Swinners are grinners

Hellooooo internet, double you double you double you dot hi. 

Last week I went to the Swinburne Lecture Theatre in Hawthorn to speak at the Industry Design Forum.

It was the first time Swinburne's run an Industry Design Forum, which is really just a day of presentations delivered by past TAFE students to current TAFE students, talking about their experience at TAFE and how they've applied the skills they've learnt in the quote unquote REAL WORLD.

Probably the biggest skill I learnt at TAFE is how to pour the perfect ratio of soy sauce onto a potato cake, (for as I'm sure you already know, too much soy sauce is overpowering yet too little is disappointing).

I was thrilled to be asked to speak, although when I then looked at the list of other speakers I got a little nervous. I was the only visual artist and all the other speakers clearly have a hundred times more impressive credentials than I do, this meant that I definitely had to put extra effort into my presentation to try and make sure it didn't crash and (swin)burn.

We were asked to speak for 45 minutes, plus question time, which at first sounded like a lot but once I started figuring out a kind of arc to what I wanted to say I realised I actually had to be really selective with what I’d have time to talk about.

It was fun putting together the presentation, I treated it pretty similar to how I'd put together a blog post, (ha, one of my better blog posts that is, not this one). 

I think my powerpoint had something like 109 slides, which was a real strain on my trusty four year old laptop, which kept freezing up like Eminem at the start of 8 Mile.

Seeing images of my little sculptures on my trusty four year old laptop screen is one thing, seeing them projected onto two cinema sized screens was a whole other level. The lecture theatre was way bigger than I'd expected. 

Here I am standing nervously as I was being introduced, (the powerpoint slide in the below photo isn't from my slideshow, it's from Swinburne's).

Immediately after being introduced the man who introduced me, Glenn with two n's, showed me my microphone necklace. It was exactly the same as the microphone necklace that the singer Pink would wear if she were performing in a TAFE lecture theatre.

As Glenn attached the mic around my neck I mumbled something like “Ha, this feels just like when Dad does up my ties”, and although I’d only said that to Glenn the mic was loud and everyone in the theature heard it. Anyway so that's how it started, and from there I did the talk, and yeah, it went well I think... I hope. I'm pretty sure.

I'm not sure if I should keep writing this blog post, I should really be packing, but I guess I'll keep going as I suppose there's much worse ways to procrastinate than this...

Speaking of procrastination, the day before the Swinburne talks I decided that the best use of my time, rather than work on my powerpoint, was to go buy a new t-shirt. I got a blue one. It wasn't until I arrived at Swinburne that I realised the t-shirt made me look like one of the geniuses that work in the apple store.

And speaking of apples, there were so many apples provided on the day. Two huge wheelbarrows full, very ambitious of how healthy TAFE students are. No sign of any soy sauce, let alone potato cakes.

I figure the apples were there so the students would have something to throw at me. I thought you were meant to use tomato's, I'd much rather get hit with tomatos than with apples. 

I didn’t get a photo of the apple display but here’s a shot of a trolley full one of the other speakers took home.

If I were smarter I wouldn’t have dressed like someone who works for apple, I would’ve dressed like Steve Jobs, which is what my old TAFE teacher Larry unintentionally did.

Here's Larry with a pear and me with a pear of apples.

Oh hey did I mention that my first slide, which was also the title of my presentation, was "You've gotta be Swin(burne) it to Win(burne) it". Ha, which might officially be the worst pun of all time.

Although I should point out the fact that I acknowledge it’s the worst pun of all time is a secret just between us. One of the last questions at the end of my talk thing was a guy saying “Hey I really like your work and you have a lot of funny jokes, except for that first one, what was with that?”

Here I am talking about the book I wrote on the way the media dealt with the Bill Henson thing, as I was in second year TAFE at the time.And here I am talking about something equally as juicy; my sculpture of an orange.

Here I am listening to a question.

And here I am attempting to answer it.

The talk ran over time because people kept asking questions which was really cool, and yeah, it was just a really fun day. I also just loved getting to listen to all the other speakers, they were all really great. I wish there were more opportunities to do this kind of thing, it was so much fun. And yeah, I really wanna say a big thanks to Swinburne for having me, (not that I think anyone from Swinburne will be reading this, but like I always say, better to be TAFE than sorry).

I also wanna say a ginormous thank you to you if you happened to be in the audience. The responses I got were pretty incredible.

On top of all that I even got paid for the day, which was very much appreciated, although sadly three quarters of my cheque went towards a parking fine I received for being parked 2 hours and 4 minutes in an empty two hour car park.

Good thing Swinburne also gave me a bottle of wine to help drown my sorrows. Anyway my strategy with things like parking tickets is to try and just pay the fine immediately and never think of it again.

