Wamboin Postcard, Summer

Works here at Wamboin are jostling with each other and the space to find their rightful place. Some works here have been seen in other Wamboin Postcards, but each work changes with time, in a different space or season, or with new insights not had before. This writer swims with all the changes in an attempt to get closer to the……, closer to making improvements.

Folded Forest in the morning mist

Folded Forest among other works, in the afternoon.

First Coming obliquely

Folded Forest detail

Me 1983 and Dana’s Jeans 1987

A painting surrenders

A painting by this writer painted in 1975 has been hung high in the shed at Wamboin. It can’t be viewed at eye level as we are accustomed or might prefer to view paintings. Being high it is also distant and small. It claims no rank as an eye level displayed work would expect.
The painting is left to establish therefore, relationships with other parts of the building. The work is partly covered with a line just as within the painting other lines cover the ground of the painting. Above the painting, a skylight makes the blue square within the painting another window.
The painting is abstracted by the context. The context is appropriated by the painting.
The slope of lines within the painting reflects the slope of the ceiling.
The dawn light outside carries the same lack of brightness. The opacity of each conceals that which lies hidden behind, outside.
The blue mistiness of each is moody, ominous.

The painting was this writer’s favorite from their show at Watters Gallery in 1976.
At the same time they were in a group show with Michael Buzacott and Harry Georgeson at Gallery A, which Frank Watters, in his expectation for artist loyalty, never forgave them. *

Painting meets site

• The use of ‘them’ is employed in its current context. What denoted plural is now singular and is accompanied by they, to make them gender neutral.

Mostly,

the last gesture, the last brushstroke, the last element of the sculpture added, provides the keystone without which the arch of the composition falls. 

A piece of music which does not end, may as well have not been played. 

A beginning can be be strong, to get you started, or in,  but you’ll get by if the climax works. 

The working end allows you to step out of the transcendent moment, to appraise the experience. The end allows you you look back at something from which you have now become separated. 

The last part is not necessarily a conclusion but does function in a similar way. 

Likewise a joke without a punchline is just a story. 

Ideally, or often, the last mark, the key mark, is concealed and only the most hardened viewer will spot it. 

The last mark, the last gesture, the final element is the move without which the match is declared a stalemate. 

Hair Of the fire

The flames are the hair of the fire.
Both flames and hair play second fiddle to wood and bone. They are accessories to the main game.

Both draw the eye because they move independently from their source, because they move.

What moves is a dance. Movement invites time more than stillness does. To watch movement is to be caught in a flow of time. We love to dance in space but more, we love to dance in time, not just plod slowly to our demise.

Both hair and time do great solos but depend on their source to set the rhythm and the base to keep them grounded.

Both hair and flame grandstand. They both need a wheelbarrow to carry their ego.

Hair has hairspray to dampen its inclination to move. Flames have no flamespray to curb their nature. Flames only ever flicker, agitated, restless, wild.
In our imagination there is world where flames can be permed and parted, combed, tied in a bun.
They are at their best in the fire.
We all come to terms with our limits, because we’re such great negotiators!

Flames are like hair.

Self portrait, held under mobile portal

Self Portrait, Held Under Mobile Portal 2020

We’re all on the phone. We are held by the light, more transfixed here than ever we were by the television or the computer.
We are pinned down by it. Reason has no power to reduce the spell cast. Something here is always more compelling than anything away from here.
This is not home detention or restriction from freedom. The phone is a cuff, leaving one hand to achieve all other activities.
This is an emergency.
We are under siege.
This painting is a warning and a reminder of our predicament. The portal is fake.

This painting is a record of the artist held under that shadow.

Surfer

This writer looks to the horizon for opportunities to form an opinion. Little gives more pleasure than riding an opinion to shore.
It is exhilarating to be held up by the power and the momentum the opinion provides. Those who have not caught the wave tread water, and can only gaze as the rider flies past triumphant. The opinion rider is often moved to a point where they lose reason and don’t care!

Why spoil the ride with reason?

