A day working with the collection

Today I worked at the Bundanon Homestead and not at Riversdale. It was a good drive down the coast and I always enjoy the trek through the bush to get to Bundanon. Parts of the drive skirt the Shoalhaven River which is particularly spectacular in the early morning.

Bushland at Shoalhaven

One of the tasks for the day was to type up some didactic plates for an upcoming exhibition. This not only anchored some of the lessons in my curatorial practice subject from last semester (cava 361) , it also anchored how much Arthur Boyd’s work was influenced by stories and literature he had studied through his life. Some of these stories are from the Bible while others are from Shakespeare.  The strong works derived by the writings of Shakespeare were of particular interest to me. Why? Because I have never read Shakespeare. On the didactic plates were small quotes and snippets of midsummer night Dream, Ophelia and Ariel and Caliban, to name a few. The link below will take you to some of what I copied onto the didactic plates.

https://bundanon.com.au/bundanon-collection/06-0016-0004-01/

This lesson was important for me as it demonstrated a body of work and that research into what you are about to create is important in terms of knowing your subject.

Soon after we ventured up to the study centre, a place which holds the collection.

Artworks stored in the Learning centre Image taken by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

It is a secure fire rated building.  I assisted in the unwrapping of artworks that had been on loan and were returning to the collection. The importance of acquisition numbers and a comprehensive date base  to check works in and out was very clear. The data base was updated and noted the condition of every work as it was checked. Careful attention was paid to returning the works to the respective homes. The shelves had a numbering system that allowed the works to be tracked and found at any time ( a bit like a library cataloging system).  But it was a thrill to be up close and personal to the works of Arthur Boyd.

One of Arthur Boyd’s Paintings of his wife Yvonne Boyd. Image taken by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

I was able to look and study his painting techniques and just admire his work. This collection of works were from the Figure in the Landscape collection and were simply divine.

Unpacking Arthur Boyds Work at the study centre gave me the opportunity to study the technique and brushstroke. Image taken by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

In the midst of this we also had the task of assisting and artist in residence store his work for a few weeks while he arranged for his work to be transported to the Northern Territory.  His name was Joshua and he had won his residency through an art prize. It was a 6 week residency and this enabled him to produce a body of work to exhibit upon his return home.  He had a combination of works on canvas and works on paper.

Courier work is also a very important consideration when moving valuable works around the country. Bundanon uses International Art Services Art Couriers (IAS) and has specially made crates made by a company called TED. These crates house the works securely without them being able to bump against anything while in transport.

Details of work from Arthur Boyd at Bundanon Trust. Image taken by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

When we were unpacking the work I noticed that the plastic tables had been covered with a kind of paper, so I asked what it was. It was a paper called Tyvec paper and is a bonded paper and is used for the protection of artworks.

Amongst many discussion on that morning was one of funding. The collection often tours and this is funded by an organisation called NCITO  which stands for National Collections Institutions Touring and Outreach program. One Million dollars is split between 9 organisations all of national standing. Funding is also derived from Australia Arts Council.

I had a great day at the collection and every day I learn just a bit more about caring for collections or running classes and I hope that these skills will be able to be transferred into my own artistic career.

Details of work by Arthur Boyd. Image taken by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

I am full of admiration and inspiration

A group of boys have arrived the day before, they had already started on some of their  projects. Today I would get to see the finished product of a workshop that I had seen the start of, with another group. It is called rearranging the landscape.

Rearranging the Landscape workshop Photos by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

Just like the group of ladies from Napean these boys would start out by laying down on a large mat like paper that comprised of sheets of water-colour paper that had been butted and stuck together.  Again they traced and drew around each other with wax and charcoal. For this group of senior school age  boys this was definitely a great bonding time, with lots of encouragement and everyone joining in and having a go.

Rearranging the landscape workshop re assembled and more work to be done on the wall. Photos by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

The difference with this workshop is that I got to see how the creative work developed and I saw the final piece after each participant had worked on it and finally reconstructed a mural out of the entire work.

A collaborative decision-making process was undertaken to  reassemble the disassembled pieces in a new order was interesting with students all having a say in what went where and how.

Everyone was enjoying the process and had something special to add to the work. Photos by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

We then broke for lunch. We had warm pumpkin soup or minestrone with crusty bread and of course there is always salad if you wanted some.  The students and teachers are always well looked after at Bundanon. Then it was back to business.

