“Mackerel Sky” 2020 Peter Breen – Digital Print on 308gsm Hahnemühle Photo Rag from an original work with mixed media on non-archival encyclopaedia page paper.

A series of drawings and prints in a suburban art studio around climate change seems an almost pointless activist exercise if it is being used to add to world wide climate change conversation.Who will be seeing these drawings? I am passionate about this “10 More Harvests” Crisis  and want to see a drastic change downwards in world emissions, conscious action to slow emissions by fossil fuel protagonists and a complete recalibration in the lifestyle of worldwide consumerism. Not much will be achieved by these works at the level that needs to be achieved but the work for me is an exercise in forced creative focus on the issue which will have some small exposure to other viewers and maybe collectors. The COVID-19 lockdown has provided extended studio time for the work to be completed.

Are the bees in the world dying? Is their potential demise a kind of canary in the coal mine metaphor? Who is acting here and will a few extra corporate rooftop office beehives save the world?

“Inotropic Insanity”2020 Peter Breen – Digital Print on 308gsm Hahnemühle Photo Rag from an original work with mixed media on non-archival encyclopaedia page paper.

This exhibition of drawings, relief lino-cut prints and sculptural works take these climate change subtext questions and the recent bushfires in Australia as entry points for reflection on our future. It is quite obvious that the corporate CEO’s of fossil fuel companies, right wing neo-liberal policies and right-wing-tabloid journalism run by the Murdoch empire have made the world a more dangerous place in this fight for environmental survival. I am however, encouraged greatly that a movement of artists and young people – aka Greta Thunberg – are now the only hope for change and change that will come. There are clearly new ventures in renewables world wide – while the environmental damage has been done and will continue to be done. Can we turn a nightmare into a new dawn of hope?

Part of my work for this exhibition has been inspired by two young female artists: Lucienne Rickard and Charlotte Watson. Both of these artists – Lucienne in Tasmania and Charlotte in Melbourne have applied their practice to highlighting the plight of the threat to and real time extinction of flora and fauna species. Lucienne has undertaken a huge 12month public project in the foyer of the Art Gallery of Tasmania of drawing  and erasing images of threatened and extinct flora and fauna. To date she is half way through. In 2019, Charlotte initiated an Australia-wide art project around the plight of the black-throated finch under threat from the proposed Adani Coal Mine in the Galilee basin in Queensland. These and other young artists and my own grandchildren’s future continue to be the canary in the mine for me in my activism and art practice.

My work has grown out of series of blind contour journal entry sketches  of Eastern Australia flora. The  body of work is in two parts: the development of ink drawings and lino-cuts of the flora and rain events and a series of graphite and ink drawings and lino-cuts of bees.

Brush and ink drawings on non-archival ageing encyclopedia pages. #1Artist: Peter Breen 2020

Mixed media drawings on non-archival ageing encyclopedia pages.#1 Artist: Peter Breen 2020

Artists are the prophets, the seers and the interpreters of the state of play – of what has happened in our world historically and personally. We move beyond decoration – though not opposed to it – to a considered and best possible response. This is my intention for this exhibition of works on July 3 at Mayne Line Studios and Gallery,

Peter Breen

Brisbane

May 29, 2020

Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing 2019, QCA, Griffith University, Southbank.
August 2, 2019

Opening Speech

Nina Simone sings “Do I MOVE you?”

I overheard one of the judges last night say:” I want to be more INTIMATE with this work.”

Over in the other gallery across the space here on the campus are signs warning viewers that some of the installations might DISTURB them.

Graffiti on trains makes some people VERY ANGRY.

We are here again tonight, 10 years on since the late Gregg Greinke won the inaugural Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing and where one of this year’s judges – Vernon Ah Kee – was also a judge because we STILL believe that ART as the voice of the prophets written on the subway walls in the sounds of silence through the discipline of DRAWING should AFFECT people.

As South African artist William Kentridge says: ” I am an artist. My job is to make drawings, not to make sense.”

Our vision at Jugglers and in the MEPD is that the drawings entered keep on getting better and that they continue to reflect that sentiment. This means that something has happened IN the artist and TO the artist – that is – that their MARK MAKING skills are maturing and that they are finding the voice of their soul.

This has happened again this year.

Look at these finalist drawings and look again until you begin to see.
Read and re-read the artist statements.
Talk with the artists.
Talk with the judges.

And – buy some art.

What art is on your walls at home?
Does it move you?
Doe it calm you?
Does it excite you?
Do you love it?

If there is no art here tonight that you fall in love with then can I suggest that you buy other GOOD art elsewhere to contribute to artists getting better and to assist them in finding again the voices of their souls.

Peter Breen/Director/Jugglers

Glasshouse has taken off as a venue of substance in the new music stakes in Brisbane. Run by Made Now Music team, Brodie Mcallister and Caleb Colledge the new space is leased from Queensland Investment Corporation by Jugglers Art Space Inc as a space for new music and emerging/mid career/established musicians in Brisbane. Since the Jugglers building at 103 Brunswick Street was sold in June 2018, new music that sits outside the mainstream oeuvre has had nowhere to lay its head. This new address at 33 Charlotte Street Brisbane CBD seems to be the perfect solution for the lack of new music performance rooms in Brisbane.

