Thursday, June 07, 2018

At a floss for words

Hey, here's a new ceramic sculpture I made of the kids book, Tales from a Tall Forestby the brilliant Australian comedian Shaun Micallef.
Acrylic on kiln fired ceramic. 20 x 21 x 25cm
I took the sculpture along to the book launch at the Sun bookshop in Yarraville where Micallef was kind enough to autograph it.

But what I liked even more than getting the sculpture signed was getting the chance to tell Micallef how much I love his tv show, Micallef Tonight, and that when I was in year 9 my best friend and I would always race home to watch it. 

Micallef replied quick as a beat, "Oh so you're the two people who watched the show", (referring to the fact that sadly the show was cancelled after just 13 episodes due to mysteriously poor ratings).

But it didn't matter because much like his fairy tale, Shaun's gone on to live happily ever after.
Photo by Claire Sullivan
And a little congrats is in order for Micallef's book, as last month it won an Australian Book Design Association award for Best Designed Children's Fiction Book.
And a worthy winner it is; as it's very beautifully designed, both to look at, but also to hold on long walks up a mountain.

What I mean by that is yesterday some friends and I did the Thousand Steps walking trail out in the Dandenong Ranges. Now sometimes when people do the Thousand Steps they carry weights with them for the extra challenge, but I decided to bring the sculpture.
Photo by Emmy Clifton
Micallef's fairy tale deals with some pretty heavy themes, but it's not just the themes that are heavy, the sculpture is too!

Nevertheless I made it to the top, and so here's a photo of the Tall Forest, pictured amongst a tall forest.

And so segueing nicely from fairy tales to fairy floss, here's a photo taken in front of my new mural, (aka. my newral).
Photo by Emmy Clifton
The photo just shows a tiny part of the mural though, come see the whole thing at Realm Artspace in Ringwood, alongside the 3 person exhibition I'm in with Carly Fisher and Nathan Taylor, on now until July 15. 


Photo by Emily Jones
And in other exhibition news, I've got a couple of new pieces in a fun upcoming group show called Soft Toy Cityopening this Wednesday night, June 13th, at Rubicon Gallery just up from the Queen Vic Market.

The show's curated by Melbourne based artist Tegan Iversen and features a huge lineup of artists, a few of them whose work I already know and love, such as Tai Snaith and Cat Rabbit, but also a lot of artists whose work I'm not yet familiar with which is really cool and exciting too!

Here's the flyer for the exhibition.

And so yeah, hopefully see you there, and in the meantime I hope you have a fairy nice long weekend!
Photo by Emmy Clifton