neptune's necklace

I thought I'd sneak in some progress shots of some of the paintings I've been working on for my upcoming show with Anna Davern.

It has been glorious to return to painting, though it is is also a painful reminder of why I stopped. RSI is a bitch. I never would have thought much about the difference in holding a paint brush compared with a scalpel, but it is phenomenal. These tiny treats do come with a price.

However, I have now handed these paintings over to Anna, so you'll just have to wait and see what she does with them, but I am pretty sure it is gonna be ace.

Show is coming up fast! Details here.

x

field notes

As you may already know, I have been working with the delightful Anna Davern for nearly 12 months (off and on, mind you!) on our upcoming show Captain Foley and the Lost Voyage of HMS Laburnum, which opens at Craft Victoria on October 18. Over the last couple of months we have upped the intensity of our research and making, and I have been doing some stints at her studio, which is based in NorthCity4 (if you don't know, you must click the link - so much amazingness).

Anyway, I thought it might be time to share some shots of works in progress, without actually giving too much away. 

two words: kelp forest.

Anna prints my kelp onto steel!

Anna cuts the kelp using a teeny saw, in time to THIS (true story)

 

 

Angry Kookaburra army

I have totally hijacked this spunky lady's desk!

Cardboard chairs, hand painted kelp scanned, printed and then cut from steel - could it BE any more collaborative?!

And finally, some pretty integral research.

Anna and I are having a blast bringing this work together, and we can't wait to share it with everyone! We hope to see you on the 18th October from 6pm for a drink and a giggle!


x

over the sun

Dear all!

It is the moment that, well, I have been waiting for – TinPan Orange's new album, over the sun, is set for release TOMORROW! I am extra excited because they have featured my work on the cover (you may remember seeing the work from my show 'after the end' a few of months ago).

If you think the packaging is pretty (many thanks to Le Sphinx for their stellar designing skills), wait till you hear what's inside. Probably their sexiest album yet, this one is a total winner. It's available to buy at Vitamin Records from tomorrow (or you can pre-order now!), or iTunes and jb hi-fi etc. These guys will be touring the album over the next few months, so get amongst it. It's a whole new experience once you hear them live (true story).

Meet me at the Northcote Social Club in November - the gang will be in full form, and I am dying to hear them do their cover of 'round the twist' live!

x

cats for sale - the perfect allergy-free alternative

Hey all!

Finally, I have some kitty art from the Why I eyes ya show up for grabs. Just head on to the website and have a sift through all the madness. I am still working on the site, so if there is a work that you're keen on that has no price, just drop me an email - I'll sort you out.

x

going down swinging

It must be the month of publications! Today I bring you artwork that is featured in the current edition of Going Down Swinging, an independent publication that's been kicking around for about 30 years (!).

I was lucky enough to sneak my work into edition #33, which features fiction, poetry, artwork and all sorts of other good stuff - and a mighty fine edition it is too.

You can grab a piece here, as well as back issues of previous editions.

x

the garden issue

Spring spring spring spring spring OMG SPRING!!! I know I have been very slack with the posting lately, mostly as a result of hiding in piles of cardigans and hot water bottles. Currently I'm working away on an upcoming show with the super talented Anna Davern for Craft Victoria, more details about that to come soon!

In the meantime, what better way to celebrate the first official day of spring than with this gorgeous little feature I was lucky enough to wrangle my way into (I also celebrated by going to the annual ferret racing competition - which is a whole other story for another day).

The first time I visited the home of Richard and Vanessa (of Prunella flowers amazingness), the first thing I shouted (a little too loudly) was "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE A BLOG HOUSE!!!", meaning, their house is so damn beautiful that it is destined to always be photographed for blogs and magazines. My absolutely favourite house in Kyneton, these guys have it going on, and I am stoked that one of my little pieces lives there.

So, surprise surprise, recently featured on the Design Files, their place has also been featured in this month's issue of Country Style. As always, Ness is looking supreme, and not a pair of vintage shoes next to a rusty cabinet to be seen. Many more pics of their place in the magazine, I recommend having a squiz!

x

Glueless

Ok ok I know that heading was TERRIBLY daggy ... and also a little bit cle-veeeer! You know you're smirking at my wit and ability to Dad-joke at the drop of a hat!

Anyway, today's post is about not-collage. Whhhaaaaaaaaaat?! Let's lay it down to 3 very inspiring days with Carmel Seymour and a very hot date at an arts supply store. The other night I lay down my scalpel in exchange for one of my rather skanky brushes. I always thought I was going to be a painter, and have been trying to reintegrate drawing and painting into my collage work.

Anyway, here lies the product of choosing not to stick. I have these two beautiful paper men carrying water vessels made out of some kind of swine. I haven't decided what to do with yet, so instead of glueing them down, I thought I'd give them a little sketchy sketch first.

Who knows where this is going, but aaaaah - watercolour is FUN!

COPYSHOP

Here lies the product of my collaboration with Carmel Seymour. This work was born from Carmel's visit to Healsville Sanctuary, and thus discovering our mutual wonder/love/amazement of lyrebirds.(There was a bit of David Attenborough in the mix too, obviously.) Naturally, pretending to be a lyrebird followed, and then this was born.

