Backyard Archaeology

BACKYARD ARCHAEOLOGY at Brighton Arts and Cultural Centre, Melbourne.

BACKYARD ARCHAEOLOGY was an exhibition of work at the Brighton Arts and Cultural Centre in Melbourne. There were twenty one artworks exhibited though some artworks are comprised of (up to eight) separate artworks. Most of the work was completed in 2013 and described a very busy and creative period. Backyard Archaeology refers to not only the use of redundant and discarded items that I include in my artworks (from both my backyards, both great and small, in Melbourne and the city and the Wimmera and the country) but also the metaphorical Backyard that is the accumulated store of imagery, experience and creativity of the Artist. The show opened on the 17th August and ran until Sunday 8th September, 2013. The photo above describes a number of the artworks. On the central plinth is ‘de Profundis’ (2013) which includes the pre recorded sound of a weight being intermitently dragged across a floor. On the upright plinths there are two examples of ‘The public and the Private series’ of bronze chairs put into an existential space. On the wall is a sculpture ‘Trophy’ using a found chair back, pine wood and a found picture frame. The framed drawing on the left ‘All paths lead back here’ references ‘the Weed Tree’. The chair sculpture in the left foreground is ‘a. meditation’ which was exhibited in the Melbourne Sculpture Prize and the Toyota ‘Brave New World’ exhibition.

BACKYARD ARCHAEOLOGY

The photo above this text looks toward the other end of the gallery space where the three and one half metre high ‘Venus Tower’ stands. Just above the sculpture ‘a.meditation’ in the foreground, is the right half of a four metre long drawing ‘portrait of the artist as an unidentified geographical feature on an otherwise flat landscape’. This drawing is from 2004 and is one of the two earlier works in the show. I include this for the context it provides to my work as a whole. To the right are two screen prints (from a suite of eight) ‘the unreliability of memory’. These prints work like that old game of Chinese Whispers. Each print in the sequence has the whisper/memory/ghost of the one previous. By the end of the eight the message has changed entirely.

Collapse in the fourth D

Collapse in the fourth D is the sculpture/instllation at the entrance to Backyard Archaeology. Standing at two metres and twenty centimetres the central figure is comprised of (from ground up) hand cut pinewood pieces, antique cedar table legs found in the Wimmera, an old wooden electrician’s case, a found wooden drawer, an axe handle and a small wooden box divider. To the left of the central figure is a large reproduction photograph of a Thai Buddhist temple. I would estimate the framed photograph to be from the 1960’s or early 70’s. There is a strong resemblance to the pinnacles of a Stupa/Chorten to be seen in the legs and I like the associated imagery of the Stupa/Chorten as a repository for the remains of saintly ascetics. To the right of the central image is an artwork using chalk on black paper mounted on board, attached to which is a manual stroboscope, a polished stainless steel disc and a circular flat brush. The sculpture/installation has, as it’s point of departure, an inquiry into possible travel in the fourth dimension, not as Jules Verne might have described it but as I have experienced it. The experience is based on aesthetics and the sharing of a precise aesthetic with people of the past. It seems to occur early in the day and in significant historico/cultural places.

Artefact. Bronze on a redwood plinth, edition of three.

Artefact is a bronze cast of a ceramic sculpture. The work is in league with the Weed Tree (see this website) and the drawing included in Backyard Archaeology, All paths lead back here. I would hope that these two large scale drawings might lead the viewer to consider the Mind and/or the seat of the Intellect. Artefact also refers to that aspect of humanity and all the frailness and strengths and the yet great unknown frontiers that the Mind contains within and without itself. The form of this sculpture is as if the Mind/Intellect has been disinterred from the brain and is being seen as an entity unto its own, stepping lightly on the earth, with darkly patinated recesses and brightly polished highpoints.