Sometimes that’s easier said than done I guess, I remember I struggled with it a couple of months ago when I lost twenty dollars. I wanted a schnitzel roll from this place near my studio, I didn’t have cash and they have a ten dollar eftpos minimum so I went to a nearby ATM. I asked it for twenty dollars and having lost all my cents I walked away without taking it.

When I realised I decided rather than use the ATM again I'd go to a newsagent, get the paper and get money out at the same time. While in there I was flipping through the latest issue of Australian Art Collectors, wondering how I could be so careless to lose my twenty dollars, and I found an article that briefly mentioned NEW14. It was pretty gnarly to see my name in bold. I had to buy it, if only to show Mum. 

When I looked at the cover I saw that it cost 20 dollars, so now I was down 40 bucks, and I still didn't have a schnitzel roll.


Oh and actually, hey, speaking of Australian art collecting, I have some pretty awesome news. Last week the City Of Melbourne bought nine of my drawings! How rad is that?! Crazy.

There's a chance you saw the City Of Melbourne's collection this past weekend, as this weekend Melbourne had their yearly open house. You wouldn’t have seen my drawings though, they’re currently being framed, but when they next get put on display or scrunched and thrown in a bin I’ll be sure to let you know.

I should finish up, this post is way too long. I'm also really worried it sounds to braggy. I should point out lots of pretty lousy stuff has been going on too of course, as always, but I haven't written here in a while and I'd much rather think and write about the good things.

Speaking of good things, the reason I need to go pack is that today I’m flying to Perth. With me I’m bringing two pieces that will be exhibited in the 2014 PICA Salon, held at PICA, (the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art).

One of the reasons I’m so excited to be in the 2014 PICA Salon is that amongst the 24 great artists in the show, (and also me), is one of my very favorite artists of all time, the South African born William Kentridge. I love Kentridge so much I like to pretend his last name is actually Kennytridge.

But so yeah, I'm rambling, are you hungry? If you're in Perth this week please send me an email and let’s get a hamburger.

Or if you’re in Perth and you don’t wanna see me but you wouldn’t mind seeing my work, then head to PICA between August 2^nd and August 31^st.

My work in the show is so brand new that I slept in the corner of my studio last night just trying to finish it. It was the first time I’d slept there, I wish I’d planned for it in advance so I could’ve brought better bedding than jumpers. 

But at least my breakfast wasn’t Sub par.

Anyway I’d better go. And hey, I usually finish blog posts by saying thank you for reading, and this morning is no exception. Thanks so much for reading, I really appreciate it. I promise the next one won't be 2000 words long.

And finally, so far one of the only things I’ve managed to pack for this trip is a little bit of plaster, and I've just realised there’s a chance this white bag of powder might get me in trouble. 

Ha, and I guess what troubles me the most about the possibility of things going wrong at the airport is that this might be the last photo ever taken of me.

Every blog has its day

Hey pal, here's some very exciting news; today I published a new blog post!

"Well der..." I hear you saying, "I'm reading it right now".

Oh yeah, good point. So ok, hey pal, here's some very exciting news; today I published TWO new blog posts!

And by that I mean, today I published this post that you're reading right now, but also I'm incredibly thrilled to announce that I was invited to write a guest post for the ACCA blog!

(Pssst.. Just in case you're an overseas reader, ACCA is the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.)

And so yeah, here's a photo of me giving my ACCA blog piece one last quick edit, sitting with the wonderful Ali, while deep inside the heart of ACCA Headquarters.

As a fun-fact side-note: To get inside of ACCA Headquarters you have to pull down on a mystery book that's hidden amidst all the other books within the ACCA bookstand. Once the mystery book is pulled from the shelf a pretend wall will spin around and at this point you'll have exactly two seconds to duck in through the secret entrance.

Please don't bother asking me which book is the mystery book, as I'm not at liberty to say. One hint I will give you though is that the mystery book may or may not be the NEW14 exhibition catalogue, but I guess if you want to find out for sure you'll need to head into the ACCA bookstand and pick up a copy.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh right, so here's Ali and I going over my ACCA post one last time, just checking to see if we've missed any grammatical errors, clunky sentences or any other general sloppiness that I might be allowed to get away with on my own blog but is certainly not acceptable when writing for someone else's.

Miraculously my writing somehow passed the ACCA test, and so the only thing that was left for me to do was close my eyes, hope I hadn't acca-cidentally written anything too dumb, and click "publish".

yay!

The 2200 word writing/image thing that I just published on the ACCA blog is titled New sen-station; A drawn out day on the train, and is the resulting work from about a month ago, on the day before I turned 26, which was also the day before the NEW14 exhibition finished.

