Tag Archives: Inflight ARI

Drive West Today’s 2012 wrap up

22 Dec

DWT had the most prolific year ever in 2012 with 15 concerts, some tours of mainland Australia and Europe and two mini-albums released.

I gotta say that the gig where I played best was the NOW now concert in August, but unfortunately there is no recording … it is slowly flowing out into the stars, mingled with other noise from Sydney at that time.

Some other highlight gigs this year were

the Pontevedra gig in Galicia, Spain, where I met some absolutely lovely people and played to a very attentive crowd

the recent gig in Hobart where I played with Matt Warren in a sort-of impromptu arrangement – the first gig of the Hovering Waitresses.

A concert in May at the Moonah Arts Centre where I worked in some sports commentary from a Carlton Blues game which worked a TREAT!!

I’d like to thank all the people I played with on various tours and whatnot, people who helped gigs happen and people who came and told me they liked my music! Met some rad people and had a blast. Big thanks to the beautiful Nadine Kessler for supporting me and making great tour posters. xxoo

2013 starts with an exciting gig where I will be playing with cartoonist Chris Downes as he draws the images for a ghost/horror story at the Rosny Barn as part of MONA FOMA 2013 … hopefully as an artist at the festival I can sidle up to David Byrne and get someone to take a sneaky pic when I hug him by stealth!!

thanks guys!!!

jxo

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Process diary #4 – November installation

6 Nov

Installing the Sleuth exhibition has been interesting … and took a lot longer than I thought … but I should’ve known since in some cases I was putting up each individual panel from a comic on the wall separately.

Here’s a picture of the Box of Virtue

The process of installing (which I suspected from the beginning) would help me edit out those comics that didn’t work. I had 17 comics in total as part of Sleuth … and a few got the cut. One consideration that I hadn’t fully considered which became blindingly obvious when I was in the space was that a few of the comics which I had as part of the broader Sleuth concept were written not for the wall, but for the page. I had written one comic about a giantess called the Waldheimerin (she had been sleeping in Dove Lake at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, near the Waldheim). It became obvious that pages with a few panels on them just didn’t work in this setting. The ones that were easiest to read across a wall were quite simply – the ones that I had designed to be read that way … perhaps that seems obvious now … but I had simply assumed that it would be workable to place comics that were written for books to be read across a wall if arranged or cut up and rearranged perhaps. So they got the cut. I still had the Long Weekend Intro which I felt had a personal element that I wanted as part of the show but this was also written for the page – my only solution to being able to keep it was to put it on the outside of the Paddy Lyn Memorial space as a lead-in to the exhibition so it’s clunkiness didn’t detract from the rest of the exhibition. The Waldheimerin is still in the zine, which is kind of nice to have some of the comics already part of the ongoing Sleuth project rather than having them all on the walls just for the sake of having them there.

Here’s a photo of one of the versions of God – Stephen Kernahan

One interesting thing I forgot to mention from the process was the fact that since having a comics exhibition is a relatively untried area – I don’t know how much the average viewer is willing to invest in reading a comic. As a consequence I made a decision right from the beginning that this fast drawing comics was the way to go, since I felt that pace had to be relatively quick to keep the viewers interested. It isn’t like a book which they have sat down with and have intuitively committed to reading the pages more patiently – this particular exhibition would have people potentially walking in who have various expectations only to be met with art that requires some attention span, possibly a format that they were not anticipating

… therefore I needed some comics to have plenty of hooks, some humour to keep them interested in staying for longer and reading the rest and deciphering the overall feel of it. I don’t know if I was successful, I’m not sure at all … the larger images of the giants were part of that, the single images on the roof of the footy players may actually give the viewers cause to think that it is a normal exhibition that you just look at single images and then walk out if you don’t get it – they may indeed be confusing to the whole intention of keeping people in. But of course – you can’t always retain every art goer in a room, but the aim was to retain as many as I could. The ARI allows for this experiment to fall a little flat so I went in with full gusto into at least giving it a crack … Most people who went in on the first day said that it was quite engaging, and easy to engage with – which is promising!!

