guardian

big thanks to photographer Marni and The Guardian newspaper for coming along to the opening night on Saturday.

i love this selection of people too - we've got one of the artists, John Barter, in there; a couple of regulars; some young melbourne artists and art fans; some locals; some youngsters; and even Jason snuck into the mix!!

Meet Your Maker: John Barter

We've had the pleasure of presenting John Barter's artworks since the very inception of Stockroom. His work is colourful, fun, playful and has been widely popular. A clever wit runs through all of his work as well as a keen eye for detail and clarity of execution. This month John is presenting a photographic series themed around the iconic image of the astronaut. This body of work also extends into prints and an element of installation practice that literally hangs over the whole show. John kindly returned serve on a series of lobbed queries I fired his way.

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Kent:

Astronauts - heroes, fools or lone wolves?

John:

The Astronauts have always seemed to me to be some of the last great explorers of our time. So I would think lone wolf just might fit my picture of my spaceman.

John Barter, Far Side of the Moon

Kent:

You work across a few different mediums - sculpture, print, photography. How do go about deciding what you're going to make next?

John:

Good question, in this show I worked on the photographic works first and the print works followed, I don't think I could only ever do one medium. I think one thing just leads you to the next, so it could be sculpture but then it could be printing. When I go into the outback with Kim my painter/printmaker wife, I tend to make sculptures out of things I find around the campsite. There is no answer, because I don't know.

Kent:

There's a strong sense of humour running through all of your work John. There's some fun sculptures of yours around the warehouse that make me smile - Powerboard, for example. Why is humour important to you?

John Barter, Powerboard

John:

I think it came from my Dad, he always had a good sense of humour, even in his last days at the nursing home he still had it. We asked him why he did not go to happy hour, he said I don't know why they call it happy hour, no one smiles!!!. I like to use humour in my work because we have so much very serious artworks that don't do much for me. I like to see people smiling after they have looked at my work, I think you can use humour in artworks and still have something to say as well.

Kent:

There's some great vintage cars in this series. And in other works you often use materials from a by-gone era, or recycled materials. With NASA cutting back space research, even astronauts seem like they're from a past era. Does nostalgia or memory play a part in your thinking about what you make?

John:

Yes I have always loved old things and collectables, my Dad ran pubs back in the 1960's and first thing in the mornings I would be down on the bar floor looking for dropped coins, I still have all the old silver coins in a box. When we lived in Wagga Wagga I never missed a Sunday market day and still make it to Daylesford market each Sunday. I also love to see what gets thrown out at the tip, and have lots of sourced bits waiting to get used in my artworks. The cars I used in this show I bought from a kid in Wagga at the markets in the late 80's, he was selling his 1970's toy cars but he also had his Dads 1950/60's Dinky toys in the same box and well yes I did buy them. I love the faded paint and perished tyres, we did a trip to Cuba a few years ago so the images of vintage cars sitting in dilapidated streets was in my memory when doing the work for this show. 

opening night

Kent:

There's a strong theme in this body of work John. Do you have the next body of work in mind, or plans for new work?

John:
We are planning a trip into the outback soon, lots of ideas come to me when we are far away from our daily lives, and if it's anything like our past camping trips with a bit of luck the ideas will flow. 

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Here's hoping more wonderful creations are generated on John's next adventure!
The exhibition runs until 5 August - and you can purchase John's work, not only his limited edition photographic works in the gallery but also his framed prints, from the warehouse space at Stockroom. 

mid winter art

this is the second time i've called on damon albarn to provide a soundtrack to an art opening video piece. i wonder what that means. i do know he collects art. i like him for that. i would have put jacques soddell's sound piece on here, but really, it just wouldn't do it justice because you have to immerse yourself in that sound.

anyway - here's a snippet of an opening night launch. if you haven't been to one, you should totally change that.

art warms the air

in the dead middle of winter, with rain and wind and chill biting at your bones, there's few things as heart warming as dozens and dozens of people turning up to look closely at the creative work of talented people. artists who, more often than not, work at multiple jobs, pour funds into projects that offer limited hope of financial return but plug away obsessively producing beautiful and captivating sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs and sounds just for us to engage with.

i know i have vested interests in this, but it still always amazes me. sitting in studios, sitting in bedrooms, standing at easels, investing time into creating work. making art is not working for a wage. you can't clock in and claim $25 an hour for your time. and then, to add more tension to the process, putting themselves and the public opinion of their work on the line, for anyone to come and stand in front of and say, 'my kid could do that'. but .... hopefully... you'll get the occasional 'wow, that's amazing' or 'shit, i never thought of that' or watch someone stand in front of your work mesmerised, saying 'what? you made that video of an exploding stadium out of still photos? and the plumes of smoke are pyroclastic gas from volcanoes? holy fuck that's cool'.

so, last night, with freezing central highlands air driving all and sundry for the comfort of their doonas, a happy, warm and excited crowd milled about the spaces of the galleries, talking about the artists and their work, and noone even noticed it was cold anymore. it's so accurate that in our language we use the term 'warmth' to describe relationships between people.

we warmly invite you. that warms my soul. you warm my heart.

anyway - last night was great fun. i managed to get some snaps of the event, in between chatting about the work and catching up with people. and while i'm here, again with confessed vested interest, if you want to put some warmth into your life, put a little warmth into the life of others too, i can show you some seriously amazing creative work, by some amazingly creative people, that would look amazing in your house or workspace. seriously. some of these guys are going to be huge.

end of rant.

start of photos.

Ross Taylor

Sally Blenheim 

Nicholas Ives

 

Michael Needham

John Barter

Ross Taylor

instal excitement

even without recourse to the great camera i sometimes use for these videos, i am so excited by these next shows that a preview video was always going to surface. it's an inevitability.

for this one, i made it with it my phone! aaah, technology. how i love thee.

there's some very exciting things being unwrapped, pinned up, plugged in and turned on. only just last night i stood in the middle of gallery 1 with sound artist Jacques Soddell as we listened to his 16 minute surround sound sound art piece filling up the space around us. he's pulled apart the sound of white noise, broken it into fragments, tweaked frequencies and sine waves, and produced sounds that will quite literally alter the physical space around you. unbelievable.

Ross Taylor filled the project space with his delicate drawings. the reproduction of them in photos only go halfway at hinting at the intricacy and the intensity of the build up of little marks. you could section off a small 10cm x 10cm section of any drawing and have a full landscape in it. but most of them are over a metre square!

and that's just 2 of the 8 artists we have on show. get a glimpse of the instal process here:



July2012 preview from kent wilson on Vimeo.