Thanks Artichoke magazine for featuring some of my work in their current issue (number 40). Artichoke is an Australian publication featuring interiors, architecture, visual art and design - and they published a little write up for my recent Open Studio for the DMY Berlin International Design Festival. Check it out!
I am pleased to announce that I will
be showing several sculptures from the Revolutions
serieswww.elizabethdelfs.com/gallery_12.htmlin a group show entitled WONDERLAND: New Contemporary Artfrom Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan
curated by Antoanetta Ivanova, Associate Senior Curator,
International Art, MOCA Taipei.
As the title suggests the show is a
survey of contemporary practionners from Australia, and accompanying the
exhibition will be a 200 page colour catalogue in English and Chinese. The
exhibition will go from the 10th of February to the 8th
of April 2012. If you are interested in purchasing a catalogue email me at info@elizabethdelfs.com and I will
let you know how you can do this.
Other WONDERLAND
artists are Kristy Boyle, Bindi Cole, Daniel Crooks, Anna Davern, Alex Davies,
Julie Dowling, Matthew Gardiner, Matthew Gingold, Chris Henschke, George Khut,
Fiona Lowry, Jasmine Targett, Jess MacNeil, Jon McCormack, Cath Robinson, Julie
Ryder, Kuuki
(Priscilla Bracks, Gavin Sade), Kylie Stillman, Josephine Starrs and Leon
Cmielewski, Martin Walch and Yvette Coyle.
For
more information about MOCA Taipei check out their website www.mocataipei.org.tw
A
good start to 2012! Now all I want is some snow in Berlin!
“A PR Network for exhibition spaces and art
related venues in Berlin; it includes a printed guide & map, a weekly
newsletter and a blog. BPIGS comes out every three months and it is distributed
for free in project spaces, galleries and bookstores. The focus of BPIGS
is on showcasing Berlin's contemporary art scene from the artist
point of view.”
This is the
second time they have run this event and it is essentially like speed dating for
curators and artists. Artists are required to submit a portfolio and are
selected based on compatibility with the program of curators. I was one of 25
artists to participate.
There have
been events like this happening in Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, not so
much in Perth – it’s not necessary given that everyone knows each other as the
scene is so small. So it was my first time participating in such an event and I
spoke with 5 curators each for a period of 12 minutes about my work.
I met
curator Lauren Reid who is actually from Sydney (there are so many Australians
in Berlin!), who works with a gallery I admire called GRANTPIRRI http://www.grantpirrie.com. Lauren is
completing a residency with Node Centre for Curatorial Studies http://www.nodecenter.org/ - another
interesting professional arts organization - which for artists does studio
visits with groups of curators based on particular research topics. Node was initiated
and is run by Perla Montelongo and Ignacio García Gómez del Valle http://www.bpigs.com/projects/have-you-met.
The event
was good and I enjoyed it. It was well organized and the curators
were friendly and interested and the artists weren’t too
nervous.
People
often have mixed opinions about this kind of “meet and greet” events in
relation to artists and curators. But in a city that is overwhelmed with
artists, curators, designers and all kinds of creative activity, for me it
presented the perfect opportunity to accelerate connecting with people working
in the art scene in Berlin. There is no obligation on the side of the curators to
put you in shows, just that they are open to the possibility.
There was
also the team from Niche Berlin http://www.nicheberlin.de
present to meet artists and chat about their practices.
For anyone interested below is a few of the other participating artists picked at random to give an idea
of the breadth and quality of participants.
Earlier this year i was privileged to present a 20 minute artist talk about my practice to an audience of 2500 people at the AGIdeas International Design Week in Melbourne. AGIdeas http://www.agideas.net/agideas-2011/speakers/speaker?speakerId=59is one of the largest and most prestigious design festivals in the world which offers an extraordinary program of events that celebrate design excellence and promotes the value of design driven innovation. I was pleased to present at AGIdeas in 2011 as one of 40 international creatives.
Benjamin Ducroz - http://www.agideas.net/index.php?nodeId=82&speakerId=61a Melbourne based artist also spoke about his work in stop animation film. He spoke about a project he was just about start filming in the days preceding the conference....and was asking for volunteers to come and help him! (Giving an artist an open mic and a willing audience is always a calculated risk!) But he must of had plenty of hands on deck to film what looks like a epic project. Both of our practices are influenced by the mobius strip - see the results in the below video - sorry i couldn't embed the VIMEO link.
I am just
finishing a work for one of my shows next year. For the past 18 months I have
been working on a series of sculptures under the title Revolutions, part of my ongoing investigations of the nexus between
architecture, dress and body theories. It’s a process whereby I turn simple 2D
shapes into complex 3D outcomes. I take a shape which I cut repeatedly and
connect together to create an object that expands and contracts. Working from
the foundation of pattern and dress making, these sculptures are built to either
be installed on the wall and floor, or more often hovering in space. In their
passive state the works are flat objects and when hung extend into active 3D
outcomes which vary in form and size depending on installation. Each work is
non-orientable which confronts the ergonomics of the human body that I describe
as organic infrastructures, with equal parts rhythm and chaos. I use stencils
and spray paint to create colour and surface designs which evoke movement and
changing mass. To see previous works from this series check out my website here
http://www.elizabethdelfs.com/gallery_12.html
and the catalogue from the exhibition here http://www.elizabethdelfs.com/pdf/rev_cat.pdf
Piecing together the order - these works usually have between 30 and 50 pieces to them.
Finally August has come to an end which is good news for me as during the month of August most Berliners take their holidays, leaving the Berlin art scene a little impotent. I have ventured on a few occasions in the last few weeks to galleries only to find the place closed, looking fairly empty and desolate. But I have since found out that everyone is just on holidays! However holidays are over and now to look forward to a series of openings and exciting projects.
This evening I went to the opening of an exhibition calledThe End of The Dream (Comes Too Soon)at project space MICA MOCA (http://micamoca.com/wordpress/) in Wedding; a low socio-economic borough of Mitte in Berlin; where all vibrant art communities start. And then eventually get pushed out! This show is the last for MICA MOCA in this location as the factory is being turned into loft apartments; however I understand that they will be looking for new premises.
With over 35 artistsThe End of The Dream (Comes Too Soon)consisted of works by some of the artists who held studios within the premises and then some whom did not, and there was a mix of photography, sculpture, installation and video.
The highlight of the show was a collaborative project by Anton Burdakov and Sophia Pompery. I first saw Anton's work on the PROGRAM Berlin website where had made a project with an architect for the gallery space. The installation at MICA MOCA consisted of a series of relatively simple make shift shelving structures with large glass jars (about 1 litre to 2 litres each) filled with black tea positioned on the shelves. These were placed at various different heights each with a corresponding projector positioned at a short distance that projected an image which was subsequently “drawn” in the tea. From one angle the glass jars appeared to have blurred shafts of light projected through them, then as you moved around the object an image appeared clearly within the jar. An extension of his TEA (http://www.antonburdakov.com/projects/09T/01.html) series this work was by far the most resolved using the binary of technology versus the quotidian, and was the most elegantly executed within the exhibition. He’s pretty ace really. Shame about my crap photography but you can sort of see the computer in the jar.
