Peteskibreen's Blog

At the close of White Silence  the sense of ending arrives and an inexplicable silence floats in on us, a silence in the moment of mini eternities. This silence is un recordable  and the door to something else, some kind of transformational possibility. Epiphany is a human potentiality lost in the constraints of empiricism, frenetic busy-ness and cynicism but possible in such a silence and come- down from a group art exercise. Artists ride the wave of blues, highs, lows and roundabouts of emotion with windows opening into epiphanous spiritual knowing that can easily slide silently past in the non-embrace of stillness. The memory of these moments grasped is all I have to keep the hunger alive for more as I stumble through a fog filled attempt at curating, filming and post production editing. The product is, I hope, a feeder for hungry souls to stillness, silence and an inexplicable feather touching the soul.

Today was another avalanche of people into  Jugglers Art Space – this time at The Shed. All day long the hum of happiness in making stuff and having hands in paint and not on tablets floated in the air. Under Jess Row’s talented arts administration skills, workshop coordinators facilitated sand blasting glasses and coasters, built paint rolling robots and made fly-able kites. A clown made balloon dogs, his partner painted faces, CIRCA led the hoop tricks and Char and Lois helped a whole host of people make little coasters which will find their way into boxes under beds for the next 20 years. As I walked around today the thing that struck me was the wonder of all this concentrated making. Someone said recently that creativity is a given for humans, we just need to let it out in our making. Here it was in community, an engaging joy unaware of wars or war rumours, of climate change and all the impending doom that some of us serious types get edgy about. The sense of sheer goodness and fun in a kind of day long meditation was a spirit lifter.

The contrast with the theatrical over running of 103 Brunswick Street on Monday and Tuesday this week is a dark and light one but both fulfilled the mission of Jugglers to “facilitate the healthy growth of the core creative human spirit. ” Noisy or quiet, disruptive or gentle, self-determined or other- directed – Jugglers very simple big picture is still alive and the returns to my soul via a few reflective filters are uplifting and full of hope.

On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night this week a theatre troupe – “TerraNemo” – performed “Witchery”- a new play – at Jugglers Art Space in all the rooms available – and not available – to them. The upstairs bathroom, the downstairs bathroom, the side veranda, the footpath,  tunnel, outdoor graffiti space, bar, stairwell and main gallery.  One of the artists in residence tried to break up a fight in the shower cubicle during the performance only to find the fighters were in character. I had to ask a couple of times if the people outside the office where in or out of character. There was an awful lot of shouting and swearing and diatribe and loud music and fake nightclub dancing and I was glad when it was all over. My sensibilities were not the issue but my angst at a complaint from the neighbours  at the interruption of peaceful nights, not to mention the clean up, the lack of access to my upstairs studio – it was full of paintings for security – and the use of our 4 wheelie bins for the sound tech guys. Sixteen to nineteen year olds are full of energy, ideas and the world is theirs for the grabbing. Throw into the mix an acting gene with its mix of extroversion, intensity and dramatics and this event was an experience of hormone overdose.The young theatre entrepreneur/producer-directors  – Gwilym and Divi – were a pleasure to work with, full of respect and gratitude and creative giftedness. The engendered this in their actors.

I have no idea what the script was about or what the theme of the play was but it sure seemed to be fun for everyone including the trailing audience who followed the actors around the building from 7 – 9 pm. That no-one tripped over leads, fell into the loo or rolled down the dark stair-well is testament to the overworked angels and meant a day off for the administrators in the Insurer’s Public Liability claims department.

What do I think of all this?

Jugglers mission is to facilitate the health and growth of the core creative human spirit and I guess this falls under that banner. These young people – at least TerraNemos directors – have the potential to go a long way.

I have decided that the visual arts and chamber music are the focus I want in the future as we follow our mission.

The place was full of durries,

Awash with bits of beer

A thousand smells of hashish 

Had been alive just here.

The bins were full of stubbies

The loos had overflowed

The tagging on the dunny walls

Put graffiti back in vogue.

The air was still and clear today,

A reminder fading fast

of what had been

a night of art

and tattoo artists’ hearts. 

A fine outline in Roarke

and colour fills in pink

and blue and orange, secret codes

of love for quiet men

whose art kills street scapes, ink.

The colours of the rainbow,

not gay or only gay,

the love of this small army 

the passion of this tribe.

A sharp outline, a wicked smile,

A skull entrenched on skin

Adorns these walls

And all the halls

Where no-one calls it sin.

Peter Breen ©2014

Welcome to the Brisbane Fringe Festival and to Rogues Gallery.

It is honour to open this one nighter for my very good mates – and rouges – and exceptional artists Nic Plowman and Jan van Dijk.

I would like you to walk into this painting with me.

I would like you to turn around and face away from the painting.

We are all here now, in our imaginations, in this painting, in this mystery.

What do you see there?

Now turn around. Take another look. What catches your eye? What colour, form, shape, figure? Look at the floor and look up again – what takes your attention?

We live in a highly stimulated and stimulating visual world, a world run by advertisers who feed our greed and pull us to yield to consume for me  and for mine.

The external world of our tablets and Google and smart phones and big screens in every bar and bowsers and waiting room and in the  dentist’s chair.

And we can’t quite work out – if we even try to work out – why we keep buying and travelling and doing and looking and buying and working harder but rarely seeing and being.

And then along comes a painting like this and we will secretly be glad when this speech is over and this night is finished because there’s not enough colour in it and it doesn’t make us feel happy. And we wouldn’t hang it in the lounge room.[ Maybe we should send it to Canberra!]

The mastery of this painting is that it is painted by two artists, that the idea for it grew out of Nic’s and Jan’s conversations and that what you see is not how it began.

I have been involved in the installation of public art murals around Brisbane for a long time now. We recently completed a beautiful work in the Creek Street Tunnel by Mjik Shida and Johnny Beer [Gimiks Born]. The original design submitted to the planning authority was rejected because it wasn’t happy enough. In the conversation with the  planning authority there was no conversation, no co -construction and reflection around building a vibrant public art oeuvre. Thankfully, the redesigned and executed Creek Street art work is one of great beauty.

Nic and Jan, however, found that as they talked and drew and sketched and redrew and repainted that the big themes of the big social themes in our country, in Australia, informed their painting. Their process can be reflected in Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”:

” And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

And no-one dared

Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said you do not know

Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you

But my words, like silent raindrops fell

And echoed

In the wells of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said:

“The words of the prophets are

written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sound of silence.”

