Peteskibreen's Blog

Chris Inwood de-installed his exhibition “Vouyer” from the Level 1 space at Jugglers today after two weeks and no art sales. He has secured a show at the BCC Square gallery in the city in 2017 after some serious lobbying and foot work and in a climate of closing spaces and an expanding artist cohort in Brisbane this is a significant success. His work as a new and emerging artist was expensive for Brisbane but it sometimes happens that good work – his work is good – and conceptual exhibitions like his fail to connect with collectors. Chris is a philosopher with a serious focus on understanding and meaning. It is a good thing that he has begun Art History at UQ as even though his self taught arts practice has reached a level of aesthetic impact with viewers, he has an obvious passion for making sense of his world and the world in general using his art as a spring board. This is not to say that he isn’t passionate about his arts practice as it seems that he is, but his ability to frame his work as scaffold for conversation and dialogue move him on from artists who only seem interested in their practice. As a collector and Director at Jugglers I am fine with that focus and the hundreds of artists and art works I have seen here attest to my passion for the aesthetic. However,  to find someone so young who has a well developed grasp on at least the process of inquiry into a range of visual impacts is refreshing. Chris’s artist talk on the Saturday afternoon was a lively and helpful group discussion that he led with a mature group approach rather than a lecture.

His installation including 2 data projectors suspended from the ceiling included the scrolling of thousands of text messages between him and his girl friend Kate  – who was the subject of the main body of painted work – and a series of GIFS he had collated into a looped stream. The theme of his work was around vouyerism as a habit that we have now all been drawn into where a “like” and a short sharp GIF means that our minds are being fast tracked away from a more reflective approach to art and life, a kind of shallow acceptance or rejection of commodified visuals. Chris’s skill as a painter and as one able to bring art movements onto canvas where some of his painting triptychs were intentionally art movement influenced, focused our eyes and inner responses into more than the well resolved works that he had painted. We were forced to assess what this was really about and why one photorealistic painting might not have been enough. As a young person influenced by the market driven world but with obvious understanding of its limits and of the benefits of a fairer and perhaps socialist world, he still had marketed himself with cards, printed books and TShirts which he did make some money from. We have been treated to a well thought out exhibition that had firm foundations and where Chris should move towards a successful career in bringing some impact on the deepening of our culture and our understanding of what it’s all about. Peter Breen.

Today was a full lurching kind of day. From the moment I drove into Jugglers with a group of over 75’s from the University of the Third Age standing across the entrance I knew it would be one of those days. Then there was the installation of the new dishwasher that didn’t fit that led to a leaking drain spilling water across the office floor to 3 kids helping mum deinstal  her show by running and leaping around the gallery space to drafting a budget for the Stairwell Project’s Australia Council grant application and then hosting a political party’s ( The Greens) attempt to understand the state of the arts and artists post the Australia Council’s slash and burn policy in favour of a consumerist model. There were spaces in there where other things happened like taking paracetamol for cold symptoms and doing a phone referee interview for a former studio artist. Not forgetting the wonderful Dom keeping an even keel and sending me off to buy dinner and our intern making seat covers and our other intern helping me carry and hang paintings in between painting the outside loo a beautiful socialist revolution red! This was part of my day, rich in texture and impact for countless people. Not the least being me. 

James Mulholland’s pencil and charcoal on paper drawings at Jugglers Art Space Level 1 gallery space are captivatingly haunting works, an unpacking of his own experience as a young male attempting to make sense of maleness incorporated as it so often is in young adult male violence, threat and fear. Self identity and a sense of self comes out in this body of work as a pathway still clouded with uncertainty.

Even the clenched hands have an element of nervousness and the shadowy self-portraits carry a feeling of lostness or shrouded desire, a common feeling in young white males in Australia. There have been excellent programs and money spent on key issues such as once punch can kill, drug fuelled violence, depression and suicide but reaching male maturity in Australia in both indigenous and the white community seems to have become stuck. Perhaps not everywhere but from my observation certainly in the general population. Some schools, mens groups and churches have developed programs and support networks and books such as Biddulph’s “Manhood” are making a significant impact. My view is,however,  that we need a spiritual, legitimate and honoured process of leaving boyhood and entering adulthood that is celebrated by all families,and mothers in particular. James works are confronting and arresting with a powerful ability to hold the gaze. They are aesthetically appealing and his drafting skill second to none, but as one couple confessed to me at the opening, they didn’t want such confronting work on their wall. Perhaps their, or rather her feelings evoked by these drawings, are part of the confrontation that needs to happen. Art is the nerve end of the culture. Over the weekend after this show opening I watched “Kes” a 1970 movie made about Billy [David Bradley] whose desire to not follow his father into the coal pits of northern England is an impossible dream until he finds, trains and becomes enamoured with an injured Kestrel [hawk]. The bullying, belittling and victimisation of Billy reflected cultural norms of the late 60’s in the UK but the view of James Mulholland would be that in 2016 in Australia, the same kind of attitude is rife. Young males are trapped by a system unable to see itself or find a way to wholeness or full humanness. As a stark contrast I also watched a short video of Our Lady of Gethsemane, a Trappist Monk monastery in Kentucky, USA where the reclusive anti nuclear activist Thomas Merton lived before his untimely accidental death in 1968.

Merton had lived a wild “normal” life as a young male until his epiphany and conversion and “call” to his reclusive life as both a theologian, poet, activist and spiritual biographer. The stark contrast to Billy’s journey and Jame’s drawings is profound but I am not sure that Merton or any of his brothers were any more sure of their own maleness than the rest of us. The stark contrast however is that there is no violence in such a place, nor in the careful loving training of Kes by Billy. Gentleness is a path less travelled by men but it is in stillness, silence and reflection – along with courage, ritual and hard physical work – that men find missing parts of their maleness lying dormant under layers of bravado, fear and ego. James Mulholland’s “Decoy” is an important addition to the conversation and action so urgently needed if young men from twelve to twenty are to find a new way of being that is free of violence, force and ego. A helpful follow on to this exhibition would be an artist’s talk with small group discussion to follow. Peter Breen.