This blog provides a beach of opinions ridden to shore. Some opinions are formed by the power of the wave more than the substance of the thinking. You cannot pick and choose though. Opportunities that arise need to be seized. This moment of being alive will not last forever.

There is the size of the wave on the one hand, large, small, medium. There are big wave riders who can use the power of the wave to perform tricks and turns. Smaller waves can prove more persuasive in the long run.

As we ride the wave these pleasures add to the exhilaration. As the wave forms and rises and moves, so do we.

Of course, some opinions have no legs. You can see them coming, with their frothy tops, shapely prematurely. Surfer beware!

Grit cafe (aDvertisemenT)

The McDonald’s logo towers above Goulbourn as you drive past on the Hume. 

It sheds a sulphur light over the landscape. The golden gates do not invite this reader to pass through. 

You have to stop for petrol sometimes. Food and fuel are bedfellows and right next to McDonald’s The Grit Cafe plays David to Macca’s Goliath. 

Customers here used to park in the McDonald’s car park but McDonald’s built a fence to stop that happening.

The likes of me is drawn to the audacity. The place is packed, the food great. 

At the next table a couple driving to Melbourne from the Gold Coast have full brekkies.  Bacon and eggs, sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms. Strawberry milkshake for the wife. They found Grit on google, recommended. They have to get to Melbourne by tonight, haven’t seen their daughters for a year.

This is Grit news.

I’m riding The Grit wave, while it lasts. The staff are young. They’ll be drawn to bigger opportunities. Let’s hope there are none here at Goulburn too soon.

Adapting to changes

The Book 2020

The Book’s production was a partnership between inspiration, determination and coincidence, like most sculpture.

The work presented itself as a conclusion to the collection of work here at Wamboin, rising to meet the fall of land at the bottom end of the block.

Gails last night imposed a reshaping however, and the conclusion proved premature.

The Book blown over

The sculptor needs to integrate changes as they occur even if they lie outside the usual processes of production. Disappointment can blind the sculptor to fresh opportunities.

As a consequence the other more modest works in The Park* have had their scale restored, and are not overwhelmed by what now seems an now overblown conclusion.

The Book blown over

• The Park is the name given to the property on which these sculptures are assembled.

The Spawning

Regular readers of the blog might mistake the skylight here as a broken stick of celery, or displaced road markings.

Just as in the forest outside, there are parent trees that are surrounded by a community of younger, smaller trees, so it is that here below the skylight on the table, baby skylights make another community. At this stage they only glint, rather than shed light. Despite their being the size and shape of needles they still advertise the presence and appeal of the cherries.

The cherries Andrew brought from Bungendore.

Volume Variety in Music

The invention of the piano with other instruments around 1700, brought the control of volume not previously available.

Suddenly musicians had another aspect of sound material to employ. With digital pressure or with increased breath pressure, volume could be made more and less loud.

Volume control allows for a different kind of expression of mood than if the hammer hits the string to produce the same volume. The variability of volume creates an emotional response in the listener. With the new instruments composers and musicians were able to release emotion.

In so doing a more basic nature of music was sacrificed, that being the capacity of the note and the interval to provide all the necessary tools to find expression, to give shape.

The addition of variable volume muddies the water and in so doing gives rise to the terrible excesses of late classicism and romanticism and most of the rest that followed.

Too many tools is a punishment and serves to gag the artist’s voice and the desire for formal clarity.

Volume control spelt the end of a beautiful beginning for Western music.

The urge to bring a tear to the eye represents a failure of musical nerve. Likewise the heart is susceptible to volume lifted and lowered.

To be ‘moved’ is to be distracted.

The Germans did beautiful musical work but they led the world astray with technical and musical innovation. The emotional power generated through that music was terribly applied to promoting political causes, causing people to be ‘moved’, and act in the world inappropriately.

The Italians contributed to this emotional well spring. They devised words which became emotional passports to musical excess.

Piano. Forte! Fortissimo! Allegro. Moderato. The die was cast.

We were led to believe we could trust our heart and in so doing we would be led to the kingdom of heaven. That portal is available only through going for the gut.