Opening night at Glasshouse – March 2, 2019

From where I sat in the visual arts at our Jugglers base in Fortitude Valley for the past 17 years my observation is that there has been a growth of new music in Brisbane over the past 5 years via the that space – and exponentially in other non-art spaces – and Luke Carbon’s “Paint it Red” initiative  under the influence of Queensland Conservatorium luminaries and Clocked Out duo, Dr Erik Griswold and Dr Vanessa Tomlinson. One outcome of this growth has been The Stairwell Project at the  Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital since June, 2015. http://www.jugglers.org.au/regularprograms/thestairwellproject

Paint it Red – Jugglers Art Space May, 2017

This past Thursday and Friday nights Brodie and Caleb hosted two remarkable gigs on a rolling schedule in April that has a rather giddying momentum! Thursday saw Brodie [ Trombone] and Caleb[Percussion] join Loni Fitzpatrick [ Harp] and Japan based percussionist Phil Treolar in two improv sets. The second set, conceived by Phil but “constructed” by the group and then performed out of that fluid understanding together, had a score not unlike artist friend, Mik Shida’s geometric graffiti! Phil later told me he had been waiting 30 years for this evolutionary stage to arrive! It was worth the wait.

Mik Shida with his signature style wall art

The first non scored set was to me where the “magic happened” as the dissonant shaky start found its pathway in the dark until there was an obvious unspoken conversation between the four musicians until after 30 minutes – or was it more – the slide into silence left the audience in stillness, suspended in more questions and a hunger for the silence to continue. The silence was brought to us all by the sounds we had been immersed in.

“Vista” Performance at Glasshouse

I have begun to realise that the consumption of music while appropriate for mental health, joy and a sheer immersion into a better world, can escape serious reflection. It was not difficult to write this as a kind of “Intersubjective Response” to this immersive soul affecting experience:

 A banging, hit, hit; 

Dissonance surprises, wack; 

Like leaves rustling 

Against the weatherboard house 

Against the casement window. 

Taken by the breeze, 

Voices in the drum, trombone, 

Plucking gut, eyes closed, 

Drumming rolls with fluffy sticks, 

Wow, wow muted calls, slow down. 

Around the edges 

The breeze takes over souls, minds, 

Bodies play, all in; 

No one knows the end just yet; 

But then it lands; gently; down. 

The end has floated; 

Nothing is complete; not yet; 

Silence is the breeze; 

Silence is infinity; 

Silence waiting; unending. 

Peter Breen 2019 © 

A response to Phil, Loni, Brodie, Caleb. 

Glasshouse Performance. 

April 4, 2019. 

Friday night’s launch of Dr Erik Griswold’s record, “Yokohama Flowers” – accompanied by Canberra based artist Loiuse Curham’s Super 8 movies –  with support acts by Jodie Rottle [ New Work for Objects] and Sam Pankhurst [Double Base Beauty] had depths of allure and impact. The humour in Jodie’s work, the virtuosic concentrated presence of Sam Pankhurst’s base solo and the almost hour long piano solo performance by Erik while not evoking silence certainly had the room in raptures and applause. The future of new music in Brisbane is alive and well and has found a home for a while!

Sam Pankhurst

Erik Griswold

Peter Breen MA, BTh, ARMIT [Medical Radiography]

Co-Founder/Director: Jugglers Art Space.

Founder/Curator: The Stairwell Project.

http://www.jugglers.org.au

Instagram: peteskijugs, thestairwellproject, jugglersartspaceinc

Facebook: Peter Breen, The Stairwell Project – Music in Hospitals, Jugglers Art Space Inc, The Big Ear.

Twitter: @PeterStewartB , @stairwellproject, @Jugglers_Art

DONATE:

http://www.GoFundMe.com/thestairwellproject

Jugglers is a registered charity with DGR Status.

All donations over $2 are tax deductible. 

I am sitting in The Project Gallery at Queensland College of Art listening to “The Pilgrim’s Song” by wonderful Irish music makers “The Gloaming.” A pilgrim is what I am and what we are, a juggling mob of wanderers. We have put up our tent of 26 drawings here, our drawings by others who are the finalists in this 9th year of the  Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing. Drawing, the making of marks onto something with any medium.

The poetry of movement in the marking elevates this prize to the capture of thousands of moments. The evolution of drawing from single line linearity to a silent spacial performance captured only in an instant in the viewing means Marie’s legacy is full of possibilities. Awarding someone a prize for a drawing captured in a memory bank? Reminiscent of graffiti’s ephemeral marking making, drawing “juggles” styles, media, interpretations, thresholds, geography, makers.

Sha Sarwari & Affifa

Here are marks on a lonely northern NSW beach at dawn when Sha, his wife, Affifa and a couple of friends dragged his boat sculpture to its death by burning. When I take time with this image the process and history of the marks strike me: Sha and Affifa collecting the ashes of the boat, the strong lines of dragging drawn on the sand behind them and the millions of marks left by feet, tides and animal life. I am moved by the striking beauty of the ash heap marks cocooned in the intensity of Sha’s and Affifa’s collecting.

Burning the boat on the shores of a place and sea. 

The winner of this year’s MEPD – Dennis McCart – speaks to this narrative. His work, “Someplace Else Unknown” could have been the title for a documentary on asylum seekers like Sha Sarwari, a former interned “boat person” from Kabul and now graduate of Griffith University Queensland College of Art and bona fide Australian Citizen. Jugglers passion for graffiti as mark making meant that the winning work had particular resonance especially after the sale of 103 Brunswick Street. Mark making by graffiti writers will always be birthed in spaces and places abandoned or not.

WINNER: Dennis McCart “Someplace Else Unknown”

Where does drawing go now? As a little organisation passionate about drawing, and as we are able, we will continue to offer this award to encourage drawing by artists in its most considered, intentional and skilful way. We know the process is unrecorded – maybe that is a new frontier for us to consider – but at this point we choose finalists and winners from the end point of each artist’s process limited to no more than 2 metres square of a 2 dimensional work.