Early last Wednesday morning, before sunrise,  I drove to a small beach in Northern New South Wales with a handful of artists and students. We had been invited to the burning of a boat, the next phase of an art project by Sha Sarwari, a former Hazara asylum seeker from Afghanistan and graduate of Griffith University [Queensland College of Art]. Sha has become a close friend over the past 3- 4 years through his work which I see as a very public journaling of his journey from asylum seeker/ refugee/detainee to Australian citizen and justice advocate. When not caring for his new son and developing his arts practice, he works as an interpreter for asylum seekers and detainees under the Australian Government’s “pacific solution.”

As I crept around the house at 2.30am I found myself in some kind of imagined world where Sha and other asylum seekers were quietly leaving a coastal village in Indonesia to board a boat only twice as big as his sculptural work. For 5 days – and one day with a broken down motor – they sailed across calm seas towards Australia and finally to a confrontation with an Australian customs vessel. Christmas Island and then Curtin detention centre led finally to his release and approval of his application for asylum. This was before Kevin Rudd’s pacific solution and the inevitable different trajectory of his life had he attempted asylum in 2016.

A full moon sunk majestically down on a still and glorious morning beach as the grey lights of dawn filtered up over the horizon and the moment of burning arrived. The symbolism of the burning was wrapped up in the theatre of the event as the turps fuelled paper and cardboard fire took hold. Sha invited me to pour the turps on the vessel with him and so it seemed like baptism, a preparation for death and rebirth. The moment had a deeply spiritual sensibility about it for me. There was a sensual almost romantic element to this morning’s fire on the beach and Sha’s walk to the water’s edge evoked images of New Testament mythology around the Jesus person’s post resurrection breakfast on a secluded stretch of Palestinian sea with his friends.

As we watched in a mesmerised trance fueled by metaphor, symbolism, tragedy, determination, kindness and luck Sha’s palpable relief broke into a smile on his handsome face. There was no closure, a word only applicable to doors, but there was a sense of being in a liminal space a space opened through this threshold experience.

The cooling embers were smothered in water and sand but not before a couple of kilograms were gathered into bowls for the next project – an ash brick.

The art making process seems to be a never ending exercise if both the aesthetic and emerging story are held as unfolding chapters. It is possible that in the attempt to construct meaning an essence statement or position arrives and there is an approximation to meaning but until that moment the making must continue to validate its beginning. My view that cultural and spiritual inquiry must be inextricably tied to the infinite creative core to hold their integrity and authenticity has Sha’s project as a fine example. There is yet more to be told of this man’s courage, pain, grief and growth and we do well to take our time to be present both to him and his work slowly and with respect and humility. The lesson is that if we are sidetracked as artists, designers, makers and collectors into only the ephemeral and utilitarian then our output and contribution to bringing understanding, meaning and depth to ourselves and our culture will be diluted.

* Sha added another element to this story on the beach as the boat was burning down to the sand. It seem that the burning ritual had set him free to tell me another chapter. His cousin had wanted to come to Australia from a refugee camp in Pakistan and to do as Sha had done, come by boat. Sha had discouraged the boat idea but in a horrible twist of fate his cousin was killed in a suicide bombing in a pool room on his way home with friends. He had been in the room when the first bomb went off and as he went to help the wounded, the second bomb was detonated – a well tried terrorist strategy – and he was killed. The ash brick is, I suspect, part of a memory shrine for Sha and his family.

Peter Breen [c] 2016

We have recently added an extra week to exhibitions at Jugglers. That is, we have increased shows from one to two weeks. This has been driven by the need for less pressure on the organisation’s core staff and interns and to allow more time for the exhibiting artists to promote their work, to build a following and maybe to secure more collectors. The collecting of original art by emerging/mid career artists is one of life’s joys for me and from the regular sales we have at Jugglers, it is a joy for others as well. Buying art from Jugglers helps secure our future as a small artist run organisation and gives a sense of determination to artists who sell.

What I have found is that in the slower turn around and the gradual exorcism of maniacal activity that our weekly shows had become, I am contemplating the works more and I am standing still in front of pieces of art with increased levels of serious inquiry. What is the story here, why am I pulled into this, why is the aesthetic so mesmerising ? It is very easy in this world obsessed with consumption and an oversaturated visual landscape via all platforms of media to be DNA wired to jump along the line in an art exhibition, to consume the image or painting and to buy into quick fix turnaround visual orgasm or vomit! A simple management decision that was value driven is contributing to the need for slowness and enjoyment without feelings of cash flow and artistic demand. Even if applicants need to wait a bit longer for a show, the benefit of our slower pace is already bearing fruit at least in me. I am also spending a bit more time with the artists. I had fallen into a commodity trap! Artists are reclusive and need time to engage with their concepts, media and then, the public and the curator. A sense of rush never achieves considered well resolved good art, nor does it leave the artist passionately planning to return to the gallery. We like working with artists who want to come back, to build the family links. We have certainly done that but our hope is that this very small change will build on the values we hold which had slipped away from us engaging with effectively.

This year Jugglers hosts another BARI Festival, a series of events to champion Artist Run Collectives in Brisbane. With the demise of The Hold Art Space ( West End) and White Canvas ( Fortitude Valley) spaces and places for artists to exhibit seem to be sliding off the radar. BARI makes a strong case for temporary spaces, accidental & short lived artist collectives and an event that exposes these collectives to the public. That has always been challenging as Brisbane is still growing into its art collective awareness having become used to a more linear white cube commercial and sometimes unadventurous ( or irrelevant extremes of) art. BARI was begun in 2008 by Randal Breen and Sam Eyles from Jugglers to create awareness and exposure for ARI’s. It has been a successful experiment and this bi-enniel (non) festival is due, again, under creative Directors Jac Bates and David Don to chip away at the ongoing transformation of Brisbane’s art DNA.