Just as the points of view of experts can sometimes be warped by different lenses, so too does ignorance warp with equal clarity. This musical theory may itself be susceptible to the tyranny of volume.

The Team

Two flies

On the writer’s screen the flies are life size and three D.

Caught with a camera, not squashed with a fly swat.

They were in this formation on the bathroom wall, facing the same way, connected to each other through this action, communicating.

They find the same traction on the wall as we find on the floor. They’re not clinging here.

They are only distanced from each other because of our own distancing focus we shall soon forget.

It’s fly season here. The air is abuzz with them.

Because of the wet weather everything is alive here and we value all life expression.

From this respect shown, they share their intelligence with us and make themselves an ornament on the wall.

Indicating the ‘collaborative’ way.

Eye Failure

Pocket photo

We are all well aware of the tendency of the eye to be inaccurate in its assessments of things.

The eye, in its corrupt partnership the brain, shrinks rather than expands the world.

It would be pleased, you would think, to be the purveyor of the new, delivering material straight from the world, to be added to the wealth of information stored in the brain.

But no.

The eye gets its hands sticky in its haste to nominate what comes across its path and fails to deliver.

We always have to stay on guard, be wary of the eye’s mischievous inclinations.

The artist and the inventor are past masters of accident control.

It’s well documented, and yet, we often fail to be surprised when accidental opportunities offer themselves.

This writer takes a lot of photos with their phone. They are always on the lookout for opportunities to be presented, but even armed with this determination, much material is lost.

The ’pocket photo’ shown above might also be called a lapcall. Either way, it is a big place, even though taken at accidental close range. It is a mirror, it reflects where the writer is in the landscape.

It is tainted with walking out among the hills and rocks and trees. It’s a more accurate account of where they are, (the writer), than if the camera had been pointed away from the body, outside.

There are valleys here and a road and bush spread evenly, when it hasn’t been farmed or felled.

It is big and in being big makes the writer in awe of where they are, with a new respect.

PS. Most pocket photos fail to deliver news. They are as unreliable as taste driven photos.

Harbour Sculpture Prize Announcement

These notes were read at the announcement of The Harbour Sculpture Prize at Balmain Rowing Club on 21st November, 2020

First of all I would like acknowledge elders past and present from the Wangal people of the Eora Nation who have taken such good care of this place. Thank you.

Thank you to all the organisers of The Harbour Sculpture Prize, Linda Bell, Ingrid Tkatchew, Catherine Timbrell and all those I have not met, who believe in art and hope. The show looks amazing, so amazing that as of 2.30 pm today, I still have not made a decision.

Thank you to all the sculptors who applied and those sculptors who were selected. I am privileged to be part of this celebration of sculpture and culture.

I don’t know how many of you here who have been reading my blog, accessed from my website.

I have for some years been trying to identify what is The Sydney School of Sculpture. We know that a number of sculptors have been working within a sculptural language that is mainly applied to the use of steel and also to the experience and appearance of the local landscape. The project is coming up to being one hundred years in the making. Those sculptors have attempted to synthesise their experience into material. Amid discussion and competition over the years that language has flourished and developed and will be identified by culture historians to have been worthwhile.

Some of the steel works here today belong to the history of that discussion.

Some here today may imagine that my prejudice towards that history will eventually emerge in my choice today despite my stated openness to other modes of practice.

It is not what we are looking for ultimately that guides us. It is what takes us and holds us, that  surprises us and subverts our expectations.

Mastery of material really helps, when the sculptor can account for themselves and their experience. Seeing something that had not otherwise been identified is always good. Sometimes we encounter a sensation we have had, also has a shape we had not seen before.

It’s not what we are looking for but when it’s there in front of us we should have the grace to acknowledge it, so that it can grow and not be starved, as we are culturally, sometimes inclined to do.

The task then is in identifying quality that rises above category. Which work here will stand the test of time? Which of the sculptural songs will we keep humming, down the track?

Art prizes also produce so many more losers than winners. More pain is provided than pleasure here today, despite this festive and wonderful occasion. No matter how many times I have failed in my prize attempts, the bruising is short-lived, because I am there again the next year with the same trust in ‘truth’ I brought with me the last time I entered.

