The Ramblings Of Linden Langdon

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DiVerse

Tuesday 27, November

I tidied up my uni studio on the weekend for a couple of visitors. One was my supervisor, Karen Lunn, and the other was Robert Kennedy. Rob has been travelling about Australia interviewing artists about their work for a book he is working on. As a founding member of DiVerse in Sydney, he is well accoustomed to the challenges that aritists face, and especially in Australia. It was very good to be able to discuss art as a a whole rather than being an island, or silo, as is the norm. DiVerse are a group of dedicated poets who frequently develop work in response to artwork. You can hear their poetry reading at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in December in relation to works in the Sidney Nolan exhibition.

And why take pictures of the studio? Well actually I started doing this as a way of recording snapshots of what is in the studio at various times during my research. This gives me easy visual reminders of what was important at these stages of the study! Is that lazy?

Outburst

Saturday 24, November

Opening night was busy and everyone was keen to check out the honours graduate work. There was a much higher number of painters in this years exhibition, and only one printmaker. Jane Tyler was holding up the flame with a body of work developed around the notion of expressing emotion through images. The works I have photographed here are actually support work, rather than the piece each artist selected for the Plimsoll exhibition.

Graduation Night

Friday 23, November

Tonight is the night for all the honours students to shine and take a deep relaxed breath for the first time in a year. The honours year is a particually hard slog, being a relatively short time span to develop work, write a paper and pull together a cohesive and powerful exhibition. I will be there - update tomorrow! The exhibition will be open at the Plimsoll for the weekend - 24th and 25th, Hunter Street, Hobart.

Finally

Friday 23, November

I have been stuck on this print four several months now, so it is with a huge sigh of relief that I feel I can finally move on! The Precipice series are groups of nine prints each and move through the progressive states of the developing plates. At the moment I am aiming at 5 groups in the series, which I hope will tell the story I want them to!

Precipice 2 relates to a landscape of the Australian outback, but each of my landscapes are constructed rather than a actual depiction. They reference the interanl workings of trauma as an affect rather than representation. This is the core thematic approach of my research.

Reaching Out - Allan Mansell

Tuesday 20, November

For a couple of years I have been trying to find the right moment to photograph Allan's public art. This huge support post is situated in a sunken garden and framed by the International Wall of Friendship. This is the etxt that accompanies the work...

"Reaching Out" is a greeting from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community in the form of a ceiling mural that creates a 'welcome sky' for the International Wall of Friendship.

The symbolic relationship between Tasmania's natural environment and its people is a central theme for the artwork.

The mural depicts the molher berry (climbing blueberry) that entwines through the design. It grows and seeks new areas to establish itself in much the same way that migrants seek to build a solid foundation for a new beginning. The eight stems on the plant represent direction points on a compass that point to regional areas of Tasmania and the seedpods symbolise the more populated cities and towns.

The ants, tieto commonly known as jack jumpers, represent Tasmania's diverse population. They appear similar, but each are individual as they travel different paths to collect resources and return home to build a stronger community.

The lootto poruttye (gum leaves) are a species unique to Tasmania. The four leaves surrounding the design depict Tasmania as an island. They also represent the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, that are so much a part of living in Tasmania.

The central pillar links the elements of nature from the earth to the sky.

Tasmanian Aboriginal words are from the Oyster Bay and North-East tribal regions.

"Reaching Out" is a digital print from an original by Allan Mansell, 2004, (the ceiling is made up of panels, but the pillar is hand painted) and you can see it at 188 Collins Street, Hobart.

No Pulp Mill Protest

Sunday 18, November

Yesterday we attended a protest about the approval of the largest pulp mill in the Southern Hemisphere to be built in Northern Tasmania. How could such an absurd proposition in todays world understanding of global environmental damage and the critical knowledge of the delicate balance of our Earths climatic control be considered to be viable? Estimates of people attending the rally ranged between 9 and 15 thousand, and for a small state that has a population of around 500,000 then it was a very good proportion who were willing to stand out in the rain and protest about the political decision that was rail-roaded through parliment.

The forest of legs became a sea of bodies as we marched through the streets of Hobart. Speakers, including Geoffrey Cousins and Richard Flanagan, spoke out against the ANZ bank as a major supporter of the mill and urged people to consider ethical investment of finances. The Mercury has more details, and also The Age and again the business section of The Age, which makes for some very interesting reading when you consider that the primary reason given for pushing the mill through is financial gain.

Translating To English

Saturday 17, November

My daughters partner is Norwegian. Which is why they are currently living in Norway! He completed a degree in Journalism at the Queensland University of Technology and has now set up a very smart business of language translation. So if you have a need to translate English to Norwegian (Norsk), or Norwegian (Norsk) to English, then Martin is the man to contact! He has just built his own website Utropstegn, which is an exclamation mark in Norwegian. That's two things I've learnt about Norsk!

Ochre And Lithograph

Friday 16, November

Last night I printed my red ochre onto a lithograph. And it worked! It is very light in colour as I have added a lot of transparent ink to reduce the tone for this print. It will become darker with each sucsessive print in this series. So I guess I will add a photo at the end of the series to show the difference! This is the first layer of three in the print.

