Sculpting Explosions

Why do we only write home when there is happy news ? Why can't we write postcards of woe and misfortune or post facebook pictures of gloominess ? Why don't we give in to the expression of being human ? Instead of putting on a brave face or burying oneself until the storm passes ?

I think about two comments that two different people in my life have made to me about happiness. One being that it is fleeting, so enjoy it while it lasts. Whilst this does inspire one to live for the moment it doesn't necessarily offer any hope for fulfilment or the promise of its return in times of darkness.

The second comment was about happiness as a sustained state of being, it is not something that just arrives one does have to work toward it - but is not fleeting.

I wonder about which state I feel most comfortable with, or which I think is true.
As things in my life continue to combust in more ways than one in front of me I wonder how exactly I can sustain happiness. When I reflect upon the way my mind and spirit responds to my work, art and relationships I wonder exactly how I am to sustain anything. Perhaps capturing a fleeting moment is more realistic.

Whilst I haven't been writing letters home about my struggle with life and worse still haven't even been able to admit it on my blog, I have been sharing words with a few friendly ears. I regret to feel like the melancholic defeatist and will probably put a stop to this soon. But not before I consider the suggestion that a young acquaintance from art school, made to me today: Perhaps I am not an artist.
'If it is not making you happy, if it is a struggle then why push it ? Are you pushing something that doesn't exist ?'A traditional National Art School Education teaches you to dedicated yourself to the studio, a practice that you maintain, through good and bad. I wonder though if this has made me blind ? Are the parts of the world that I consume, the colour, the tastes the paint that I want to mix, the sensations I want to write about just a dangerous addiction, that, like cigarettes create a great head spin but lead to destruction. Is art for me sustainable ? And will it sustain happiness ?

But now that I am so intoxicated, the question begs to be asked: What else ?
I can't for the life of me answer this. I shed more tears imagining a life without paint and plush than I do struggling with the mind games and day to day reality of trying to 'do it'. But if I don't pertain the courage and the dream to live it whole heartedly then I don't believe it is really worth doing.

I return to this state of sustained happiness and thus reflect upon my perception of what happiness is exactly. Perhaps happiness is hardship, woe, laughter and love. It is all beautiful. I think then, about my perception of the explosion in my love, home and art life that is taking place before me and try and imagine it as the explosion of sound that I heard at a Symphony concert tonight. My seat in the audience was an absolute gift, I sat directly opposite the conductor in the choir stalls and watched as he shaped the air in front of us like it was clouds of brightly coloured smoke. A great powerful sea of music that was overwhelming at times was rolled, elevated, softened and propelled by the bare hands of the conductor. Great Jazz classics were being performed in all their splendour and I imagined the engines of the city, the fabulous art movements and the exultation of life in the Cities of the 1920's. This was not pretty music, it stabbed at you and the conductor punched his players with insistent fists to burn their horns and pull their strings tighter and sharper. His eyes were mesmerising, seducing the violins to play languidly between moments. It was raw yet tight, sexy and cold. The orchestra could easily have exploded to the point of destruction but it was mediated with care and vivacious spirit.

Can I colour the smoke of my own explosions ?

Live to eat or eat to live ?

I take my heart to the market and it selects so as to savour.

Luscious flesh of a fish and tantalising salty seeds of a caper berry
I feed my soul so as understand my heart
What flavours can I roll over my tongue for desert ?
What thick syrup will wash down my throat ?
To taste so as to ignite, so as to enquire, so as to feel

I cook to transform emotion, to make tangible
To melt, to BEAT, to slowly procure a flavour
To have magic at one's fingertips

With food as ritual I love to gather - to be nurtured by a laden shelf
But as the groceries accumulate and grow dusty the pantry laughs knowingly at me.

Weighted with other thoughts, I reach for a can of baked beans.

Sometimes I eat very little and food will not satisfy
But I eat for sustenance. I eat for tomorrow.

And most of all..

I eat so as to share

Eat with me my friends

Aspirations of a Door Bitch

To live an artful life is not an easy one, though it certainly is full. Full of other people's condescension and ignorance, as I unfortunately learnt, yet again today, in the work place.