We are all privileged to be part of a culture that can find and hold its voice.  It is imperative this is acknowledged and protected when other forces can so easily dismantle achievements made.

Culture is always under threat. On top of the ongoing presence of the Wangal people, the cultural history of Balmain runs deep.  Since settlement we have been privileged to share our lives here with writers, trade unions, artists, musicians and poets.

That which is embedded needs to be actively maintained. We must continue to agitate against ‘compliance’ to survive here, culturally intact.

This exhibition contributes towards that.

Before I announce the prize winning work, and to extend this beautiful moment a little further, I would like to recite my short poem. It is called the Balmain Traffic Song. It was written in 1990, erected as a sculpture and fence in 1999 in Robert Street Rozelle and was removed last year. The work is awaiting re-installation somewhere in Balmain.  

Our lives are led, the streets are full. The air is filled with the wretched fuel.                    At night the cars are tucked up tight, as close as the curb allows.
By day they flee on a shopping spree, The Mullens Darling run.

From town we come past old White Bay, at 80, 90, a 100 K.
The roads are drains we waste along, Robert Street, here we come.
We're charging up, you can hear us roar.

From time and peace you will hear no more.
There's work and space, and things to do.                                                While the engine is running, our blood does too.                                        

We lock them and shine them and make them sing,                                  Their song is a siren, the Balmain sting.

STOP!

There is something we think we cannot do.                                               There are currents and waves and tides too.
There's a voice that is rising and floating along,                                         And we can steer it and shape it And make it as strong as the voice of the reason of machinery's song.

So while logic and facts and circumstance declare,  A brave new voice returns the stare. It can be done, the cars will go. We must know belief will show .                                    

The winner of The Harbour Sculpture Prize is Catherine Castillo Alferez.

Christine. Would you like to come and accept the award?

Harbour Sculpture Prize ‘Fungi Feet’ by Catherine Castillo Alferez.

Song of Triumph

It is fair and reasonable the work of the Sydney School is not overtly embraced by the culture. 

It runs against most trends towards the ephemeral, towards equal representation, towards space saving, and that which is easily and inexpensively transported. 

The pleasure for the sculptor lies in the making of the work and the opportunity to show what is made. To be part of the dialogue, to be in the discussion is everything. It is the wealth of the society which allows the sculptors to be their own patrons.

This writer had for many years the hope for a different success. This led to disappointment and fatigue. Prizes afforded to other disciplines, such as sales and wider exposure were not available to the sculptor, in the majority of cases.   

The reality is that most sculptors within the SSS are male and white with a history of privilege out of balance with the community. The alpha male was given free reign for some time, the outcome of which is currently evident. The old front of the queue is the new back of the queue. 

We had imagined patience would provide some sustenance eventually however all patience is a form of impatience and is delusional and had to be handed over, with the other privileges.

The material of choice, steel, stakes a claim for durability however, over time, steel has proved to be ephemeral. Its ‘durability’ was a guise, and a long time proved to be short.

These issues have been brought to light this week by council closing down this writer’s Balmain workshop, when ‘residential’ needs overrode the sculptor’s presence.

This experience of resistance is an extension of the the material’s nature and comes as no surprise.

This is not a lament. This is a song of triumph.

Further Speculations on The Sydney School of Sculpture

There has been the beginning of discussion here on what constitutes the SSS voice. Some clarification is available from understanding what the school is not.

How it is different from English Sculpture, (ES), has been discussed earlier.

Discussing how The Sydney School sculpture is different from Melbourne sculpture will add to that understanding.

Melbourne sculpture employs craft to manipulate material. Mastery of the medium becomes the language the sculptor employs, to speak. The Melbourne sculptor manipulates the material to conform to their intent.

Geoffrey Bartlett, Gus D’Allava, Tony Prior, Bruce Armstrong, David Wilson share this mastery of material. More recently Callum Morton, Patricia Piccinini, and much earlier, Inge King share this aspect.

The Sydney sculptor is the servant of the material. They are more guided by the voice of the material than the voice of the sculptor. Does the material speak or is it spoken to?

