Thursday, July 28, 2016

Doing things by the book

Hey, I don't wanna boast but here's a new ceramic sculpture I just finished.
In other boastful news, I'm super excited to have found out that I'm a finalist in the upcoming R & M McGivern Painting Prize, held at Artspace in Realm, opening on September 16.

Here's a list of the fantastic artists I'll be exhibiting alongside;
When it gets closer to the date I'll be sure to invite you to please come along, but in the meantime I thought what might be more fun for today, rather than go on about shows that I'm involved in, will be to mention three other artists who've got exhibitions on at the moment.

First up is Emily Floyd. I really like Emily Floyd, she's funny and warm and a great sculptor. Emily's featured in the current exhibition, Telling Tales, on at the MCA in Sydney. Here's a quick drawing I made of Emily's work in the show, titled It's because I think too much that I do nothing.

And here's Emily Floyd and I at an exhibition she was in earlier in the year at Gertrude Contemporary, where she was kind enough to sign a ceramic sculpture I made of her 2014 book, The Dawn.

Here's my sculpture of Emily Floyd's The Dawn, photographed this morning at dawn.

The next artist I'll mention is Jess Johnson, and no I don't mean Jess Johnson the Cricket Wag...
I'm talking about Jess Johnson my pal, the awesome New Zealand born artist, whose work you might remember from her show at the NGV last year where you got to take a ride inside a fully immersive Oculus Rift headset. 

The show was amazing. Totally amazing. I was totally amazed.
Jess has a show opening tonight at Talbot Rice Gallery, so if you're lucky enough to be in Edinburgh between now and October 8 you should definitely hit it up. 

Here's the flyer;
And here's a selfie with the wonderful Jess as she's signing a ceramic sculpture I made of her book, a few days before she left Australia to go live in New York City.
Also, before Jess signed my sculpture, here's the scrap piece of paper she practised her signature on to make sure she would do a good one :) 
And here's the finished sculpture.

And with no time to keep Patting myself on the back let's move on to the third and final artist, who's a different kind of Pat altogether, the artist Pat Brassington. 

A lot of Pat Brassington's work is really disturbing. 

"How disturbing is it?" I hear you ask.

I would say it's almost as disturbing as the other morning when I walked into the kitchen and discovered that my Mum had made my Dad a coffee using my "Worlds best lover" mug.

The first time I saw Pat Brasington's work was back in 2012 when she had a show at ACCA. Recently I made a ceramic sculpture of Pat Brasington's book from that exhibition and last month, while at Arc One Gallery, Pat was kind enough to sign the sculpture for me. 


And so cool, there's three new ceramic books signed by three awesome and inspiring artists. 
Check out their shows if you can, pretend their work is Pokemon and go catch it in the wild.

Emily Floyd is in the group show Telling Tales, curated by Veronica Kent at the MCA in Sydney. It's on until October 9 and it's free. Click here for details. 

Jess Johnson's show opens tonight at Talbot Gallery in Edinburgh. It's on until October 8 and it's free too. Click here for details.

Pat Brassington is in the CCP 30th anniversary fundraiser in Melbourne. The last day to see the show is this Saturday, (July 30), and it's also free, but obviously it's a fundraiser so all the work is for sale and CCP is a great space so if you feel like buying a work you'd be helping out a great cause. Click here for details. 

Thanks heaps for reading, see you soon, and yeah, I'm just really thrilled with these new ceramic sculptures. But like I said, I'm not really one to boast. I much prefer to Boost.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

A series of thank you's

Hey! I just wanna say a massive thanks to everyone who was able to see my solo show, A series of self poor traits, back in May at Galerie Pompom in Sydney. I know it was over a month ago but I'm really proud of the show and was blown away by the amazing response. 
I was also just blown away by how many people came to the opening. 
Galerie Pompom made a facebook event for the show and apparently 1.3K people clicked "interested", but even still you never know if anyone is gonna turn up.
Speaking of 1.3K, click here to read a nice little press release thing for the show that was written by The Thousands.

And while I'm sharing links, please click here to read a fun little interview I did in the lead up to the show with Sharne Wolff for The Art Life. The interview also answers the question I get asked on a daily basis about whether Brad Pitt and I are identical twins, (spoiler alert; the answer's yes, according to wikipedia).

Thanks so much also to the people who came to my artist talk at Galerie Pompom. Here's a picture I found of it on instagram, ha, and I swear the room was packed out, even though in the photo it looks like I'm just doing the artist talk for one person.
And lastly, not that sales is a particularly interesting thing to talk about or in any way defines the success of the show, but the show did really well, in fact I think even 8 or 9 of the works had sold before lunch time on the day of the opening. And I just feel like it really needs to be said that this kind of support really helps and is really appreciated as it allows me continue to do what I do.

For instance, the first thing I bought with my sale money was a long overdue new phone cover. It's hard to believe that my new cover and my old one were once the same colour.
Anyway that's most of what I wanted to cover in this post but I also just wanna say a massive thank you to everyone who saw my work in another exhibition that finished around the same time; Cornucopia, curated by Anna Briers and held at the Shepparton Art Museum.

I gave an artist talk at this exhibition too and again am really grateful of the turnout. It was also probably the most nervous I've been before an artist talk because my parents came to hear it and they rarely see my work. Here's a photo I got off instagram of my parents and I after the talk, with my Dad holding a sculpture I made of a gold logie and my mum holding a sculpture I made of a cup of tea.
And I'm super excited to announce that my piece featured in the Cornucopia exhibition has been selected as finalist at this years The Churchie prize exhibition held at the QUT Art Museum in Brisbane. 

For more information on the Churchie just click here, and if you happen to be in Queensland please come say hi at the opening on Friday August 19. (Ha, or at the very least please click "attending" on the facebook event.)

In the meantime though thanks heaps for reading, see you soon, and um... well, I'm not quite sure how to sign off on this blog post... Maybe the best way to sign off is with the fine art of sign art, and so yeah, here's a painting I made of a sign which I recently installed on my street. 
A little sign of things to come.