Nic and Jan have given us all here tonight – the only audience to see this work – a glimpse into their conversations, their minds, their hearts, their souls and their strong and mature artistic talent. They are affected by advertising and the consumer driven world we are all in and all affected by, that external world that like a cancer has eaten its way into our internal world, and theirs.

But they have found a prophetic heart to make a clear statement – or maybe even a veiled one for those who cannot see – about the state, the internal state of the heart of our country, Australia.

The words of the prophets are painted on this canvas wall.

As Tom Waits says:

“We are buried beneath the weight of information which is being confused with knowledge. Quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns. ”

Thankyou.

30/08/2014. Brisbane.

This year the Marie Ellis OAM Prize for drawing attracted a record 174 entries, about 50 up on last year from across Australia. Winner [Carolyn McKenzie-Craig] and Runner Up [Matias Jakku] were under threat from a host of 23 other artists of determined passion and skill as the Judges Jeff Hopkins-Weise, Clare Collins [2013 Winner]Nic Plowman and Dr Sally Butler [Head of school of Art History, UQ] walked and talked and finally dragged the winners and themselves over the line.

Here are some of my words from the speech I gave after the winners were announced to a packed gallery last night[August 1] :

“Drawing. Mark making. We all do it from the moment we can hold a stick, wield a piece of chalk, scribble with a pencil or drag our finger in the mud. We make marks.

South African artist William Kentridge says we draw because we must.  An artist friend recently told me that others say to him, “Simon go and draw for a while. You need to. And they are right” he said.

At Jugglers we are passionate about drawing as a core making process of the human person.

Our passion about about graffiti emerges from the belief that it is another  mark making practice – whether the purist indecipherable calligraphic text or  evolving image based representations. Jugglers has attempted to validate and legitimatise this drawing modality and medium since we kicked off in 1998. The Marie Ellis OAM drawing prize is really only another expression of our passion for this core human mark making practice. But mark making can be side tracked into a quest for perfection at the expense of evoking intuitive responses to life.

Kentridge helps us here: “It is in between the work that I thought I was doing that the real work is happening.”

The undisputed father of art abstraction [Kandinsky] makes the point in his water shed essay “Concerning the spiritual in art” that the artist must learn to work from the heart/soul otherwise he/she will only be a good illustrator with a market driven ouvre.

Every person’s work in this drawing competition is dictated by their skill, discipline, desire to win and the in-between things in their experience – including depression, ecstasy and spiritual epiphany. Whether artists have been able to articulate these deeper matters is what we want to encourage in this drawing prize and what we are looking for as an organisation and what the judges are looking for.

In his book “Beauty” Irish poet John O’Donohue quotes Nietzche in the chapter “To Create Beauty our of Woundedness”: “Beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life.”

O’Donohue; goes on: “When we decide to explore our lives through creative expression, it is often surprising to discover that the things that almost destroyed us are the very things that want to talk to us. It could be years later; time makes no difference in the inner sanctum of this encounter. The wound has left its imprint. And yet after all this time the dark providence of suffering wants to somehow illuminate our lives so that we can now discover the unseen gift that it bequeathed. The labour and discipline of creativity refines our blemished seeing, and gradually an unexpected gift comes to light. Because creativity demands patience, skill, expectation, desire and openness, it leads us to another place where we learn to see in the dark. Nothing is said directly in a creative work; it is obliquely suggested. Perhaps creative expression is a way of telling something indirectly that we could never tell out straight. Beauty is not all brightness. In the shadowlands of pain and despair we find slow, dark beauty.” *

It is worth considering that beauty is not necessarily pretty or glamorous but a reflection of pain that gives birth to a visual story drawn through the hands of a disciplined and skilled artist who, like Kentridge considers repeated creative attempts and failure as the step ladder crawl to some kind of place of embrace and artistic achievement that might not even be acknowledged in her lifetime.

William Kentridge

*“Beauty-The Invisible Embrace” John O’Donohue  Harper Perennial 2005

Downstairs here at Jugglers there is a team of young art students from Queensland College of Art [Griffith University/Southbank Campus]. I have opened the windows and doors of my studio on the second floor to fend off the toxic aerosol fumes. I have realised the impact our sacred graffiti art can have.

There was a sense of recognition about one of the works on the tunnel wall and in conversation with the artist realised she was a successful entrant into this year’s Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing. [ See http://www.jugglers.org.au ] The students are part of a street art course being run by doctoral  student Simon DeGroot, and a course experiment for QCA. Jugglers has regular links to schools and tertiary institutions including TUT [That Upstairs Thing] and regular SouthBank TAFE free exhibitions for winners we have offered since 2012. We are planning to expand our connections with TAFE and QCA into something more solid in 2015.

The course that Simon is teaching  has had some interesting feedback on Facebook where opinions around a contained street art “course” is vying with the true graffiti writers and the need for lack of supervision and freedom of expression. My view is that anything that exposes artists and art students to a less traditional canvas for mark making is positive. My view also is that anything that cannot be collected and paid for and is ephemeral and transitory has even more impact in a world obsessed with consumption and personal ownership. I fall into this category and so my passion about street art and graffiti is part of my therapy, part of the need to de-clutter.

“Three Wise Men” Mixed Media 30x30cm Peter Breen

Griffith University QCA  [Southbank] – Works in Progress “Street Art” at Jugglers Art Space 11/07/14

Opening speech given at Nic Plowman’s exhibition at Anthea Poulson, Southport, March 8, 2014

Popes, kings and other fools

Anthea Poulson

Gold Coast March 8, 2014

It’s a great honour for me to make this speech for my good friend, long time Jugglers studio artist and Life Drawing Tutor, Nic Plowman and to officially open his show – “Popes, Kings and other fools”.

I noticed works for sale here at Anthea’s by artists who have also been in residence at Jugglers studios: Anthony Bennett [Archibald runner up, Wynn runner up] Dane Lovett, Vitor Dos Santos and Anthony Lister.

As a former protestant minister of religion in the non-conformist tradition for 20 years I have some understanding of the concept, framework and philosophical inquiry that underpins these marvellous works and some quite considerable experience of power and intrigue. I am both a former power broker and victim of power plays.

My craft has been the spoken word but religion – particularly both Eastern and Western Christian traditions – has a long tradition of religious iconography  including the graffiti marks on the walls of the catacombs of Rome from the early Christian period of Western history. Visual art – and music under such greats as JS Bach – began to flourish during the renaissance and protestant reformation – hence the origins of the “Jugglers’ species”.