In order to allow the material to guide the language, there is little scope for leaving the mark of the individual sculptor. Ironically one forgoes ‘style’ in order to speak clearly. Narcissism and liberation are incompatible.

Dave Teer, Leo Loomans and Paul Bacon should be included as parts of the SSS movement. Their work is derived from the history of the movement. No tradition however, has value unless it provides a launching pad to new life and this is provided by the work of these sculptors.

While Robert Klippel, (among many SSS members), would be repelled by his inclusion here, his work also qualifies.

Trump’s temple

Awaiting Trump

Columns denote ‘temple’ as we wait for the arrival of President Donald Trump to accept defeat at US election.

The US was not born in a day. It took half an hour and the temple here will not enjoy an afterlife of ruin.

There is a sense that when Trump does arrive, he will arrive naked. Too much has been stripped away. He will wear only his expression, pursed lips, with sleeves rolled up and up and away! The hand is punctuating the emptiness with double donuts.

Donald’s Donut

Artist speaks

This writer has been advised that an artist cannot call themself an ‘artIst’. Others may, but not the artist.

This writer paints and sings and makes sculpture. There is no better word than ‘artist’, to bring the parts together.

This writer, as an artist, can give themself a brief, and execute the brief according to the terms an artist employs.

This artist may, for example elect to reflect on China’s changing place in the world, or the way Coronavirus is changing our lives.

What would they bring though to those discussions, as an ‘artist’? Would a lack of expertise in the subjects limit the scope of their reflection? At what point does reflection become ungrounded?

What makes the terms worthy? What is the nature of the well from which deliberations are sourced?

1. Reflection. An artist is not constrained by time pressures. They are able to immerse themselves, to give themselves over to a subject independently. They are uniquely qualified to ‘dream’. There is no labour charge and they can work both in and out of work hours

2. Space. An artist is mostly unqualified to speak through lack of expertise. Their thinking is governed by a specific lack of ‘blinding’ detail. Without detail the subject is plainer to see.

3. Inspiration. An artist is equipped to be inspired and therefore be taken to a level

   of thinking not available through normal channels and disciplines. Inspiration allows breaking through glass ceilings and any others that may inhibit progress.

4. Key holder. The artist holds the key. They are both the living god’s lieutenant and the dead one’s.

‘The folded forest’ aUstralian galleries 31 Oct - 22 nov 2020

Making art, whichever art it might be, is a research project.

The main function of a gallery is to provide a forum to show that research. Thank you to Australian Galleries.

This exhibition is one part of a long term project that addresses the following questions. 

What is sculpture? How can the life of sculpture be sustained? 

What constitutes clarity? When is something nothing and nothing something?

These works talk to each other to determine that.

They also talk to the long conversation which is The Sydney School of Sculpture conversation. 
 

Work on ‘The folded forest’ began as the new casino at Barangaroo reached into the sky to look down onto Balmain. 

The eye is always absorbed by curves and the sculpture increasingly indicated lineage to that building. We can choose neither our parents nor our influences!

The works are drawn lines on steel cut and bent with heat to swell the steel into three from two dimensions. They employ Corten steel, a grinder with a cutting disc and heat for bending.

The sculptures made themselves out of this process revealing opportunities for both richness and simplicity.

- Michael Snape, 2020

The sentence

This writer runs the risk of tinkering with words as an amateur might.

Because this writer does not see their writing as a ‘central’ activity, writing constitutes an aspect of laziness when more central work should be undertaken. 

Writing is very similar to sculpture though. Great ponderous words need to be assembled to make sense and induce meanings and feelings in the reader just like a sculpture needs good parts and good connections between them. Sweat is as likely a product of wordcraft as sculpturecraft, after all. 

It gave me great pleasure and pride recently therefore, to have constructed a sentence which had sculptural qualities. 

Addressed to Telstra, it was part of an attempt to have my brother’s phone reconnected. 

To describe its qualities is to leave nothing to either the imagination or interpretation.