Peter Breen, Co-Founder/Director : Jugglers Art Space Inc http://www.jugglers.org.au

Director’s Encouragement Award [High School Student] Hannah Downs “Matthew”

Honourable Mention – Natalie Wood “Housedress [Chux Blue 1] “

The first exhibition and opening night of the year at Jugglers are, if nothing, else interesting events. How do we get traction out of summer slumbers and into installation modality?  February 16 , 2018 was one of the best beginnings with Iranian artist, Moji Khakbaz and Brisbane artist, Clare Cowley.

Iranian artist, Moji Khakbaz invites us to consider:
“You are reading her story.She is seeing it through your eyes.You watch her expressing herself, she sees you being you, you are she, and she is you.
You are reading her story from your face. You are a part of her story and you can influence and change her dynamic. Now it is not just her story, it is your story.”

Clare Cowley’s beautiful work in Level 1 Space included a range of lithographic prints and drawings, some on found objects. As a former finalist in the Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing, Clare’s mark making is well known and, going by her QCA honours supervisor, Russell Craig, she has exceptional print making abilities. The difficulty of lithography is not easily learnt, Russell said in his opening speech, but Clare seems to have an knack for it.

Downstairs, Moji’s opening speech about her being an artist in both Iran and Australia, and a woman, unpacked the cultural filters that many Australians, and Iranians, seem to have around her calling and vocation. Ignorance is best undone by education, by a slow and intentional sharing of knowledge and experience.  Moji’s unusual works on mirrors including images of women alongside English and Fasi calligraphy did that and led viewers to consider their own stories in the presence of these women. The invitation to take a “selfie” in one of the mirrors and post it on personal instagram accounts with a # had more men than women engaging. Moji was fascinated by that phenomenon.

These two story telling exhibitions were the diverse and multilayered expressions of the souls of two culturally diverse female artists co-existing in a moment in time in Jugglers space. Their impact was best felt with time taken with the works as they were not appealing to collectors primarily but to those who were intentional enough to consider the layers of life across a range of cultural and other experiences.

November 22, 2017 – Stairwell Project team member Ian Ahles [ Classical Guitar] with bone marrow recipient patient, Jim Usher in ward 5C, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital [ RBWH] Cancer Care Services [Haematology]. 

The little but big idea that live music performed in the open spaces and wards of a large city hospital is a positive factor in raising staff morale, improving patient recovery and reducing health care costs is gaining momentum. Documented international research is finding traction in policy and funding development while in Australia via a range of new ventures such as   The Hush Foundation  where live music in all kinds of combinations is  being slowly introduced onto hospital campuses. The Stairwell Project’s pilot project in Cancer Care Services at RBWH was part of this evolution of new aspects of health care at the RBWH from November 2017 – January 2018. We were invited by the RBWH Cancer Care Services Associate Professor Dr Glen Kennedy to apply for a small RBWH Foundation grant in 2017 following our successful experiment with live music placement in the hospital from June 2015.

Six musicians from The Stairwell Project volunteered to be involved in the new pilot – to perform in Cancer Care Services wards 6AS, 5C and the Oncology Outpatients on Level 4 in the Joyce Tweddell building. Each musician was remunerated according the current recommended award.

Contracted Musicians:

• Ian Ahles: Classical Guitar.
• Lachlan Hawkins : Hand Pan.
• Anna Kho: Vibe/Percussion.
• Bart Seaton-Said : Harp.
• Rafael Abraham: Cello.
• Janita Bellingham: Harp.
• Curator/Admin: Peter Breen.

All of the participants participated in journalling their experiences which were referenced in our report back to the RBWH.

From Lachlan Hawkins:

What I wrote on my personal Facebook Page the day the results of the Marriage Equality Plebiscite were read out. On this post there were around 150 “likes” and a flow of positive commentary,  but no diabolical attacks from the the “No” campaign supporters.

“I celebrate this YES decision with all LGBTIQ folks. I have made constant changes in the way I have responded to and see the world over my short life but as a white middle class heterosexual male I have had nothing like the horror of adaption and pain so many minorities have and still do endure- First Nation sisters and brothers, asylum seekers and the Islamic community for eg. Today though, the sense is one of life given, hope injected, love winning and fear exorcised. I see the tears of relief in Penny Wongs face and I am moved to tears. To the gatekeepers, as I tried to be once, who promelgate a position of superiority and spiritual insight wanting us to follow your fear/law based narrow graceless pharisaism – I understand it well and it is a poison. Your position is in the wrong spirit. Today this country – though I was opposed to the survey – has shown grace, love, level ground and mate ship. I do not want to have a debate, as I might get nasty! Let’s hope those knuckleheads in Canberra can make sure we see a fair go for all in a straightforward legislation.”

ABOVE: Me in preparation for Emily’s and Alice’s Wedding in 2015. What a hoot that was. Unable to be legally married, it was still a day of joy, conducted  in hope of a day of legalisation of the union. We were asked to come and dress – and be – outrageous. We were! [ Maeve and I and everybody else]

Walking up stairs can keep us well. It can even make us better. Or the activity can bring on a heart attack. Heart attack hill, one person called it. I walk up the stairs at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital to hear music and before I get there I can hear it. It floats down from level 9 to level 3 and then all the way up again. Trombones, harps, hand pan, tabla, cello, guitar, voice.  I haven’t had a heart attack and I don’t want one so I walk every morning around my suburb, into the little apology for a forest and sprint up a few hills. At 67, I am intentional about fitness. The Stairwell Project at RBWH is an initiative [ begun June 2015] that tomorrow will see us start playing for Cancer Care Services under a small funded program from the RBWH Foundation that quite simply, is meant to bring some degree of wellness for everyone there.

