In 2020 I installed a body of work for my first solo exhibition – “All the bess are [not] dying” – outside of the comfort of the space I was used to – Jugglers Art Space, 103 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley. We sold the building to the YMCA in June 2018, moved out and I have continued to run a stripped back Jugglers Art Space Inc [JASI] without a graffiti space, studios, Paint it Red music events, the Marie Eillis OAM Prize for Drawing, public art murals and White Silence. The Stairwell Project, our studios at Tarragindi plus my own enjoyable art practice – and a busyness with family during COVID-19 – have taken large slabs of time. But COVID-19 gave me space and time to draw, and to prepare an exhibition with long stretches of reflection to respond to global warming on paper with prints and drawings.
What is happening to the bees? What will happen to the forests now burnt while action is stifled?
In 2014 I curated a White Silence event at The Shed which was a marvellous massive industrial shed on the banks of the Brisbane River that Jugglers leased for 3 years. This intentional non-verbal group art making event grew out of an ongoing desire of mine to explore existential experience within a construct – a construct designed to evoke a kind of slow dance response to a specific music, spatial and art making environment. Would a silence descend, would it capture us, would there be a singular moment of being transported somehow without drugs, hypnosis or alcohol?
Check out https://vimeo.com/464047357 [ White Silence, 2014] and
https://vimeo.com/463266584 [ All the bees are [not] dying” ]
Peter Breen
Peteskibreen's Blog 