Here’s something someone sent me this week. Natalie Thomas speaks from the hip about the inequities that exist in the arts. Most of my time at Jugglers Art Space Inc is caught up with administration, applying for funding, ticking boxes and hoping we can stay ahead of the red line.  A small group of us took a mortgage on our building in 2003 to offer studios and exhibition spaces for emerging mid career artists and we have made a small vision a reality and have seen the arts practice of hundreds of artists and musicians  get some traction, at least for a while post graduation. As the co-founder of this small artist run organisation passionately committed to seeing artists grow and flourish, THE one thing that is almost debilitating is the growth in arts administration over the past 5 years. Doing battle at this level does affect vision and creative momentum. It hasn’t destroyed hope or growth or sustainability but neither has it enhanced my own arts practice or desire for a slow down, research and actual art.   Natalie makes sense.

Peter Breen.

What Australian art needs in 2016

by Natalie Thomas  |  Posted 13 Jan 2016

Australian art needs a total makeover, starting with more artistic and curatorial bravery and less pandering to money and power. We must resist the rapid privatisation of our culture. If culture is open only to those who can afford it, we’ll all be the poorer.

We need fewer sycophants and more punks, less fashion but more dressing up. More nudity, but fewer dressing-downs. More substance and less abuse. We need to identify and nurture artists who take a position in their work because everything is political. Everything.

Australian art needs to be less conservative. We need more experience and less youth. I love optimism too, but it looks as if Australian art is feeding off the young like Brad Pitt fed off Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire.

Australia needs to double its investment in art and halve the managers. There are mutterings that art galleries are over and it’s hard not to concur. Getting an art show is too difficult: there are too many cherries to pick from and the emailing is a killer.

The internet gets more traffic than galleries but without the paint fumes. Artists should produce more online exhibitions and wait until working in galleries is easier again. Either that or start up more artist-run galleries to show in.

There’s a lot of talk going on, but nobody is saying anything. We need fewer conferences and more studio parties. Less networking and more solidarity. Fewer infomercials and more critique. Fewer delegations, forums, sector round tables and leading industry professionals. Saying what you think is not brave – it’s part of any healthy arts discourse.

Australian art needs to do a lot less huffing and puffing about how hard it’s working and put on more risky art shows. There needs to be fewer identifiable examples of curators curating relationships, networks, contacts and alliances rather than art. We need less institutionalisation and more independence. Less stitching up and more wardrobe malfunctions. Let’s see less clean, straight lines in pastel hues and more messy, obtuse peripheries.

The art must come first, then all the other stuff follows along behind. A safe space needs to be left between artists and leading arts industry professionals. No tailgating. No intermarrying – that should be illegal – no “I’m best friends with the big boss and progressing very rapidly up the ladder as a result”. This isn’t another explosive episode of House of Cards: it’s our cultural legacy and it’s important and worth fighting for.

Australian art needs to spend less of its resources importing and more of its resources exporting. We must nurture local content and protect against cultural colonialism. The big, state-funded galleries are sending out very mixed messages. There’s limited money for work from local artists, but when the latest imported circus comes to town the galleries are awash with cash. We need to think less about them and more about us. We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves now – and art is a great lens through which to look.

I want to see less Degas and more Destiny Deacon. Less Leonardo da Vinci and more Vernon Ah Kee. Less David Lynch and more Stuart Ringholt. Less Pablo Picasso and more Danielle Freakley. Less Gilbert and George and more Clark Beaumont. Less Grayson Perry and more Richard Bell. Less Marina Abramović and more Sarah Goffman, more Anastasia Klose, more Sue Dodd. It’s time for strong women to dominate the public discourse.

Artists need to stop doing anything for free. No meetings, no giving ideas away for free, no “You plan the program and propose it to us, and then we’ll talk money’.

Sometimes I go to art events where every single entity in the room has been paid except for the exhibiting artists. All the people who work in the gallery, the caterers, the freight guys, the installers, the wait staff, the cleaners: they all got paid. The artists, the primary producers responsible for the “art” in the word “art show”, got paid in “great exposure”.

Talk money first; everything else can wait. Exposure is not a sustainable payment plan for artists. If a project doesn’t include a budget to pay an exhibition fee to artists, then nobody gets paid. Resources need to be funneled to the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. Why are the people who create the art at the bottom of this pyramid? The top can sort themselves out with their high-end corporate sponsorship deals.

Managers are cutting themselves a larger slice of the pie than they give to the producers of the art. They spend a lot of time talking to artists about how hard it is to work in the arts industry now. Cut us a break and be quiet – you’re messing with our creative spirits. Stop being mean to us and put on more exciting art shows.

Australian art needs to free itself from the grip of universities. Australian artists need to graduate from university, pay off our HECS debts and enter the real world. Do you know how many arts graduates are being churned by our universities each year? A gazillion. And every year all the arts graduates need to have an art show, so will someone please pull their finger out and put on a few hundred more art shows each year?

Australian art needs to double the art shows and halve the fuss. It’s not our fault you’re all dependent on us. Four art exhibitions a year isn’t an arts program, it’s a death march into an abyss of exclusion. Sure, there is an oversupply of artists, but we’ve got to stop allowing our ambition from being exploited.

Australian art needs less earnestness and more laughs. Oops, sorry, I forgot: you guys are all too busy tapping into the revenue streams from our creativity. And middlemen just aren’t that funny.

Natalie Thomas is an Australian artist who was part of collaborative duo nat&ali. She is the creator of nattysolo.com, an ongoing performance project that considers the social side of contemporary art through opinion-based coverage of art openings and public events. 

– See more at: http://artguide.com.au/articles-page/show/what-australian-art-needs-in-2016/#sthash.gttuBysk.dpuf

What I wish I had done:

William Kentridge 030 – Final Artwork – Universal Archive (Nine Typewriters). The evidence was collected from this work. Image copyright and permission of the artist

What I did:

For Lent this year I painted a daily response to a series of meditations on little canvases [ 10.2 x 10.2 cm] and learnt a bit more about guache, acrylics, gesso , pencil and what they do. I learnt a bit more about how painting and doing art increases passion. I learnt how conceptualising and planning a work makes a difference to how I feel about the work, the sense at its resolution or otherwise.  I learnt to rework some pieces. Each response was to a small book of Lenten readings by a friend [Mark Pierson] who for years has been compiling meditations to help the religious communities and those less religious – like me – make some sense of the long Christian tradition and story surrounding Easter.