Ian Ahles, Classical Guitar, Level 7, RBWH Stairwell. Ned Hanlon Building. 

This morning I was with our jazz combo [ Jazzkill ] as they played in the outside foyer of the hospital and as they played we were immersed into the sadness of the coming and going, the smiles, the happiness, the throwing of a few coins and the story about a dying husband. We were moved to realise again, that this was a thing we are doing that is not insignificant. Wellness does not come as a measure on an adding machine – but eventually it does have an economic impact. The bills of health care are reduced by the increase in wellness! And music is a means, a conduit, a little bit of magic. And we are the magicians. May it be.

“Jazz kill” – Admissions, RBWH Ground Floor, Ned Hanlon Building. 

The Art of Graffiti Writing

This is the final draft of the forward I was invited to write for a new book by Brisbane photojournalist, Toks Ojo. Toks has photographed and collated a vast amount of current graffiti/street art in Brisbane into “Brisbane Walls, Graffiti and Street Art.” The book is due for release later this year. 

2018 will mark 20 years since I began an alchemist’s experiment with graffiti. I invited graffiti writers into a conservative enclave to publicly demonstrate their art. It was a bold and maybe naïve move but it was the beginning of Jugglers, at that time a bi-monthly celebration of fine art, music, graffiti, comedy, poetry reading and coffee in, of all things, a north Brisbane suburban church context.

I was the minister of a large protestant congregation and I had begun feeling deeply frustrated with its sterile and utilitarian approach to the arts. Not only that church but the whole religious paradigm and its dualistic approach to life, spirituality and subsequently, art had become stuck. I needed a push through the door that was opening.

Jugglers effectively became my wide open door out of the restrictions of that paradigm into a new life where graffiti would feature as “the writing on the wall” and the metaphor for a new life, a life immersed in artistic and free thinking expression. I developed Jugglers with one of my sons – Harley – on the church property before we ever moved to Brunswick Street. Once we moved in 2002, he launched his own comedy career in Melbourne.

I have seen a range of changes in the development of graffiti in Brisbane over the past 20 years, and in particular, since 2011 when I took on the director’s role of Jugglers Art Space Inc. from my son, Randal. Randal guided the early growth and development of Jugglers since the move into 103 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley in 2002 from the church property and he led and developed a range of remarkable programs including gRafFic (Emerging Artists Development Program), a course initially linked to the Brisbane Magistrates’ Special Circumstances Court.

In Queensland, the charges for wilful damage, particularly for graffiti, are the most stringent in Australia. A new experiment in diversion programs via the Magistrates court meant we were set up to run short courses (EADP) in collaboration with the Department of Justice for referred offenders, thus working with them on artistic and personal development and the detour from a jail term. The Special Circumstances Court was defunded in the first year of the Newman Government in 2012.

The changes in graffiti writing in Brisbane in the last 7 years that I have seen have mirrored the world wide phenomenon of graffiti as the next art movement, embraced by town planners, architects and hipster inner city slick. A sudden influx of commission requests began arriving in my inbox, while friends I had supported through wilful damage court appearances and others who had found their voice at Jugglers suddenly found themselves in the spotlight, developing new business skills and even international rock star status. Trains and rail corridors still “got done” – and still do – but the gentrification and acceptance of more designer styles were suddenly appearing in every alley and wall in Brisbane.

It was somewhat ironic in 2015 that under strong anti-graffiti position that Premier Campbell Newman had taken, the Queensland Government funded Jugglers, in collaboration with Queensland Rail and Brisbane City Council’s Visible Ink to paint murals on QR infrastructure with aerosol for the G20 Cultural Events for the visit of such luminaries as President Obama.

We developed Jugglers as a multilayered not-for-profit organisation with one focus being on providing subsidised and at times, free art spaces for artists from a wide range of art genres. We offered our backyard space as a free, open, safe self-managed graffiti art studio. It didn’t take long for the word to spread that there was a place for writers and artists to make marks, and to make every effort to beautify the place. It was void of law enforcement and surveillance. We encouraged a mutual respect value where writers developed their own modus operandi, making it their place and their art. In some respects, this was a mirror of older crew values. Crews have long been a sub-group of our society with a kind of tribal hierarchy where younger writers learn from older elders. Respect for each other and each other’s work is highly regarded. This is not to say that there are not turf and ego wars, common in any art and testosterone fuelled practice.

Over the past 15 years we have welcomed hundreds of writers and artists and I have made lifelong friends from Brisbane and around the world. As an older non-writer I have found total personal acceptance by the writers I have met both on their turf and mine. The tunnel and back space has been covered with tags, characters and multi layered pieces from the inception until in 2014, when the back wall came down in the mother of all hailstorms and we found that the layers of fibro and paint were akin to multiple tree rings stories.

This book that Toks has created as a current 2017 narrative of graffiti pieces in Brisbane is a record of passionate artistic endeavour. Jugglers fits into the evolution of graffiti thrown up in legal and illegal spaces in a range of ways reflected by this terrific book. There are many others who have partnered with us and us with them for whom this is a significant work. As far as I know it is the first of its kind for Brisbane and it will become a book to proudly own and lend and refer to for writers, artists, libraries and art schools. It carries in it a sense of pride and identity for the artists and writers seen here, both identified and unidentified and as a means of remembering those who are no longer with us. Graffiti will never die and as someone wrote cryptically, “…it is the last bastion of freedom of speech.” Well done Toks.

