Sauerbier House
Sauerbier House consits of two dedicated artist studios and two gallery spaces for showing AiR work. I have been allocated the Riverside Studio. It is a four metre square studio with good daylight and electric light, four large panels for working on tables and chairs. The facilities are really good with key access for evening and weekend working. Sauerbier House is 50 metres from the Onkarparinga / Ngangkiparingga (women’s) river. The landscape is formed of bi-cultural
environment (Aboriginal and European) reflected in place, land management and
agricultural practice. The river and coastline forms the main focus for the AiR, and engagement with cultural, social and environmental
aspects of this complex and culturally significant coastal area influence my conceptual and perceptual thinking. Whilst my response is largely sensory, objective and visual, the subjective contexts of sustainability, climate change and history are very apparent. In these terms the idea of 'scape' has been developed as forming visual responses to the place seen and in the case of my project, recalled.
I was able to bring some art materials with me including 19 new canvases fitting into a black suitcase (reference #luggage art) that caused much discussion at Adelaide airport immigration control! The suitcase with brushes and some paints arrived into Sauerbier House on Friday 5th October, also picking up a couple of larger canvases from the Colonnades at Noarlunga Centre. On the previous day I took the train to downtown Adelaide to visit Premier Arts suppliers in King William Street to stock up on watecolour paper (Canson 200g) Chroma A2 and Jo Jonas acrylic paint, drawing materials (charcoal, chalk and compressed charcoal) and large A1 paper that usefully folded over in the black suitcase. After a brief but highly productive visit to the Art Gallery of South Australia, I was basically all set to begin work.
My aim (as in the previous post) is to explore Place. In approaching the new landscape, sensory, perceptive and intellectual
responses will contrast with a biographical notion of place in relation to home
territory, defined as ‘scapes’.
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| First sketchbook studies 4.10.18 |
Initially in the first two weeks, I plan to work with drawing
materials, pencils, charcoal and chalks in sketchbooks and on paper to research
initial visual ideas found whilst exploring the area. The visual dynamic of the shape of the river will almost inevitably form
the drawn element of the initial studies. being able to easily walk to the coastline and further down stream on both sides of the large curving river meant ample opportunity for drawing. The small sketchbook I bought with me and the larger A3 sketchbook bought in Noarlunga with a shiny flat surface to the paper that works really well with the compressed charcoal pencil, proved very useful in getting to know this place.
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| A3 sketchbook studies 6.10.18 |
The process of drawing here is to familiarise myself visually with the place. The time taken walking and drawing, looking and searching for an image is all part of the digesting of the subject. In getting to know the place, the elements and characteristics infiltrate onto ones perceptive memory defining blueprints of information, stored for later studio development.
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| A3 sketchbook studies 6.10.18 |
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| A3 sketchbook studies 6.10.18 |
For this project, that in many ways is very different from my usual methodology; this initial information gathering stage is crucial. I am also using lens based media as I find photographs very useful in recording quickly detail and vista that otherwise might well be forgotten. Lens based media is particularly good for recording colour configuration. My direction is that through process, the
research will be used in the studio to create a series of acrylic
paintings reflecting on the visual identity of the place: facets transformed
into pictorial compositions of colour, the aesthetics of ‘scape’.
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| A3 sketchbook studies 6.10.18 |
In these early studies,
recognisable aspects of the location, townscape, estuary and landscape are naturally evident. As I search for a developed abstraction through process, form will simplify, trying to locate the essence of the place.
Supported by an International Opportunities Fund Grant from
Wales Arts International
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