The Christian church has always prided itself on being a fool for Christ’s sake and politicians swear to serve their constituents in the same spirit of humility and service. However, in a horrible twist these days we see that Popes, Prime Ministers and Premiers share this mantle in a twisted irony of idiocy and arrogance.

I cannot imagine the Holy See being interested in purchasing any of Nic’s work, but if they did maybe Pope Francis might see through them that more and more of his predecessors and some of his current Cardinals have been involved in too much monkey business. That many Christian and secular institutions have perpetrated and hidden child abuse, is, most likely, beyond the dignity of the primates. No Chimp would do what some priests and community leaders have done to children.

Nic’s work shows not only his exceptional skill as a painter and draftsman – which he hones constantly – but also his reflective path of philosophical inquiry.

The founder of Methodism, Anglican priest John Wesley used to teach his lay preachers that a sermon must comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. These works of Nic’s are visual sermons carrying the viewer into uncomfortable spaces that demand a response. They afflict the comfortable at least.  If you are a religious person maybe you could buy one for your local parish priest!

These multi-layered images of artist, pope and primate speak to all of us intuitively about our search for wholeness, for meaning, for sensibility. Greek dualistic teaching which divides the human into body, soul and spirit, deeply influenced post Constantinian Christianity right up until today so that we have leaders with no heart, priests with no compassion and politicians with no love . From what we know of Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed there is no division, no dualism. We are all one in god and god is in us all. They taught and lived childlike wonder and welcome, love and respect for the natural order and the beauty not evil of the human body. Wholeness and joy can arrive for humanity with a shift to new ways of seeing and I think Nic’s works are one of the door openers. Nic, like all serious artists, is intuitively wanting to represent both the search for understanding and the moment it might hesitantly arrive and , regardless of the commercial outcome, to continue down that road less travelled. In respect of artists being passionately committed to art and philosophical inquiry, one of the best bits of news I have heard this week around art as protest is the resignation of the chairman of the 2014 Sydney Biennale in the face of the withdrawal of artists from the Biennale because he and his family business, Transfield Holdings, which is a major sponsor of the Biennale, were just awarded the contract for the Australian Government’s Detention Centres. His father was the founder of the Biennale in 1974.

In this exhibition of Nic’s questions have been subtly, beautifully and disturbingly structured.

Someone has said that there is only good and bad art which leads any serious artist to a lifetime of being true to the craft and intuitive inquiry. However subjective this evaluation is, most people and art critics can sense good or bad art.

Nic has painted his soul’s search and his enviable skill into great art that we see here tonight and which, as we take time with, may make us realise are asking our own fleeting questions.

Congratulations Nic.

I am very happy to declare this exhibition open.

Fasi Graffiti

We have had ideas to take Jugglers overseas. An Indian visitor urged us to bring our colour and graffiti to beautify his city. “Everyone will love your graffiti. It is  beautification for us”.This weekend in Toowoomba “First Coat” is a courageous beautification  project jointly funded by Graffiti Stop and Ironlak with some of the big names getting their signature line and colour brand onto lane-way walls in a conservative Queensland town. Congratulations Toowoomba and notably The Grid Artist Collective and Contraband. 

Last night at Jugglers the  “Linear” group show continued this idea of the imposition of random and predetermined lines, shapes and colours into our conservative white cube minds. In my experience in Brisbane we are conditioned  to and still partly stuck in a two dimensional no touch white cube gallery art oeuvre. But the change towards a more organic vision and praxis is becoming palpable.

Last night’s group show included cacophonous arrangements of a large collection of detritus  – for example, the arrangement of random lonely plastic tombstone flowers and a bower- birdesque blue work, trigonometric and anatomical pen and ink line drawings on paper,  female figures on stretched paper over canvas, illuminated beer bottles, a pulsing suspended skin “carcass” and Fasi* graffiti on the front window. My good friend Sha Sawari graffitied his support for Jugglers Art Space in his native Persian [Fasi] calligraphic text in chalk on the front window.

This was not a themed show in respect of media or subject matter but one that created strong dissonant responses for viewers. In this sense, the theme that emerged was dissonance, a fractured emotional distancing from the confronting nature of the juxtapositions of the works and one that invited engagement and reflection. Perhaps the question being framed was “Where is the beauty here?” Taken on their own, each artist’s work was resolved with a well developed and careful attention to concept and execution in the chosen medium evoking  beauty and inspiration. When viewers were jostled between such different conceptual expressions however, the resounding effect was a kind of dislocation even though each artist and the curators at Jugglers carefully considered the placement of all the works.

Someone has said that there is only good and bad art. Whether that is a truism or not, I consider art as story telling that needs to be good. Linear was a series of very good chapters in a story book still to be understood and in that sense there is a profound sense about this show. As with Virginia Wolf’s sometimes mystical writing, this show is a mysterious beauty. Alice Weinthall’s haunting female figures seem to be questioning Joey Gracia’s multiple inflated goon bags and wall of collapsed balloons. Matt’s and Zoe’s exquisite line drawings have withdrawn in a kind of questioning navel gazing wonderment about everything while Joey’s other detritus installations have a semi permanent  insecurity around them. All the while a pulsing skin carcass implanted with fairy lights was alive in the tunnel and a former Hazara refugee wrote on the front window expressing his support for Jugglers Art Space. This was a show about as organic as art can get and the essence is still evolving.

• 1. *Persian[Fasi] is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other countries which historically came under Persian influence. 

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“We cannot speak other than our paintings. With a handshake.” Vincent van Gogh.*

Jessica Dyball, Cory De Muth and Jamsin Togo-Brisby reflect van Gogh’s strongly held view and sentiment in their group show at Jugglers Art Space [open until February 12]. How we tell our stories and how we hide the secret parts is what we are to the world. Our secrets become a dark place as we live to protect our image and relationships from the not-normal. We long for acceptance,  love, justice and validation. Until we find a way of living with our dark sadness, bitterness, unanswered questions and pain – maybe never – we will fight not to stand out. Or we will fight. Or disappear. Art has that ability to take a reflective person into another world where some elements of the story begins to make sense, where the dark flickers as a light. The viewer and the artist are together attempting to make sense in whatever the artistic construct is. Here, these three artists  from the Brisbane South Bank TAFE Dip Fine Art Graduate show 2012, have reflected deeply on their histories and personal narratives. Each brings well developed skills and innovative arts practices so that the exhibition as a whole and each individual piece has a strong aesthetic appeal. But the exhibition is more than aesthetics, more than decoration. This is an exposition of van Gogh’s text.