My shiny new black brogues with their sexy toes are really the only reason I get up on my work day mornings. I slip into them and I feel a million dollars, it doesn't matter that I will be opening doors and directing people to the toilet whilst wearing them - they almost make it worth it, and dare I say, make me feel a million dollars. However, as a customer revealed to be today, I really am not worth a million dollars, nor is the 5 star service that I provide for her whilst she shops. For the purposes of this entry, let's dignify the customer with a name.. bitch face.

Ironically today, I embarked on a new approach to my job, diligence and enthusiasm. My rationale was that perhaps time would fly by, with the more eye contact I made, the more doors I opened and the more excitedly I talked about the pansies in the flower show. All was going surprisingly well when I smiled at an approaching customer who was exiting the store. I made my way ahead of her to the heavy doors (which in retrospect I should have done her a favour and made open for herself, her tuck shop arms needed it). Standing with the door open she looked at me with a narrowed brow and shaking head,
"You certainly have THE most boring job" she exclaimed.
Exhausted by this comment yet again, I responded with a disconcerting smile:
"Yes madam, but I really don't need you to tell me that".
To which bitch face responded:
"You really ought to aspire for something better than standing at the front of a shop and opening doors, i mean really ! "
(Yes, I thought to myself, I should busy myself with consumerism and buy myself success and happiness, just like you, you certainly behave the better for it - judging everyone else whilst sporting a hideous shade of beige lipstick).
But instead I responded: ' What makes you think you know anything about my aspirations outside of working here at this store ?'
'Yes.. I guess I don't', she replied with a sigh, ' but the look of you is awfully sad', she said, as she flounced out of the store.

I stood perplexed. I was just trying to perform the David Jones 5 star service. The 6th star is obviously that the customer must out perform you and not only make you do your job but pity you for it too.

If only she knew the beauty and wonder, trials and passionate tribulations, ideas and unquantifiable fortune that comes from my artful life and those I share it with. I need not aspire for it, because with my heart open, it comes to me. Unfortunately for bitch face she will never know this.

As I completed my final lap in the pool tonight, having watched the water turn from aqua to turquoise to an iridescent green in the changing light of dusk and nightfall. I felt like I had perfected a certain stroke, I knew too that I had surrendered something. Just As I must diligently push through the water and consciously mind my style, I must surrender my body and thoughts and let the water take me. A simultaneous giving and receiving, a grace.

Succinct (sheep) Sabotage
Madeleine Cruise David Peddle Huw Lewis

Painting Sculpture Installation Video


Horus & Deloris Contemporary Art Space

102 Pyrmont St Pyrmont Sydney
1st - 15th September 2010

Players unite!!!

In Succint Sheep Sabotage.

With colour and thread we brush and stitch, rework and invent the musings of your macabre and magical dreams.

It is an uber game of ultimate fantasy, seen and whispered, yet never before holding the stage.

Together we bring the smelliest of rodents and sweetest of dreams from your imagination and discover the crunch of cockroaches between soft layers of sponge cake.

It is a dance of the deadliest kind, where you can chase down dancing deli demons in the park of priceless pleasure and stroke that fury reptile that lays in your lap.

As no stone is left unturned no thought is left unsketched, ye must lick lick lick that unearthly delight that drips before you!

We: Cruise, Peddle and Lewis are your amateurs of all time, imminent stars of the tuckshop, - we see all and dare to share.

As whimsical train robbers we have jumped aboard your worst nightmare and sweetest of thoughts and sabotaged the deplorable truth.

The succinct world is over.
This Spring,
Make way for the sheep.

Oxfam Charity Art Auction

Want to sip champagne and nibble at canapés with the high flyers at Martin Place and know that your heart is still in the right place ? Then saunter on down to a charity art auction this coming Tuesday night from 6 till 8, at Middletons, level 26, 52 Martin Place and bid on painting created by some of Sydney's best emerging artists. Proceeds will go to Oxfam and a glorious new work could be yours (perhaps even mine).

One Hectic Day !