Here are the works: [*The small purple dots represent the sacred place in the house] I installed these small works on one of the walls inside the gallery space at Jugglers for a couple of days recently and invited people to respond to them when they had a few reflective moments. You might like to do the same and let me know where any one or more of the images “take you”. There is no need to attempt any religious, spiritual or Easter overlay unless that is what comes up for you.

SOLD

SOLD [Red White Table Work Only]

What is it about artists?

What is it about art?

There are times every week when I wonder what I do in the scheme of things and wonder about the “grand scheme” and if there is one, where does this aspiration to be an artist and running an art space – Jugglers Art Space – fit.

A friend of mine’s first response to this work was that it was cute. It is a work of mine that I ended up selling at last year’s “Response to River” event at The Shed at Hamilton Northshore. What does cute mean? Why did she think it was cute? What made it cute? A first impression and then another more reflective look and conversation might turn up some new understanding of the work leading to a revised critique, or not.

William Kentridge 030 – Final Artwork – Universal Archive (Nine Typewriters). The evidence was collected from this work. Image copyright and permission of the artist

So is this piece cute? What is the first response of viewers to this piece and it prices it at over $200,000? My view is that it is the artist [William Kentridge] and the representative agency. The modality, theme and size are perhaps insignificant here but Kentridge’s massive body of work and standing internationally frame the impact. The price is inconsequential. And there is an obvious passion for art in this artist. My cute art is cute rather than arresting precisely because the passion is still to be born. If there is no constancy in art then the art will be “still-born.”

Passion for art comes from doing art over and over and over and then doing it some more. The waiting for inspiration probably means someone else will do their art on my coffin.

At a recent South Bank [Brisbane] TAFE Dip of Fine Art Graduating Class Exhibition I gave a short speech on art as essential. As someone has said: “When we dilute or delete arts programs, we unravel the infrastructure that assures the cultural future of the nation.” A boring deductive speech does nothing to help the intent “stick in the throat” so I dressed and redressed with due decorum to deliver at least a memorable beginning in the guise of the Juggler. And life for an artist is a juggling dance, a twisting pirouette in a fog with no-one watching!

“Graduates – whether you sneak out onto the world’s stage or rush out flamboyantly you are artists and you are essential. You are not doctors, accountants, lawyers, project managers or engineers but artists and as artists you are essential. Essential for the growth and depth of our society in this and every era.

Artists are cool, weird, poor, fun, eccentric, introverted, extroverted, innovative, rich, depressed, happy and ESSENTIAL and to be essential we can only be convincing if we are passionate. Passion is everything!

Passion is deep, felt and experienced in all kinds of ways by all kind of temperaments.

You know you’ve got passion when you have this sense of being carried.

You know others have passion when they seem carried.

Doing art constantly is the path to passion and change.

There is a young artist who graduated from this institution [TAFE] who is passionate and is followed by thousands around the world, a friend and supporter of Jugglers and an artist who “does art”. Sofles [Russell Fenn] is a graffiti artist of exceptional natural skill and a passionate art practitioner whose work is a conduit for renewal in this contemporary art form, this frontier of new art in the 21st century.

The challenges with passion and doing art are the extraneous diversions: Expenses, income, sales, studio space, exhibitions, relationships, representation, moods, ideas. How we manage those accoutrements will be yours to manage but manage them you must at great cost sometimes.

The last is this: If you are going to be passionate practising artists essential for the growth and depth of our society – no pressure!! – then you will need one thing: You will need to determine to make the search for beauty a commitment until the end of days. Not glamour and superficiality and productivity but beauty. Set you heart and mind to search for, find, experience and represent beauty. If this is your core focus and intent then passionate art and art in passion and passion following art will carry you, carry us. We will always need skill refinement and refine our practice to find our own modalities but pursuing beauty in all its illusive,silent, loud, monochrome and colour filled expressions is the mysterious spiritual formational framework for a satisfying life as an artist and as an influencer on the deepening of a more reflective society.

There is  a Jewish story about a ruler with massive wealth and in particular, hundreds of sheep. This was a  symbol of power, wealth and influence. Next door to the ruler lived  a man and his family with one little pet lamb, his only sheep whom he cared for and loved  as if it was his child. When one day the ruler decided to invite friends over for lamb stew he suddenly realised that, since the price for lamb was high and that he would lose the competitive edge at the next lamb auction, he devised a plan to “procure” his neighbour’s little pet. He decided that since his neighbour’s lamb was “available” he would create a law to procure it without cost to himself and justify its slaughter as being good for the common good and the flow of money into the community. The neighbour’s grief would be short lived while his success as a keen businessman would elevate, again, his profile among those who mattered. The only snag for this ruler was that there was a fearless prophet in the country who found out about this injustice and confronted him about his actions, asserting that his days and his paradigm of unjust dealings were intolerable and would be numbered. Such stories need to told regularly in every era, in every culture and particularly in this age of entitlement and rampant capitalism. Today, as for this heartless ruler, a heart of compassion has become an iron heart wherever we look. An inclusive conversation and elevation of the wisdom of the weak and poor has been killed off in favour of the mesmerising power of consumption and affect. The justification of success, growth and prosperity on the altar of ego, power and influence has blinded the world. The creative depth of a slower time and a more reflective approach to living has been sidelined as quaint and pre-digital, upheld by a convoluted language. Add to that a marriage between corporate wealth and a low taxing government mixed in with a  highly paid public service held only by their security and leave entitlements then our little art enterprise is probably only one of many to experience the little lamb effect.

