Posts Tagged artists and museums
After a successful showing at Gold Coast Arts Centre Fibro Coast exhibition will open in a new format at University of Sunshine Coast Gallery on June 12th presenting material from local private and public collections, artworks, architectural drawings, contemporary and historic photographs, ephemera, objects, and oral histories documentaries. There is, in short, something for everyone. More information can be found on the Gallery website or at BlueSkyView.
My work for Fibro Coast includes video and a series of small, evocative, paper structures reminiscent of reliquary boxes.
In wandering around my neighbourhood of Noosa photographing fibro houses for the project I was very aware that we are fast losing this part of our heritage. Many of the houses I photographed were for sale, not as houses but as development sites. Sometimes all we have left is piecemeal, blurred images, small fragments of the past. I have collected some of these fragments and boxed them as precious objects might be housed in a reliquary box, a tiny shrine to the past.
Here a snapshot of some of my works shown in the Gold Coast portion of the exhibition. Some of these will also be shown on the Sunshine Coast



art, artist book, artists and museums, BlueSkyView, creative histories, Creative history, Fibro Coast, Gold Coast Arts Centre, hertiage, John Waldorn, Judy Barrass, Noosa, Sunshine Coast, University of Sunshine Coast Gallery, Visual Arts
An extended version of the catalogue essay with an introduction to the project and a section on the work of each of the artists is now available in e-book format at all major e-book retailers including the Kindle store on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo and Diesel. The book can be easily accessed in all e-reader formats as well as PDF and HTML by visiting the Smashwords publishing site at this link http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/60135 or through any of the e-book retailers above.

Amazon Kindle, Apple, art, artist book, artists, artists and museums, Barnes & Noble, collections, collective insites, creative histories, Creative history, E-book, Gatakers Artspace, heritage, history, HTML, Kindle, Kobo, Maryborough, Museum, museums, Queensland, Sony, Visual Arts
The funding available through the RADF grant was augmented by a generous donation from Downer EDI that allowed the production of a printed package that included a small fold out colour catalogue and an artist card for each of the artists. The whole was enclosed in a vellum envelope and was a much sought after memento of the exhibition. The full text of the catalogue essay by curator Judy Barrass is available in the pages on this site (above or right).

art, artist, artists and museums, collections, collective insites, creative histories, Gatakers Artspace, heritage, history, Maryborough, Museum, museums, national trust, Queensland, Visual Arts

A large crowd gathered at Gatakers Artspace to celebrate the opening of the Collective Insites exhibition on May 6th 2011. Jenny Galligan,Executive Director (Arts Development), Arts Queensland opened the exhibition.

art, artists and museums, Christine Turner, collective insites, Creative history, David hidges, Gatakers Artspace, museums, Niels Ellmoos, Peta Duggan, Susan Hutton, Visual Arts
It seemed like it was never going to happen. The gallery looked like a construction site. It’s hard to image what comes before a beautifully presented exhibition in a white cube gallery space. Chaos and stress.
Niels Ellmoos was hard at work putting together the frame-work for his massive charcoal drawing. His portable museums were a mass of bits and pieces, tools, glues, and unkowns.
Susan Hutton seemed like she was on a dream run, putting together four of her five pieces in record time. But it seemed like a cat was going to be her undoing. Many tries later the cat finally conformed to Susan’s idea of where and how it should sit on its pedestal. 
It was then up to Christine Turner to create havoc and challenge everyone to remember how the mangle went back together. Trevor Spohr from Gatakers was his usual unflappable self coming up with solutions to every problem, and finding a way to get everything done.

