King ARI (artist run initiative)
27-28th August 2017
“we need the presence of other people to make creative energy in a particular place. We need witnesses and guides, supporters and critical helpers, motivators and travelling companions…Magic happens
in the spontaneous arrivals and new insights shaped by the give-and-take with other people. ”
Part of the work that I do is as a therapeutic Arts practitioner; I work in a mental health context as well as in community settings to engage and explore the experience of others through the Arts. In order to support and develop my practice in these contexts I have found it critical to feed my own artistic appetite. I have made a commitment to developing my own private art practice, I see it as a way to extend and reflect on the dynamic systems of interpersonal exchanges in my daily experiencing, my art practice nurtures my inner life by attending acutely to my sensorial system, it keeps me creatively inspired and maintains a working knowledge of materials and techniques that I can bring back into my work.
I also have a strong community of practice amongst other artists; we share and collaborate on creative projects, inviting each other to provide critical feedback, curatorial advice and discussing the machinations of process in an effort to share our knowledge and support the development of individual expression.
Most recently I worked with artist Elyss McCleary to develop a 24hr project that explored our individual responses to sound, through the medium of drawing. We worked intermittently through the day and into the night to visually transcribe or respond to sound; from the gallery space, the surrounds, each other and visitors.
The experience was a rich sensorial recognition of the spontaneous expressions that happens in and through the body. We worked in a gallery space over 24hrs to build a body of work that reflected our interpretations of sounds; the concentrated parameters of time and space gave an acute focus to the artistic reverberations and forged deep connections with our intrapersonal spaces, working emergently we held open space for each other, a tacit prescient feeding our non verbal exchanges with visceral accuracy.
The process occurred from the 27-28th of August 2017, and culminated in an exhibition titled; ‘The Deafening sounds of these Drawings, it was a continuation of an interest in spatial ideas and dialogues, a call and response approach to drawing, a visually symphonic conversation between artists, space and time.
The sensing body is not a programmed machine but an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to things and to the world. (Abram, 1996, p. 49)
This collaborative project allowed me to explore my values and processes in a modality that felt authentic and transparent. I tuned into access points within my own body, exploring their resonance through processes of amplification and reduction, reflecting my felt sense of the intersubjective space and reflexively feeding these manifestations onto the paper. This practise of attuning to my somatic experience extends upon the desired skill of being fully present in my work, whilst bracketing in my core values, in respect to communication; to be as clear and open in my relational interactions, and capable of responding in a considered way without any preconceived agenda.
This was an immersive arts project that activated the gallery space for 24 consecutive hours and encouraged a connection between processes, individuals, space and the broader context community. It was a simultaneous display of a body of works on paper that represented my gestural explorations of the intersubjective space created in the process of relating to others, and a way of eyeing out flashes of momentary truths from within the prescribed constructs and imagined boundaries of my experience.
These intangible experiences, that ultimately give value to our lives. The focus on the process of making and being in relation to others, rather than the product that's made.
“I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the centre of things but where the edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one. ”
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Exhibition details
THE DEAFENING SOUNDS OF THESE DRAWINGS
KINGS Artist-Run
Lvl 1 / 171 King St.
Melbourne,
27 Aug 2017–28 Aug 2017
Opening 6.00pm 28 Aug 2017