Special mention to the addition of staccato like strokes to the work by one of the students. Photos by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

All of the separated pieces were labelled in a row like system (eg A 1, B 1, C 1 ,B1,B2,C2 etc) and then stuck up on  a large cement wall. The fun didn’t stop there. New marks and additions to the work were added to make parts of the work integrate a bit more. The result was a staggering piece of collage work.  To see this workshop from start to finish was great.

Some of the students painted while others participated in a design workshop. Photos by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

The next session saw the group divided into two, some painted with acrylics with Saskia while others worked with Jim and myself on a design piece (similar to the concertina books) using the skulls and bone collection as inspiration.

Jim reflects the process with students and the decisions they have to make when undertaking a work. This translates to their current HSC studies very well. Photos by J Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust

So far I have to say that I have loved every workshop that I have assisted in. I know that all of this great knowledge that I am accumulating about technique and practice will show up in my art practice. I can’t wait to get started on some great new ideas.

 

Will I help on your open day?…… YES! Id love to!

Volunteer an extra day? No Problem! Will I help on your open day? YES! Id love to!…. Jeanette we really need you the week after next ….. I’ll be there!

Through the rain on a Saturday morning I head down to the Bundanon open day. I wonder if the event is still on, but I am confident that all the preparation that has gone into the event will probably mean it will go ahead regardless of the weather.

Today I get to work in a slightly different role meeting new people. First off I am at the front of house tent with John, Jen and Chris. These are people I have seen around Bundanon but have had little opportunity to get to know. Meeting them on a more casual basis was delightful and I feel that this is where I shine.

Community groups gathered on site and erected exhibition gazebos.

Welcome to country was performed by a local indigenous elder and then his son Richard sung in language to mother earth; it sent a shiver down your spine. There is something noble and dignified about singing to an audience in a language that most of them don’t understand, while it seems to set itself apart from the rest ( theory of other perhaps) it simultaneously embraces the giving of the language to outsiders. To me it’s quite an abstract and  intimate form of communication.  It certainly had the wow factor in my books.

There was a reptile man there who stole the show with his snakes just freely slithering across tables and people were able to touch them.  Friends of the brushtail wallaby were also there along with other environmental groups and the environment was the focus of the day. Guest speakers gave talks on  landcare, frogs and other pressing and interesting environmental issues.

I got to meet this wonderful lady who was staying with the Deborah, CEO of Bundanon. We struck up a conversation as she was a Brazilian artist and was here with her mother and my son Daniel is off to Brazil next week. It turns out that she has a large immersive light installation for ‘VIVID’ right outside the MOCA….depiciting a heart beating and pulse, titled ‘Heart of the City’ … her name is Ana Isa Franjco. Here is a link to her Blog with an image from the blog. This creative work will be an interactive public sculpture that pulses according to the participants pulse. the piece aims to bring people closer together and create a heart in the city where people can gather sharing their heart beat with the heart beats of others.

WOW…..with my recent heart investigations that is relevant to me! I wonder what would happen if I sat on the sculpture????? they would probably call an ambulance!!!!! ( I have an irregular heart beat )

http://anaisafranco.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/the-heart-of-city-at-vivid-sydney-2015.html

I also met other people from around the place on a casual and in passing way.Everyone joins in to make it a successful day regardless of the weather. We are a team and at Bundanon I feel like a team player. I like teams.  I am not a believer in hierarchy. I believe that all people have the same potential and sometimes opportunity plays an important role in where you end up in life.  Position means nothing to me but friendship and making meaningful connections does.  I prefer the gentle softly travelled way. Although I may seem confident to those who don’t really know me, years of submission or oppression have taken their toll. This is why I love Bundanon, it is a place where I feel safe and nurtured.

It’s gonna be a Lemsip and rest kind of week for me!

Sneezing, runny eyes, aching bones croaky voice and not really feeling well at all, I set off for Bundanon just the same. I felt and obligation to make an effort to get there as the people there had become my work mates and I didn’t want to let them down. It was still a  great drive down the coast and I arrived to the usual happy faces and warm greetings I had become accustomed to.

It was obvious I was unwell so Mary suggested I didn’t need to stay and they were OK in terms of getting things done so I popped over to see Jim and Saskia to say hello and they could see clearly that I wasn’t in my usual top form and suggested I go home. So I did.

So why would I write about a thing like this on my blog you may be asking?

Communication is important! Sometimes if you are unwell so is staying at home. Considering your workmates and keeping a healthy work environment sometimes means making a sacrifice. The funny thing is the imprint that my previous workplace had left on me in terms of taking time off when I was unwell was not a positive one, so I was unsure of how a day off would have been received in a new work environment.