The Sentence 2020 Words on screen

Speculations on the sydney school of sculpturE

The sculptors who best encapsulate the spirit of The Sydney School of Sculpture (SSS), are James Rogers, Jan King, Paul Hopmeier, Paul Selwood, Harrie Fasher, Orest Keywon, Michael Buzacott and this writer.

Other sculptors, Ron Robertson-Swann, Michael LeGrand, Ian McKay, Kevin Norton, Dave Horton, Ayako Saito remain more attached to English sculpture and have not adapted the sculptural language to being here.

The work of the second group is less mediated by the local landscape. These sculptors may prefer to be excluded from a ‘regional identification’ when in their minds sculpture has universal themes. This writer identifies those ‘universal’ themes, as English ones.

This distinction has no bearing on the quality of the work. The task here is to identify aspects which best characterise The Sydney School.

Sculptors move in and out of the SSS sculpture space according to their conviction and commitment. Because of the very limited ‘career’ opportunities within the movement, many sculptors over the years have moved on or attached themselves to more art world friendly forms where ‘individual’ practice is championed. Because the work only looks like itself, it cannot be identified as being something else, for which a viewer may be searching.

The physical ingredient the SSS sculptor employs over their more ‘English’ counterpart is heat. Heat makes steel soft. When the heat is removed the steel stays fast. The ‘English’ sculptor forms the work cold. With ‘English’ sculpture, the heat only occurs at the welded joint, between parts.

The ground on which Australia stands is iron ore. Like clay comes out of the ground, so does steel. That ore is extracted and smelted, to become steel. To become sculpture, it goes through a liquid phase again. This heat provides the gateway to expression. The use of steel is an extension of the place. The temperament of the sculptor shapes it. It is a primordial process, instinctive and reactive. The place impacts on the language of sculpture, which is The Sydney School.

The preferred use of steel and heat is one aspect that unifies the SSS sculptors. Steel is also used because it is direct and immediate and does not require a second processing, such as casting. The sculptor’s voice is registered in a robust and durable material and the work can be placed in the weather with minimum damage. The material is relatively inexpensive and can be worked in response to the scale of the human figure.

There has been sustained dialogue among the sculptors to extend the language that the use of steel presents. Through association with one another, individual styles are made redundant. Through their association, the sculpture engine has a sustaining power than one sculptor alone cannot muster. The work of Picasso and Braque before the First World War was equally committed to a trans-individual research practice which was Cubism.

The Sydney School was informed by innovations in the mid and late twentieth century in both the US and Europe. David Smith and Anthony Caro significantly extended the sculptural language. Part of the task of the SSS is to revitalise and extend the Cubism project from which the art world has mostly shied away.

The collective energy generated within the SSS group arises through friendship, competition and argument. The school spans three generations.

Success and market corruption brings about the end of most ‘schools’, as much as neglect does. The sculptors have maintained momentum in their practice by flying under the commercial and critical radar. A Sydney art world that prefers to be dazzled has no time for the slower art of the SSS

To escape a difficult identification with steel sculpture, some very good sculptors are experimenting with more traditional methods such as carving. Harry Georgeson, who was trained at The National Art School and lives in New York carves and casts sculpture. Stephen Ralph, also trained at NAS now carves as does Dale Miles. Cathy Weismann models the figure and casts in bronze. Time will determine which work survives.

This writer proposes the longest legacy will arise through the SSS innovation in the use of steel as the material of choice.

The National Art School sculpture department has for nearly one hundred years provided the sculpture education to establish this language standard and stands alone among the art schools of the world for this reason.*

When this education is applied to reflecting the spirit of place, a long lasting sculptural conversation is possible. The Sydney School of Sculpture is that conversation.

There has been little critical recognition of the achievements of the school. Those champions that were, shrank away or died. It is conceivable that this neglect has served a protective purpose. A writer will need to present themselves soon, before the land out of which all this work came, swallows it again.

All material ultimately does not survive over time outside. All sculpture everywhere is in a queue to come inside. Truth can bide its time as it always does, but there are rumblings here at the back of the internet.

Steel Is a Rock 1999 Michael Snape, Balmain