Station 2

This is the final station I did, Station 2: Jesus is made to carry the cross...

For this one I utilised a style I've been working with for a while now - structuring it as a cluster of small framed prints, and drawing on images from a library of photographs that I've taken over a 15 year period. In fact a couple of the images I used for this piece I also used for the station I did for the Cityside event nine years ago (although that one involved the images being looped on a television set rather than printed and framed).

For the St Luke's event, I used war images photographed off the screen from TV war documentary and news footage. I put the cluster in a slanted / slash shape to reflect the idea of strife and also the forward angle of a person carrying a heavy weight.

This was the most 'obscure' of the three pieces I did, so I included a supporting statement:

When Jesus carried the cross he took on his shoulders one of humankind’s most notorious weapons of execution. Politically, he was carrying the weight of the judgement of the world’s major super-power – the Roman Empire.

Despite Jesus’ actions on the cross, we have continued to devise weapons and tried to conquer each other.

War is where all of humanity’s worst traits come out, so it serves as a fitting metaphor for what was laid on him.

In carrying the cross, Jesus chose to carry our strife, hatred and suffering (past, present and future) and the pain we inflict on each other and inflicted on him.

Here's a mock-up of the piece - each photographic print is 6x4" (click to see it a little larger):

Station 12

The second station I did (and I'm actually posting these in reverse order) was Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross.

I did this station once before, for the Cityside Stations of the Cross exhibition in 2003 (but with a different piece)... I always feel like this is kind of the climax of the story that the stations tell (seeing as the resurrection isn't part of the traditional stations) so there's probably a bit of pressure on this station from an art perspective. Anyway, I went pretty subtle.

The style of the image is actually one that I'm working on extensively at the moment, so I utilised it for this piece. Essentially the method involves taking a human form, reducing it to lines (sort of a schematics of the exterior of the human body) then 'exploding' it, dragging points and lines out from the schematics to describe the path of particles flying outwards from the body. It has something to do with showing that the body is fragile - made up of particles and bound together by whoknowswhat.

In the figure of Jesus, I hope it demonstrates that he is human, making a sacrifice, the creative energy of the universe (the breath of God) exiting as his life is given up. I also consider the particles to be a representation of humankind's sin that attached itself to him in the sacrifice.

The working method is digital but once it was printed out onto art paper, I wanted to do a non-digital intervention. The original concept was to use wine as my water colour pigment. In the event, it turns out that merlot dries to a kind of violet colour. Quite a nice colour actually, but not very indicative of blood. So I added a red water colour pigment to the wine - which gave me the final result.

I had hoped that the smell of wine would persist on the piece - and it certainly did while it was wet, but after it dried the smell mostly disappeared. So I put the piece behind glass in the end seeing as there wasn't much chance of the wine smell being obvious anyway. The wine is still there in the process though and I think that's important.

When the piece was set up for the stations, it was framed in a light wooden box frame and lit with a votive candle on either side (click to see the image a little larger).

Station 14

This year St Luke's had a Stations of the Cross Easter art event... over the next few days I'll be documenting the three pieces I did for this.

A bit of background: The Stations of the Cross dates back to the pilgrim trail through Jerusalem (probably during the 1400s), in which the faithful would retrace the traditional route that Jesus took on his journey to death. The pilgrims would pause for reflection at significant sites. These 'stations' (usually 14 of them) were transplanted back to Europe and recreated in various forms and places so that the faithful could make the same observances without travelling to Jerusalem.

In Europe (and subsequently other parts of the world), these stations were given artistic representations. Historically, these exist as a fine example of Christian art.

I'm not sure of the contemporary history of utilising the stations globally, but in New Zealand the practice was reinvigorated in 1998 (and in subsequent years) by Mark Pierson at Cityside Baptist Church in Auckland. In this context, the stations became an annual and serious art happening that drew a certain amount of mainstream attention. Artists from the Cityside community were each given a station to interpret as they saw fit. Cityside's exhibition became an impressive and immersive experience, and the concept was picked up by other groups around New Zealand - perhaps most notably by Peter Majendie in Christchurch and Dave White in Hamilton.

On a smaller scale, the concept of the stations of the cross being used as an opportunity for artistic expression at Easter has been picked by Christian communities around the country, and has almost certainly played a part in contemporary Christianity rediscovering and more actively engaging in the visual arts.

Which brings us to a couple of consecutive Sundays in April 2012, and to St Luke's - a little church in Mount Maunganui that meets in rugby clubrooms.

Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb

I've been wanting do some model-making for a while now. It seems like a logical interpretation of my safe little world concept. So I seized the opportunity to do a fairly literal piece for Station 14.

I collected materials from around the place: an unbelievably beautiful stone from the beach at Kaiaua on the Firth of Thames, a square of MDF board from the Seagull Store at the Thames dump, some chicken wire mesh, some two dollar shop poster paints, some newspaper, PVA, some dirt and some special model-making 'grass' from the model shop. The piece was further sparked by a little wooden life drawing posable model that I discovered by accident at AJ's Emporium. When wrapped in crepe bandage, the model became the body.

The final piece was interactive. The viewer was able place the figure into the tomb, feel the weight of the stone and then place it over the mouth of the tomb to seal it up.

