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Richard Black: Australia's Murray River
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND: The Nevada Museum of Art's Centre for Art and Environment is an internationally recognised research centre that supports the practice and study of creative interactions between people and their environments. In 2011, the museum acquired Richard Black's Murray River archive (comprising more than 100 drawings, renders, photos and archival material); exhibited his work in a solo show ('Richard Black: Australia's Murray River'); and invited him to be a guest speaker at its triennial Art + Environment conference. <br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: This research explores how the construction of site knowledge is transformed into knowing where and how to intervene in a location. It uses the Murray River floodplain as a case study location, (a river system close to ecological collapse) to examine ways in which we might begin to learn how to live with the natural cycles and rhythms of the river. The research culminated in a range of designs that demonstrate how to integrate town and tourist developments into the re-established cyclical flows necessary for the health of the system. Site knowledge drove the design process. The researcher's work combined landscape architecture, ecology, political and social forces to suggest ways designers can engage with landscapes. <br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: Black was the first architect to be exhibited at the museum and the first to be included in its archive. The exhibition was curated by William Fox, the museum's director. Black was also an invited lecturer at the museum's Art and Environment conference
Casey Fields stadium artwork
No full textResearch Background The interdisciplinary practice of interpretation design includes design of site-specific artworks with interpretive, way-showing or place-making intent and remains under-theorised (Woodward 2009; Weiler 2005). The giant javelins and shot-put extend beyond the arena, speaking of athletes' endeavor to surpass their own boundaries and perform like giants. Research Contribution The project contributes to knowledge of interpretation design practice through a site-specific art intervention in the landscape that concurrently interprets the site's function and reinforces community identity. The work continues my ongoing investigation into creating permanent installations that help to shaping the identity of sites and communities where the environment is impoverished and where art is an uncommon element in the landscape. It traverses the boundary between design and art through a focus on interpretative intent. In addition, the collaborative design process involving industrial designers and sculptors tests the boundaries between art and design practice, exemplifying contemporary collaborative design practice investigated by Baudke-Schaub et al (2002) and F east and Di Russo (2013). Research Significance The project was awarded through a rigorous competitive public tender. The design team was shortlisted based on a concept design and detailed rationale. Final selection was through presentation of a maquette and interview by the Council's panel. The work provides a significant landmark for Casey Sports Fields and Athletic Stadium, interpreting and strengthening its identity. The artwork is a permanent installation and forms part of the City of Casey's permanent art collection
Complexity and Fullness
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Complexity and Fullness' was developed for the IDEA 2012 inaugural research exhibition, a major endeavour of national and international significance. Influenced by the work of Rem Koolhass - who proposed that 'everything is melting into shopping' - the researchers explored the proposition that being in retail spaces is a complex and full experience for consumers. <br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The project comprised a gallery installation and catalogue essay. The researcher-designers used photography, projection, diagramming and storyboarding to produce sets, props and images that examined the production of interiors within the urban medium of retail.This installation-based project followed on from a series of built works including models, film and public interventions that are part of an ongoing research inquiry into the production of interiors through the use of scenic strategies. This project creates new knowledge about a ubiquitous yet significant part of everyday life - shopping - and the twin drives of desire and sacrifice that fuel every commercial exchange. It proposes that retail is an urban medium. <br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association) working group pioneered a competitive, double blind peer-reviewed model for this international exhibition convened by Curtin University at the independent and prestigious FORM Gallery (funded by state and federal governments). The group received 36 abstracts from designer-researchers in Australia, NZ, the UK, the US and Canada. Eighteen projects were selected for inclusion. An inter-institutional team curated the show. More than 2500 people visited the exhibition (exhibition report) and it was reviewed in three online publications and in three research publications. The research was further dissmenated via a 63-page catalogue (published by FORM Gallery), which included an essay by Fryatt and Kemp
Enabling Communities: Community-based innovation in designing for bushfire preparedness
