Who Needs Artists?

2006

Who Needs Artists?, was our contribution to It’s a new day, curated by Sally Breen. Breen articulated the aims and intentions for the project as: ‘seeking out the porosity of what has been ostensibly a closed building – tightly shut to the local community, many artists and audiences,’ and that the exhibition invited artists to ‘engage with the metaphor of community via the conceptual and physical grammar of what it means to work in convergent spaces.’

Who Needs Artists?, literally asked if the services or presence of artists were required, but also playfully eluded to the possibility that the response might be: Artists? Who needs them! 500 flyers were distributed that sought responses to the question: ‘If you had two artists coming into your neighbourhood for six weeks, what would you want them to do?’

For more on outcomes from this project, read Art Conversations – failure to communicate by Josie Cavallaro and Anne Kay

Flicks at the Loo

Initiated by a couple of local residents, Flicks at the Loo was a one-night screening at a public park in Woolloomooloo. The key motivation for this event was the opportunity to screen Kid Stakes, an Australian silent film from 1927 that was partly shot in Woolloomooloo. As a prelude, the music video to Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil was screened. This classic protest rock song (c1987), features images of the band playing in Woolloomooloo.

Cake as Art

Children from the after-school program at the Juanita Nielsen Centre participated in Natalie Woodlock’s Cake as Art workshop at Artspace.

Articles

Writings on It’s a new day

Woolloomooloo and the Expanded Neighbourhood of Process-driven Art Practice by Catorina Moore & Jo Holder, Artspace Projects 2006

Art Conversations – failure to communicate by Josie Cavallaro and Anne Kay, Runway issue 13

Art and Social Life

Community Opening Marrickville Library

I coordinated the Marrickville Library Community Opening for Inner West Library and History, Inner West Council.

Art Works

Frazer’s Party Hats

The gargoyles featured in Frazer’s Party Hats are captured from Frazer Mausoleum, located in Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney. This sandstone gothic cathedral-in-miniature was once the family vault of John Frazer, an Irish immigrant to Australia who became an influential Sydney merchant.

Art Works

Human Act

Human Act points to the European introduction of rabbits to Australia and its disastrous legacy to biodiversity. This work aims to consider how human activity such as overgrazing, recreational hunting and our regulated and domesticated version of wildlife frames our relation to other species.

Art Works

Foothold

Foothold emerged from reading about a major transcribing project to identify and record deteriorating headstones at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney.

Art Works

Grazing on Graves

Holding fresh flowers, a friend enters a cemetery to visit her mother’s grave. She was soon approached by the groundskeeper who advised that it was best not to lay fresh flowers as kangaroos graze on them. This occurrence set the impetus for Grazing on Graves.

Art Works

Sedentary Australian White Ibis

Sedentary Australian White Ibis was created from melding reputation and observation between people and the ibis in my neighborhood, located in the south-west Sydney.

Art Works

L’Etna Scoppiau e Messina Rifriscau- When Etna erupts Messina is relieved

L’Etna Scoppiau e Messina Rifriscau- When Etna erupts Messina is relieved, explores my experience and understanding of Italian culture shaped by family dynamics and narratives that operate in isolation from the homeland.

Art and Social Life

Playback

Playback is the outcome of a participatory project with the ceramics community from the Sydney Institute of TAFE (SIT), Gymea Campus. Using audio description, I scripted a rendition of a found ceramic object. Participants were invited to listen to a recording of my narration, then translate the description into physical form.