Orange Botanic Garden: Saturday outing

Gabriella emailed me these images: the works in the casuarina forest have been disturbed. Hannah and Joanna gathered the ends and tied and tucked them back into the gauze. They have become part of the Gathering, experiencing the feel of the gauze. Normally Hannah and Joanna would not have touched the work, I hope they enjoyed working with the gauze. The nature of the gauze is fragile, like our natural environment. The gauze can be leaned against gently, (only stretching it a little) if you are sensitive to the material. Go too far and it can break. It can be repaired, new patterns becoming established. Even with complete remaking it would not return to the original, it would have similar characteristics but always different, inconsistent.

Richard Serra at MoMA

The following images and text from http://scoboco.blogspot.com/2007/06/richard-serra-at-moma.html led me to think about a series of short walls of gauze between trees creating passages that undulate: disrupting the rows in a pine tree forest or in a vineyard. I will look for a site at Mount Tomah for this idea. One of these images is without people, the other with people in the space. I am interested in how the inclusion of people in the space changes your viewing of the work.

' Richard Serra at the MoMA
Try NOT swaying slightly from side to side in tune with the undulating passages as you walk through Sequence, his massive, interconnected spirals on the second floor... or leaning backward as you approach the inverted walls of one of the immense cocoons within Band. You can taste the metal in the air; you can smell it and feel its deep chill and unimaginable weight in your chest. You can get seriously disorientated here, even lost (well... we did, anyway), and yet it seems more comforting than dangerous, thanks in part to the stunning suppleness of these giga-ton works.'

' The exhibit is divided into three parts. On the second floor are the real show-stoppers: three new, enormous, enveloping steel sculptures, Sequence, Band and Torqued Torus Inversion, that you walk through and around and within, and that you'll have to run your hands over even though all the signs tell you not to. Made from weatherproof steel, there's none of the rusting and oxidation that you might normally associate with Serra's work—here instead are long, seamless, almost placid surfaces. These three pieces are literally breathtaking.'

Mount Tomah Botanic Garden

gathering at the garden

Sat 8 Dec, 2007 - 3 Feb, 2008


Exhibition Opening
2pm - 4pm Sat 8 Dec


I will be installing site specific gauze works in the gardens. In the visitors centre I will have echidna works and grass seeds works including an animation. Some of the photos I have taken of the garden follow.

Insiteout: Orange Botanic Garden, New South Wales, Australia

Tuesday 23 October, 2007
Installed 'Eco tone' at Insiteout

Thank you to all the people who participated in the installation, artists, Aileen Francis, Ros Auld and visitors to the garden from Canberra, Tara, Luke and their Dad. Tracy Sorenson recorded video footage. ‘Ecotone’ became another gathering of people joined together by a length of gauze. We each felt the softness of the material. We experienced working in a cooperative group. A rhythm is established, with the stretching, cutting and rolling to prepare the gauze and then with the passing of the gauze from one person to another during the installation. We shared associations and stories of place, families and journeys.

‘Ecotone’ was installed in a casuarina forest. It emphasises the difference between different ecological communities.

An ecotone is a transition area between two adjacent ecological communities or ecosystems. It may appear on the ground as a gradual blending of the two communities across a broad area, or it may manifest itself as a sharp boundary line.

The plantings in the garden generally fit into the second category having ‘a sharp boundary line.’ When bushwalking I have often wished to camp in an allocasuarina forest but they are generally situated on the top of a ridge, a long way from a water source. The floor of this forest is covered with needles, springy under the foot. As the wind brushes through the needles on the trees they talk, becoming ‘the talkative casuarinas’. They provide food for the endangered ‘Glossy black cockatoo’, that’s the one with the red/orange band on the tail.

Gooches Crater

Walk on the 20 to 21 October to Gooches Crater.

Gooches Crater: edged by pagodas lined with ironstone banding

The white of the tree on the edge of the swamp in the Crater emphasises the lines of the tree.

When walking on the pagodas, the sound your shoes make on the iron stone banding is unique, so typical of pagoda country.

The ground beneath the feet.

Whipstick malley, site for gauze installation

Whipstick installation: narrow gauze wrapped around the base of the whipstick malley, forming a vessel shape

We walked through the heathland to get to the ridge ot the pagodas.

one foot in front of the other

hiding the face from the sun

shoe aimed between the allocasuarinas, isopogans and new banksia stems

the heath land in flower,

large tea tree flowers

the sound of feet on the pagodas rocking iron stone bandings

crouching in the shade

windows in rocks

cicadas sound, a wip bird responds, an aeroplane, half moon

Number 47 'Beyond the fence'

While setting up the exhibition at Number 47 on Friday, Rylstone resident delivered some gauze that he had found in a cave near Tayan Peak, Wollemi National Park.

He added to the story: in the cave there were some other items, a bottle of caster oil and iodine and a box of Propain Powders: a mix aspro and caffeen wrapped in small paper pieces.

After From the Mud to the Stars

On Saturday 22nd September, Terry Yates presenter of 'From the Mud to the Stars', Kandos Rylstone Community Radio KRR fm interviewed me about my exhibition at Bathurst and 'Beyond the Fence' exhibition at Number 47 Rylstone. I asked for donations of unused, unwanted cotton gauze to go towards the 'Gathering' work. One Kandos resident left a package at Kandos Post Office for me. What a wonderful surprise when a cordless phone box was handed to me and I was told it was full of gauze. Thankyou.

This is a wonderful roll text 'New Era, White open wove, bandage, neat edge, 1" x 6 yards, Johnson and Johnson Pty Ltd, Sydney, Made in Australia'

Performance

On the last day of the show at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery we presented a performance based on Symmetrical Planting. Lisa Roberts , Karen Riley and I improvised movement. The movement was connected by white cotton gauze, if one person made a movement the other had to compensate. The ‘as the dry’ projection played over the gauze. Tracy Sorensen, whose background is in journalism, community arts and video script writing, videoed the Gathering performance. There is a link on Tracy's site to the performance on You Tube . Sue Clarke-Lindfield operated the still camera for the animations. The performance was another gathering.