FIRST DRAFT 1985-1991 - First Draft WEST - December 4 to December 22, 1991

This was the final exhibition at First Draft WEST under our directorship.  It contained work by as many of the former directors that we could find - Roger Crawford, Tess Horwitz, Narelle Jubelin, Paul Saint (1986-1987), Adriane Boag, Mikala Dwyer, Astrid Kriening, Joanne McCambridge (1988-1989), Vicente Butron, Helga Groves, Janet Shanks and myself (1990-1991).

We handed on the gallery to Linda Goodman, Simone Patterson, Rod Jacka, Penny Thwaite and Richard Dabek.

I have no idea what I put in the show....

THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT - First Draft WEST, 39 Parramatta Rd Annandale - 23rd October to 10th November 1991

This was my first real major solo exhibition.  It was in the downstairs space at First Draft WEST.  It consisted of two long rows of paintings that were made to fit exactly onto the length of each wall space.  The paintings were all 25cm tall but of varying lengths.  They were hung next to each other without any spaces, so that they made two very long paintings. 

The layered imagery was taken from a book called 'The Grammar of Ornament' by Owen Jones that was originally published in 1856; which was an attempt to catalogue "the innumerable and ever-varying phases of Ornamental Art".  One of Jones's aims was to "arrest... that unfortunate tendency of our time to be content with copying...", so of course I set about not only copying his copies, but layering them so that as many of them as possible could be used. (You have to remember that Post-modernism was all the rage, it was your duty to present as much out-of-context information as possible...). The smaller back wall of the gallery space had one single square painting (50cm x 50cm?) that was made up of all the patterns and colours that had been used throughout the other works.

I remember that it was quite a complicated logistical problem to construct all of the canvases to fit within the wall space, as I had to take into account the bricked-up fire place and electrical meter box - I did have to quickly make one last painting to make it all fit.

Below are some images of separate pieces - I still have plenty of these paintings left - there were so many!  There was also a video made of the exhibition - I have had it transferred to dvd - it's a little blurry, but it is 20 years old!  I have also included a picture of the invite and room sheet which were painstakingly (and a little crookedly...) typed, pasted together and photocopied - thank god the computer got invented...

MICROCOSM -Garry Anderson Gallery, Sydney - 1991

All I remember is that this was a large and diverse exhibition of small works...that's it....

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