Jasmine Togo-Brisby

“My works is a response to my family history and a light on the dark truth of the early sugar industry”

Jessica Dyball

“I am interested in the intimate connection between thread, identity, fashion, and the female body.”

Cory De Muth

“INTO THE WOODS… AND HOME BEFORE DARK” is a sombre and visceral portrait of childhood trepidations manifesting into a condemnation of psyche anchored to the past, putting adulthood on hold out of necessity.”

Jasmine’s ongoing inquiry into Queensland’s slave trade [Blackbirding] in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s found its poignancy for me in the brown sugar and resin skulls. Anonymous lonely deaths in a strange land with only remnants of family, familiarity and religious customs is an indictment on our white colonial past. Sadly, it feels strangely familiar. That Jasmine is also reflecting on her own grandparents as slaves captured from Vanuatu adds a deepening impact to the work. This project that needs ongoing exposure. Jasmine’s work was recently part of an exhibition at the State Library of Queensland.

Jessica’s fine charcoal, watercolour and thread works though beautifully rendered force us as viewers to consider a sub-text that emerges subtly from a haunting gaze, appearances of blood and an awkward stance. What is going on here, what are the secrets seeping onto the gallery floor?

Cory’s haunting and carefully crafted collages and drawings around the desire to stay in childhood is a fantasy tale with deep reflective elements indicative of a rapidly developing intelligent discernment around his own story. Young white Australian males are notoriously underdeveloped in their emotional depth as the older Australian culture continues to elevate strutt and machismo at the expense of reflection and vulnerability. It is usually as we cross the midlife crisis line that we begin to strutt less! Cory is speaking transparently and honestly with an skilful attention to detail here that is rare in young men. This does not belie his painful past or his lack of life experience. This work struck a chord with me and with more that a few viewers indicated by the almost complete sell out of his works.

Jugglers continues to be passionate about facilitating the health and growth of the core creative human spirit and to stand in solidarity with voices who call weakly and strongly to be heard.

[ http://www.jugglers.org.au ; https://www.facebook.com/jugglersartspaceorg?ref=hl ]

* https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/748781/video-327004-h264_high.mp4

[Quotes are all from artist statements.]

“I haven’t been that silent for ages..”

“I felt claustrophobic, walking around there, dark, locked in!”

“I didn’t think about anything, I just walked and watched my feet.”

“That was awesome.”

These comments after the multi modal art installation event last night are the short stories of deeply personal experience and exposure to Sha Sawari’s refugee story and his representative boat sculpture.  They were also  peoples’ responses to walking the labyrinth and processing their responses to Sha and to the broader deeper issue of how asylum seekers are treated in Australia. And they are stories of being embedded in mystery and  silence. Sha’s story had particular poignancy on this Australia day weekend. The labyrinth is a well known meditative walking ritual which I chose to include into the first 2014 White Silence event at The Shed. [Hamilton North Shore, Brisbane].

We stood around Sha’s paper and cardboard boat sculpture [built as partial requirement for his Queensland College of Art fine art degree] as he confidently but carefully shared part of his story as a fleeing Hazara [Afganistan] to Indonesia, ending up in an Australian detention centre.

“It’s not the Australian people who have rejected us, it has been the Government’s policy that has driven us to despair. I have felt accepted by Australians. I was devastated when the Labour Party introduced their new asylum seeker policy before the last election. When I made this boat as part of my fine art degree I thought that that would be the end of my journey from Afghanistan to Australia. I am an Australia citizen now but the current situation and my work as an interpreter has shown me that my journey has not finished. I am not sure I will ever feel like at Australian citizen or that my journey will ever finish.”

I have never had to flee like Sha. I worked in Phnom Penh [Cambodia] in the lead up to the Pol Pot rule and atrocities [1975] but I could leave and be welcomed home. In our group at The Shed was one whose grandparents had come by boat to Australia as refugees from Russia but Sha was the only one whose experiences we had very little resonance with. The final 30 minutes of the night took us on a slow single file walk on the labyrinth laid out on stitched Hessian on the concrete floor as a means of processing our response to  Sha’s story – told and untold . To attempt some kind of context we projected visual images of rolling angry seas on the shed wall overlaid with ocean sound scapes. Arvo Paart’s mesmerising “Alina” then weaved his magic.

When all the walkers had exited the labyrinth and picked up their white stone of hope, we found ourselves standing in a huddled group, staring down or out towards the sculpture for close to 20 minutes without moving. The silence bound and kept us bound in a kind of transfiguring hypnotic state. There was a sense of the sacred as if the silence was too precious to break and as we eventually began to move our words were short and whispered to each other.

What had just happened there?

After Shah’s presentation and before the walk in the shed around the labyrinth, we had been working with clay and taking in the cityscapes outside the shed as well as trying to make sense of the first labyrinth we laid down. This labyrinth had been the original plan for the event but it now had seen better days after the Thursday afternoon storm ripped it from its taped moorings. The silhouetted white shirts – some standing, some walking and some sitting began to frame the beginning of the rest of the response to the site and the story. For me the city of Brisbane blinked its welcoming party lights, all prosperous and welcoming on this eve of Australia Day weekend knowing full well that there were policies and people who did not want us to be reflecting or for Sha to be here at all.

What part does art have to play is raising awareness around matters of injustice? What has happened to art as protest where it is more than illegal graffiti? This White Silence was another attempt to meld art practice as a response to other multi-modal art forms and in this case, with an art piece referencing injustice and bravery that is politically current and affecting millions of people and dividing a nation. One person prepared herself for the installation by watching the SBS series “Send them back to where they came from.”

I would like to think that if nothing else we were, in our exposure to beautiful and confronting art carried into a silent space in our souls that will be revisited and that can evoke a new way of seeing justice and the world.

A film of this event will be released by http://www.blueroomproductions.org; https://vimeo.com/ablueroomproduction by early February, 2014.

Nic Plowman – represented by Anthea Poulson, Gold Coast, Qld, Aus.

We went to see Nic Plowman at the old scout den* art studio he shares with life long friend and fellow artist, Sam Eyles. The million dollar location overlooking the Brisbane River fell into Jugglers hands from Brisbane City Council after the sudden eviction of all 13 Jugglers artists from the 4  leased Queensland Rail houses. Jugglers leased these on a peppercorn agreement lease for around 5 years.