My new workmates knew that I was unwell. It would be a far wiser thing for me to stay home and recuperate and perform better next week than to struggle through the day and get worse. They supported my decision to trek all the way back home and rest up.

By getting better over the next few days I would be in better shape to help out as a volunteer at the Bundanon Open day on the 2nd of May… ( the following Saturday)

I didn’t need to spread my germs around the participants of the workshops or my fellow workers…… So its back into the LEMSIP for me for a few days, work on my other subjects and get back on top of things for the weekend.

Timeline of Arthur Boyd

I cannot take credit for the work I am about to post. This is a resource from the Arthur Boyd Trust. Rather than me try to interpret it and potential get it incorrect I thought it would be better to provide the link to the resource. Take the time to click on it…. it is amazing.

Click to access ARTHUR_BOYD_TIMELINE_2.pdf

Re-arranging the Landscape

In the afternoon of Wednesday a wonderful group of ladies arrived ready to take part in a number of workshops. They were a group of ladies that get together once a year and come along to Bundanon to learn new techniques. Some of them are art teachers, others practising artists and some students and a range of people who may fit anywhere between these parameters.

Participants drawing with candle wax as a resist around bodies on a 28 page grid. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

Jim and I had already made our way to the Bundanon homestead in view of going over some of the techniques Arthur Boyd used in his works however we didn’t get time to do that as some of the ladies arrived soon after we did. Alas we will need to do that another time.

Special arrangements had been made for this particular group to talk to one of the artists in residence. This was a great privilege and she gave an insight to the construction of her collage works that she had made depicting the architecture of the area.

It was a one in all in kind of activity and there were laughs and giggles everywhere. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

To our delight another artist also agreed to give us an insight to his works. He was an artist from the N.T. who had won a 6 week residency through the TOGA art competition. He said he was working on ‘developing his techniques’. His works were a vibrant, thick textural works of an abstract nature

Next, there was a tour of the homestead where I never tire of listening to the stories surrounding the Bundanon homestead, Arthur Boyd and his family and the works that are in and around the site.

These ladies were not sleeping, they were creating and paying careful attention to the principles of design. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

We then went back to Riversdale to have a bite to eat and start on the program of workshops. The first being known as ‘Re arranging the Landscape’

28 Pieces of 200 gsm paper were laid out on a very large plastic sheet and taped together with small pieces of masking tape in a grid like fashion.

Participants were then requested to lie in various positions on the paper and their mates would draw around them in Candle wax and then later in charcoal.

The charcoal lines where then altered and varied creating interest.

Varying the lines and texture of the works. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

Three candidates were chosen the draw very large depictions of the surrounding area in charcoal over the top of these drawings.

Indigo ink was then poured onto parts of the drawing and the ladies were allowed to spread this across the works in a random fashion. A further red/ purple colour was also added in the same fashion as the indigo.

This lady thought she would practice her ballet at the same time. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

Buy this time the paper was getting quite wet. Usually at this workshop the paper is left to dry however due to the lateness of the afternoon and the clouds gathering it was decided to ‘mop up’ the excess with paper towel….. this also gave another effect that enhanced the work.

The ladies were then asked to dissemble the grid and chose one piece.

a mixture of red, indigo and charcoal made a wonderful composition. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

They were invited to draw a Banksia leaf and some of the seed

pods from the plants that edge the path of the building in an enlarged form.

It was at this time that I left for the day however I queried what the next step would be for the workshop.

The ladies would later reassemble the pieces into another grid only this time removing one piece of the work so that it would be impossible to put it back in the same format.

The first format was  grouped as a 7 x 4 grid. The next format would be grouped as a 9 x 3 grid. I would have like to stay the next day to see the result but this was not to be unfortunately.

An example of how one of the participants tackled the task. Photo taken by J.Riley with permission from the Bundanon Trust.

BUT WHAT I DID DO WAS THIS……….. I made friends with a lovely group of ladies, asked how do I join their group to come here with them the following year. Hopefully Kerry will invite me along because this group of ladies looked like they knew how to PARTY.

A Sense of Place and Belonging

WOW!!!!! WOW!!! WOW!!! WOW!!!!

Bundanon is full of people with different areas of expertise and lets face it you don’t have to be an artist to know what beautiful means. This week one of the people who work at Bundanon (Ralph) took some of us to two remote places nearby. One was a great look out the other was a great look out with the bonus of some fantastic vegetation and some Aboriginal Axe grinding marks in the local sandstone plateaus

The view was amazing perched so high overlooking the Shoalhaven River. It was as if no one had ever been there before.