Of course Fiona Mohr also had a hand in trying to put that mangle back together. In the end we had to call in the experts in the guise of Patrick from Mavis Bank. Fiona was heard emitting huge sigh of relief that her expertise would no longer be called into question.
Over in a corner was what we affectionately called ‘the Tardis’, but which was, in reality David Hodges’ installation. Sometime after lunch workmen in flurescent vests arrived and started doing all sorts of things to it. We don’t know what. Perhaps they were attempting time travel. We’re looking forward to how this thing is going to operate, if it does. 
Peta Duggan was nowhere to be found. We think she was at home putting the finishing touches to a fantastic and amazing sculpture that will definitely not be able to be transported and will never fit into the lift to the first floor. But we hope she’s having fun. John Meyers from the military Museum came in to go over her work with a fine tooth comb and we are pleased to say he actually liked some pieces. Thanks John!
Make sure you’re there for the opening of this amazing exhibition. Gatakers Gallery, Maryborough, Friday May 6th, 6 pm. The catering is going to be great! All are welcome to attend.
art, artists and museums, chistine turner, collective insites, creative histor, Creative history, David Hodges, Gatakers Artspace, Industrial history, jusy barrass, Maryborough, muesums, Museum, Niels Ellmoos, Peta Duggan, Queensland, Susan Hutton, Tardis, Visual Arts

New media artist David Hodges has used the Collective Insites project to develop a new interpretive resource for the National Trust property, Brennan and Geraghty’s Store, donating many hours, his artistic talents and his technical expertise at a minute fraction of the real cost. The final result, an interactive DVD of short video clips telling the story of significant items from the collection will be unveiled at the opening of the exhibition and donated by David to the National Trust.
David talks about his work with Brennan and Geraghty’s Store below.
“The project has been a collaborative process between Ken Brooks and myself. Ken’s involvement has been providing input into every stage of the project, passing ideas on the items being displayed, the interface design, acting in the production video and providing feedback at the stage meetings.
My involvement has been vast across a number of areas in the screen and media field. The interface concepts were drawn before the digital version was created to save time. A test video was shot and modified for proof of concept. These processes allow you to get a feel for the production inspiring ideas, identifying pitfalls and highlighting areas of improvement.
Working with digital media has it draw backs as well as its benefits. Systems are software driven and to complete this project, improvements had to be made to the workstation I currently use. Software crashes and files can become corrupt; this is a standard in the digital media field so professionals save versions of work over and over along with automated system backups on a daily and weekly basis. All of these processes add to the space taken on the hard drives in the system.
The work represents around 300 hours of work that has been completed over two and a half months. That, combined with my main job meant a seven day week for the entirety of the project (I am looking forward to a day off). The process mentioned has created over 200 gigabytes of information contained in 19,282 files.
art, artists and museums, Brennan and Geraghty's Store, collections, collective insites, Creative history, David Hodges, Digital media, Gatakers Artspace, interpretation, Maryborough, national trust, National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, New media artist, project, Queensland

Maryborough School of Arts Building
Artist Susan Hutton will be working with the Maryborough Historical Society collection as part of the ‘Collective Insites‘ project. Susan’s mediums include painting, drawing, assemblage and artist books. She is also interested in various methods of printing and has recently acquired a kiln to experiment with printing onto ceramic work. Susan describes her work as using images as metaphors to tell stories from the inside.
Maryborough Historical Society is the main repository of Maryborough’s social history. Many objects, photographs and documents in the collection are cared for and put on display by a team of volunteers. The sheer size and diversity of the collection can be overwhelming for the visitor.
The collection occupies a significant heritage building, the Maroborough School of Arts and includes the original School of Arts library which is still in situ on the mezzanine floor.
Susan has made several visits to the collection spending some time there absorbing the feeling of place and space and ambling through the collection to see where it leads her. She intends to explore the books, documents and plans and the objects before deciding on her approach to making artworks about the collection. To get started she is playing with photographs and drawings making digital images that may be used in later works. For her this process is as important as the final work. She lets the collection speak.
Susan says “The journey is going to be fun!”

Artist Susan Hutton

artist, artist book, artists and museums, collective insites, Creative history, heritage, historical society, history, Maryborough, Museum, project, school of arts, Susan Hutton