I am totally and utterly honoured to have had the opportunity to work with Carmel, who is actually ace, and so alarmingly talented that when the time came to CUT UP HER PAINTING, I nearly vomited. Having said that, I am completely stoked with the beautiful work we have created, and feel that we have captured our individual practices as well as something entirely new and exciting for both of us!

Limited edition prints of this work, as well as our own individual prints and others by contributing Copyshop artists are available for a steal at $50 at c3 Contemporary Art Space. If you can't get down there this weekend (it all wraps up on Sunday), I strongly recommend giving them a call on 9416 4300 to secure a print - there are some corkers!

x

Why I Eyes Ya - Finishes TOMORROW!

Hello all! Tomorrow is the last day of Why I Eyes Ya, so if you haven't got your fill of pussy-art, get yourselves along to Craft Victoria today or tomorrow. I believe there is still some Cat Shit available for purchase too, a perfect gift for any feline-enthusiast.

COPYSHOP - Day #1

START: KYNETON

7.00 am      Turn off alarm. Squash Marcel (cat).

7.18 am      Get up. Shower. Realise I have left makeup case at Mum and Dad's. Internal swearing. There could be photos today. Find back-up mascara. It's not as good. Accidentally smoodge some on my eyelid. Smear it across my face in an attempt to remove it. Start again. Find the back-up to the back-up mascara. It's much better.

8.06 am.     Wait out the front for Richard to pick me up. The couch, the lawn, the letterbox, all covered in icicles. Take an instagram photo so everyone knows that my couch is frozen. It looks mouldy. (It might also be mouldy.)

8.17 am.     Richard arrives. Car is covered in ice.

8.20 am.     Richard and I bitch about the ice on the car, the traffic, the way some people's dogs smell really bad and people who shop at Chadstone.

9.45 am.     Richard drops (dumps) me at the baths on Victoria St, with a vague 'tram's just next block over, cool?' Tram is approx 9 blocks over.

10.01 am.    Arrive at Brunswick st. Tramtracker says that tram is 29 minutes away. I turn to walk down Brunswick st (to achieve what, I don't know). Tram arrives instantly (magic?).

10.12 am.    Get off at Nicholson st. Dicover that it is a 1.5 kilometre walk to Abbotsford Convent. Sigh.

10.18 am.    Still walking. I guess it's only been 6 minutes.

10.26 am.    Arrive. Quite sweaty.

10.35 am.    Have a traumatic experience at the coffee shop. Note to self – it is rude to give them your dirty, half-full coffee cup. Was charged $10 for 2 coffees. Cross.

10.45 am.    Sit down. Eat biscuits. Discover that I accidentally paid for Simon's coffee too. Less cross. Chat with Carmel Seymour about our day's activities.

11.00 am.    Photo shoot with Jon – glad I had the back-up back-up mascara. Try to look 'officey'. Fail.

11.10 am.    Eat some more biscuits. Cut up stuff:

12.20 pm.    Lunch. Go back to coffee shop to redeem myself. They don't recognise me from earlier (phew). Discuss the value of Krista McCrea's work in depth with Carmel.

1.30ish pm. Pass other boss on way back from lunch – he huffs at us. It's ok. It was a long lunch.

1.45 pm.     Cut up more stuff. Talk about weddings. Carmel is getting married soon. I offer worldly (useless) advice. Do awkward drawings:

2.20 pm.     Need another break. Go and get coffee – too scared to take my dirty cup back to the café. Rinse out cup, go to different café.

2.30 pm.     Do more awkward drawings. Cut up more stuff.

5.07 pm.     COPYSHOP closed seven minutes ago. In an effort to make it seem like I'm leaving, I stand at my desk instead of sitting, while assembling more stuff:

5.15 pm.     Clear desk. Leave framed picture of me and Marcel behind for tomorrow's Copyshoppers:

COPYSHOP

Dear all!  

I cordially invite you all to the opening of COPYSHOP, I project I am involved with that opens TOMORROW NIGHT at c3 contemporary art space! ARGH! You may be wondering why I only mentioned this now, the truth is that I only JUST found out about it, and it sounded so good I couldn't resist joining in!

This project promises to be super fun and exciting, with 'real-live artists' making 'real-live work' in the space throughout the duration of the show. So if you can't make the opening, do come along to the space this THURSDAY, where my collaborator Carmel Seymour and myself will be copy-shopping.

More details below!

x 

GALLERY 3
COPYSHOP
Created by Jon Butt and Simon MacEwan
SCOTT MITCHELL + SIMON MACEWAN
VIVIAN COOPER SMITH + JO SCICLUNA
DANAE VALENZA + SALOTE TAWALE
CARMEL SEYMOUR + LUCY JAMES
Collaborative fine art print services by Colour Factory
Copier service by Toner Express

Reflecting on c3’s interest in a group oriented, activity based collaborative processes, the COPY-SHOP project involves 8 artists working together as ‘employees’ of a staged photocopy shop within the gallery.
 

The selected artists all work in quite different ways yet have been paired on the basis of a certain affinity between their practices, choosing partnerships that will produce exciting and unexpected results.
 

