VOLUME I & II - Limited edition artists' pages published by Vicente Butron & Janet Shanks - 1991

Volume I & II was a suite of artists' pages in a limited edition of 50.  Each Volume contained A4 sized prints by 8 artists which were presented in a plain brown envelope...

The prints were curated and published by Vicente Butron and Janet Shanks, with the envelopes printed by Simon Hanly.

Volume I consisted of prints by Vicente Butron, Simon Hanly, Melinda Harper, Stephen Little, John Nixon, Kerrie Poliness, William Seeto and Janet Shanks.

Volume II consisted of prints by Stephen Bram, Graeme Cornwall, Helga Groves, Anne MacDonald & Chris Fortescue, myself, Christopher Snee, Gary Wilson and Constanze Zikos.

My work was created by adding paint to a piece of flocked wallpaper and taking prints from it.

Kate Mackay - Untitled - 1991 

Stephen Bram - Untitled - 1991

Constanze Zikos - #91 - 1991

BODY WITHOUT ORGANS - First Draft WEST, 39 Parramatta Rd Annandale - 15th January to 3rd February 1991

Body Without Organs was a group exhibition curated by Janet Shanks and Vicente Butron.  ("This body without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles" [A Thousand Plateaus, G.Deleuze & F.Guattari, 1980, p.40]).  My interpretation was to create a wooden book, that in reality consisted of only the front and back cover and no text - I think it was something about making the unreadable solid......    
Participating artists were - Tony Ameneiro, Cristina Bahamid, Stephen Bram, Maureen Burns, Vicente Butron, Graeme Cornwell, Maria Cruz, Adam Cullen, Clint Doyle, Jeffrey Fereday, Susan Fereday, Rebekah Fogarty, Adam Geczy, Helga Groves, Stephen Little, Rose-Ann McGreevy, Kate Mackay, Elizabeth Pulie, Martine Ranby, Scott Redford, Jane Richens, Margaret Roberts, Julie Savage, Nike Savvas, William Seeto, Janet Shanks, David Laurence Stafford, Ruth Thompson, Penelope Thwaite, Hiram To, Justin Trendall.  

BOOK - wood with brass hinges, 32cm x 22cm x 8cm, 1991

VACHE (for AIDS) - AGLASSOFWATER Project - SITE 36 Agnes St, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane - 2nd November to 1st December 1990

VACHE (for AIDS) was a AGLASSOFWATER Project initiated by Luke Roberts, Scott Redford and Hiram To as a fundraiser for the Queensland AIDS Council.  I don't remember what my work was - geez I hate that!....

 

SITES UNSEEN 1 & 2 - CCAS Gallery 3, Manuka ACT - 24th October to 15th December 1990

SITES UNSEEN were 2 exhibitions curated by Janet Garcia Coleman, Sue Lovegrove and Caroline Gray.  Both exhibitions showed 2 Sydney artists with 2 Canberran artists as an exercise in stimulating an ongoing dialogue within alternative and regional art networks.

" 'Sites', in the context of this curatorial aim refers to the actual geographical locaton of artists and 'Unseen' refers to the lack of interaction between regional art practices."
JG Coleman, S Lovegrove, C Jervis 1990

I exhibited 5 works.  Each work was of the same image - a re-creation of a Romantic Classical Ruin with a Garland of flowers taken from a wallpaper sample.   Each image was the same except for the colouring.  The paintings were created by a series of stencils that built up the image in a similar way to a screenprint.  The imagery was chosen as a response to the exhibition rationale.  I was attempting to suggest that the relationship of the Regional art spaces to Sydney art spaces was analogous to the relationship of Australian painting to European painting.  I used the culturally debased imagery of wallpaper that had taken its imagery from historicized European art.  The five colour-altered versions referred to the way that we in Australia got to view these paintings - always slightly different depending on which book we were looking at.

I have just discovered that I showed these paintings in the back room at First Draft WEST as part of my 'Grammar of Ornament' exhibition  in 1991 and I have a video of the 5 paintings in that show.

No.2 of  'One to Five', oil on canvas, 38cm x 30cm each, 1990

NO - AGLASSOFWATER Project - Milburn & Arte 336 George St Brisbane - 21st September to 10th October 1990

Luke Roberts and Scott Redford co-ordinated a series of art events that they called AGLASSOFWATER Project.  NO was a group exhibition that was held in Brisbane.  I don't have an image of the work that I sent, but I remember it ...it was a framed, typed work on blue/purple paper, about A5 in size.  I had gone through the dictionary and listed alphabetically all the 'negative' words that contained the word 'no'.  I had an old typewriter that had belonged to my grandmother - it had a half black/half red ribbon - I typed the words so that the 'no' was in red - abnormal, cannon, dishonour, nothing, nobody, snob - you get the idea. I found a page full. It was the first work that I sold!

1:10 - Upstairs Gallery First Draft WEST, 39 Parramatta Rd Annandale - 3rd April to 15th April 1990

I liked this show...  The upstairs gallery space had five areas of wall - they were of course all the same height, but of different widths.  I made five canvases that were each one tenth in size of each wall space.  I lined the canvasses up next to each other and painted them with a layered pattern as if they were one painting.  I then hung each canvas on its matching wall.  I think I sold two, (I think Sandra Norrie may have purchased one...or I might have imagined it...) and gave two away as gifts - so I've got one left to photograph.

CERTAIN WORK - Foyer Gallery, Macarthur Institute, University of Western Sydney - 1990

I was invited to show some work in the Foyer Gallery space at UWS.  I can't find any list of the works from the show, but remember that it was basically paintings that I completed while still at Sydney College of the Arts - so it may have included these works....

Untitled Carpet, oil on canvas, 140cm x 80cm, 1987

Untitled, oil & wax on canvas, 150cm x 90cm, 1988

Untitled, oil & wax on canvas, 150cm x 90cm, 1988