I am not talking about one or two axe grinding marks I am talking about ‘heaps’ of them, and when you considered where you were and how high you were up in terms of mountains and valleys around you, it made you consider why they were there and why so many of them?

Was this a sacred place ? Was this a vantage point for observing intruders? Was is a ceremonial place?.

Aboriginal Axe Sharpening site at Red Rocks Cambewarra Mountain

Well what ever it was it was isolated and not many people would go there. There was an abundance of natural fauna in both locations and the views seemed endless.

Ralph sharing his knowledge and sense of place with Mary at Red Rocks Cambewarra

In terms of the internship experience I could argue that this was giving a sense of place to the participant ( myself) however if feel that there was a much more generous gesture here from a person who has a wealth of local knowledge of the area who wanted to share and show what he knew about the beauty of the world that he is a part of . Ralph didn’t have to show us this but he did, and I am so grateful for the experience.

The pigment of the minerals seeping into the waterways was spectacular and so were the reflections in the water pools around the place

That night again extracurricular activities bound with the pleasures of friendship found some of us sharing conversations and a meal at the local Bowling Club.

The $9.90 roast will be a regular Tuesday night event  along with the desert and coffee which will cost the same……. but the sharing and friendships I am developing????? you can’t put a price on that… they are just too precious

Did you just say MUD AND MILK?????

Well this was an exciting revelation and a by product of the textile workshop, Linda told us about a dying technique using Mud and Milk.

You simply size the paper with Soya Bean milk, paint it with different muds using milk the bind / thin the medium and paint or dye away. Leave the garment or work there for a several days/ weeks and remove the residue and you are leaf with some wonderful colours. This is something I am definitely going to try. I wish I had have taken photos to share… sorry

This took my interest so much that I just had to do a little research. I found a great article by Di Mcpherson; a textile artist. Here is the link to the PDF

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1254&context=tsaconf

An exciting new textile workshop

Some colleagues of  Bundanon were fortunate enough to go to a textiles workshop in the Blue Mountains recently and were then generous enough to share what they had learnt to assist in formulating a new workshop. Sharing knowledge and technique is such a valuable thing to any artist and it is imperative for skills to be passed onto younger generations so that this vibrant craft is not lost.

Drawing inspiration from nature and using natural pigments some examples of dyeing techniques were shown and explained to the educations officers.

We then set about making some text pieces the following day with dye baths and used steaming techniques to emboss and mark natural pieces of materials ( cotton wool felt silk and muslin). The results were great and staff were filled with enthusiasm for the potentially new program in textiles that will emerge from these experimental pieces.  Dye baths using 1/3 Brush Kurragong Bark 1/3 Australia Indigo and 1/3 Acacia Bark were stewed in water to produce a dark pigment. This pigment can be used to dye cloth, Mark paper or even paint with in a water-colour technique.  A most exciting addition to the cloth ‘bundles’ that we made was the addition of rusty items which created the most amazing colours and patterns on the cloth. A bundle cloths layered with  leaves and rolled in a rusty tin created the most beautiful patterned fabric.

A matrix was then made up that covered the techniques that would be used in a workshop ensuring that an even distribution of techniques and materials were covered leading to a pleasing body of work that could be taken home by the students.

As this workshop is influenced by the works and techniques of textile Artist India Flint I have decided to add a link to a resource I have found online. This resource will give you images of some of the wonderful results you can achieve with a combination of leaves, fabric and paper.

http://www.indiaflint.com/page6.htm

Time to Tidy and Prepare

While school holidays are on it provides a great time to prepare and tidy equipment for the upcoming new term. This week Jim and I got some general cleaning done. We tidied up  trolleys, culled damaged drop sheets, got rid of a few cobwebs and sorted out things that had been put away in the wrong place. Time however didn’t permit us to give the press a good clean so we will have to do that next week.

Jim also explored new techniques for workshops including incising  paper with a print- making scoring tool and then seeing how the scored marks absorb water based inks, charcoals and other mediums. These investigations are imperative to a new workshop if the workshop is to be successful. In a setting like Bundanon, one of its unique features is that students don’t get to come back next week to finish off a project. They are there for one or two days only.That means the bugs of the workshop have to be ironed out before the workshop even starts. This forward planning and trouble shooting is essential in managing a great educational program