Peter Breen

Co-Founder, Chair/Director

Jugglers Art Space Inc

http://www.jugglers.org.au

Insta: jugglersartspaceinc

FB: Jugglers Art Space

Guido van Helten – and his completed work in Chernobyl, 2016.

The control over Western Art and its evolutionary demise: White men.
That’s me [ Peter Breen ] but I sincerely hope only guilty by association.
I would like to think that we at Jugglers Art Space have been, for nearly 20 years – yes next year it’s 20 years – outside the main stream, facilitating core human creativity in multi modal applications of some terrific and good art and some not so good art with a range of folks giving it their best, their very best.
Some have gone on to become very well known, some have put their pencils in the bottom draw and others just keep making.

Others in the safe havens of corporate and government enclaves tick or cross our applications for funding and occasionally “borrow” a working idea for their own badging. That’s the way it works in a world of economic measurable outcomes, partly divorced from the wonder of the core creative human spirit.

“How Art Became Irrelevant: A chronological survey of the demise of art,” the essay’s central claim is that “while the fine arts can survive a hostile or ignorant public, or even a fanatically prudish one, they cannot long survive an indifferent one. And that is the nature of the present Western response to art, visual and otherwise: indifference.” There are lots of flaws with this argument, as well as its supporting evidence. But besides greatly overstating art’s demise, the conclusion rests heavily on artists who are primarily white men. “

The Most Relevant Art Today Is Taking Place Outside the Art World

But a triangular
box of words
Stuck to ply wood.

My story lines,
my story lines of
Meaning’s search
My search for meaning
in this last third
Of my living and dying.

What is this feeling,
What is this madness
Falling in on me?

Who are these floating ghosts
These gentler souls?
These ghouls of happiness
Of listening gentle joy?

What is this avalanche of words
This waterfall of never ending
Words of shouldness but
my
Inherited
Precious
Way …?

Collect
Do
know
Buy

Collect
Do
Know
Buy

Collect
Do
Know
Buy

Shout it from the tree tops
And make this your living
This tyranny of oughts.
This avalanche of no escape.

But
here now
Right now in this place
I lay this down
I lay this down
this preaching teaching telling mode.

I lay it down
To go with these gentler angels.
Into their caresses
Into the vacuum of their silence
Into the journey of my discovered
Path.

We have just pulled down and dissembled a large collection of artists’ bits and pieces belonging and precious to  Carolyn V Watson, Sam Eyles and Jude Roberts. Organic ephemera indeed. These bits and pieces were the construction parts of the “temporary studio” in the main gallery space at Jugglers Art Space for 2 weeks for these three artists. While they worked away, we watched. We watched, enthralled at “the process.”

Carolyn’s Corner

The “White Cube” is the familiar enclave for gallerists, artists, collectors and art lovers but winds of change  are stirring up new ideas, some are inspiring* ,some are in the early development phase and some, need to be let go. In general, my view is that the underlying organic nature of how we operate at Jugglers is what needs to be the driver for change. There is something helpful in predictability but there is also a certain “stuckness” that hovers around constant predictability. The influence of the ephemeral nature of graffiti has helped me catch onto the coattails of organic change and let it re calibrate our DNA over and over again. Graffiti could never be thought of as held in by the “white cube” but the evolution of graffiti and other art styles onto the street is that it is on the streets in massive forms and onto canvas, hung in white cubes. An interesting evolutionary phenomenon.

The story of this new adventure at Jugglers with these three artists is simple enough. We had a cancellation, an empty space and the need for a solution. Never leave the main “white cube” space empty! One of our curatorial goals here is that each year we look for and invite artists who have a strong and more developed practice, are “mid-career” and who, by the very nature of their works, attract art lovers and collectors.  The solution to our cancellation dilemma seemed to be to offer a discounted deal with a range of artists who fulfilled this mid-career criteria and who would also promote drawing as a lead up to the 2017 Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing. The final cut came down to these three and then Carolyn birthed the process idea.

Jude Roberts with visitors 

Sam Eyles

It is relatively straight forward enough, if there is plenty of lead time, to attract this calibre of artists but what about something different from them, Carolyn suggested. “What about letting art lovers  into our heads, into our private making lives?” This was a courageous idea that for visual artists who protect their privacy tenaciously was a step into the unknown. Our Q and A on the first Saturday with Cultural Flannerie’s Carrie McArthy around “Getting into the Artist’s Mind” opened up our minds to their minds and the subsequent conversations over a cup of tea were animated.

The two weeks of coming and going for these three along with  managing other work and studio practice was very successful. They almost seemed to co-alesce and it was indeed an easy relationship. Visitors dropped in, the Q & A was a highlight, as was the dinner for 9 guests who joined us all for the closing event.

We, at Jugglers,  are more than a gallery. We are a community of folks who love to be around art, artists and art making where we attempt to make sense of the world together. The unpredictability of this means an intentional focus while such a focussed commitment to this new idea during these two weeks meant our intentionality was given an incredibly big lift.

Carolyn V Watson is a visual artist well known for a range of works in mixed media via sculpture, drawing and painting, with focussed themes around animals and animal behaviour. She has been a finalist and a runner up place getter in the Jugglers Art Space Inc Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing and has been the manager of Oxlades Art Supplies at Queensland College of Art for the past 13 years.

Dr Jude Roberts is an artist whose work encompasses an inquiry via drawing into the state of the sub-artesian basin in central Australia, particularly where she lived in Mitchell, Central Qld on a property for 20 years. She is a lecturer at Queensland College of Art.

