RICHARD TIPPINGUrban Animals
21 January - 23 February 2013

Concrete poet and artist Richard Tipping has recently moved to Redfern. However, it is not the stereotypes that his eye honed towards as he beat the pavements from Redfern Park to SLOT As he says, "Urban Animals is an on-going series on animlas and their images in the city and surrounds, trying for poignancy and the mysterious more than simply documentation."
 

A suite of 'pics' snapped on a smart phone and then uploaded to a blog, these images are quirky and fun. They capture the speed of a pedestrian and the kind of transitions in a day. Utilising a QR code displayed in SLOTs window pedestrian viewers can visit Richard's urban animals blogspot and find out the stories behind these peculiar urban critters - where is James the pig now? did the vet bills get paid?   

richardtipping.blogspot.com.au

  

ALEXANDER JACKSON WYATT

CLOSED FOR REINVENTION

17 December - 19 January 2013

 

Thinking about what might be shown in SLOT I grappled with the concept of the Window Gallery itself. Focusing on it as space that one encounters from the street - and at the same time being a space that brings the artwork into the public arena whilst still remaining a conventional form of a gallery space (ie. white cube/non-interactive). These original ideas focused on dealing with the very volume of the slot. My first thoughts were to build a construction that did not fit into the space - ideas that were trying to engage the curiosity of passing pedestrians by creating a work that performs within the space itself, and at the same time making it a foreign concealed object.

The idea then moved towards a direct interest in the actual SLOT window space, and was to replicate the volume into plywood. Made to look as though it had ‘turned’ within the confines of SLOT, appearing to have crumpled in on itself. These ideas remained attractive but unrealistic, especially if the installation was going to be shipped from Europe where I am on residency. The challenge was to take this thinking process towards something that could be installed by others via instruction. What developed was a work that challenged the concept of the Window Gallery and arrived at a project that covers the glass with images documenting the artist trying to fit something into a space. This was an attractive move as it would also involve the passing viewer, creating an invitation to remove the posters so as to reveal the scrunched mattress inside SLOT.

 Now the work is as much about interaction as it is about making art at a distance but
also sticks to the original proposal to make an artwork that is present to the urban
character of Redfern as a surrounding environment.

- Alexander Jackson Wyatt 2012

JUDY BOURKE

POSITIVE PAPER SCREEN

19 November - 15 December 2012

This flighty installation uses the plastic sleeves for protecting film negatives, suspended in columns of light, movement and colour. As relics of a generation of photography now super ceded by digital technology, Judy has converted their 'slots' as housing for her drawings and prints - zips that build vertical landscapes.

GREGORY O'BRIEN

CONVERSATION WITH ROSEMARY DOBSON ON RAOUL ISLAND

21 OCTOBER - 17 NOVEMBER 2012

I was between Tonga and Easter Island when I heard the Australian poet Rosemary Dobson had died. Martin Gascoigne emailed the news from Canberra on 2 July 2012. I had corresponded with Rosemary briefly in 2004 while curating an exhibition of work by her very close friend Rosalie Gascoigne for City Gallery Wellington. Hence the email from Martin. Rosemary was well into her eighties at the time of the Gascoigne exhibition. Her son Ian, a classical violinist, came up from Christchurch, where he was living, for a poetry reading in honour of the artist. He read a memoir which his mother had written especially for the occasion. Among the poems Ian also read was 'Grieving':

Upstairs there, in the mind:

Beating of wings, loud weather

Days, nights together

To force on the mind order...

In the small world of things, my father had known Rosemary's late husband Alec Bolton, a hand-press printer and renowned publisher at Brindabella Press. Between my father and my brother Brendan, our family owns a complete set of every Brindabella book ever produced.

In her heyday Rosemary Dobson would drive Rosalie Gascoigne around rural Canberra, collecting road signs and old softdrink crates for her assemblages. These two exemplery figures would careen around the rolling country, riding the soft suspension of their hulking Holden stationwagon, often reciting Romantic poetry.

When I heard Rosemary Dobson had died, I decided I would have an imagined last conversation with her. And the best place on the planet I could think of for this dialogue was the very remote Raoul Island, in the Kermadec Group, 1000km north of New Zealand. (I had steamed up there in May 2011 on HMNZS Otago.) Rosemary would enjoy such a Romantic setting.  We would time the conversation so that it occurred on 8 October, which is the day the migrating whale population in the waters around Raoul is surveyed by the Department of Conservation workers on the island. Last year 126 whales were recorded during one four hour period. Hence 'Whale Survey, Raoul Island, with Rosemary Dobson', a poem based upon Rosemary's 'Poems from Wang River', offered with gratitude and respect. This is how we leave things. Two poets talking, immersed in land and sea and sky, counting whales, basking in the wonder of it all, now and for all time.

  i. m. Rosemary Dobson 1920-2012

Whale Survey, Raoul Island, with Rosemary Dobson
Gregory O'Brien

Two poets on a headland, mid-survey
might pause suddenly and say
will this be your whale, or mine?

Moving, accordingly, from one observation area
to the next, a whale is 'handed over'.
Please take it. No, you first.

Early morning spent 'getting the eye in'
the velocity of clouds, sea conditions noted.
Breaching, logging, travelling, the Pacific

divided between Coral Bay and Tropic Bird Face
Bomb Shed, Hutchies Bluff and Blindspot. Later
Rosemary observed to a friend

from the sharpest point of her triangulation
of ocean: If I stand still enough, I can see
Wolverine Rock, a water spout and, westerly,
          one cow and calf.

MARILYN SCHNEIDER

EPIC TOURBILLION
23 September - 21 October 2012

The idea for this work was inspired by a collection of Jacob and Co. watches titled Epic Tourbillon. Marilyn Schneider is interested in this title because the billon part of tourbillon could easily be mistaken for billion and this word combined with epic suggests that these luxuries offer some form of abundance.

As these ‘excessories’ are usually decorated with hundreds of diamonds, the title implies an extensive display of conspicuous consumption for the wearer, although their inevitable small scale undermines the use of language that promotes them.

Using the idea of a ‘face’ as a façade that exhibits excessively ambitious presentations of wealth, Schneider utilizes sculptural installation to create of collection of ‘replicas’ that reinterpret the glamourising norms of representation that emulate luxury and status.

KENZEE PATTERSON

Not only biologically sound and environmentally safe, but also socially and aesthetically acceptable

27 August - 22 September 2012

"Farmers already lose up to 30% of some crops as a result of birds. Some bird species will double their population in the near future, which will have a dramatic effect on food security worldwide, and as you know food shortage is already a disturbing global phenomenon."

Wildlife scientist and bird expert Kevin Shaw

The "pest bird deterrent" borrows its form, materiality and dynamism from the visual language of Bauhaus and Minimalism.

It is marketed as a tool for the protection of crops, thereby ensuring food security for the earth's human population.

But can an art object really save the world?

Kenzee Patterson is represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

WILL COLES

Memorial to the Unknown Armchair General

30 July - 25 August 2012

Are we and our junk reaching critical mass? If all our junk is made in China, we will have nothing worth digging up in the future. The trivial and shallow now represent the peak of Western Civilisation. The internet brings the entire history of human achievement into our homes, but we are watching ‘reality' TV. 

Welcome to the age where nearly everyone grows old, hates the young and is so busy being scared of dying that they have forgotten how to live. Stop, take a deep breath and step back.

- Will Coles, 2012