Nic has always impressed me as being adaptable in life, influenced no doubt by his country Queensland [Toowoomba] roots and his more than fair share of serious health hurdles. Being yanked out of one studio and plonked into yet another one seems to be another forced lesson in adaptability for Nic, undeterred and determined as he is to complete this body of work for his next solo exhibition[“Kings, popes and other fools” ] with Anthea Polson [ http://www.antheapolsonart.com.au ] in March, 2014. The greater issue for the arts and emerging mid career artists like Nic Plowman in Brisbane is that the eviction of 13 artists from the 4 houses might be justifiable economically by accountants who are looking for an improved bottom line, but in my view it is culturally counter-productive and counter intuitive. A commercial value, though essential for artists, does not reflect the depth and  impact an artist like Nic Plowman has on the cultural conversation that his paintings are a part of. Selling Nic’s works means that he buys paints and canvas and someone has a constant reminder of what he thinks and feels about, in this case, religion. For the deepening understanding of life by our children and the general population , we need a conversation that emerges from reflections on and in this beautiful troubled world by artists and groups of artists. Artist collectives [eg Jugglers]  have long facilitated these kinds of alternative educational processes in Brisbane. These artists and collectives have shown to be the essence of that education and understanding. As we say at Jugglers, “Art is the nerve end of the culture”. Nic’s current body of work is indeed one of those “nerve ends”.

BCC Scout Den artist studio.

Bundoora QR Studio House – studio space for Nic Plowan, Sam Eyles, Jan van Dijk, Andrew Harwood and Johnny Beer.

This body of work largely in oils on stretched paper over canvas, represent what Nic sees in his experience of religion. Brought up  in the Catholic system, his understanding of Catholicism is considered and confronting. Having been raised on the Biblical creation stories, his views on evolution and the known genetic similarities between humans and apes rise up from the paintings in a strange juxtaposition that forces the viewer to consider the priesthood and the papacy from a totally different position. What if the ex cathedra pronouncements from Rome are only 3% ahead of what a chimp might do while chomping on a bit of bamboo in Borneo? The authoritarian single white male dominated religion of Roman Catholicism is finally facing its clay legs as its relevance is shown to be as pagan as the next “heathen”  with depressed suicidal middle aged abuse victims find the courage to face “the voice of god”. Except for the light of Pope Francis, the  “monkey business” perpetrated against women, children and common sense have overshadowed the enormous good done by Franciscans and Jesuits over the past centuries. Nic’s story telling here is as complex conceptually as artistically. His signature use of mutliple images, lines and gold leaf are not busy motifs as much as the unpacking and depthing of a story that has afflicted countless generations since Emperor Constantine made Christianianty professional and male dominated and removed it from its roots as a little Jewish bit of enlightened madness. 

Some of the works have already “sold off the plan” even before the event and I for one, as a Plowman collector, would want to own a larger piece as a means of ongoing contemplation of these chapters of disturbing painterly story-telling beauty. Nic’s well known drafting skill at a number of levels but in particular of the human form, shine here in the dominating chimp and papal representations.

This is a show not to be missed and one to take on as a serious attempt at both personal reflection and prophetic suggestion.

* Jugglers have lost the lease on the Scout Den but have been successful in securing the lease of the old Guide Hut at Tarragindi and will take over the lease of that property in April, 2014.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,700 times in 2013. If it were a cable car, it would take about 45 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Containerval is over, finishing 2 weeks ago and escaping the surrounding November storms. Over 3 weekends in November, it was deemed a success by the popular press,the punters, the site operators and the organisers [Economic Development Queensland – EDQ]. A borrowed idea – it has been done in Christchurch, Melbourne and elsewhere – it was developed by the marketing team at EDQ to activate the hard stand at Hamilton North Shore as a temporary solution for their concrete desert  and decaying wharves along the Brisbane River as their 20 year strategic development plan takes shape.

The Containerval  idea was to provide some kind of exposure for Brisbane based artists and cultural developers within a retail festival “pop-up” space. It provided a unique opportunity for food retailers, Jugglers Art Space, Nomads, ceramicist Erin Lightfoot and Brisbane International Film Festival to have ” a conversation” together and with the consuming public. This kind of conversation is not uncommon in the pubs and cafes and new design architecture and reworked lane-ways  in Brisbane  and Melbourne or at Woodford Folk Festival – but would it work in containers  in this temporary market style retail setting?  In this sense it was a big risk, given the predicable heat in November in Brisbane – and in containers on concrete – and the unpredictability of average festival punters. No amount was spared on marketing, however, so the  event was a success purely from a response to advertising saturation. By Festival end  it had been a success commercially and in Jugglers’ case it had given a range of artists, musicians and performers new audiences. 

In my experience where I live here in Brisbane there is an insatiable hunger for yet another consumer feel good experience. Containerval looked like fitting the bill and in so doing, give Jugglers a unique opportunity to expose the general public to  our passion for “art with heart”, and a less consumer driven experience. There was some risk here. We wanted to experiment and see if the consuming public could find a way in to contemporary experimental art and music. This is an interface that we are passionate about that has led Jugglers to initiate a range of ventures such as the bi-annual Brisbane Artist Run Initiatives Festival [BARI]. BARI fosters that interface across Brisbane during the festival, giving  the public the opportunity to see, meet and spend time with real artists in real studio spaces with felt engagement rather than a commercial one.

The QUT design school students and builder Randal Breen secured the contracts to design and fit out the retailers’ containers and Jugglers – as the “arts and cultural hub” – used its innovative gene pool and network of contacts and supporters  to design and fit out their 4 allocated  containers on a limited budget. We created a magical and utilitarian space with an organic sense about it, including a grassed gathering space in front of the performance container under the orange onion bag canopy. The grass continues to thrive despite the heat and foot traffic.  Two borrowed water tanks, a pump, misting system and hardy grass has amazed Stuart Bull, the project landscape architect who, like the whole team*, donated his time.

Container set up at Hamilton North Shore

Jugglers’ Containerval space with gathering lawn, onion bag canopy and retrieved NBN bobbins.

Luke Carbon & Lisa Dere performing “Paint it Red” in the gathering space at the performance container.

Graffiti by Gus Eagleton, David Don, Charmaine Malpago and Greta Waring. 