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND: The Australian Commonwealth Government's Social Inclusion Agenda and the trends in the 'Big Society' policies in the UK is calling for citizen involvement and partnerships between community, government agencies and non-profit organisations to problem-solve societal issues. Enabling Communities was led by a research question, how can design enable people to build adaptive capabilities so they can co-design ways to be better prepared for bushfires? This problem was addressed from a user-centred perspective: developing a strategy for knowledge-sharing among local residents and emergency management authority that is specific and applicable to their own contexts. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: Emergency management agencies have realised that their 'command and control' structure reinforces the power-dynamics between the 'expert' fire authorities and the 'non-expert' community, entrenching further dependency by the community. Enabling Communities is a suite of innovative design methods used to facilitate engagement with communities and emergency management to prompt thinking, discussion and share local knowledge in preparing for bushfires. The co-design methods demonstrates the value of design thinking in supporting social innovation for community-based issues. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: A panel of international and interstate judges shortlisted 'Enabling Communities' for the 2012 Premier's Design Awards and the project later won two Good Design Australia awards. These were: the Patron's Prize for Australian Design for an entry that has 'the potential to shape the future economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects of our planet'; and the Education Service award that recognises 'community-centred innovation: co-designing for disaster preparedness'. The Premier's Awards said 'Enabling Communities' demonstrated excellence in collaborative, design-led process in strengthening community resilience in fire disasters
Portfolio of Fashion Presentations: Replique L'Otel & Tableau Vivant
No full textBackground:<br>These works investigate the relationship between fashion design practice and performance and their material conditions. Replique L’Otel extends Evans’ (2013) history of the relationship in modernity between the form and materiality of a fashion collection and the space in which it is shown. In this project the relationship between the dressing of bodies and spaces is not fortuitous but deliberately staged. Tableaux Vivant questions the lesser rank of fashion within the arts, traditionally conceived, for which fashion objects and scenarios often serve as passive material for photographers such as Man Ray, by reversing this priority and returning the products of his art to its origins in fashion.<br><br>Contribution:<br>Replique L’Otel sought to explicate the assumption that a fashion presentation is a performance of dressed bodies in an appropriately presented space by designing and presenting printed garments featuring fabric swatches from the Swiss upholstery manufacturer Création Baumann. Set in hotel suites referencing the salon shows of haute couture, the garments uncannily resembled the wallpapers and furnishings, undermining the material difference between the clothed exteriority of the body and the interior surface of the space. Tableau Vivant referenced Man Ray’s appropriation of fashion images, reversing the material and temporal privilege of photography over fashion in modernist practice. Dresses and millinery referencing his technique was part of a triptych along with a film reproducing solarization techniques (HiBall) and photographs replicating the poses of Miller (Coles), both commissioned by S!X. <br><br>Significance: <br>Replique L’Otel was shown at Melbourne Spring Fashion Week and received in-kind donation ($3000) of rooms by Sofitel. Tableau Vivant was selected for a limited program at the Melbourne Fashion Festival. The projects were selected by panels of experts from the festivals, both of which are the leading cultural programs for fashion in Australia
Temporal Resonance Choirs of Modulation
No full text<p dir="ltr"><b>As part of Cities & Memory network (https://citiesandmemory.com/) Sonic Heritage</b> is the first collection of the sounds of the world's most famous sights. The project presents the sound of 270 <b>UNESCO</b> <b>World</b> <b>Heritage</b> <b>Sites</b> and items of intangible heritage. </p><p dir="ltr">My audiowork creation uses field recording 115 labelled, <b>Hospicio Cabañas at Guadalajara </b>in<b> Mexico. </b>When I first listened to the field recording, I was drawn to its spatial rendering, which made me curious to learn more about the place and its surroundings. Historically, it functioned both as an orphanage and a hospital, with certainly thousands traces of stories. This history, along with the architecture, inspired me to explore the relational characteristics of frequencies, materials, and memories. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by how a cathedral's dome is designed to shape frequencies, creating what could be described as "the chant of the angels." So I started to engage with the volume and height of the space, imagining how sound might behave within it—how frequencies would rapidly reflect across various distances, spreading in all directions within the massive structure of the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara. I engage with Sonic Heritage by focusing on the relational and spatial aspects of sound within historically and culturally significant environments. By interpreting and exploring the acoustics of <b>Hospicio Cabañas</b>, I consider how sound interacts with architecture and memory, emphasizing how sonic imprints persist in spaces with deep historical resonance. I used only the field recording as the primary material, processing it in SuperCollider. I enjoy the forensic nature of coding, allowing me to dissect sound and explore its possibilities.</p>
Falling off the floor
No full text<p dir="ltr">Background: This painting developed via a long-term research focus on ideas around being within unsettled conditions informed by feelings fluidity in our lives. The research investigates ideas of agency and passivity to reflect on how unstructured and unpredictable contexts may affect individual and collective psyches. This research is supported by Rebecca Fortnum and Elizabeth Fisher in their investigations into working via the merging of conscious and unconscious approaches to art practice (2013). The research is also informed by Boris Groys’ ideas that instability and uncanniness are central features of our times and that it is difficult to grasp our reality (2016).</p><p dir="ltr">Significance: This painting poses the question that perhaps it’s not possible to devise an overarching view of our world and we should opt for a survival strategy of radical momentariness, where fragments can be experienced as a totalising instance. ‘Falling off the floor’, puts forward the idea that to be in the contemporary is to experience life as an accumulation of ubiquitous and peculiar moments. Rather than seeking structure within this tumult we could consider the chaotic moments as a sequence of equivalences where what matters is not a rationale, but rather, feeling our way forward. </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution: The inaugural Sorrento Art Prize was selected by committee, with the prize awarded to Gareth Sansom, one of Australia’s most respected contemporary artists. The prize was judged by Alexander Grishin AM, FAHA, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University.</p>