Sam Eyles is a professional artist and part of the founding team of a new artist run initiative, Bib and Brace in Tenerife, Brisbane. He also manages a team of creatives involved in Micah Projects, an organisation that works with homeless people in Brisbane. Sam was part of the Jugglers’ management team up until 2011, and before that had been an artist in residence at Jugglers from 2004. His art practice includes painting and drawing and mixed media in abstract forms.

L to R: Jude Roberts, Sam Eyles, Carolyn V Watson

*See “How an OMA-Designed Art Museum Just Opened in a Remote Town in the DRC” ARTSY posted on Jugglers Art Space Inc FB on May 13, 2017.

Chris’s work at Jugglers Art Space http://www.jugglers.org.au  [ April 14 – 25, 2017] was a series of photographs and an installation piece representing his reflections on seeking asylum and other themes. At least that is how it started as he says:

Initially, Waterbeds and Burial Grounds was intended as a response to the plight of the refugee and as a performative testament to those who have lost their lives at sea (waterbeds) and those who have made it to distant shores or across borders only to be detained and left in limbo inside detention facilities (burial grounds).

In the midst of an abundance of harrowing media imagery surrounding this issue, the work developed into a series of mini-narratives that acknowledged the difficulty in comprehending these experiences whilst seeking to identify their origins.

Thus, “waterbeds” began to suggest the varying stability of our comfort zones and “burial grounds” the denial, ignorance, displacement and desensitisation that act as borders obstructing our empathy. [ From the artist statement]

I found the works poignant, beautiful and deeply affecting. The body bag on the floor under the lighting box invited the viewer into an inescapable  uncomfortable journey by its silent horrifying stillness without any sense of domination. Chris’s photographic works, beautifully composed and curated, took us to edges of a range of unknowns.

To produce a series of photographs for a solo show is a challenge within the current digital platforms available to everyone. Chris’s works rose to that challenge in my view and exceeded it. Mini-narratives, as he wrote, were indeed present as he played skilfully with light and colour to create captivating aesthetics along with a few photos of a recent trip to New York City.

It is this deeply intelligent, sensitive and skilful crafting of the state of the world in the moment that gives me a sense of hope. There are young fine art graduates who are still captivated by their passion and the state of the world, representing it into works of beauty that while more than photo journalism are game changers for those who take the time with them. I see the power of consumerism and superficiality that gobbles up the talented and drives them around the block to dump them just in time for another drive by shooting. But with this kind of determination, talent and reflection on the state of the world, consumerism has another prophetic voice.

Last Saturday night we packed in about 100 people at Jugglers for our “Status Unknown” gig, an exhibition conceived in the office at 103 when we had a spot to fill. Driven by Kira Bayfield [ Gallery Manager] the concept involved an art work response to the current state of the world with $250 first prize and the first 3 selected to be printed into post cards for circulation. We also decided to make it a democratic selection process so everyone had the chance to vote. And vote they did. The winning work was, in true come from behind style, the democratic process making its presence felt.

Matthew Adams “Slick Talking” Mixed Media.

What I have been aware of during and particularly since the event –  I’m immersed in the works at Jugglers –  is that these works are all a response to the world, to the world that all the artists are in. This is a gut reaction, a considered one with little happiness but chiefly, anxiety let loose. Every work is an experience expressed, an experience of perception, an experience of construction and poetic referral.  This is not happy art or Kmart copies of Iris flowers but an attempt to say, as artists do, this is something I want to say to the folks who look on this one night and this one thing – or many things – is in my heart whether I win or not. Everyone reflected longer than “click bate” longer than a “like” and considered the  state and their own.

It feels,at times, as if we are a stick insect on a lilly pad in the middle of a dark pond with slight impact potential. Around us are the swirlings of the corporate world, the rules and barriers and mirth of the bureaucrats, not to mention the madness and climate change –  while we attempt to stay afloat and put marks on paper. But almost 60 artists let their feelings out through those marks and my hope is that for a moment or two there will have been a connection with the soul of concern that we hold sometimes in darkness and fear but which when affirmed by our peers and elders, holds us as seers in a world of plastic pretence.

L:Ethan Whaghorn “Ribbon around a Bomb” R:Andy Monks “Chaos Bubble”. [Second and third winners.]

“The Gaze”. An exhibition by women about women. “Hang Dada”. An exhibition about being male and gay by a gay man. Both kicked off the year for us with pizzaz, nudity, confrontation, fun and big volume [ Monster Zoku Onsomb ]! Loud and proud comes to mind.

Monster Boku Onsomb in full flight on Saturday.

On Saturday night [ Hang Dada]  Ethan Waghorn’s first solo opened to a big crowd of around 150  while Dorothy Lau [ Curator of The Gaze] opened her eclectic series of multi-media installations from a range of all female artists [ Primary Arcade Collective]with 60 multi-media works on Friday.

Opening Night: The Gaze

The impact of both shows was viscerally and visually engaging. Ethan’s A3 framed digital prints, posters, life size adhesive prints and post cards embellished with strobe lights and male mannequins in the Level 1 Gallery space were drawn from a range of typical gay erotica imagery pop art style. 

Hang Dada in the upstairs gallery space at Jugglers.

The Gaze collection of works while more subtle – apart from the two topless female video films in the Jugglers entrance bar space- were installed in a combination of salon and traditional placements in the downstairs gallery. The consecutive exhibition openings [ Friday and Saturday nights] worked well particularly for the gallery staff’s management of the big crowd at Hung Dada and The Gaze exhibition’s double exposure. Ethan’s inclusion of strobe lights, though effective as a scene setter, seemed to limit viewers time in the space. At least it did mine and I noticed that the space was not populated with many viewers during the night. Perhaps that was Ethan’s intent and that a short sharp walk around in such a highly charged room was part of his invitation. The big energetic crowd, however, were exposed to a wide range of art and a party atmosphere, particularly with the techno “crazy” Monster Zoku Onsomb. Sales of both Ethan’s and The Gaze’s works was encouraging.