A result of these collaborations will be limited-edition archival quality print editions. The COPY-SHOP itself will consist of a studio working area for the artists complete with a museum grade archival printer and a showroom where the resultant prints are displayed and sold.
 

The visible inclusion of the artists themselves (making work in public) calls attention to the ambiguous commerce of the art world, where what is being purchased is not simply an object; but a connection to a set of ideas, to the authorship of those ideas and ultimately a relation to the life that they came from.
 

This work is presented as a companion piece to c3’s Art Fair Project Space.

c3 contemporary art space, 1 St Heliers Street Abbotsford, 3067

Hours: Wed–Sun 10am-5pm, Mon–Tue closed

FYI: This information has been completely copied from the c3 blog - thanks Jon Butt for his words!

marry me.

The Cat's Pyjamas

Today I was going to write a post to warmly invite you all to Wednesday night's The Cat's Pyjamas, an event organised by Craft Victoria to coincide with Why I Eyes Ya, a night of feline fun and fancy.

However, I have just discovered that it is fully booked - wwWHAAAAAT?! 
But you can call 9650 7775 to go on the waiting list. Yep, there is actually a waiting list. I think we've unleashed something dark and hilarious and wonderful.  If you miss out on the event, the exhibition runs until July 28 - plenty of time to get your pussy on.

Crazy cat ladies, unite!

I can hear the morning birds if I listen

I can hear the morning birds if I listen, 2012, collage on paper, 70 x 100 cm (detail)

Last days of my show! Ends THIS SATURDAY! OH MY GOODNESS!!!!

BLADE RUNNING: Nostalgia under the knife

Hello all! To celebrate/commemorate/farewell the final week of my show at Anna Pappas Gallery, I thought I'd share the catalogue essay written by the ever-clever Tai Snaith! If you haven't already, you have until Saturday to see the show - pip pip!

Traditionally when we think of post apocalyptic visions we are inclined to imagine bleakness. Arid, desolate highways towards nothingness and night. Or places where Mad Max-esque machines roar past in clouds of dust towards wintery, nuclear coastlines. In the collage world of Lucy James it’s a different vision. She imagines a new age of yearning for another beginning. A bright white, hypothetical,  happy post-apocalypse. She presents a different tint to our future memories. Vignettes of people and creatures exist in a strange limbo between fiction, history and assemblages of half-truths. Nostalgia goes under the knife to deliver us a new past for us to look forward to in a parallel universe.

James’ images seem to be selling us something we can’t quite put our finger on, but we know we want. Something we are charmed by, something we think we might need, but we are slightly apprehensive about what might happen if we fully let ourselves go there.

These images possess a sweet, slightly detached yet irresistible irony. Not saccharin or sentimental but not nasty or dark either. Vaguely patriotic signifiers remind us of nationalistic Pie in the Sky promises. Familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Run of the mill and blade-runner in one hit. Looking at these images we can’t help but imagine they are a kind of propaganda for a new political party that exists exclusively in our collective unconscious. Like they are something we just don’t understand yet, but very well may in times to come. Like the absurdist dreams of a future incarnation of Leni Riefenstahl.

In her memoir, Riefenstahl writes of her first impression of hearing Hitler speak;

"I had an almost apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget. It seemed as if the Earth's surface were spreading out in front of me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth".

Using second-hand imagery from this era, James has created a similar, hypnotically beautiful post-modern epiphany. The finished images seem to amass a haze of snippets and glimpses of a new reality. Full-figured, red body-suited marching girls dissolve mysteriously into a cloud of blue flowers. Young boys excitedly catch bolts raining from the sky as if they were Easter eggs. Perfectly normal and yet completely, deliciously absurd.

There is also an undeniable whiff of the American dream in these works. The girl clutching the car, or the erudite 1950s stereotype of a mother waggling her finger as birds explode and cascade out from her neck. There is something of an anti-dream lesson here too.

An impression of exoticism and spiritual aspiration is detectable in these works. Like a rich collector displaying an ancient pipe brought back from the Middle East or a taxidermy endangered species of owl, there is a sense of forcing a relic to perform as a lifestyle symbol. These symbols may seem playful and light to some people, while to others they may represent everything that is problematic about fetishising the exotic.

James has a knack for selecting a vivid, yet delicate palette of subjective content and arranging them just so. Often reminiscent of a propagandist campaign, but unlike propaganda, this is subjective material without an aim. Or perhaps with an oblique aim. She has found the recipe for encouraging literal signifiers to coagulate into an informative nonsense conclusion. A visual wild goose chase that ends down the rabbit hole.

The images are constructed by a combination of surgical precision and a conceptual lucky dipping of sorts, like cutting tiny fragments of dreams and transplanting them onto fresh white sheets of paper reality. Hours of laborious and meticulous cutting are followed by a type of controlled happenstance whilst she is assembling. This finely crafted series of not-quite-real revelations on stark white are as unsettling as they are intriguing. after the end is about collecting, cutting and constructing dreams out of images of a bright future that looks a bit like the distant past.

Tai Snaith, 2012