductions of characters I know nothing about (what are you Frozen Elsa?).
Yesterday I was feeling a little lost and felt frustrated because I kept drawing the same kinds of pictures over and over. Then I remembered that when I was a kid I went through a phase where I just really loved drawing princess jasmines. I had a bit of a jasmine drawing system that I used to experiment with, pushing the limits to see what could make the most truly beautiful jasmine.
So I thought I’d revisit drawing princess jasmines.
Here are the basics according to child Alice’s drawing process.
To draw the most stunning jasmine you need to nail the curly shoes. The more curly, the more elegant and beautiful.
Also the hair needs a really lovely curl, and if you add lots of extra sections to her pony tail then she becomes more beautiful. Boofy pants is a must, amplify that hip to waist ratio with extra boof. Also, note that red outfit jasmine really opened the creative doors colour wise for jasmine outfits, you can put her in yellow or green clothes if you want. Jewellery wise, take style inspo from the geenie cos his golden geenie bracelets are actually superior to jasmine’s arm band. DONT FORGET JEWEL HEADBAND.
The first one isn’t quite beautiful enough. The face doesn’t matter at all as long as you pay close attention to the key areas outlined above.
Yellow jasmine was a lefty, child Alice wouldn’t have been into it. Also green jasmine is a little off brief but adult Alice started to add some different flavours.
The whole point of the princess jasmines, was to celebrate that commitment to drawing the same dumb stuff over and over again without overthinking it. I think I will be more open to letting myself do that instead of worrying about doing something new or more meaningful. There’s also probably a whole bunch of stuff here about how my views of ideal feminine bodies and expectations for how I should look were influenced but I haven’t had a coffee yet so don’t worry about it.
I wasn’t joking when I said I was going to start out drawing butts with my wrong hand.
Days 5-7 of the residency have seen a lot of this behaviour. The butts I can’t entirely explain but the wrongs hands I can. Probably in every one of my drawing classes I forced everyone to draw with their non-preferred hand. I find it’s a really good way to relax, reduce pressure and relinquish some control. It helps to deal with that feeling where you have a really cool, clear idea in your head of the awesome thing that you are going to do and then you end up with something bung, but not bung enough to make you laugh.
The past couple of days I have been sketching, collaging (digitally and on paper), printing, sculpting and thinking about what form my performance might take.
Here is my ACTION PLAN:
And here is a selection of some of the experiments I have been doing.
I’m trying not to think too much about what where I am going with all this. I’m just trusting that along the way there will be delightful moments where I unlock new ideas or ways of approaching things.
I’ve been doing a lot of wandering around Lisbon and soaking things up. There are abandoned buildings everywhere, hand painted tiles on everything, bandy legged old dudes stealing stone fruit from the mini market, tiny coffees, sardines, otherworldly ice cream, practical footwear (cobble stone streets yo), dog poo everywhere, pleased looking dogs everywhere, hills, bakeries, cheap cheese, old ladies in markets that make you sample chickpeas off the end of their bread knives – that kind of stuff. Here are some visuals,
and then there’s other stuff like vege maccas, street art, indoors art and a bizarre shower that reminds me of 60s movies where people are being futuristic.
Just for a moment reflect on how monumental it is for there to be a delicious vege option at maccas. I’m truly lovin’ it.
Sooooo, back to the art stuff, I think I always thought that it would feel really contrived or forced to be like ‘I’m so inspired by this place, my art is responding to this special thing blah blah blah’ during my residency, but its nice to see that there are definite influences from my surroundings and they are true to my style and personality and it feels natural.
Today I finally allowed myself to go to the art store with a budget of 50 euro, I spent 55. I walked away with a feeling of exhilaration because I have new art supplies and regret because I just blew heaps of cash on art supplies. Does anyone else spend like an hour puzzling over acrylic paints trying to weigh up economic value versus quality with no knowledge except for the price and packaging??? IT TAKES ME FOREVER and I forgot to buy just regular white paint. I invested in some super heavy gel medium for the first time and some weird looking beige house paint from the Chinese MEGASTORE pictured below, strange architecture.
That’s it for today, we just got back from an opening at the gallery called ponto I ponto, I’ll upload some photos of it soon, it reminded me of Zac Svendsen and Carl Jiorjio‘s favourite game ‘I draw a dick, you draw a dick’. There were free bananas (high quality).
Zaratan live streams their events and if you want to see this particular one it is available here. I recommend skipping to 2h 47m to see a baby riding a cat. On September 15th, Loki and I will be delivering a Not-DJ set which will be live streamed until we breach the copyright laws, I will provide more details closer to the date.