The educational impact of both of these exhibitions by these young artists was one of the strongest I have experienced for a while at Jugglers. It reminded me that young artists with talent, hard work and the intent to thumb their noses at the establishment change the world.  It wasn’t so much that in general the works were aesthetically pleasing but that their work was drawn from an intelligent reflection and response to current cultural, image and lifestyle issues.

What does it mean to be a gay man in Brisbane?

Can I let others in on the  edge of my world?

How can I send a message to viewers, how can I tell my story about what it means to be a young woman in Brisbane, about image, beauty, body, emotions and feelings?

I don’t thing it is necessarily of any great significance  that one young man prepared and presented a show (Hang Dada)and that a group of young women prepared and presented a show (The Gaze) but maybe in respect of how some of the issues raised  – body image, freedom, sexual identity – do impact on mental health for a growing number of gay men in particular, it is worth considering that support from others can be a life saver in times of self doubt, depression and anxiety. Ethan had a very supportive group of friends who worked with him on the installation of his works. 

Peter Breen.

Ethan Waghorn.[Artist]

I sketched these works on site in Eire and then once back in Australia, from photos using a little tin of water Reeves colours. They are all sold!

“A grief observed” [ After C S Lewis]

There is a grief observed

I see sadness everywhere;

But in the little children

Joy runs in eternal rivulets

Up and down their faces

and in their flailing hands.

A trumpet calls us all

to slow down quietly

and be still,

Silence our racing minds,

Still our fidgeting hands,

Close our darting eyes.

In this rivulet of grey skies,

A shadow runs beneath

And carries us in its gentle tidal swell

to azure blue hope filled skies

momentarily knowing

all will be well,

all will be well.

all,

will be well.

Level 1 Space, Jugglers Art Space, 103 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley. 4006.

SOLD

“Eros Embraced” Water colour pencil, charcoal on book pages on matt board, framed. $520

“Drawn to Silence”

Opening Speech

Presented at Jugglers Art Space Inc on September 31, 2016.Peter Breen

Welcome and thank you for coming to this exhibition of drawings and sketches on this theme that strikes a chord with me and many others – Silence.

Let us acknowledge the traditional custodians and elders past, present and emerging and take time to reflect on this.

• There is too much noise
• There is too much noise
• There is too much noise.

What might this mean to be drawn to silence?

Thomas Merton wrote this “In Silence”:

Be still

Listen to the stones of the wall

Be silent, they try

To speak your

Name.

Listen

To the living walls

What are you?

Who

Are you? Whose silence are you?

Who [be quiet]

Are you [as these stones are quiet] Do not

Think of what you are

Still less of

What you one day be.

Rather

Be what you are [but who?] be

The unthinkable one

You do not know.

Only be still, while

You are still alive,

And all things live around you

Speaking [ I do not hear]

Speaking to the unknown

That is in you and in themselves.

Will try, like them

To be my own silence:

And this is difficult. The whole

World is secretly on fire. The stones

Burn, even the stones

They burn me. How can a man be still or

Listen to all things burning? How can he dare

To sit with them when

All their silence

Is on fire?

1957 from The Strange Islands.

Thomas Merton interests me along with other poets and writers and artists and musicians primarily because I am drawn constantly and have been for years to silence and mystery. When I was a minister of religion – for 20 years – the hunger I had was for a life of connection to silence and mystery. In that role I facilitated a range of programs and events and readings that along with all of the other accoutrements of religion formed the direction I took. In leaving the religious framework and beginning Jugglers and returning to radiography in 2003 I eventually have come to a new understanding of such things as eternal life as a present knowing of wonder and beauty found in nature –eg  Ireland’s natural wonder – and a range of other spiritual experiences and sources that for me are centred not only in the Christian Scriptures but across the bottom line of seeking to know. An honest integrity and passion to know has a reward of its own missing from consumerism and the GDP and religious belief.

White Silence has been driven by this drawing to silence, mystery and epiphany. My trip to Ireland gave me the opportunity for silence in beauty and for beauty in silence.

There is now, a growing hunger for silence for stillness and renewal of the soul and a move away from the division of the enlightenment and rationalism including Greek “spirit, soul and body” non-dualistic holistic experiencing .

• The ABC now has a weekly podcast of yoga and stillness music every Saturday morning at 5.30am.
• A film has just been produced in the USA by a group of young film makers: “In pursuit of Silence.” The sound track of that film is what is at the back of this PowerPoint of my photos of our trip.

The pressure of consumption is reducing, we have reached peak car and a time is coming when we will walk away from our phones and computer screens. Into silence. And the world will be a better place and so will we.

There is too much noise.I am diminished by the flashing signage at the 5 ways.

In Ireland there were hardly any billboards and none on the roads from north to south.

Thomas Merton though a Christian Hermit, an artist, theologian and writer was a full blooded human. Though a priest and Roman Catholic monk he began to fully embrace Buddhism and while still under his Trappist orders, fell in love with Maggie Smith, 25 years his junior and his nurse at the local hospital. The Eros works in the show are representative of this experience.