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Sleuth Exhibition

4 Nov

Images from the Sleuth Exhibition which opened yesterday

– will be open until November the 30th at Inflight Art Gallery in Hobart,
1-5pm Wed – Saturday in the Paddy Lyn space which is in the back of the gallery.

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Sleuth – process diary #3: October

4 Oct

So I’ve got a month to go till the exhibition at Inflight Art gallery alongside the well known Neil Haddon. The process so far has been very interesting, I’m still not completely sure how it will look or how the comics will be arranged (I have some thoughts about certain sequences which make up the spine of the comic).

The many comics that I’ve drawn … I count 17 in total … appear to have developed a life of their own … stories are demanding to be written. Which is odd, I set out to let the space between the stories write themselves and I feel like I’ve become a bit of a puppet for the story – it’s telling me what to write, to fill in that space, which wasn’t the plan at all!! I tried to hold back, but it’s out of control.

Some of my favourite characters so far have surprised me – there’s this one who I just labelled the Academic, here he is with Ivan Brackic.

He reads quotes from out of a pile of books – mostly paragraphs that detail the fragility of the modern Australia placed delicately upon this natural world which we’ve held ourselves subtly separate from over time, we seem no closer to becoming one with it. It is an archetypal monster that dwells in the back of our minds.

Then there’s lots of characters in this large panorama that I’ve made

This was based on some old sketches I made whilst sitting on a bench in King’s Cross of people walking by in 2011. I drew lots of people in this version of it, the paper is about four metres long …

I have yet to write the script for this piece, it will be superimposed upon the image. I have some ideas but I’ve purposely tried to keep elements of improvisation in this highly constructed form called comics. I keep a theme, but usually I am forcing myself to keep most of my initial gutfeelings about the words – trying to use my intuition to detect the truths within topics. Slightly terrifying, as I have read over some of the other stuff, and there are glitches all over the place that don’t quite run well together, but there are other bits which even surprise me.

I am currently getting the first Sleuth zine #1 printed, folded and stapled this week – it has a few different comics from the exhibition arranged in a slightly multi-layered fashion to echo the method that I am using in the exhibition as best as can be done in the print format. Can’t wait to see it !!

There are some interesting problems with arranging comics in space – although some conventions to do with reading need to be followed, there are less traditions that need to be followed overall – we don’t have to arrange things left to right or top to bottom. I chose to do this unthinkingly initially because I was thinking generally about how people should move through the space and I wanted them to move around in a clockwise fashion, but technically they could start at any point in the room and read any one of the stories at any time … so this really is not necessary. As I moved on with the development I noticed this was irrelevant and intentionally tried out a right to left comic for the roof (a space that defies the movement of the rest of the room) and some vertical comics.

I have also included a comic with a looped section that moves around two walls and interacts with three different horizontal comics which was quite fun and fluid. I have found more and more that the tying together of separate stories seems to create dialogue between the art and the themes. If you keep the themes totally different between the comics but create a definite physical link between the two – the imagination strives to understand the link even more – and finds links. The human mind’s desire to find patterns is a powerful tool.

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Pages 102-105

12 Aug

previous pages 99-101
For the rest of the graphic novel go here

I’m quite fond of these pages … I’m a bit of a dag but I find them funny. I didn’t change much with the text in these sections. The cannibalism section is a little shocking in contrast to the rest of the comic which doesn’t have fantasy sections which are quite so full-on … but I think that’s a nice way to break the comic up a bit and refresh the reader throughout these long cadenzas of wordiness and concepts. I was worried that long periods of lecture-like talking might be a little grating so the jokes and munching were a necessity.

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The Sleuth Exhibition – process diary #2 – late May

24 May

See process diary #1

So things appear to be cracking along … well slowly.

I have two major projects on the go with lots of other things slowly coming to boil that I have to check on every now and then.

