Reunion of the Bower artists

 

This photo, an installation view of my miniature watercolours at the Johnston Collection museum in 2018, mysteriously appeared in my inbox yesterday morning. The photo was emailed back in January 2023. Heaven knows where it has been all this time. 

The watercolours were made for the four-person exhibition Patterns of Collecting - from the Bower at the Johnston Collection, which also featured the works and collections of Loris Button, Louise Saxton and Carole Wilson. The exhibition had previously been shown, in slightly different iterations, at Warrnambool Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ballarat. 

The watercolour miniatures were included in Unsolved Histories, my recent solo exhibition at the Old Butchers Shop Gallery in Ballarat and most of them have found new homes. 

Meanwhile, on Thursday night at the Print Council of Australia Gallery in Melbourne, the Bower artists were reunited. We were there to celebrate the opening of Stuck: performing collage, an exhibition focusing on collage in printmaking, featuring works by Loris Button, Dianne Longley, Jackie Gorring, Diana Orinda Burns and Anne Langdon. And what a superb exhibition it is. 

Pictured below, L-R: Bower artists Carole Wilson, Louise Saxton, Loris Button and myself in front of a series of works by Loris Button based on the turban in one of m favourite paintings, Portrait of a Man (1433) by Jan van Eyck. (Photo credit: James Pasakos).

Stuck opened on June 18 and can be viewed at PCA Gallery, Studio 2 Guild, 152 Sturt St, Southbank, Melbourne, until July 5. Gallery hours: Tue -Fri, 10am-4pm.

WALK-AND-TALK WITH THE BOWER ARTISTS

Installation view: The Daughter of Time by Deborah Klein and Urn by Carole Wilson in the upstairs dressing room at
Fairhall Exhibition House, The Johnston Collection, East Melbourne. Photo credit: Tim Gresham.

Directly following are details of the remaining walk-and-talk events with the Bower artists/collectors before our show PATTERNS OF COLLECTING/FROM THE BOWER AT THE JOHNSTON COLLECTION concludes its long run on 18 September. Some events are booked out, so do check the link below. 

Thursday 9 August 2018 | 6.00 pm – 7.30 pm with Carole Wilson & Loris Button
Saturday 11 August 2018 | 10.00 am – 11.30 am with Carole Wilson & Deborah Klein
Thursday 13 September 2018 | 10.00 am – 11.30 am with Deborah Klein & Louise Saxton

For further information about the above, or to book a house tour during the run of the show, go HERE: 

My watercolour pad gets the chop

As mentioned in a recent post, it was my intention to publish the remaining watercolour miniatures created for the forthcoming show PATTERNS OF COLLECTING - From the Bower at the Johnston Collection singly, along with progress views of each. Times have been extremely busy of late, however, and with the deadlines for this and other projects fast approaching, I couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer. It was time to take the Knots and Braids series to its final stage - namely, cutting up the contents of watercolour pad to fit their individual vintage frames. 

Here is the watercolour pad page-by-page, shortly before I took to the contents with a pair of scissors, followed by the aftermath.

New work from the bower

Untitled (Pearl) 2018, watercolour, 12 x 9 cm 

The newly completed watercolour miniature pictured above was specifically made to fit the vintage frame on its right. Since planning began for the latest iteration of From the Bower at the Johnston Collection in East Melbourne, I’ve amassed a sizeable assortment of vintage frames, sourced from antique shops and markets, thrift stores and trash and treasure markets.This one was a lucky find at Ballarat Sunday Market. It's rare for me to know anything of a frame's history, but this one is an exception. The elderly woman from whom I bought it told me it once held a photograph of her grandmother. 

In a reversal of the usual order, it’s the frames in this project that come first; I relish the challenge of tracking them down almost as much as making the works to fit them.

Untitled (Pearl) progress view

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

Victorian hair jewellery, L-R: bracelet, brooch and watch fob. Collection: Deborah Klein

With Christmas Day nearly upon us, and New Year's Day following closely behind, planning for several projects in 2017 is already well under way. One of these is From the Bower - patterns of collecting, an exhibition focusing on the collections of four artists, namely Carole Wilson, Louise Saxton, Loris Button and myself

The following excerpt is from our our combined artists' statement:

Each of us connects with or interrogates our collection in myriad ways, at both a subtle level and more literally. For some of us, the material and objects collected form the very fabric of our art, whilst for others it is a source of inspiration and imagery.  We source our objects from opportunity shops, junk shops, garage sales and markets, both at home and while travelling. Andre Breton said of flea markets "… I go there often, searching for objects that can be found nowhere else, old fashioned, broken, useless...” (1) We can also add: objects that are disused, discarded and even disinherited.  Opportunity shops and flea markets are in a way a kind of ‘bower’ where objects are gathered, and which reflect the lives of many other people.

Among my own contributions to the show are a substantial collection of hair ornaments and a small collection of Victorian hair jewellery (pictured above). Gathered together, the objects put me in mind of a story I've loved since childhood, The Gift of the Magi (1905) by the American writer, O. Henry. Hair, decorative combs and a watch fob are central to this, one of his most beloved tales, which unfolds over another Christmastime, long ago. To read The Gift of the Magi, go HERE. To learn about O. Henry and read more of his stories, go HERE.

FROM THE BOWER - Patterns of collecting can be seen at Warrnambool Art Gallery from 18 March - 12 June, 2017. 

It then travels to the Art Gallery of Ballarat, where it will run from 29 July - 17 September, 2017. 

Full details will be posted nearer the times.

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[1] Plant, M, “Shopping for the Marvelous: Life of the City of Surrealism” in Surrealism: Revolution by Night, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1993.