STORY 1: I recently prepared a quote for Brisbane City Council to provide a body of work for murals on pillars on the northern approach to the Go-Between Bridge across the Brisbane River. This was an exciting development for us at Jugglers. We have been working with BCC and other organisations to provide public art installations in Brisbane since 2005 with in general, reasonable success. My passion is to use these opportunities for training, mentoring and raising the standard of modern art in the public domain. We have always advocated for the best price for the artists’ design and onsite time with 12% Admin costs to Jugglers and only lately, some payment for supervision and management. The sense of disappointment was overwhelming when after 7 weeks of silence I was told that another offer that “BCC could not refuse” – the project was not an open tender project! – had come along and had gazumped our quote. My intention was that our quote was a working draft and that it could be negotiated down. I had structured it so that we could adapt to the Council’s budget. A large international circus had made an offer to BCC to gift a piece of Street Art to the city and, instead of asking us if we could be the artists and agency, BCC had gone with the recommended artist who had little experience in this kind of art and has been paid to install a rather boring piece of decoration. The talk on the street is that the money spent by the circus on this piece was more than our quote and my model of mentoring and the installation of art by experienced and respected muralists was an opportunity missed. I understand that this is business but there was something more disappointing here, something unjust about the process and the obvious lack of vision from Council for a vibrant city they talk so much about. I have since moved Jugglers on from such projects opting for a model where BCC can liaise directly with a more business savvy muralist community. The loss is that our expertise and mentoring model, though slower, is lost to the council’s obsession with being “cool” and “like Melbourne.”

STORY 2:  Jugglers hosted a fund raising art show for a private school from the north-side of Brisbane last month. We were invited to both provide the art prize [$500], a free show at Jugglers over the next 12 months for the winner and to consider opening up our space for their show. So far so good. We agreed to this and one of our board members contributed the $500 for the prize. At the first committee meeting in a leafy aspirational suburb I realised that they saw us not as an organisation that was partly dependant on donations to survive but as an organisation that was their servant. Now if this school had been run by the Edmund Rice centre or had been a struggling aboriginal organisation then I would have not hesitated to offer them a free space and time and assist with the curating of the show. But this was a private school where committee members take their family overseas to Europe for a three week holiday. We were also compelled to agree that Jugglers would not take any commission on sales – we normally take 22% – but that all sales would be commissioned to the school at 25% as a means to raise funds for their art department. For some reason it seems easier to work with those who are poor, who have tasted poverty recently or who live in the paradigm of justice and kindness. Here there was no sense of empathy or sense of awareness to  converse about what would be best for us and them. They did eventually reluctantly agree to [a reduced] fee for both upstairs and downstairs gallery spaces. Excuse this as disorganisation, temperament extremism or committee dysfunction maybe but my experience tells me otherwise. The takings for the night on art sales was $21,000, a record figure. Given the well heeled crowd and the traditional but buyable art by well known Brisbane artists this was a god send for conservative leafiness! The token aboriginal artist and art auction was mixed for me as her art was worthy and sold well but there was still a sense of this school’s colonising collusion.

REFLECTION: The little lamb bleats and is told to bugger off or it will get its throat cut! I am reticent to make my own observations in the event it looks like sour grapes but this happens regularly to us albeit all intertwined with the positive impacts and rich history we have been able to be a part of, structure and be taken up into. What I see is that  rampant capitalism, consumption, entitlement and privilege have infected our society and our cultural development with a cancerous iron heart unable to see its own way except to prop up its own progression and self aggrandizement. A better world is possible and a better culture is needed where conversation between adults rather than dominance by an under developed parental authoritarianism is normal. Goals to succeed in their strategy in both examples here are driven by a blindness to the other that is necessary in order to be seen to be successful by whoever they want accolades from. The cheap deal for BCC and the private school was an agenda for something that appears laudable but when it sacrifices the one little lamb for its own success, it has the prophet getting out of his bed and beginning his journey towards confrontation.

This little animation from Auckland speaks to the principle of systemic privilege:

http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

NOTES: There are other stories that bear the same blindness to what the small guy can bring to cultural depth and development including Jugglers’ experience with The Shed at Hamilton Northshore and the big end of town’s money  proposition to the Queensland Government and the selling off of 4 Queensland Rail houses used for Art Studios for 5 years by Jugglers. All these decisions by Government are business decisions and can be justified as such but the loss of what we – and others like us – can bring in exchange for the addition of what makes a quick buck with a veneer of “culture” is what needs to be investigated with more rigor.

First Coat is a wonder, a wonder in a Queensland country town. International, national and local graffiti artists painting on walls in lane-ways and on walls once the oeuvre of carefully constructed family conversations and the latest beef price woes was a tide turner. The vibe this last weekend was distinctly upbeat and almost unbelievable. That aerosol was being applied on and around old red brick and federation style buildings, up the back of an Irish pub or on an aging  corrugated iron shed all within 20 minutes walk of each other blew me away. It was installation of mammoth and intensely impressive proportions all ticked off and supported by the shire council and Queensland Police Service’s “Graffiti-stop“. This was not an obvious clamp down but a new direction, a ride on another train in another direction and no-one had any sense of ambush or anxiety. The sense of camaraderie was palpable and the final legacy of such an amazing installation – led by the indefatigable Grace Dewar from the local Ironlak outlet “Kontraband” – has set a mark on the wall that feels almost out of reach for me in Brisbane  even when we [Jugglers] have been making some positive advances in collaboration with Brisbane City Council and QR over the past few years.

Where it all leads is obvious to the astute. Street art is the thing now and everyone wants some and wants to do a bit. Pay or not pay, that is the question. Here or there, that is the other question. And who to get is another one. When you get a job done to make it look like you are cool and in touch with the latest – “we want Brisbane to look like Melbourne, we want our Hosier lane ” – then you are still in prep school. But I am sure that it will all work and Brisbane might follow Toowoomba as it tries to follow Melbourne. But they need their astute advisors and people who have been on the ground and think with their bodies and their souls not their heads and their egos and their politics. If they do they will make marks with their mark making. Viva la revolution!

Luke Jaaniste is a talented and passionate sound artist and curator.His passion emerged  at the end of his extraordinary 4 piece set and installation last Saturday night at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art [Brisbane] as part of his Autumn Mesmerism series. As the last of his four composer/musicians completed his piece and left us all in a space between worlds, Luke was walking in a state of ecstasy, drifting in trance-like religious euphoria while commending the composer/performer. As we moved into the evening Luke had gently introduced us to the lighted space and the concept driving the night’s performance, making the throw away but carefully chosen remark that the silent and suspended spaces between the performances were as much an invitation to the human person as the immersive sounds and movements. We were invited to lie or sit on the floor on cushions,  respond in dance and movement or in any way that the light/ sound/ silence conflagration affected us. It was certainly more than an affective concert or a mindless rave gig . The depth of sound and carefully engineered light scape were intended to affect us, to hold us and move across and deeply down into our senses. I think I needed another hour or two but my “soul” was affected and my arms and legs responded and revealed some of my soul’s story in those moments supporting some suggestions that we embody our experiences into and out of our unconscious and subconscious selves.

My intense interest in Mesmerism flows from my White Silence installation experiments,years of exposure to religion where silence and repetitive sound were sidelined and the construct that the material, spiritual, and physical worlds are not separate entities but one. Music is a fruit of all and affects all as “the language of heaven” or the leaking of the soul of the gods [God] into an internal elevating cycle. It is exciting to discover another person who is on a similar trajectory around the construction of space/ music/ art experiences and who obviously references more than the sensual and erotic and who  can sidestep alcohol and Ecstasy use so successfully. What we are attempting to do is to construct  an environment for a range of authentic bodily/sensory/spiritual experiences -including epiphany – or at least some kind of total body/mind/soul enrapture.

As humans we are hungry for – yearn for – these experiences. We felt safe in the space with our hunger and expectancy last Saturday. Luke’s use of computer based amplified digital sound wave compositions was mesmerising and it resonated with my search for works that have a sense of swoon or trance-like induction. My use of works by Arvo Paart [eg Spiegel im Spiegel] and Gavin Bryars [Jesus Blood Never Failed me yet] never fail to weave their mysterious spells in White Silence. The performance installation space at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art is a beautiful cocoon and the lighting was perfectly designed and installed for maximum effect in a way that allowed the music to dominate the performance.

Below: White Silence at Existence QCA June 2013 and White Silence at The Shed, November 2014

Jugglers has been forming stronger ties with tertiary art institutions in Brisbane, particularly South Bank TAFE. For the past three years we have hosted and funded a show from each graduating group of the Diploma in Fine Arts. The two exhibitions this year have included six emerging artists [three from each class] from a range of genres that I have selected at their graduating exhibitions.

Here is my Inter-subjective response to the January 30 exhibition for Alex Frietas, Felicity Scarce and Jane Mcgeogh.

CAPTURING THE SPIRIT

They caught the spirit

or at lest they ran around trying to

in their little bowls of incense, chocked wood and staring activism.

They were drawn in by their own work

that was obvious with the intensity of installation and the pull down process

It was clear to me that the spirit was there.

Where has the spirit gone now,

now that they have gone and their work has gone?

I was moved but has the spirit gone?

What was it that moved me

what was it that day,

What took me right in there

right into their clay?

What galloped around here?

what took us all in?

Was there really a spirit

Or was it all spin?

A night in the garden,

a night of soft lights

has spun a fine story,

of spirits and flight.

We might begin slowly

to wonder and call

how smells can entrance us

and paintings enthrall.

We might lose our interest,

to find life in the wood

but the spirit has captured

my heart as it would.

The question arises,

has the spirit remained

in their souls and their art work

or gone down the drain?

Peter Breen [Copyright]

The start to 2015’s exhibition and studio installations at Jugglers Art Space are following themes of  justice, personal grief , expressions of aboriginal response to Australia Day and “selfie” narratives. They have highlighted new innovative skills in paint making and application, a return to “old fashioned” polaroid pictures and works informed by disciplined architectural design. The White Silence experiment into improvisational response, epiphany and collaboration continues to find its way in the maze.

The collapse of the back wall at Jugglers during the November 2014 super cell hail storm delivered bits of wall fibro with 10 + years of aerosol layers attached, silently telling stories of artists and this little outdoor public self managed studio. The layers of improvised works, filmed pieces, tentative throw ups by beginners and the more mature writer had hardened and disappeared under multi coloured layers, but left behind a raw industrial and jagged beauty.

First Marks by First Australians.  Back space studio January 31, Feb 1 , 2015

The rebuilding of the wall begged for a symbolic act to celebrate and connect with what had gone before and to draw a line in the sand in respect of what the Jugglers’ vision has been about around graffiti and street art. It has always been about this space being safe for freedom of artistic expression as we have attempted to validate graffiti as legitimate art and aerosol as a valid medium. The first plans were to have young writers apply some ” throw  ups” in recognition of our commitment to them but when I had a request from  Libby Harward [ Creative Director at Creative Inclusive] for her mob to paint in the space on Australia Day [Invasion Day] it was a “no-brainer”. A female indigenous graffiti writer making marks as a first Australian with her mob on a white fella’s wall on Australia Day had a powerful symbolism  about it. Due to rain and final building requirements, the event was postponed until the following week [January 31] on the day of the Queensland state Election and a change of Government was the outcome. The whole weekend was full of joy, camaraderie and heat in a celebration of art, aboriginal first nation mark making and a new start for Juggler’s vision.

TAFE show #1 February 15, 2015

“Badass Chicken” paint and ink on board. TAFE #1 Show Alexandre Freitas

I have been struck by the standard of work and strong narrative  lines running through the works in the first three exhibitions in the downstairs gallery space at 103 Brunswick Street in 2015. From stories of suicide, parental death, and aboriginal activism to experiments with paint making, the artists have attempted some tough topics and in some cases it seems, used the walls as text free therapy sessions. The only way to approximate some kind of understanding is to take time with the work and artist, as if that’s not a given. I find that in the rush and pressure of organising,  meaning can be too superficial.  Overhearing conversations during hanging of the work enlighten knowing.

White Silence installation [January 30, 2015]

“White Silence is an ongoing group exercise at Jugglers where invited artists collaborate on an interpretive response to a controlled environment of selected music and silence, usually in one of the Jugglers exhibition spaces. This is done without any verbal communication between participants. The idea is borrowed from the mystics across a range of spiritual traditions in an attempt to also create a crucible for possible moments of inexplicable presence, new understandings and epiphany. We encourage the use of these videos for private reflection and contemplation.” This White Silence [installation pictured above]  involved using music as a kind of scene setting device sliding seamlessly into silence as the three [male]participants used the time through mindfulness, clay sculptural activity and drawing to find a “conversation” that once again held moments of mystery. This format will be followed in White Silence in 2015.

A river is a thing with life, an artery of change, a living breathing organism in a city. The Brisbane river flows with wide majesty from its source in the South Burnett region [Nanango]  to its mouth in Moreton Bay. What stories this river could tell us, does tell us, wants to tell us! We have heard from aboriginal people that at one point it could be walked across not far from the mouth. Dredging  has increased the depth and changed its flow. How do we respond to this river? To enjoy beauty superficially is to treat it as a consumable, a commodity, a disposable and useful thing. To take time over time, to sit and wonder at this beauty that flows by our doors, under our Brisbane City Council Cat or through our fingers is to begin to find its voice to our souls.

Jugglers has had the enviable position of being the lease managers of choice for the Queensland Government [Economic Development Queensland] to develop an Arts and Cultural Hub at “The Shed” on Macarthur Avenue, Hamilton [Brisbane, Qld, Australia]. We have been planning  a “response to river” exhibition of works by artists in residence at “The Shed” in response to the river and our experience of it for the past two years. Curated by Jess Row and Peter Breen from October 31 – November 9, “Response to River” artists installed mutli-modal works including glass, timber and paper sculptures, works on paper, video installation, a “White Silence” performance piece and artist talks.

Opening Night

The work of preparing a rather mysterious monolythic industrial shed for a  more gentile viewing public took hours of collaborative work and imaginative hiding of storage in out of site areas. Jess led the project with enthusiasm and attention to detail that resulted in a transformation and exhibition calling for more to come in the future. Every artist’s work was a reflection on the river and on the experience of this majestic, flowing, laughing, sighing, breathing, snaking, silent, “vessel element.”* From Vanessa Stanley’s carefully constructed “Your Altered Gaze Returned” installation and video to Joanna’s and Aaron’s suspended glass bubble installation to Joy McDonald’s gentle rice paper gelatin prints, this was a multi-faceted body of work by an artist’s collective.

Artists and artists’ collectives are a parallel universe, a river of life,  a window onto possibility, a nerve end of local cultural norms. Jugglers Art Space is an artists collective, an artist run organisation drawn into drawing out what life might be saying and in this instance, what a river might be saying to us. How well did we do? Did we sit long and silently in her presence, unfolding our understanding in her whispered stories?

I think we did well. Representational and interpretive works allowed artists and viewers to hear the river’s whispered voice. Joel Glazebrook’s [Edith Thomas Fury] sound scape installation and recorded works added the unseen and deepened the experience. It seemed that experiencing the shed and the event captured the imaginations rather than motivating collectors but as a first event the future is bright for the next phase of visual art installations in this space. Economic Development Queensland’s support meant each artist had some material costs met. In 2015 we will ramp up the event into an art prize with EDQ. This will expand the spread of representation and interest. Crowd numbers were not where we had hoped and other local sponsorship was not forthcoming even though our first attempt at marketing was intense and thorough. We will be evaluating each aspect of Response to River in our report to EDQ.

For me the most memorable segment of Response to River was White Silence. This is a growing passion of mine, an exercise in finding a way into another space and timelessness, a reflective event of silent and gentle experiment. At Response to River a group of us carried Sha Sarwari’s paper mache sculpture to the edge of the beach at Northshore Cafe and cast our little paper boats – while attempting to set fire to them – into the river as a kind of blesssing, a grateful symbolic gesture. Only one boat could be lit and as it so happened, this was the fulfilment of a lifelong dream for the one woman whose boat it was. Every White Silence has at least one moment of entering the unknown and the inexplicable and this time it was in the moments after returning to the shed and gently lowering the boat to the floor. We stood silently in the space held by Joel’s music beauty and finally broke into a slow exodus.

*Fil Filardo credit.

With thanks to all the artists: Sha Sarwari, Joy McDonald, Rose Moxham, Mel Davis, Johanna Bone, Aaron Micallef, Vanessa Stanley, Kay Lawrence, Jess Row, Paul Harris, James Watts, Zoe Mary, Matt Lockwood, Peter Breen.

With thanks to Economic Development Queensland.

A White Silence Video will be released soon.

#G20 Cultural – A personal reflection. 

The Pillars Art Gallery South Brisbane

Between lines on lines

The painted lines, thoughts arrive

Living for moments

Thoughts fly on fine spray outwards

Linger in our reflective hearts.

Lights dim on pillars

Life stories start begin to stir

Lines twist soundlessly

Silent  stories creeping out

Watching people passing by.

Story lines live here,

Live here on these pillars now

But maybe before

Another story line lived

Just down here, under this place.

When we paint we live.

Do you hear our story told?

Painted story lines

Silently beckon, seduce

Those who have ears to hear us.

There is a mystery in graffiti, a poetry of form and content, colour and style. Young aspirants tag bedroom walls, parent’s fences, city walls and trains as they find their way into adulthood and artistic acumen. Their stories are those marks just as all visual art is mark making and just as aboriginal people scratched and mouth-sprayed their marks onto rock walls in this ancient wide brown land. Ancient marks appear across the world in all cultural groupings as calligraphic text and image, symbols of revolution, beauty and the human necessity to make marks.

Someone had the idea to continue this flow of mark making on sacred aboriginal land on the South Side of the Brisbane River as one small part of the G20 Cultural program, an ambitious project that would attempt to move the focus away from power and economics onto what Brisbane had to offer as a community.

The Pillars Street Art Gallery Initiative was a challenge at a number of levels. It could have been done by artists and a few ladders in a few days but the layers of local authorities, approvals, safety and screening of artists made this a large and expensive project*. The final outcome was visually stunning with a range of artists mostly associated with Jugglers Art Space given the opportunity of a lifetime within the heart of Brisbane. Jugglers mission is to “facilitate the health and growth of the core creative human spirit” another ambitious dream that has seen countless young emerging and mid-career artists across a broad range of art genres find doors opening into a satisfying arts practice with cultural impact. This was one of those projects for us at Jugglers that was rather surreal. The bumpy ride through administrating this project is lost in the wonder of the beauty that continues to grab passersby. It has a similar sense for me as when I saw my first aboriginal rock paintings in Western Queensland in 1987.