Four Paintings have been delivered to Kaleidoscope Galley for Thursdays Show, One to the Mosman Art Galley - for the inaugural art prize I'm yet to claim - and one to FirstDraft Depot for its launch and art exhibition on Saturday.

In between all of this suburb hopping and heavy lifting I: Battled Centrelink - why must I feel like an invalid and gutter clinging member of society on such a regular basis ? Held a conversation with a lovely Prada sun glasses wearing cabbie - who stole my heart with talk of the colours of India; Purchased THE most disgustingly amazing snot green, pom pom covered velvet - a new plushie will be born soon ! Hunted down a loaf of bread that was less than five dollars - it's harder than you think; Was cheered up by Michael Jackson's tunes; Watched an amazing artist at work, threading silky lengths of blonde artificial hair onto a body suit of fishnets; Drank tea and ate stolen scones with jam and cream on a picnic blanket with a friend; Sewed a plush mask into existence - to be worn in some shenanigan tomorrow; Felt like a tourist navigating my way over the Harbour Bridge to THE OTHER SIDE; Was stamped the 750th entrant in the Mosman art prize and Sculled a schooner of beer.

Pleas come and enjoy 'calamity cake' and wine on Thursday at Kaleidoscope Gallery or a sausage and some art with Clover Moore on Saturday at the Depot. It should be a hoot !

A Review

Dangerous Domestic Delights
Paint The Town Red, Group Exhibition
Fraser Studios, Chippendale
July 4 - 10 2010

Paint The Town Red was a group art show featuring the work of Maggie Aydin, Willurei Kirkbright, Jacqueline Larcombe, Susie Nelson, Rachel J. Park, Bec Sheedy, Jenna Tapai and Madeleine Cruise. The show was curated loosely around the core ideas and artistic methodologies that were celebrated during the rise of feminism in the visual arts in the late 1960's and 70's.

The diversity of works in the show ranged from text to edible sculpture and exemplified in material terms the complexity of the movement and its continuing resonance with female artists today. With the exception of an unfortunate video showing yet more slime in a recreated birth scene, the show was a considered yet playful re engagement with the sentiment of being a female art maker. There was a consistent sensitivity showed to materials and and honest portrayal of life's bindings and constraints, tests and turmoil's that women find themselves experiencing. One needed only to read Maggie's work to laugh out loud at the pitiful state of conformity and measured systems of worth that people are encouraged to perform and succeed within. Yet ironically, though this work was autobiographical one inevitably found them self laughing or gasping at a mere reflection.

Evidence of self enquiry, a consideration for 'who' the artist is and an assessment of the identity of the female artist resounded in the show. This was done with a pragmatic antagonism, which made for an 'un quietness' to encompass the exhibition space. Fraser Studios made for an ideal setting to support the proportions of the show: With Susie Nelson's impressive paint scaffolding work towering high into the loft of the warehouse, her slow tenuous drips of red paint tearing through through the paper construction. Whilst behind this a maze of suspended toilet paper drapery caught the inevitable undertow of a winter draft that whirled around the expansive floor space.

Undeniably though, it was Cruise's work that took the cake (sorry couldn't resist) for best at show. Proving that a woman in an apron is formidable in the kitchen and out ! Predominately known for her painting, Cruise transformed her sensuous use of shape, colour and texture onto a plate so as to create Dangerous Domestic Delights. Like any dutiful 1960's house wife Cruise prepared the evening feast in style, her red and white gingham apron splendidly matching her red lipstick. However as her performance progressed, spectators of the exhibition realised that all was not quite well in domestic bliss - the cake was blue the pasta was green, the eggs filled with jelly and worst of all: A sickly smell of pickled onions paired with sugar syrup wafted from the dining table. The work was designed by the artist to be a culinary feast that both seduced and repelled the guest so as to test the parameters of good taste and visual appeal, sensuous desire and rational recognition. What was initially meant to be a fixed installation work, similar to her earlier piece edible art evening 2009 evolved into a performance. The artist became protagonist for the role of women in the culinary history and as dutiful house wives. Cruise inverted every social expectation of the respectable evening meal in Dangerous domestic Delights and humorously empowered all women in the past and present that cook up storms in their kitchens.