Drawing translucency or 40 holes a minute: Nathan Young

40 holes per minute, 21,600 holes per day and the lack of a thimble, was this really an idea worth pursuing? If I've learnt anything; pay more attention to Grandma - running a pin through your hair makes life so much easier. 

Light in the Antarctic: Margaret Elliot

Freeze Frame 1

 The pressure ridge reared up like a frozen wave threatening to break as we walked along it into a distance of shifting cloud shadows. I am still fiddling with this work, must stop. 
500 x 2000 mm.

Freeze frame 2

This work recreates some memorable light effects I experienced outside Scott Base at 1 in the morning. The photos I took didn’t really do it (I often find bad photos make a good starting point for a painting). 
300mm x1500 mm

Freeze Frame 3  

This currently looks like a collapsed Pavlova. It is currently being made less distinct and hopefully more translucent. Watch this space

Freeze Frame 3a  

Light effects …… If I only had time 

The studio with the works under construction -- still tweaking.

We all know that photographs can lie, but what about half-truths?

Somewhere between the public face and the private, lies a translucent presence neither transparent nor opaque. Neither entirely true nor completely false. Much like contemporary social media.

Photographs have been a social media for over one hundred and fifty years. Over the period, contemplation of the mundane has revealed great depth of meaning and beauty.

I see photographic translucence not as a diaphanous form but as partially resolved meaning.The photograph may be sharp but is sited between the private and the public. Each of us brings to the image our own perception.

My personal photography transverses this social translucent landscape - revealing only clues to the true state of the material and the personal. With the exhibition as a catalyst, over the past month I have explored the personal spaces of my family, letting their domestic landscapes reveal something of their lives.

Tony Kellaway

The Backstory

On the 17th of December Helen, Poppy and I went on an overnight trip to Matiu/Somes Island. The trip was many things: a workbook collective Christmas party, a belated birthday celebration, and last, a farewell to a dear teacher, mentor, fellow artist and friend off on a new adventure. Alas, she could not join us.

Since we were butting up against our upcoming exhibition, Translucent Landscapes, it was only natural this was at the forefront of our mind and therefore directed conversation and exploration. We spent much of the day researching through filming and photographing, discovering many extraordinary visual feasts, in all sorts of interesting places. It was exhilarating to be absorbed and to respond. In my case, it was in the micro worlds and moments that I discovered. The weekend was a consolidation and followed previous research.

  

A southerly blow had us limited to the Forest and Bird house, late on the Saturday afternoon. Where we managed to get very merry on some rather good wine and become obsessed with completing a jigsaw puzzle. The 9:30 light curfew didn’t stop us, we were jigsaw possessed, using headlamps to carry on. Poppy sensibly bid us goodnight - Helen and I were convinced of the benefits of jigsaw in relation to our art practice, a distilling of form, colour, problem solving, and composition. How you can get stuck on a piece, believing it to part of some whole but it just doesn’t fit.

Jigsaw Demon Photo by Poppy Leknar

 

I work in a rather convoluted way; I tend to dig holes for multiple seedlings rather than a single tree. I am slightly sheepish about bringing up Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattaris’ philosophical concept the Rhizome. Because, quite frankly I haven’t read and absorbed enough to be able to make a critical analysis of how it relates. Only that I am very drawn to its concepts in regard to application of thought processes.

I tend to work with a number of parallel ideas in an organic Deluezian fashion rather than a sequential development from a single source idea. Follows is a sample of activity from my workbook.

 

My main project will be an installation. The model below doesn’t translate well in photo form, due its static quality. Whereas, the piece involves the viewer’s body to activate what occurs within the space.

In this project, I have enjoyed the play with the materiality of translucency and am using it as a mechanism to create a sensory space where people can travel their own landscape through their perception of what is presented to them. This may occur through triggers such as memory, emotions, imagination or physical, exploration or perhaps more. My challenge is setting up an environment where a lot of in-betweens exist. It’s untested but hey, that’s what the Fringe Festival is about.

Come along tomorrow and Saturday Night to the following free Fringe Shows- love to see you there! 
BRIGHTER FUTURE- by Mike Ting: Fri 10th Feb. 4 min loop (9-12pm). Majoribanks St side of the Embassy Theatre (outside). Free!
FEATURE-LESS - by Poppy Lekner: Sat 11th Feb 10.30-11pm. Paramount Theatre. Koha/Free!

http://featurelessbrightfuture.blogspot.co.nz/

Detail from photo by Herbert Ponting 2/12/1911

 Ice, the element that dominates all life in Antarctica and turns what would be a archipelago into a vast expansive continent 3,820,000 square kilometres larger than Europe. I have found this vital element of Antarctica surprisingly hard to write a musical composition on. The main problem is that Antarctica is a very quite desolate place, and only a few people have any form of emotional attachment to the place, also I have never been there. So instead of trying to write a tone poem about a place that I have only ever seen on the TV screen, I have instead decided to try and capture the feelings that the early explorers of Antarctica would have felt visiting the white continent. I'm working on an instrumental piece for mandolin, violin and guitar which we'll perform on the opening night.

Layering Clouds

Helen Reynolds 2012

Moist air rises up to meet a layer of cool air - a cloud condendses.. Layers of air swirl above us and clouds mark the movement, a different shape for each layer.
Here in Wellington the hills constrict the sky. The motorway is one of the best places to see as many clouds as you can, see them rising drifting on the currents. In particular the motorway's raised fly-overs. But I have found that getting absorbed by the clouds when driving is almost as dangerous as texting while driving and I have had to give it up.
I am cutting layers of paper to make clouds for the exhibition, tracking the expansion, drifting and dissipation of clouds in each layer.
I come out of the studio, absorbed again, and ask my daughter if she can hang the clouds out on the line to dry. She looks puzzled, but decides to get the laundry out instead.