Baseboard dimensions: 570 x 510mm

And here are some progress shots...

installation views

Well, the piece is now up at draw inc., in Hamilton. Some installation views and video...

safe little world: gallery installation at draw inc., hamilton, new zealand from andrew killick on Vimeo.

quote

another quote apropos to the safe little world thing:

"The work you do as an artist is really play, but it is play in the most serious sense. Like when a two-year-old discovers how to make a tower out of blocks. It is no halfhearted thing. You are materializing - taking something from the inside and putting it out into the world so you can be relieved of it."

Leslie Dick, faculty of CalArts, when asked “What is an artist?” in Seven Days in the Art World, by Sarah Thornton.

exhibition (at last)

an exhibition...

14 -21 November

draw inc. 35A Ward St

Hamilton, New Zealand

micronaut

Last weekend, while visiting the World Press Photo exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery, I unexpectedly encountered the work of New Zealand artist/illustrator Graham Percy. Big, bad, wide world, shrunk beautifully down, as I ascended the stairs to the upper gallery, into safe little world.

Then I wandered across the road into the city library to see if they had the book of the Percy exhibition. It's called 'A Micronaut in the Wide World'.

"A micronaut" says Gregory O'Brien in his introduction to the book, "is someone who dwells on or is moved by small things; he or she is a student of miniature objects or a traveller across minute spaces. Seated at his work table in his South London town-house, Graham Percy was a micronaut par excellence. His eyes would scan the objects, works of art, postcards and books in the room. He began with these, the smallest, most unassuming of things."

"As well as being an astute observer, Graham was scholarly in his attentions. If he were to sit down with the present book, I imagine one of the first things he would do is look up the word micronaut in his dictionary - to find it derived from naut (Greek), 'a sailor'. Micro- is easily sorted. If he searched further he would find the term was used by an American [toy] distributor in the 1970s for a range of science-fictional tin figurines..."

"Continuing to research the word 'micronaut', he might arrive at Friedrich Froebel, an nineteenth-century German educationalist best known as the inventor of the kindergarten. Froebel described the child as the archetypal micronaut - an explorer who should be left to make his or her own discoveries. Since Froebel's time, much has been written about the affinities that exist between the modern artist and child. Graham Percy's approach was very much that of the wonder-struck child... Weaving together imagined and observed realities, and inspired by intellectual as well as material accumulations - the books and bric-a-brac with which he surrounded himself - his 'micronautical' art embraced the wide world beyond the personal and private.'

Boom!

Percy's love for his little world was so complete that, when he died, his ashes were placed for safe-keeping inside a scale model of the Le Corbusier-inspired house in which he and his wife lived for 26 years. The model is kept within the real house. It is made of tin, wood and frosted glass. You can put a candle in the front section of the model house so that it lights up - to remind you of Percy working on his drawings late at night. O'Brien describes the model as the "last residence of a micronaut".

I'd never heard of a 'micronaut' before, but I want that title! For this micronaut, there is too much to get excited about when I connect all this with Safe Little World.

bret vs rod: the punch dance

VS



VS (the original)

Pledges

I'm raising capital for an exhibition project I'm working on at the moment. I'll be exhibiting a large piece (consisting of 23 individually framed images) at draw inc in Hamilton, NZ.

Good times! The pledge target is NZ$350 - which sort of covers the cost of framing.

So, if you'd like to be part of it, you can pledge. Pledgers get sweet Safe Little World items as a thank you.

Get amongst. Click the link below to check out the project and / or make a pledge:

www.pledgeme.co.nz/Crowd/Details/31

unpacking terms

I find the meanings and implications of words and phrases fascinating. All words and phrases have a history and a web of connotations. It can be interesting (I think) to unpack some of the terms we use almost without thinking… yesterday I used the term ‘religious experience’ on my tumblr page to describe something that isn’t easily describable that happened to me one time when I encountered a Culbert - Hotere artwork.

After that, I got into a bit of a discussion about the word ‘religious’ with a friend on Facebook. The word ‘religious’ has become a bit dirty in the last 50 years. Generally speaking, contemporary people aren’t big fans of religion. Even in Christian circles the term is avoided because of its associations with a tired, old-fashioned, legalistic, formulaic, nominal form of belief.

In thinking through my use of the term ‘religious experience’ I found a rather nice definition of the phrase on Wikipedia, and realised that the term was more appropriate to what had happened to me when I saw that artwork than I had hoped or dreamed when I somewhat casually used the term in yesterday’s post:

“Religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience in which an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality, an encounter or union with the divine. A religious experience is most commonly known as an occurrence that is uncommon in the sense that it doesn’t fit in with the norm of everyday activities and life experiences, and its connection is with the individual’s perception of the divine.”

The article also carries William James’s description of the characteristics of a religious experience, which I also found fascinating:

Transient - the experience is temporary; the individual soon returns to a “normal” frame of mind.

Ineffable - the experience cannot be adequately put into words.

Noetic - the individual feels that he or she has learned something valuable from the experience.

Passive - the experience happens to the individual, largely without conscious control

mount ruapehu

a few shots from a cloud-covered dusk expedition up mount ruapehu (turoa)... (click on 'em to see 'em a little larger - and a little less noisy)

dillard quotes

more quotes, hijacked to be subsumed into the 'safe little world' concept that obsessively captivates my mind... (this time annie dillard is the source - 'a pilgrim at tinker creek')

"We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumours of death, beauty, violence..."

"We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise."

"Everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames."