Transmigration

Upcoming Exhibition of my work at the beautiful Tweed River Art Gallery at Murwillumbah in Australia.

Installation will be in the foyer gallery. 140 nest-like forms constructed from found materials and split bamboo.

Opening 12th December at 7 pm.

Tweed Naturally Art Awards

Fragility

Tweed Naturally Art Awards opens this week at the Tweed River Art Gallery and one of my works 'Fragility' (pictured above) was selected for this show. This work is coil stitched from fishing line and was made from debris I found along the beach at Fingal and the banks of the Tweed and Currumbin rivers.

“The Tweed Naturally Art Awards evolved from a need to promote awareness and understanding of biodiversity and conservation issues within our region. Through the creative process, the objective is to educate and inspire the artists and viewers alike, to further appreciate, respect and examine our ever changing natural environment.”

                                            TNAA 08

Art Quirks

This Sunday Art Quirks opens at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery. 15 of my pieces from the Transmigration series were selected for this exhibition which represents contemporary emerging artists who use unconventional media to make their art.

"The curatorial premise for the exhibition and subsequent touring project is to engage the audience in issues associated with defining art and investigating what original contemporary art is all about. If art is fundamentally everywhere then so is the stuff to make art from."

Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery

From Transmigration series

Timor-Leste

EWTA Weaving Tour, Illiomar districts, East Timor, July 2008

Borneo Baskets

Recently I spent a few days in Kuching, Malaysian Borneo en route to East Timor. Beautiful basket work but dangerous place as has the highest casualty rate in the world per capita for pedestrian head injuries from descending boom gates.

Chiang Mai University 21st Thesis Show

The other night I went to the opening of the graduate exhibition of students from CMU. As usual, a great show, lots of diversity and talent on show.





Last month I wrote an article on the students for Chaing Mai CityLife magazine.

Chiang Mai University - The Art of Local Art

Newest Nests

Lately I have been doing more work on the Transmigrate series, cutting up maps, packaging, the boys' old text books and other flotsam and jetsam that comes my way. Recently I found out that the original forms I constructed for this series last year, have been preselected (from an incredulous 463 entries) for the Stanthorpe Art Prize which opens next weekend.

Square by Square Exhibition

A few nights ago was the opening of the Square by Square exhibition at ArtSpace on 7, in which a group of Chiang Mai based artists were given a 12" x 12" square to construct onto. The theme of the show was Time, Vision and Invention and my work for this show, titled September 2007, was a reflection on the recent crackdown on monks protesting in Rangoon.

I worked with layers of red acrylic onto which I attached a nest made from fibres from the Banyan tree outside my studio. Have been busy lately and only managed time to do one square (mine is the one in center of the photograph below) but it was a good opportunity to meet some new artists and the work looked great thanks to the wonderful folk at ArtSpace who worked hard to organise the show.

Loom work

A new direction! Since taking the boys to Jim Thompson's kids weaving workshop, I have starting weaving on a little hand-made loom with pineapple fibre and red nylon fibre from the local hardware store. Fun playing around with language and some new techniques .. have been a bit obsessed - weaving until late into the night - good for my patience, not good for my neck.

Glasswing Butterflies

Glasswing Butterflies - magical !

Guerilla Knitters

Stockholm, Sweden


I have just been reading about 'knit grafitti' and stumbled across the website for knitta, a crew of knitters who tag public spaces with their gorgeous colourful craft. 

Kids Weaving Workshop

Recently I took my two young sons to the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok to see the exhibition 'Weaving Paradise: Southeast Asian Textiles and their Creators'. As part of the education program accompanying the exhibition, the boys participated in a kids weaving workshop, where they learned to weave on a loom and gained a greater appreciation of the incredible amount of time and skill needed to produce the beautiful hand-woven textiles that we see all the time in SE Asia but tend to take for granted.

It is great to see the private sector in Thailand offering free art events like this and as someone who works in art education, I couldn't believe the huge amount of time and effort the girls at JT spent preparing looms and materials for the workshop. Yay Jim Thompson!

Here's a picture of Jonah-Boombie with his beautiful weaving ..

ArtSpace on 7

I have recently begun writing art articles for a local magazine. You can read my article here.

                           Artwork by Laura Spector and Chadwick Gray

Not taking colour for granted

Since reading more about the recent political crackdown in Burma and the censorship of art, I have been thinking about red and how much I take for granted colour and the freedom to use colour. At the moment in Burma, red is considered subversive and consequently any artworks or exhibitions that are predominantly red are heavily censored. It has inspired me to begin collecting red materials to work with .... because I can and because so many Burmese can't.

Pink Period

This week I've been playing with pink!

In Thailand at the moment there is a pink shirt craze. Recently the Thai King suffered a stroke and when he was released from hospital he was wearing a smart pink blazer. Apparently an astrologer has advised him to wear pink to aid recovery and as a result, there have been floods of pink shirts at local markets as people around the country have been wearing pink shirts as a tribute to the Thai king and to help him regain his health.

Thai King sparks pink shirt craze

Inspired by all this pink, I began some new work using bamboo, dyed raffia, copper wire, hemp, plastic and waxed linen.

Chaw Ei Thein

Lately I have had the chance to hang out a bit with Burmese artist Chaw Ei Thein, who is truly a Renaissance woman ! She is based in Rangoon where she runs Soulflower Gallery and a children's art workshop.  She paints, does performance art, curates, writes, teaches, dances ....  
I first met Chaw Ei at the Asiatopia Symposium where she did an awesome performance piece on the current climate in Burma and delivered a paper on Performance Art in Burma. Before talking with Chaw Ei, I hadn't realised how exciting the developing contemporary art culture in Rangoon is, despite the huge obstacles the artists face. Chaw Ei gave a talk to my students about these challenges and ways that the artistic community attempts to overcome them. 

Transmigrate

I have just bundled up and sent off some work from my Transmigrate series to 4a Gallery (Asia Australia Arts Center) in Sydney for the 10th Annual Members Exhibition.