Between making coffee and serving cassoulet

Part of my job description is to make regular chalk drawings on the blackboards at the restaurant Le petite Deux. Between making coffee and serving cassoulet i climb up and down the bent wood chairs to complete a 2.8x1.5m 'scribble'. As Le Petite is a French inspired restaurant the debut work is a Parisian street scene and I have plans for a boulangerie window. I am currently sitting on the forshore at Newcastle baths, between shifts, I have swum a few laps and am waiting elf or my hair to dry before I return for dinner service. With a full house tonight I am nervously rehearsing the food presentation Trout gravlax with bisque jelly, avocado and prawn veil; Duck breast with confit leg and orange glaze or was that lavender jus and cauliflower mousse ? I guess I'll find out in half an hour.

Material Developments

Whilst developing Nightmare on Sugar I experimented with rubber and the colour black. Whilst pastels and plush have been part of my material repertoire for a little while, the Gastro Porn exhibition prompted me to seek something more unsettling and sexually provocative. I felt it necessary to introduce a harsh contrast and a new element that would strip the plushies of their playful innocence and push them into the world of erotica. Rubber has seduced me in its own way as I find myself gritting my teeth in an unusual material pleasure when I twist and contort it, I like how it can strangle the textile so that soft plush oozes out. Images come to mind of hands on a piping bag squeezing out hollandaise sauce onto poached eggs. Like other Plush sculptures and installations Nightmare on Sugar is a hyper real piece, based on life, only this time it is indulging a little more in peculiar guilty pleasures of sensation, aroused by food and who knows what else....

Nightmare on Sugar - A new installation

I use my art practice as a means of discovery: To realise wonderful places and harness fleeting memories and sensations. Seductive fusions of landscapes and creatures are made through a sculptural and painting practice that allow for different realities and sensory experiences to unite. In this hyper real world of exploited colour, texture and form I antagonise the boundaries of recognition so as to suggest that identity is fluid and changeable.


Nightmare on Sugar represents the seductive colours and flavours that are abundant in the candy aisle. It has taken all the calories, all the lard and sugar and waged war upon your healthy conscience ! Dripping with luscious velvet ‘Plush’ sculptures imitate fluffy cake and beg you to give in to your wildest fattening desires. Within this culinary nightmare, all is not what it seems: Strings of Liquorice dangle like a noose and fairy floss threatens to suffocate. This installation is both attractive and unsettling but altogether too good to refuse.

Gastro Porn

On Tuesday the 25th of September the exhibition: Gastro Porn opens at NG Gallery Sydney.

I will be exhibiting a plush installation 'Nightmare on Sugar' that exposes some new sexual twists in contorted black rubber with rivulets of buttery yellow velvet. Additionally, there will be paintings inspired by my recent occupation in fine dining - think bio dynamic eggs, soubise and lavender creme brule turned on their head with acrylic paint and sarcasm.

Visit the gallery online at:

http://ngart.com.au/exhibition_gallery_85_gastro.html

Hope to see you at the opening !

Works on Paper – a parallel journey to my painting and sculpture practice.

Whilst travelling in 2011 I maintained an artistic practice by working on a pocket pad of paper, often just with pencil or pen but at other times with gouache. The immediacy of the marks and colours gathered in these pads were fresh and raw and continue to speak truthfully of my experience of time and place. During my residency at Bundanon I returned to these sketch pads so as to start work on a larger collection that would broaden my interdisciplinary practice.

Life of the Fire revisits my participation in Dias De Los Muertos, one of the most sacred and colourful festivals in the world. The colours and imagery are derived from the public and private spaces in the Mexican towns where Day of The Dead is celebrated and pertains to the devotional practices and energy that is abundant at this time. The rainbow grid format refers to the paper flags that adorn the streets and welcome the communion of the living and the dead. Featuring a combination of printmaking, drawing and ink painting it is a piece of work that could be extended in a number of directions. This possibility excites me and is an expression of the rejuvenation that Mexico offered me.

To make a promise

Hidden deep in the bush behind the pristine pasture of Bundanon is the Amphitheatre. It is a natural rock formation that towers into the sky and is framed by the thin trunks of spotted gums. At the forefront is a shady dell that welcomes picnics, conversation and music. This is where Arthur Boyd would often relax with friends or play music with the local people. A painting of this place is currently in Arthur’s studio at Bundanon and it made a lasting impression on me whilst I was an artist in residence at the Bundanon property. Pledge at the Amphitheatre is created after this work, as my response to the landscape but also to the community and creativity that is inspires.Just as Arthur painted with his wife Yvonne, I have taken loved ones to this special place. The robust brush marks and intensity of colour suggest the powerful beauty of the environment; whilst the immediacy of the pastel marks are connotative of the energy of people enlivening place. If you creep through the brush at the base of the rock you will find a little passage way that leads up onto a stage like platform. Once standing on top, looking out at the surrounding bush there is an overwhelming vibration in the air, everything and nothing exists between you and the natural world, no longer looking up at the towering surrounds you are part of the place. It was in this moment that I was compelled to make a pledge....