For the day I stayed on the train from the first train in the morning until the last train that night, travelling on every line and drawing people along the way. 

I'll write more about the piece soon but for now I just kind of wanted to tell you about it, so that you can go and have a look, if you'd like to, and hopefully it can speak for itself. 

To find the piece go to www.accaartblog.com, or even easier just google "ACCA blog", or, easiest of all, just click on any part of the second half of this sentence!

So yeah, I'd love it if you'd have a look!

In the meantime though you've already at least read this blog post, and so thanks heaps for that, I really appreciate it. Hi.

Before I finish up I also want to say a ginormous thank you to ACCA for giving me the tremendous joy of publishing on their blog, it's such an honour, and in particular a huge thank you to Alison Lasek, Kyla McFarlane, Jane Rhodes and Cherie Peele. 

And ok great, I think that's it. All I really wanted to say here tonight was to please have a look at the ACCA blog, and so now that I've said that I guess it's time for me to click "publish" on this post. 

Clicking "Publish" on my own blog is just slightly less scary than clicking it on ACCA's, so rather than cover my eyes for this one I've decided to instead click "Publish" while enjoying a delicious, nutritious dinner courtesy of the sandwich artists down at Subway.

Getting into the spirit of NEW the sandwich artist even insisted that we bust open a brand NEW bag of fresh lettuce.

and so lettuce all be grateful for that. (You know, grate-full, because the lettuce is grated...Goodnight everybody, I'll be here all week, try the subs!)

You've got a Friend in me

Hey friend, this is just a friendly reminder that today is the last day to see my work in the Future Now exhibition on at Substation.

Future Now is a travelling prize, curated by Will Foster, that seven 2013 Honours graduates were invited to be a part of. The show will travel to three Regional Galleries around Victoria over the next 6 months, I'll let you know more about those dates when they're a bit closer.

Essentially Future Now is an exhibition of work from the recent VCA Honours Graduate exhibition, but because I'd already been in a show of Grad show work at West Space earlier in the year, and also because I figured that most people who'll come to see Substation will have already seen that work, instead I asked if for this part of the show I could make new work.

The piece I made is called FRIENDS, and it's basically a kind of site-specific solo show within the exhibition, I think. 

FRIENDS was exhibited in it's own little room within the gallery. From the doorway as you walk into the room you see a sculpture on the floor of a blu-ray DVD of the American sitcom Friends, (season two). 

Friends (season two), acrylic on kiln fired clay, 17 x 14 x 1.5cm. 2014.

When you then look to the wall on the right you see six A3 drawings; a portrait of each of the artists in the exhibition, (plus, you know, the same amount of friends that are in the sitcom Friends).  

Photo credit- Kristy Milliken

Six drawings, acrylic on 225gsm paper, each 42 x 29cm, from left to right they are titled Alex, Christina, Dan, Isabelle, Daniel and Sarah.

In each of the drawings the subject is smiling happily like a headshot photograph of a sitcom star.

Dan. Acrylic on 225gsm paper. 42 x 29cm. 2014.

There's also an audio element to the show, as repeating throughout the gallery space is a one minute long looped recording of me singing the theme song to Friends. 

If you'd like to hear my version of the song from the show I have previously used it as the audio to this video, that originally I made to accompany a slideshow of me and my friend Dan, that I made for Dan's sister when she was putting on a mini film festival.

The audio is coming from a CD player on the ground, (the cd player, of course, was the listening device of choice in 1995, the year of Friends season two). 

So yeah, obviously I have the voice of an angel, but even still, that angelic song repeating all day long turns the experience of spending time with the work into a little bit of a friendzy.

Anyway the show is meant to be fun, but also I wanted to pay a genuine little tribute to all six people in the show I went through university with and am lucky enough to call my friends. 

The work is also meant to draw a reference to the idea of group shows that feature a selection of only artists who are all friends, which I think is a pretty common thing in Australian artist run spaces.

The other thing I liked about the show is that to get to my FRIENDS room you have to have gone through most of the other artists rooms in the show, and so having just experienced their work I liked the idea that the viewer could now put a face behind the art. 

For instance, here's a drawing I did of a detail of one of Christina Hayes' paintings from Future Now.

And now, exhibited fifteen meters away from Christina's painting, here's the face behind the work.

Christina. Acrylic on 225gsm paper. 42 x 29cm. 2014.

Ha, anyway, thanks heaps for reading, and I hope you know dear reader, that even though no one told you life was gonna be this way, and even if your job's a joke, your broke or your love life's D.O.A. And maybe it's like you're always stuck in second gear, and if you feel like it hasn't been your day, your week, your month or even your year. Well, just write me an email cause I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour, yeah I'll be there for you, like I've been there before. I'll be there for you, cause you're there for me too.