The workshop container [Artist: Wade Schaare – “Lucks”]

Opening night – Jugglers core team reps and artists.

Opening night – more Jugglers design and construction team Emily Fong, Stuart Bull, Jake Wood, Lisa Dere. 

Gallery container – glass work by Joanna Debone and Aaron Micallef

For us at Jugglers, the opportunity came out of our  lease with EDQ to develop an arts and cultural hub at The Shed, situated about one kilometre east from the Containerval site. This shed houses a group of practising artists and glass blowers. Punters at the Festival made their way to the shed during the festival and so more links and networks were created.

Parallel with Containerval was the kick off of Eat Street Markets, right next door to the Containerval site. Eat Street is the brain child of Brisbane market entrepreneur Peter Hackworth and managed by John Stanton of Australia Zoo fame. The Containerval retailers and arts/charity organisations [Erin Lightfoot, Nomads and Jugglers] were given the option to continue on with Eat Street Markets under a new business arrangement once Containerval ended. Jugglers initial response was to continue to offer the interface option to the market punters just as we had done with the Festival. It soon became clear, however that there were a number of dynamics at work : There were different values driving Eat Street Markets than had informed Containerval and Jugglers had a resource problem – both human and financial. It was going to be impossible to attract the eating consuming public into our space and for a slower paced conversation about art and meaning. It was also going to be a challenge to meet rental costs and to fund an event coordinator, artists and musicians for a market that we were not prepared for.

We have seen that the Jugglers Containerval design/art project has been just that, a large and amazing installation that was the conduit for artistic ideas and flow that drew people into itself and made some kind of impact on their sensibilities. It certainly impacted all of the design team , construction team, event coordinator, volunteers, artists,musicians and performers.

This experience has been a good one for Brisbane and for Jugglers. Brisbane is still finding its head and heart in respect of new,contemporary and innovative artistic expressions. There are wonderful ARI’s [Artist Run Initiatives] and galleries now, with people putting up art in “non-art places” [not just graffiti] and so providing Brisbane with the educational interface we are so passionate about. But I am quite sure that the Eat Street Market model is not the place for this kind of artistic expression.

A poignant piece in the September 2013 issue of Art Forum under the review of Jonathan Crary’s book “24/7 Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep” is relevant here: “Karl Marx along with many nineteenth-century reformers, lamented that the lifelong vocation of the artisan was destroyed by the factory, wherein the worker, rather than employ his tools, himself became an instrument wielded by the industrial apparatus.” [Michael Hardt]

*Design and construction Team: Lisa Dere, Marissa Lindquist, Emily Fong, Stuart Bull, Jake Wood, Peter Breen, Aaron Micalleff, Wade Schaare [Lucks] Randal Breen, Jessica Row, Zoe Trevethan.

Graffiti artists/artists: Renae Awen, Peter Breen [Sculptural installation], David Don, Gus Eagleton, Charmaine Malpago, Greta Waring, Lucks, Travis Vinson, Brett James, John Ryder.

Written for the Memory Collective’s catalogue. Opening event Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, September 20, 2013,

The Memory Collective

A collection of memories and reflections

Peter Breen MA, BTh, ARMIT,MIR

Co-Founder, Chair/Director Jugglers Art Space Inc

“ A beautiful thing, though simple in its immediate presence, always gives us a sense of depth below depth, almost an innocent wild vertigo as one falls through its levels”[1]

On a cold windy Toowoomba morning earlier this year I found myself on my hands and knees scrambling under a jammed roller door somewhere in a downtown alleyway. I rolled into a bleak almost deserted industrial space with a few piles of old furniture and shop fittings in the corners and a quaint brick toilet block near the entrance. The whole freezing landscape was filled with a wonderful winter light. In the space proximal to the roller door a large Damien Kamholtz painting rose from the floor suspended somehow in front of a series of exquisite porcelain bowls and a square steel open tank about 10 cm high. The cold dark water added to the mystery with a kind of present endlessness , its gentle silent lapping inviting me to look deeper and stay longer. Dancers, photographers, film makers, painters, composers, musicians and writers swirled around the central icon. In breaking into the moments of this carefully scripted performance and image capture event [ for future editing and performance in the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery on September 20]  I had also broken into something intuitively  wonderful and sacred. As one of  Kirsty’s dance sequences slowed to a still and suspended moment, I found my throat contracting and my eyes filling with tears. Here was threshold moment where light poured in and mystery opened its heart to let us catch a glimpse of the beauty and grace of the Other. And then as it opened it slid shut. The secret had gone and yet the mystery and beauty remained in the installation, space and dance sequences.  

What draws me is not only the sensed beauty  and skill of artists’ works but meanings that emerge in the silences,  stillnesses, reflections, and spaces between. The “Memory Collective” is a unique beauty but I see it as part of what is hopefully a rising swell of inquiry by gifted artists who are walking lightly on the earth. The consumer, decorative and investor paradigm is stuck largely on the surface of the instant.  To find a group of artists led by Damien Kamholtz  who have been moved to follow the beckoning mystery beyond their talent and praxis and to inquire below the surface is itself a threshold moment. The pull towards the market  for this talented group is the straight jacket to avoid while financial pressures I believe need to be relieved by our taxes and greater corporate generosity that is not limited to the elite who end up becoming perfectionist  performers in a consumer circus. While Regional Arts Funding has made this wonderful project possible, may this group of artists find the beckoning of more of the sacred to be the underpinnings and deepening of their practice and so cause a few of us to scramble under doors into the light.

The collective mind

Holds them all, suspends them here,

Suspends them in time,

Suspends them in no time space

Of memory synapses.

Door rolls jam time frames,

Opens sacred momentums;

Freezes, unfreezes

Cold paper plans; thaws, melts, warms.

Dance moves mystify; paint creeps.

Listen, the stillness calls

To the root bound beauty  well.

Quiet tears run.

The sacred moment hangs here.

Painter, dancer, maker dream.

