Monday, 11 April 2016

Mine, says the cat

Mine, says the cat, 2016

Mine, says the cat is one of the latest prints featuring a couple and giant cat.
Title of this print is the first line of Marge Piercy's poem 'The cat's song'.

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.


Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.


You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?


Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.


Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word


of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

Thursday, 25 February 2016

Exhibition - Animal Instinct


Paintings, drawings, printmaking and sculpture by: 
Anita Barrett, Dean Bowen, Jazmina Cininas, Rona Green, Bridget Farmer, Gillie and Marc, Gracia Haby + Louise Jennison, Lucy Hardie, Kyoko Imazu, Sheridan Jones, Adrian Lockhart, John Ryrie, Judi Singleton, Jess Szigethy-Gyula, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Deborah Williams and Gail Willoughby

Since prehistoric cave paintings and throughout art history, animals have appeared in many guises in mythology and storytelling, and their physical and behavioral attributes have supplied artists with a wealth of inspiration and artistic metaphor. Even the internet has become a menagerie of animal photos and videos!

Metropolis Gallery is excited to present Animal Instinct, which explores how artists view animals and at times appropriate their characteristics to make sense of the human species and connect more with the natural world.

5 - 19 March
Opening Saturday 5 March, 5 - 7pm

64 Ryrie Street, Geelong VIC 3220 Australia
03 5221 6505

Night chase, 2016

Forest race, 2016


Monday, 15 February 2016

Treasure box - latest print

Treasure box
I think we all had a little treasure box as a child.
Mine had letters from friends, letters to the future self and little toys I bought from Gacha Gacha machine (you put a coin and turn a lever attached to the machine, a capsule containing a toy comes out) in Japan.
I used to bury it with friends as a time capsule on the corner of school yard or side of local shrines and temples and we made a promise that we would dig it up after 10 years.
We would go back and try to dig again after few months despite the promise - but we never found our treasure boxes again. It's still a mystery.

Treasure Box is one of the latest etching print.
This brand new print will be exhibited at Metropolis Gallery in Geelong, VIC Australia as part of a group exhibition Animal Instinct from 5 -19 March along with many diverse and amazing printmakers in Australia interpreting animals in their works.

Artists include:
Anita Barrett, Dean Bowen, Jazmina Cininas, Rona Green, Bridget Farmer, Gillie and Marc, Gracia Haby + Louise Jennison, Lucy Hardie, Sheridan Jones, Kyoko Imazu, Adrian Lockhart, John Ryrie, Judi Singleton, Jess Szigethy-Gyula, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Deborah Williams and Gail Willoughby

Animal Instinct
5 - 19 March
Opening Saturday 5 March, 5 -7pm

Metropolis Gallery
64 Ryrie Street
Geelong
VIC 3220
Australia


Saturday, 6 February 2016

Mural at Angliss Children's Centre

I had such an amazing time working on a mural in a kindergarten this week with my good friend and mural master Tom Civil. Tom is also a printmaker and I have been admiring his work for a long time and I had such an honour to work with him on  this project.
Tom created the landscape, gum trees, bottlebrush flowers and his signature stick folks and I made Australian animals of kangaroo, ringtail possums, wombats, wagtails, kookaburra and crows.

It was wonderful to be hanging with local community and receive lots of positive comments from the parents who picked up their children from the centre.
Local girl Topaz came helping us paint the wall too.

Topaz and Tom
Tom - photo by Chantal Wynter

Tom's stick folks having a meeting - photo by Chantal Wynter
Photo by Chantal Wynter


We'd love to thank Angliss Children's Centre, and the committee members especially Chatal Wynter who has been the driving force and even helped us paint the stinky clear protective coating with us :)
Also the community of Footscray - a place with one of my fondest memory in Melbourne who hanged out, offered us food and drinks and lovely comments and the parents and children who supported us! 


Saturday, 30 January 2016

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

Updates on ANZAC Centenary Arts Project

Image of a smuggled kangaroo from Australian Geographic website.
I had a meeting with Penelope Bartlau of Barking Spider Visual Theatre to discuss our ideas and share our research on ANZAC Centenary Arts Project blog.
It is always so inspiring to talk to her. She's one of the very few people I know who can really pulls ideas and thoughts out of my brain as we converse. I always leave her house feeling positive, hopeful with some kind of epiphany.

She made beautiful blog posts on our research.
It has our ideas as well as what / how we felt while doing the research on WWI soldiers from City of Wyndham area. And some of my doodles..

When we read each soldier's story on Wyndham Our Story website, suddenly the number of death isn't a mere numbers anymore. Everyone has a story to tell and so does their death.
It's one soldier's life that ended in the war times thousand times.
I think numbers alone can make us a bit blind to the significance of these events.
Although numbers signify magnitude of horror and tragedy, I believe it is really the personal story that makes us empathetic and deeply care. 

Here is a line from a letter that a soldier Private Leslie Joseph Rogers from the Werribee Shire who was killed in actuan on 6 August 1916.
I'll only put some line that really helped me visualise - Penelope has made beautiful post on the blog.


“Black prevails everywhere and still the people are happy and very hopeful“
“somewhere behind the sun”
“everything but the crucifix has been smashed”
“battalion band struck up some tunes and  anthems”

Penelope will include her poetry along with my image.
This project is a huge challenge for me and I'm so glad I'm working on this.

More information on the project is best read on our ANZAC Centenary Arts Project blog.

Monday, 25 January 2016

EDITIONS 2016


EDITIONS 16 is an annual exhibition showcasing Melbourne printmaking at Tacit Contemporary Art. It's a wonderful opportunity to see so many wonderful prints in one exhibition.
It has been going bigger and bigger every year and this year Tacit extended the gallery space and we are taking over the entire gallery space!!

Hope to see you at the opening!

EDITIONS 16
10 - 28 February 2016
Opening Wednesday 10 February 6:30 - 8pm
312 Johnston Street
Abbotsford
VIC 3067
Australia

The Great Wave, 2015


Saturday, 12 December 2015

ANZAC Day Centenary Commemorative Arts Project


From December 2015 through until March 2016 Penelope Bartlau, artistic director of Barking Spider Visual Theatre and I are creating a public artwork for the Wyndham City, Victoria, Australia. This very special project is to commemorate the ANZAC Centenary, with a focus on the what appened at Gallipoli and the Western Front.
Wyndham City together with the Werribee RSL selected Barking Spider artists myself, Kyoko Imazu (visual artist) and Penelope Bartlau (artistic director) to collaborate in the research and creation of the artwork.
We have created a blog that will let you know what we discover and uncover, and the process by which we will create the final artwork. 

This week we were extremely fortunate in having had two lengthly phone conversation with Lyal Raison who has an incredibly vast knowledge of war through loss of his great uncles in WWI and is also an army man: he served as a professional soldier for 38 years, and saw action in Vietnam.
More details of this week's extraordinary findings through Lyall are on this blog.