The search for silence and mystery and god and understanding is not about denial of the body as much as a loss of the ego in order to embrace all things as good and beautiful in which the silence and mystery dwell and where occasionally an acute awareness and passing by happens. The normality of this is what I long to experience and long for us all to be aware of as normal. We do not deny our sexuality, sensuality or hunger for beauty as much as let it be part of our spirituality while understanding that love and ethics form part of our behaviour. Coming from a narrow and repressive religious dualistic framework for me and for Merton has taken time to abandon.

In the sketches on old dictionary pages “Talking and listening” I confess my own slow journey into the embrace of silence: I talk too much, listen reluctantly, shouting in the wrong direction but I also know the wonderful personal joy of “the thin whisper”!

Merton’s journey and writing and art was unfinished but finished. His path to silence, to knowing god, to being fully human and fully alive was a journey into death, a disappearance both physically and spiritually.

Read the new children’s book:

“The Sound of Silence”  by Katrina Goldsaito illustrated by Julia Kuo [Little Brown and Company, New York and Boston, 2016]

This is the edited version of the opening speech I gave at Jugglers Art Space on September 3, 2016 at the “Refugees Exhibition”.

“If our life is poured out in useless words

We will never hear anything

and in the end,

because we have said everything

before we had anything to say,

we shall be left speechless

at the moment of our greatest decision. “

Thomas Merton, American Mystic and Trappist Monk, Peace activist and anti-nuclear campaigner who died in a tragic accident in Bangkok, 1968 at 53.

As  a disciplined hermit and mystic, Merton, in advocating silence as the only way to approach and maybe touch mystery which he saw as the edge of god, or god’s thin whisper, continues to have a profound impact on genuine spiritual inquirers and social activists.

His life of inner dwelling was wrapped in nature in his hermitage in Kentucky, USA. While for a busy person the desire for this as an essential for the hearing of the whisper is almost impossible my intentional experiencing of silence in constant search for the thin whisper was given some time in the nurturing areas of Connemara and Kerry, Eire.

Art, when it springs from silence and mystery, pain and suffering either voluntarily or involuntarily is, in whatever form, however naive or sophisticated, affecting. It will and does have something to say to those who listen.

That is why this event, so wonderfully conceived of and managed and curated by Jugglers QUT intern Moojhan Kheiri – is so important.

In this room  “the words of the prophets [are]written on the [subway] walls” are the “Sounds of Silence”

You have come here tonight as artists, former refugees and asylum seekers, friends, family and supporters to see, to support and more than that I hope to hear, listen and sense what these artists are saying so cogently even if it takes time to find the spaces where the whisper lives.

Art exhibitions can easily be decoration or they can be banging a wedge into wall crevices  to open up the possibility of that thin whisper from the heart and pain and voice of the artist. That is what this exhibition is.

The art can be collectible, it can be ugly, it can be beautiful [in the narrow sense of that word] it can be dark, it can be light but if it is more than decoration then it will be arresting, grabbing, silencing.

This exhibition is all of those. We are here compelled to listen to the thin whispers and under this compelling we begin to hear a rising shout.

I returned from Ireland this morning where I was linking up with my sibblings to celebrate some milestone birthdays and to find our relatives – a good Australian thing to do. While we were there we visited Shankhill Road and Falls Road, small suburbs in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The history of Ireland is the history of religious wars and colonisation by the British. The Irish people have fought to return to self-rule and so 100 years ago this year the Easter Rising in Dublin saw the start of the last revolution that led to the establishment of the Republic of Ireland in 1922. But the British, after handing back the South, kept a foothold with the annexation of Northern Ireland. With the Northern Ulster groups mainly Protestant and pro-British, the Catholic Sien Fein and now demobilised IRA presence in the North continuing to agitate for a total end to British rule the conflict continues. In this conflict two very famous roads/suburbs in Belfast – Shankhill Road and Falls Road are full of patriotic fervour and ground holding.

Shank hill Road is pro-British and protestant.

Falls Road is anti-British and Catholic.

Right down the centre of this area is “the wall” – a 7 metre high 1o00 more long wall built by the British armed forces.

The Protestant side is constantly covered in graffiti. The Catholic side is a static exhibition space of Marxist and pro-justice workers rights murals. I could not find one tag on that section of the wall. This does not mean I am anti Marxist. Far from it but I found that the living graffiti art on the Protestant side indicated an organic development rather than a party specific one.

On the day that we visited, we were told that not so long ago – about 2 years – our Republican number plated hire cars would not have been welcome in the protestant sector.

So what has changed? Why were we allowed in now?

It seems that it is the graffiti on the Protestant side that is having the change effect. A writer who was there and who knows Jugglers alma mater Sofles, Fintan Magee and Guido van Helten and who comes from the south to run workshops with young people there told me that it has been the workshops, graffiti and art focus that has seen the reduction in slogans and the decrease in animosity as people have begun to embrace the positive affect of this arts practice. The protestant gate keepers in the houses opposite the site began to visit the site and bring beer to the artists and writers. Their view was that this art wall was the best thing that had happened for a long time as a means of peace making.

Art changes the world.

Former refugee Sha Sarwari art installation boat burning, April, 2016.

Art creates conversation, builds respect, drives wedges to let whispers leak out, shouts to those who are listening – or not listening just as this work does here tonight.

Brisbane trains as art canvas after the 2011 floods.

This exhibition, as with Amensty International’s upstairs body of work is about justice. Justice, welcome and kindness for refugees, asylum seekers and aboriginal people and children in adult jails. This is about exposing how we as a nation under our representative governments have failed to act, have failed to work from that value base of justice, kindness and welcome for all.

Art influences policy makers as it reflects values starkly and subtly.

It is critical that we celebrate these artists as significant voices, listen until the thin whispers begin to be heard, let the change change us and celebrate the artists’ skills.