The big thing this week was my video tutorial with Rebecca (8-Apr-2016). Very helpful. A lot of thinking time on it since, including realising that there is still a lot of unfinished business for MMT. I need wind back a bit on the transitioning and keep some focus on the immediate tasks.
So I’ve been trying to research current Australia Post rules, done some shopping research and have a new toy tool hopefully to be delivered tomorrow, and have stalled on drawing while I finish up the sketchbook.
Paper yarn project
This week there are better quality photos – definitely worth getting out the camera, not just using my tablet which has trouble with my workroom lighting.
I’m enjoying this little gathering point in each day, a minor meditation.
Lectures, exhibitions, performances
There should have been a lecture, part of the Collectors and Collections series at AGNSW, but I mixed up dates and missed it 😦
I visited the MCA for a second look at some works which I felt rushed on first time round.
GRAYSON PERRY – My Pretty Little Art Career
There’s a lot to see in this exhibition and I’ll only touch on a few points that particularly struck me.
One was how foreign an apparently similar culture can be. There’s a lot of linked history and the base of colonial Australia, the same woman as queen, I have an English mother, have lived in the UK a few times for a few years in total, watch lots of TV and so on, but many of the references were totally unfamiliar and not particularly meaningful to me.
It was interesting to be able to see a few of Grayson Perry’s sketchbooks. I was particularly taken with the translation of a work from sketchbook page to massive tapestry.

Grayson Perry sketchbook

Grayson Perry
The Upper Class at Bay
I’ve wondered before about the use of tapestry by contemporary artists. In an exhibition of Chuck Close I found the tapestry lacking in emotion, not adding anything new (25-Mar-2015). It seemed an easy way to get scale. Not exciting to a textile person.

Grayson Perry
Walthamstow Tapestry (section)
In a way this makes more sense to me. It is packed with allusions to all sorts of aspects of British culture. It is huge – and yet it has the connotations of domestic textile. I suppose in other works Perry’s pottery works in the same way. Skewering a society at the same time as being a close part of it. All the awful details of suburbia and domesticity uncovered and displayed in appalling detail and scale.
Artists in the 20th Biennale
Noa Eshkol
I’m fairly confident a large reason for the inclusion of this artist is her movement notation – performance is a significant strand in this Biennale. However the “wall carpets” are interesting in their own right.

Noa Eshkol

Noa Eshkol
stitch details
All of the works shown above were human in scale, less than my height, narrower than my outstretched arms. Two works shown, both from 1995, were much larger.

Noa Eshkol
The Four Seasons

Noa Eshkol
Bush at Night

Helen Marten
Smoke Description (2015)
The more I looked at this work the more I found. It was probably about the same level of bewilderment throughout.
The descriptive information includes words like eclectic, ambitious, readymade, hand crafted, found… I am flummoxed and intrigued. I would like to learn and see more.
Shahryar Nashat, Parade. A video of a performance, this was based on an original work from early last century that has gone through two processes of translation. The result is hard to describe but fascinating to watch.
Reading
Finished the Claire Falkenstein book. My original research on this artist was posted 11-Mar-2016. The best thing about this book was the many large, clear photographs. There were some interesting essays too. I continue to find Falkenstein very exciting both in her work and in her work processes. Risk taking, following her own ideas, experimenting in many media… There are ideas around exploding the volume – no longer a solid mass; kinetic, with the potential for viewer involvement (this suggests to me engaging haptic as well as optic senses, unlike much 20th century art, and could be part of what attracts me to her work); the combination of scultural and graphic processes. Drawing in three dimensions… I could benefit from spending some time developing drawing techniques based on her work (similar to exercise done with Ruth Hadlow based on John Bokor (25-Feb-2016).
The Falkenstein Foundation (2012) Claire Falkenstein Los Angeles: The Falkenstein Foundation
Ongoing: Fer, B. (1997) On abstract art New Haven and London: Yale University Press. This is turning into a rocky road. A lot of Freudian analysis, to which I react with impatience. Now on to a section on Eva Hesse, which I find more engaging.
I’m reading/listening to Grayson Perry’s ‘Playing to the Gallery’. I am endeared to his tone and digs at The Art World. My mum saw those tapestries at the British Museum hanging next to the ancient tapestries that he used as starting point and was intrigued by his contemporary references – the sure-footedness of his starting point I suspect enabled her to engage with a work that she might otherwise have dismissed. Interesting that you note the cultural ‘foreignness’ for want of a better word.
How do you find all the text Grayson Perry uses? I found the detail overwhelming, it just turned into some kind of mental fuzz, but I’m sure could be rewarding if one put in the effort to read it.
Little trick… l don’t always get left alone when I’m reading (ok hardly ever) so I listen to books on audible while I’m doing a chore – amazingly I’m left alone hoovering, washing, cleaning…If I’m listening to a text that really captures my interest I find a paper copy to then I can copy or reread quotes that literally catch my ear. I have the Grayson text as the original lectures/ talks he did from audible. He is quite fun to listen to and when I haven’t got it I can either reredos section or rewind.
And on a simpler level, how incredible is that translation from Grayson Perry’s sketchbook to full sized tapestry. Intrigued by the Eshkol pieces, a new name to me. Great post, a real mix of ideas and stimulus – full of admiration for your creative momentum.
Fascinating to see the changes as well as the parts and overall feel that were translated. I’d love to know more about the process – how involved he is with all the technical detail and decisions needed to ensure a stable weave structure.
*reread even!!