©Peter Breen 2013

The finished wall in The Queensland Museum’s Turtle Exhibition Room

Last year we [Jugglers] were commissioned to paint up a beautiful design studio in Brisbane run by Artisan. [www.artisan.org.au [Artisan is the peak body in Queensland presenting and promoting unique and individual quality crafted design to an Australian and international audience.] It was for their Reboot show,a funky idea in collaboration with Nike and other sportswear manufacturers where artists in Brisbane were invited to rework a pair of shoes for an auction/ exhibition. Our commission was to create a street art style grungy graffiti lane feel in the space. It seemed to work well at every level and is still seen, apparently, as one of Artisan’s more popular shows. From that came a commission last month to repaint the inside of one section of the Queensland Museum in preparation for their Ghost Nets installation. It was a simple idea and a simple brief. Repaint the walls with aerosol and rollers as part of the preparation for this new installation highlighting the plight of turtles affected by fishing boat nets lost at sea. After a few hurdles mainly to do with poor planning around ventilation and archival issues, the job was done and some young artists have been able to add this to their CV. It was an interesting experience for me as I found myself touching up a few parts of the walls and architraves. I was formally trained in a number of disciplines – science, the humanities and theology and continue to be educated as I go in the arts but never expected to be touching up a wall in the main section of the Queensland Museum! The three artists who have had a long association with Jugglers and are on our mural program with Brisbane City Council and other agencies, learnt a few things about how some government agencies work. I’m not sure they would rush back to this kind of commission again but I think it was a worthwhile project. There seems to be a new tide of interest in big wall visual art projects in Brisbane that are incorporating street art and graffiti art styles and colours – and artists from “the scene.” It is gratifying to work with artists and the people initiating the commissions on these events as we all are drawn, in some mysterious way to deepen visual beauty on a larger scale in Brisbane.

I think the work I do is as a kind of poet. The management of events and people and exhibitions is a kind of writing and finding the right line and metre and rhythm. Take the container festival in November. If I put the work into this I will write a work that has poetic feeling. Others are writing it with me. To get the work right there is a call of the mystery beyond planning but with planning. There is some kind of mystery in this work and it is not about financial returns. Really. Like William Kentridge and his unplanned need to put marks down. So I will keep writing works that have mystery in them and that come inexplicably from mystery and see if I can be a Shakespeare or maybe a king David. Or just a poet trying to move beyond Haiku and that effects a kind of stillness at least for a moment. And maybe some listener glimpses the space between the lines and falls into it.

My quest for epiphany is gaining momentum. I realise now that this is a quest of some significance for me and thankfully, I am not on my own. I just subscribed to Kierkegaard In The World in my bid to find more thinkers on my journey. And how long will the journey be? A never ending one I suspect and beyond the last breath. The late [Fr]John O’Donohue is one reflective thinker I am immersed in at the moment . He is a breath of fresh air in my search for oxygen. As a former catholic priest and Irish Hegelian scholar [an interesting mix – think Irish jig and German precision] his writing’s Beauty and Benedictus are enabling me to see that my quest is the right one for me, and a good one and that embracing it is bound to yield fruit.  He is enabling me to see that the lifelong nature of it is one I need to embrace as good despite my constant struggle with my past fundamentalist Christian life and practice, my fear of what some family and evangelicals think and the sense of being “alone and palely loitering where no bird sings.”

The experience of hearing voices for three of our family members in 1995 as a result of anxiety and prayer was a turning point for my understanding of the presence of “god” and what the bible is about. The bible is to be read as a story and record of previous experiences of the breakdown of the barrier between humans and god. It is not a formula for the future but a record of the past. Reflecting on Harry Westcott’s story on Compass [ABC Television] last night about hearing the voice of God in O’Connor Uniting Church in 1974 resonated with our experience and how I see the bible. I have taken a different track to Harry in his now fundamentalist literalist charismatic religion that has no appeal for me, at least culturally if spiritually. If epiphanies occur in that religion [Vision Ministries]  my suspicion is that they would be lost in the superstructure of what he has formed since trying to hold onto what happened post 1974. This is also what I suspect has happened to the bible. No doubt there are principles that emerge around “experiencing god” from the bible stories but they are not formulas. Ours wasn’t. Harry’s wasn’t. Apart from desperation for knowing – and maybe anxiety and introversion – art, silence and stillness keep on popping up for me as places to be in if there is any chance of educating for awareness and experiencing epiphany. And now I am wondering if this is partly misdirected and that the journey is about living in the world of beauty as itself epiphany and letting go my own religious structures so subtly erected to sail my ego around in and to float with beauty as the wind that constantly shows me more if I am still enough. This breaks down the dualistic nature of religion that emerged early on after the Jesus phenomenon and puts spirituality and the Jesus story into a sensible framework – not formula – that sets me free to explore forever. Once the spirit is embraced as in beauty and life and once beauty and life are embraced as in the spirit then eternal life is now and will be. Benedictus.

This is an edited version of my paper at the Exist-ence 5 conference at QCA delivered on June 26 and followed up with an installation on Level 6 on the same day. Attached images are of that installation. Thanks to Mel Davis, Paul Harris, Lisa De Re , Sha Sarwari and Lucy Forsberg. [Participants] and various conference observers who slowly became willing extra performers! Photo credits Alan Warren.

exist-ence 5: international festival and symposia

live art, performance art and action art

Performance, the Body and Time in the 21st century

June 26-27 Brisbane exist & QCA Project Gallery

White Silence

Peter Breen MA [Creative Arts Therapies], BTh, ARMIT, MIR

Do threshold moments or liminality or theophany arrive within a contrived time space performance installation?

INTRODUCTION

Why we are in the arts is a lifelong reflection.

What work we do is dictated by forces beyond us even if we fall on our feet and are full of a sense of call and destiny. Few have the luxury of a life of long reflective walks where –says Nietzsche – good ideas come to us.

From the day we leave our tertiary training institutions or otherwise, the battle is on for the sale of our work, for positions in theatre and performance, for studio space and for the energy and vision to pursue what we thought we were called to be and what we passionately want to do.

We are not as altruistic as the social worker or health worker –  artists have fun, reflect  angst, make our own beauty and try and conquer the occasional moments of doubt and depression.

But the arts are society’s medicine. As aboriginal dancer and choreographer, Stephen Page said “The great medicine for humanity is art” and Simon and Garfunkel sang in the 1960’s “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.” Along with a range of qualitative research and intuitive knowing in artists including Kandinsky’s  1914 essay  “Concerning the spiritual in art” this implies that in and through our practice there is a spiritual force, perhaps unseen or slow to emerge – but there. It is critical that this spirituality be free in us if we are to be medicinal prophets,  if we are to be more than just 9- 5 artists and if we are to be more than accomplished and successful.

Does this imply that only the truly gifted can be medicine and prophet? Yes and no. We find our place as artists in the hard work and struggle against our own poverty and in the hard work and occasional rejection that finally confirms or redirects our talent until we find our rhythm and flow. Most of us will add and subtract various practices and disciplines over our life but even in dissonance and disappointment hopefully we find a place where we are true to ourselves and our gift.

