Artist Talk

Greetings!!

I'm doing a brief artist talk on Friday, 26 October 2007
@ Artisan (previously known as Craft QLD)
381 Brunswick Street Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
1030am - 1230pm

For more info CLICK HERE

Hope to see some of you there. Sorry for the late notice.

Quality Brissie Talent

My wonderfully talented friend, Janice Kuczkowski, was involved with the Young Brisbane Artists Exhibition at Metro Arts this month.

Below is an excerpt from the website discussing Janice's work.



EXPERIMENTATION IN LIMITS OF TOLERANCE #5

Sneezing was once thought to involve an individual’s heart stopping and their soul escaping through their mouth and nostrils. Working from this myth, Janice Kuczkowski attempts to capture the soul of her subjects in Experimentation in the Limits of Tolerance #5, a series of digital video portraits.

Against a black backdrop, Kuczkowski’s subjects are split from the upper torso diagonally, horizontally or vertically; the remaining half is then mirrored on the other side of the screen. Each of the five subjects are filmed as they attempt to sneeze. In anticipation of the oncoming sneeze, their bodies convulse and their eyelids pull shut; before they are able to execute a sneeze, however, their movements are replayed at varying speeds and the sequence is ruptured by jump-cuts. Frames cut between moments of the subject’s bodies preparing for the expulsion of breath and the changing of the angle at which the screen is split.

In these physically demanding moments, Kuczkowski presents us with the possibility – perhaps never to be realised – of capturing the true subject. In doing so, Kuczkowski echoes concerns expressed by artists such as Bill Viola – with whom Kuczkowski shares formal similarities – and Francis Bacon. As the sneeze momentarily takes hold of the subject, they lose their self-consciousness before the camera, analogous to the loss of the heartbeat in the myth of the sneeze. No longer self-conscious, the subjects of Kuczkowski’s portraits appear to drop their veneer, letting their unmediated self (soul) escape temporarily. Kuczkowski’s subjects, like Bacon’s, are presented in their fervent and visceral form. What Kuczkowski envisions, however, is the movement which takes place between Bacon’s violent lines. Kuczkowski’s careful editing draws the viewer’s attention to the barely visible movements of the subject’s flesh clinging to their bones in tense anticipation.

Not only a contemplation of the possibility of portraiture, Kuczkowski’s Experimentation in the Limits of Tolerance #5 references its own medium. Moving image feeds the viewer’s anticipation of the next frame, akin to the way in which Kuczkowski’s individual tries to anticipate when their oncoming sneeze will finally arrive. Just as the finial event of sneezing brings relief after the build up, so does the last frame of a film. In Experimentation in the Limits of Tolerance #5, however, the subjects never reach this moment of full release. Moreover, the viewer watching the video’s subjects is also left without reprieve since the images play before them on loop.

WORDS: Ellie Buttrose

Tell Mr Smith...

Hi there,

A request for your help. The organisation Banktrack.org, a web operation tracking global finance, is running an online slide show displaying the pristine waterways and native forests before flashing scenes of mown-down forests. You can access this presentation by going to:

http://www.tellmrsmith.org/

At the conculsion of the presentation is a letter to Mr Smith, the new CEO of the ANZ Bank, Gunns' bank since 1995, has yet to decide whether it will fund the project. The bank has commissioned its own indepentent technical review, as it is a signatory to the Equator Principles on socially responsible lending practices. With the current liquidity crisis (post the sub-prime morgage fiasco and the consequent fallout), the inability to finance this mill may be our last hope of stopping it.

You can influence Mr Smith by sending this letter to him online. You can amend the letter if you wish.

And tell all your friends, please


www.tellmrsmith.org
http://www.tellmrsmith.org/
Share

Oh no!!!

Gunns Ltd is ready to start construction on its proposed pulp mill in a matter of weeks. The Wildnerness society's challenge to the fast-tracked federal government assessment process of Gunns Ltd's proposed pulp mill has been rejected in the Federal Court.


What does this mean? (exert taken from www.wilderness.org.au)
Logging and land clearing release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and destroy precious carbon banks that have been accumulating over centuries.

If Gunns have their way, they will build this polluting pulp mill, burn our native forests and ancient ecosystems for power generation AND continue export woodchipping.

Some consequences are irreversible, such as the extinction of our struggling wildlife. For example, scientists predict a 97% risk of extinction for the endangered Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle in North East Tasmania.

The pulp mill alone would contribute more than 110 million tonnes of carbon pollution to our atmosphere every 25 years - that's equivalent to all transport on Tasmania's roads for the next 80 years!

If this pulp mill goes ahead, generations to come will be dealing with the opportunity we lost - they will be the ones to face the forest destruction, the impact on climate change, the massive air and water pollution, and be condemned to the task of repairing the damage of a poor decision made today.

If you feel the sense of loss that will occur if this mill goes ahead, please make a donation to help stop Gunns Ltd's outrageous pulp mill, and to protect our forests, wildlife and climate for today and for future generations. I have spent many months living in the Tamar, hence my passion for this cause. My friend's home 'Toad Hall' is based along the river and was one of the most special times i had spent in Tasmania over the past 3 years. To think a smelly, polluting mill may affect the tranquility of that area - well, it simply is a depressing thought!


If you are interested to learn more, please visit www.wilderness.org and help! This is a travesty for locals to the Tamar and Launceston.

Marisa's online shop.

It is finally here - my online shop.

www.marisamolin.etsy.com

I have just finished uploading my greeting cards series. I'll be updating the jewellery soon, i promise! (keep in mind the prices are in $US)

Happy Shopping!

Yellow monday

I have just discovered a wonderfully talented like minded Illustrator from Sydney who works under the name Yellow Monday.

Linda Kruger works in ink, pencil and digital prints. Her blog is definately worth a visit.

What does contemporary jewellery mean anyway?

Benjamin Lignel from Bethel, Metalsmith Magazine, attempts to answer this question...
http://www.klimt02.net/forum/index.php?item_id=7624

an excerpt from the article:
'Contemporary Jewellery is a type of practice - understood as the contemporary offspring of a craft-based design activity that finds its origin in medieval workshops. Such a definition stresses contemporary jewellery’s historical past, and finds antecedents in the British and American Arts & Crafts movements, the renewed late XIXth century interest in manual skills (as a last stand against industrialisation), and the emergence of radical jewellery movements in the 60s: it underlines the notions of individuality, craftsmanship, and its troubled relationship to the production mainstream; or a type of object: poised between high-street jewellery and art (the former’s glorified other, the latter’s poor relative), we know what it’s not (‘just’ manufactured artefacts for wearing), and what it wants to be (the expression of individual talent that reflects on, and sometimes influences, contemporary culture), much less what it is.'



image credits:Benjamin Lignel
Ring: Happy family NHS 2002
Rubber, gauze, ink
Set of two adhesive rings, edition of 300
Photograph by Joel Degen (London)