Sleuth is starting to take shape in sort of the manner that I had anticipated – each of the stories that I had plotted out I strategically left as vague as possible so that when I came to each one I could take it and mould it to the space that I had available on the wall. Of course this is sort of much the same as making a story that fits 28 pages or so and then plotting it out etc. I have already made one story that is far too long and my only solution is to reduce the size of the images so that it fits into something across the wall that works amongst the others. The risk with having some stories that take too long to read is that the viewers won’t want to read too many before they move on … this may be an unrealistic fear, it is difficult to capture people’s attention for too long in galleries … but of course comics may be somewhat different in this respect, I don’t know what other comicers’ experience is with respect to this. Perhaps people do hang around for longer.

I have managed about 6 comics so far. As I have been completing each of the comics I have been sticking them up on the walls of my study so that I get a sense of the way they might be read across the walls. There are already a few different sizes of panels and some without panels at all. I have also decided to have what I call a BANG panel – that is a very large panel at the beginning which sets the scene by way of introduction or by having a huge image to start with then having the following panels much smaller attached to the image, hopefully drawing the viewers into each of the stories. I haven’t got digital versions of these examples yet to give you a sense but perhaps later.

I told you about my intention to write really quick comics and to draw them in such a way that they don’t take too long so as to produce more comics. So far I’ve managed to stick to that concept, I have found it to be a very interesting way to write comics. I have insisted on keeping the process very improvised, even the scripts are somewhat dictated by the images, characters’ body language have changed the script in numerous places (because I wrote the words after having drawn the images, in one example I have drawn the entire comic before I knew what words would accompany it). There’s something extraordinarily satisfying in drawing comics quickly, especially after doing such a long-winded and hand-chiselled comic like the Long Weekend. It feels more organic, more exciting and more in-keeping with the way in which I make music.

Enjoying it so far, November here I come.

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Carlton Blues 2012 Premiers Round #7 Marc Murphy

10 May

For other pictures in the series – go here

I’ve had a headache these last few weeks with my own little dream-team competition. Drawing one a week has turned problematic with injuries … Yarran was supposed to have reached 50 games last week so I drew him, but he turned out injured and Waite was supposed to reach 150 games this week but he was rested so he should reach that next week … and if Yarran comes in next week they will BOTH reach that milestone on the same week and only one of them gets their picture – yes that Carlton team is pretty tight for spots in the weekly picture!! I feel like Brett Ratten trying to choose the team here. Injuries cause selection headaches …

Same headache last week with Eddie Betts reaching 150 and Shaun Hampson reaching 50 games I had to select Eddie … but Shaun will have his day in the light – he’s having a scorcher of a season so far and will only get better by the looks of him.

SO – here’s ol’ faithful – 2011’s best and fairest at the club – the midfield general !!!!!

No longer Judd’s right-hand man … he’s become a great unto himself – but completely team oriented!

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Moonah Arts Centre

4 May

Looking forward to playing some more of the Acousmatic Series of music at this event tomorrow night.
Thanks to Andrew Harper for organising this one in my home suburb!!
SEE YOU FROM 6pm!

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Amos

23 Mar

Another character in my sketchbook at the moment … striding around the desert, taking three fingered jacks out of the soles of his feet and muttering into his beard.
He’s also part of my end of year exhibition … and he is a giant.

 

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Vulpes Vulpes

22 Mar

More of the Tasmanian fox … this picture was part of my visual ramblings in my sketch book whilst searching for themes for my exhibition coming up later in the year in Hobart.

Here’s the fox image I put up before … it was related to some of the many media articles I had been reading about the fox eradication program here in Tassie which is apparently the largest pest control program of its kind in any one area in the world. They use the unpopular 1080 poison which also tends to kill pets and other predators … in Tasmania that means the already heavily endangered tassie devils … and any tigers that may still be lurking … keep your eyes open and your mouths shut if you see one (tigers that is … open your mouth if its a fox).

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