symbols and perennial questions...

Last weekend there was a 50th birthday celebration in my family so visitors and busyness abounded. All week it was still go, go, go ... for this reason Easter provided the perfect chance  for a change of pace. This Easter it's been rather a deep pleasure to slow down, watch films, and paint for hours each day.

Taking things outside to the garden to enjoy the day whilst busily creating has also been ideal with our weather so lovely at the moment. Easter hasn't been celebrated here at this house in anything but a quiet way... catching up with things, mostly thinking about painting and enjoying the quiet.

Found here at Alisa Bourke's blog

We have a four day holiday at Easter each year...for some i5 days or even longer... with school-aged children on up to a 2 weeks break. For many Australians it's a time for family and friends, perhaps special projects if staying at home... whist there is an old tradition in parts of the country of vacating urban spaces to go camping.

Apart from the Xmas period and summer holidays it's the longest punctuation in the year, signalling the arrival of autumn and changing preoccupations. As such, it is as such a time of reflection ... irrespective of or coupled with diverse religious and spiritual beliefs.

Perhaps with this season around the corner last week when reading the blog of this young Brisbane artist Michelle Knowles I found myself quite taken with her call out for people to participate in a project she's recently conceived.

Michelle is a Brisbane based contemporary artist. Her practice explores notions such as the uncanny, the fetishisation of objects, performance and ritual, the otherworldly and imaginary spaces. A curiosity in belief systems and broader spirituality is the catalyst for experiments in both video and photographic works that utilise objects, including handmade artefacts, as tools for transformation. Michelle has a BFA (Visual Arts) with Honours from the Queensland University of Technology and has shown her work in Brisbane galleries such as Artisan, The Block, Metro Arts and QUT Art Museum, and in artist run spaces such as Accidentally Annie Street Space and inbetweenspaces.

The Photos here are all from Michelle's flickr site:

Michelle on Pinterest.

I thought it really apt for the Easter break, which, despite varying so much in significance to people ...  remains nevertheless a time of symbolism and reflection with elements of enduring cultural traditions.

I asked Michelle's permission to write about this here and also let you know that your participation is warmly welcomed and appreciated if you don't mind spending a few minutes following the links. I know that various ones who pop in here from time to time have all given a great deal of thought to the things Michelle is pondering and asking for our thoughts on here.

SO this is what you will find at Michelle's blog post:

I don't know what it's like for you, but trying to pin someone down for a deep and meaningful these days is almost impossible. We skim through our lives, barely daring to break the surface for fear that we might not be able to handle the truth. Our lives are so carefully crafted to fit inside of contemporary life. We (particularly the urban dwellers) reside in a bubble that protects us from the big realities. Until one day that bubble bursts. And reality changes. And we are faced with the only certainty there is - the unknown. And death. Non-existence. The idea of which is so terrifying and incomprehensible that we become faced with an existential dilemmna. How do we live in the face of non-existence? How do we fill the void?

I'm embarking on a new project to find out exactly that - how do people live with such existential concerns. How do you fill the void? The project is open-ended and I don't quite know how it will progress, but for now I am seeking people to participate. I am hoping that at least a few people will take some time out to engage with me in this way - to share what it is that drives them through the uncertainty of life. The information gathered on the website will be used as the basis for new works.

If you are reading please do drop me a line or two, or even an image which addresses the question "how do you fill the void? 

Website is www.fillthisvoid.com  

Email at submit@fillthisvoid.com

Thank you, and please share the site link. The more information I can gather, the better

Michelle: Tackling the jungle that is my garden. The plants were threatening to eat us alive!

I've visited Michelle's world through her blog for some time... appreciating the fact she brings a very warm, human  and even playful approach to intellectual concerns which so often in recent decades have been treated in a cold and all too often not terribly engaging way. Her blogging, imagery and writing on various social media platforms give it dimension ... and with Michelle it never feels token or random... it's this capacity to be humanly convincing that I think attracts me to observe her work.

My own early Art School experience in 1977 to 1980 was defined largely by the domination of abstraction in terms of colour field painting, with a bit of existentialism thrown in, and not a whole lot else. My main painting teachers (I majored in painting) were male and two of them, back from stints in New York, talked and skited endlessly about their heroes in NY... (male) painters... and thats it they weren't waylaid at a local pub instead. Perhaps if we were very lucky they might pop in at the end of a 4 hour studio session they'd missed, and in a haze of beery loud-mouthed insults infer we'd be better of if the entire Art school were pushed off the nearby cliff into the Pacific Ocean.

No wonder Feminist art and women like Simone de Beauvior looked like they might be onto something... I left art school rather underwhelmed indeed! In time nothing phased at Art School but I felt the vacuum of this "education" quite strongly and so I welcome the fact that Michelle came out of Art School not so long ago appearing spirited and focused... with some great questions, verve and pluck! 

from this post

from this post

I think I will close with this beautiful post of Michelle's in full... from September 26th last year... containing a poem by a much loved late poet from this state. I do hope you might give Michelle a little of your time for a few words or an image you can share on this topic.

It seems timely for us here in the southern hemisphere now in autumn... and with the world churning as it is everywhere with big questions. I hope you enjoy the world through here eyes as I have done...

A dense, tangled growth...

Rainforest

~ Judith Wright.

The forest drips and glows with green.

The tree-frog croaks his far-off song.

His voice is stillness, moss and rain

drunk from the forest ages long.

We cannot understand that call 

unless we move into his dream,

where all is one and one is all

and frog and python are the same.

We with our quick dividing eyes

measure, distinguish and are gone.

The forest burns, the tree-frog dies,

yet one is all and all are one.

I've been spending a lot of time in the great outdoors lately. It keeps me sane and grounded.  All that green has a positive effect on me. The forest is a temple. - a space in which to confront my own mortality. To be reminded that the world will turn regardless of my place in it - this is a comfort. Life and death on the dank forest floor. "A dense, tangled growth".

Discoveries:

• Maurizio Anzeri
• Frederique Morrel
• Spirit Cloth
• Hand Eye Magazine

With warmest thanks to Michelle... it was a pleasure to visit your rich gardens of treasures to write this post!  S xo

ps...

do pop over to homage blog if you want to see what this is!

                                                      There's a "must-see video" too about the Millennium Seedbank!