The reality is that the medium is the message [Marshall McLuhan] and the public is fussy about its medium, having been educated to the perfect image in form and colour for at least two generations of television viewing. Any sign writing company could have produced a similar effect on the pillars at South Brisbane if they had the designs and public would have been “wowed” by it.  The alternative which was attempted for this project is a greater challenge: To listen for and to the stories, to engage with the local tribal elders and the artists themselves both before and after the works have evolved into reality. Not that any of that would have necessarily changed the planned images as much as new levels of respect and knowing would have emerged. This always happens when time, commercial interests and egos are left at the door in place of artistic excellent, integrity, skill and listening for understanding. The big challenge for art in this fast paced output consumerist world is how to work with a paradigm that is driven to tick a box, keep the budget and sacrifice community and artistic integrity.

Guido’s research for his work on Pillar 15, Mik Shida’s philosophical response to his work on Pillar 17and Libby’s and Warraba’s aboriginal stories imbedded in their work need to be told and heard. The workshop featuring Black Drum and storytelling around the history of place did not necessarily inform the works but gave us all some context. Another half day work shop could have possibly affected the nature of the works. A follow up workshop would have helped us hear the artist’s stories around their work experience. But time was against us as it always is.

Peter Breen, Chair/Director

http://www.jugglers.org.au

www.guidovanhelten.com

*Thanks to Rena Singh, San Marie Esterhuysen, Dan Brock, Sammy Gilliland, Athol Young and Jeremy Welland who administered this project.

Photo Credits:Feral Arts, Peter Breen

Peter Breen©2014

Jugglers works with a range of groups, artist collectives and individual artists around a shared dream to provide a conduit for exhibitions and curatorial experience. Our values are strongly weighted in favour of a collective and community shared passion for the arts mostly at an emerging and mid career entry level engagement. A recent series of exhibitions and installations by three separate groups of artists from Southbank TAFE at Jugglers in the LEVEL 1 space expanded our collaboration into visual arts academies.  The idea of and organised by Zoe Mary [Jugglers Administrative assistant] with Scott Avery [Southbank TAFE art teacher] The Upstairs Thing [TUT] provided some curatorial formation experience for students in a low key gallery space outside of their institutional boundaries.

Jugglers waived the normal 22% commission on sales to facilitate returns on sales to the artists, removed all but one of our permanent collection to open up the space  and Zoe and Scott managed the installations in team with the students. Each student’s body of work found its own way into the sight of punters in all three well – curated shows. Though not a high turn over of sales there was a sense of positive achievement and excitement at each show. We are planning the 2015 TUT’s – this time without Scott Avery who has retired. We are confident that this small initiative continues to be part of the web of arts and cultural infrastructure building in Brisbane.

Last night was the second night of the Brisbane Artist Run Initiatives Festival [BARI 2014]. Boxcopy and Jugglers were on the bill following a successful low key opening night at the amazing  Newstead Brewery [former Doggett Street Gallery] on Thursday with Frankandmimi [Rick Hayward and Emily Devers]. Rick’s beautifully executed and resolved hand painted text on old silky oak framed windows and Emily’s wonderfully alluring acrylic on board renditions of local aging Spring Hill corner stores were a gentle ease into this celebration of artists and their collaborative practices in Brisbane. When artists coalesce to make works of art, that jelly of excitement moves and shakes for a few months or at most, a couple of years. The idea of BARI is to plunge the viewing public into that shaking coalescence over a couple of weekends.  The BARI dream is that  some of this shaking  jelly will stick and find its way into the minds and DNA of how viewers  see the world. Change is a slow process in this hard wired capitalist consumer obsessed logic-reason-is-everything paradigm we are all immersed in. A viable alternative to seeing and being  is hard to find and even harder to “sell”. BARI has shown its mettle though since it kicked off in 2008 and continues to add a visual art experience for emerging artist collectives and the viewing public in Brisbane.

And then there is Ryan Renshaw.

Taking the risky plunge out of staying long, the successful Ryan Renshaw is closing his Warry Street [Fortitude Valley] gallery. Last night’s  biggest star of visual art madness under blinding lights was the closing party for the inimitable Ryan and his Gallery. After 10 years of remarkable installations of the newest and best  in the Brisbane contemporary art, Ryan has called it quits. To me it sounds like a smart move, getting out on the crest of the wave for artists and Brisbane’s contemporary art lovers. It is easy to make the call too late in any small business, but particularly in the specialist field of running a commercial gallery. As a non-government funded commercial gallery, Ryan has appeared to make his venture work and his little red dots have indicated a keen collecting public. Any gallery owner/curator knows the pressure to create a following of viewers and collectors and conservative Brisbane added into the mix is an even tougher hurdle. But Brisbane is changing for some of us and the wave of new ideas and new ventures and new emerging art talent has some of us holding our breath and cheering at the same time.

Ryan chose Michael Candy and Archie Moore as his closing exhibitors.  What a combination – one very talented kinetic artist and one very talented indigenous activist artist impacting my sensibilities and conscience. Michael’s installation was a hat tipped to a crazy hedonism of free booze and a politically incorrect attempt to kill a goldfish when and if the crowd swilled the last drop of his plumbed spirits.

Archie’s works composed a skilful conceptual rubber mallet attack on the white population’s awareness of our shocking colonial and post colonial record history of treatment of the indigenous population in this country.

In an ironical twist to the gold fish threat, Angela Hughes PhD installation at Jugglers exposed the horror of animal cruelty. From the tacky but moving shrine to dead animals to multiple mixed media on paper and board animal representations, Angela’s passion for a better world was a clear and clarion call.

The visual arts are telling strong stories in Brisbane. Who will fill the Renshaw vacuum and how  that hole will affect the challenge of bringing depth and change to a growing but still conservative city are  my questions of concern.