Does this imply that we can’t have fun and that we are to be full of intensity as we are so often the first to see and reflect the injustices of the world we live in? Yes and no. Once we manage to free ourselves from being only market driven and find our voice, we will develop balance around intensity and fun in our practice.

The idea of a spiritual element to our lives, calling and arts practice might sound irrational and decidedly impractical and certainly not economically productive but I am totally convinced of its presence in all of us and that it can be nurtured. To leave it undeveloped impoverishes our lives and our art.

So what leads us to be artists? What keeps us at it? What value does art have in the scheme of our living?

South African artist William Kentridge has something to say on this:  “So what was it that led Kentridge into art? What possibilities did he see in it? And how did he justify art-making when, in his own country, people were being locked up, tortured, murdered, exploited and spiritually crushed as a direct result of government policy? In a formulation that sounds almost like a pointed rebuke to the law, Kentridge has said he saw art as “a way of arriving at knowledge that is not subject to cross-examination”. Kentridge makes up his animated films as he goes along. His motto when making them, he claims, is ‘NO SCRIPT, NO STORYBOARD’. And his art flouts the first rule of cross-examination: that you know in advance the answer to every question you ask. Elsewhere he has spoken of the “seriousness of play”, claiming that “it’s always been in between the things I thought I was doing that the real work has happened”.[i]

Kentridge and Kandinsky inspire me to pursue the in between, the third way, the road less travelled, the vision of who I am.

Bruce Wilson in “Reasons of the Heart” talks about Australian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Patrick White’s epiphany – a kind of in-between experience : “During what seemed like months of rain, I was carrying a tray load of food to a wormy litter of pups down at the kennels when I slipped and fell on my back, dog dishes shooting in all directions. I lay where I had fallen; half blinded by rain, under a pale sky, cursing through watery lips a God in whom I did not believe. I began laughing, finally, at my own helplessness and hopelessness, in the mud and stench from my filthy old oilskin. It was the turning point. My disbelief appeared as farcical as my fall. At that moment, I was truly humbled.”[ii]

In the pursuit of our art, in our practice, in our experiencing, are there moments when we sense another dimension, another voice, another vision?

Do we find a cupboard door opening into the mysterious in the creative silent moments between the lines, between the breathless final curtain call and the change room?

Are there non drug induced existential and almost inexplicable non-diarised moments that arrive at some point for us as artists, as people passionate about our practice in our practice and during our practice?

Are there moments that arrive for us that bring new intuitive poetic meanings and that are concurrent with or above or more than dissonance or exhilaration – a kind of   “feather on the breath of God” and that are motivational for the rest of our lives or at least for the next chapter of our lives?

Which begs the question again:

What indeed are we doing art for?

William Kentridge again:

 “Often, the finished drawing is different from what I had in my head when I started off, and the better ones are those that don’t look anything like I thought they would. The ideas are not the driving force in drawing, nor is meaning. The need to make an image is the driving force. It isn’t like a writer who has a story they have to tell, and so they write a novel. It isn’t as if I have an image the world has to see. Rather I have a need to be making marks on paper. Drawing isn’t a decision, it is a need”[iii]

So we make art – as visual artists because we need to make marks. Maybe the same need is there for all artists driven by gift, talent , education, training and plain hard work – to make a mark, make a noise, to move, to design, to make, to compose, to write….

And in the flow that emerges as we make our marks, our moves, our music, our drawings; as we lift our voices to find the one line that grabs and write the couplet that engages the heart in mystery – is there another mystery, another poet  writing, another composer flinging a pianissimo semi-quaver into the concerto and flow of the scramble of our obsessive mark making?

Organised and disorganised religious groups –particularly the three big monotheistic religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – think they have “cornered the  market” or know better than anyone else what the mystery is, how to experience it and what it looks like within their messages, dogmatics and stories around this inquiry. I don’t think they do. What is more disturbing than their blindness to the reality of spiritual experience outside of their domains is that those who should be the respected voices in religion – the mystics and the artists – are minimized and in some cases victimised. There appear to be some healthy changes happening, however, as some religions are learning to embrace mystery and lack of certainty and to support the arts without a utilitarian iconographic agenda. But this is still rare – at least in Australia.

Patrick White’s mystical experience is, I am convinced, an example of what it means to be a normal human. Eastern religious expressions and constructs appear to celebrate mystery and wonder that we as artists often encounter even if we are at a loss to be descriptive about it.

My lifelong wonder at beauty, my love of good story telling, my aspirations to excellence in my own mark making accompanied with attempting to facilitate the healthy growth of the core creative human spirit in others – have been undergirded by at times an inexplicable but real hunger – cf Kentridge’s need – for moments of Patrick White type epiphany and feather touches of the breath of the other, the spirit.

So I was drawn to this conference and in particular the theme of Utopia, the sublime, ecstasy and transcendence in art. It is encouraging to see the growth of inquiry around this theme across arts genres.

It is in art – but not only in art – that I continue to look for these experiences/moments and which led me to produce a particular performance piece 3 times in 2012 with a small group of invited  visual artists with friends and observers at Jugglers Art Space in 2012. The plan is for some of us to stage this again for you today at 6pm.

The physical context for the three performance installation pieces was the main gallery space at 103 Brunswick Street, 6 easels, 3 tables and chairs and basic materials for painting and drawing. In the middle of the room was a plinth with a Perspex cover filled with water, which became the wash bowel for brushes,  lit from underneath. The music sound track for WS1 was British composer Gavin Bryars haunting and well known piece “Jesus Blood never failed me yet” – played regularly on Triple j and ABC Classic FM. My particular interest was what this piece would evoke. What happened over the 3 performances in 2012 was that the response was to the whole event, each other and evolving contexts, including the music I selected. For some reason I asked the artists to dress in white as an aesthetic context.  The idea was that that the event was to be both a collaborative and personal response to the context but that collaboration on co-constructing painted/drawn surfaces would be via written text only. I continue to be committed to exploring ways of slowing our mad lives down and of finding new territories of interpersonal connectivity.

“ The production of these events drew out a knowing that to pursue this reclusive and disciplined centring down with a group of artists like this was meaning making for me. This was where I found some enlightenment, energy, joy. And maybe these, this is the epiphany but I am not satisfied”.[iv]