Etsy Website

Monday 12, November

I have a few prints left over from the mini print sale we had recently, so I decided to put up an Etsy website! Etsy offers a great way for people to sell art and craft items on the internet. If you haven't checked Etsy out before it is well worth considering if you have work that needs a home, and you can find my page under the name "shellac".

Website Changes

Sunday 11, November

Yesterday I mucked about and put up new javascript slideshow on my website. The photos are of the recent work "Were you there on the day?" and including "Bullet (passed by)" which are both about the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. "Bullet (passed by)" alludes to the internal impact the body senses when a bullet passes by quite closely, while "Were you there on the day?" considers the impact that the traumatic event had upon the lives of the people living on the Tasman Peninsula, whether they were at Port Arthur or not.

Also on the topic of website changes, my blog is going to go through a major change soon. It is time to shift to a blogging software rather than the hand coded site, for a number of reasons. This will mean that my current site will be archived, but still accessable. So it is to the drawing board for me, and the code books, and the www to do some researching and hopefully the new site will be a step up from the current one.

White Cedars

Thursday 8, November

My sister sent me a stunning photo of her cedar trees at dawn. Taken in winter when the branches are bare, it is such a beautiful photo we thought it would be mean not to offer it as a desktop!

Empathic Vision

Wednesday 7, November

Today is a good day - partly because I finally seem to be coming out the other side of spring flu that has slowed me down substantially and also because my book arrived! Reading the first paragraph lifted any doubts that I had about my masters study - there is someone out there who is researching in the same direction as I am! Which of course I already knew, but Jill Bennett is one of the best writers I have come across when it comes to writing about artists and their work. And of course her driving interest is very similar to mine. So rather than try to explain, I thought I would quote the very first paragraph , and then perhaps everyone will see what we see (because she says it so well).

"Some years ago, I co-curated an exhibition of art relating to the topic of trauma and memory. In planning that project, it seemed viable and productive to identify a thematic category, especially since my co-curator and I were aware of a number of interesting artworks that emerged from an engagement with traumatic memory but weren't immediatly recognized as such. These works had eluded classification as trauma works largely because they in some way evoked the processes of post-traumatic memory without declaring themselves to be about trauma; and, indeed, in many cases, they would appear to be about something else. The trauma, it often seemed, was not envinced in the narrative component or in the ostensible meaning, but in a certain affective dynamic internal to the work." (Empathic Vision, Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art, Jill Bennett, 2005)

Jill's book was quite hard to find, but I ordered it through Gleebooks in Sydney, who had to order it from the USA, so I imagine that they will have some in stock now. Jill Bennett is the Associate Dean (research) at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, where you can read a couple of reviews, and the book is published by the Stanford University Press. You can read chapter one on their website, if your interested!

Making Ink

Tuesday 6, November

Recently my mum returned from her winter escape in desert and brought me a wonderful jar of ochre she came across in her travels. So it was about time to try to make some ink!

The results speak for themselves really, and the bonus is that it is just the right colour for the work I am doing! I can feel the graininess of the ochre when I am working the plate, which appeals to me and the colour has a natural warm glow that I have been chasing. This could be my 'thing'! Thanks Miche!

Mary Scott At Criterion

Sunday 4, November

The paintings of Mary Scott have taken a leap into the dark. A leap that has unleashed an intensity that dwells inside. The exhibition at the relatively new Criterion Gallery runs until December 1st. The gallery is located at 12 Criterion Street which is right in the centre of Hobart.

Reinventing

Sunday 4, November

One of my constant activities is to comb through the job ads in search on one box that I can squeeze into. No i'm not the size of an elephant, I mean in a sense of being selected because you fit the criteria. A horrid word that - criteria. We have become a society driven by little boxes that people have to tick to conform to specified ideals. Anyway, in my browse yesterday I came across what appeared to be new job! "Under Water Ceramic Detailer" it read... and in brackets "kitchen hand". I would just like to wish the Bellerive restaurant Sails on the Waterfront all the best in their search for the extremely important dishwasher Ceramic Detailer!

A Tale Of Two Books

Saturday 3, November

Two books have found a home on my shelves recently. They have both managed to navigate the oceans and traveled from Europe where Ross and Amy launched them from. Thank goodness the postal service is so much more efficient in modern days. Anyway, this is about the books. Antony Gormley had a huge exhibition called Blind Light earlier this year, and Ross was so inspired by the creativity and depth of his work that he bought the exhibition book for me. Thank you so much Ross! Gormley placed his stoic figures in sentry type positions around the Southbank Centre to direct the gaze inwards. Inside the exhibtion covered work in retrospect as well as his current project, Blind Light. Investigating the notion of presence, the blurred atmosphere of the enclosure encouraged visitors question the state what is certain and known.

Visiting Paris earlier this year Amy had the great pleasure of exploring the Louvre. Or at least part of, as I am sure it would take considerable time to really plunge the depths of this monumental museum. She bought a book by Arlette Serullaz about Corot, focusing on the extensive collection of drawings. It is wonderful to glimpse into the life of Vente Corot as he sketched out the people and places he visited during his travels. Pages from journals, scenes of rocky cliffs, cool dark spaces in creeks and portraits fill the book and reveal teh process of teh creative mind as the few simple lines capture the mood or essence of the moment.

Both are fabulous additions to the bookshelf and hugely inspiring as well! I have another eagerly awaited book arriving from Sydney next week, but that will be another blog!