Indeterminate Duration
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Indeterminate duration' is a body of work including site interventions and artefacts, produced during a month-long artist residency in Hamtramck, Detroit. The documentation of these works - plus an additional work produced in Melbourne - was exhibited at Neon Parlour gallery in Melbourne. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Indeterminate Duration' demonstrates Carey's practice which directly negotiates specific sites and situations through drawing, painting, sculpture and process-based interventions within decommissioned buildings and gallery spaces. The production of this body of work is his direct response to the month-long stay at Popps Packing and the greater Detroit area: it speaks to his methodology, which is responsive and allows particular temporal conditions to surface through specific situations. The Popps Packing site was inhabited in time, and specific rendering techniques such as drawing, mark making and maintenance were introduced. These immersive processes materialise immateriality and allow the residue of particular rendering processes to be assembled as collections of materialised and spatialised time; they facilitate new understandings of material engagement with the site, and ways of reconstructing, occupying and honouring interiors. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The Popps Packing residency fosters cultural exchange between local and international artist communities. The engagement with artistic and economic recovery in a post-industrial landscape draws a wide variety of international and national artists to the residency program. The invitation and residency is an international recognition of the significance of Carey's practice. The culminating exhibition at Neon Parlour (Melbourne) includes an exhibition catalogue with an essay by contemporary critic and writer Suzie Attiwill (Associate Professor, RMIT)
Innocent Bystander Winery
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND<br>This new winery and cellar door complex for Innocent Bystander Winemakers is located in the main street of Healesville township in the Yarra Valley, Victoria. The strong architectural form evolves from a diagram in which wine production is stratified into programmatic bands. The long textured panels of Thermomass concrete form the external facade and evoke the programmes within (the barrel store), articulated by a cast image of a vineyard. The defensive concrete box locks into a timber-clad cellar door entry. Here, a large glass wall reveals a section through the barrel store and processing facility, exposing the complexity and alchemy of winemaking to visitors.<br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE<br>The winery continues a line of research by Martyn Hook (IPH) into the manner that the aesthetics of 'environmental architecture' may evolve from landscape, programme and materiality rather than technological systems. It also researches how standard industrial detailing in architectural production may be refined to produce work that is both economic and robust. <br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE<br>The project formed part of the 2007 travelling exhibition and symposium: New Trends in Architecture Europe Asia Pacific, which visited Patras (Greece), Tokyo, Melbourne, Perth, Luxembourg and Barcelona. It has been published in Architectural Review Australia magazine. The design received a positive review from The Age newspaper architectural critic, Norman Day, and won Best Winery Restaurant in The Age Good Food Guide Awards 2007
S!X 2005
No full textThis invitation-only international exhibition was held as part of the 6th International Shibori Symposium and curated by the two leading figures of the World Shibori Network, Yoshiko Imamoto Wada and Hiroko Watanabe. The exhibition included an international range of artists and the brief was to explore the possible ways in which the shibori method of textile pleating and dyeing could be used in the creation of garments. The exhibition aimed to cut across fashion, sculpture, and spatial installation, erasing such tidy classifications, and the artists were encouraged to respond to cloth's tactile surface, much as painters interact with canvas and sculptors work with clay.<br><br>S!X was chosen as a leading exponent of the contemporary, rather than traditional, use of shibori. The aim was to employ shibori techniques to create fashion rather than decorative display pieces or so-called wearable art, which in reality rarely rise above the level of the kitsch. For the exhibition, an embroidered fan-pleated skirt, a shibori-pleated and dyed cardigan, and an accessory made from a jacket lapel, which further explored the way in which traditional tailored garments might be put to novel uses, were created. A measure of the success of the work was the degree to which it freed itself from connotations of traditional, indigenous craft techniques.<br><br>S!X was one of only two recognised fashion designers in the exhibition, which also included international textile artists. These included: Patricia Black, Joan McGee, Marian Clayden, Mascha Mioni, Angelina DeAntonis, Aisling McLaughlin, Genevieve Dion, Hiroaki Ohya, Ray Harris, Jeung-Hwa Park, Ana Lisa Hedstrom, Barbara Rogers, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Yoko Ito, Carter Smith, Mie Iwatsubo, Futoshi Tanaka, Mary Jaeger, Yvonne Wakabayashi, Elisa Ligon