Posts Tagged ‘landscape’

TREE SPHERES

Participating Artists/Designers: Tom Chudleigh

Canandian designer Tom Chudleigh’s tree spheres are suspended ball-shaped houses that use the forest as its foundation, creating an architectural feat that puts its resident at one with nature. The physics of the project borrows heavily from sailboat construction and rigging and the spheres are supported through a series of ropes tied to the surrounding trees.

Tree Spheres

THE WAYWARD PLANTS REGISTRY

Participating Artists/Designers:
Heather Ring
Amy Seek
Alison Scott
Teresa Diaz
Bryan Boyer
Emilee Yawn
Jeff Ring (for the original database)
Travis Douglas (for smuggling wayward plants across state borders)
Robin Amer
Jaimes Mayhew
Maura Rockcastle (and her car, R.I.P.)
Javier Arbona
iKatun
Archinect
The Bitter Melon Council
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things 

The Wayward Plant Registry is a public art initiative dedicated to the rehabilitation of unwanted plants. The project functions as a kind of guerilla ‘landscape architecture’, ostensibly plotting lines of  flight amongst humans. The project raises questions about the symbolic role of the ‘natural’ landscape in the city/country divide.

Wayward Plants Registry

JOY SMITH : Cubed Landscape

Wool and cotton; woven tapestry (on cardboard cube)

Mostly my tapestries are small, flat and framed — but I could not remove the word ‘cube’ from the theme CITY|COUNTRY. So I have ended up combining both in this piece.

CITY|COUNTRY is a very familiar theme to me; I am often making comparisons as both places have desirable qualities. I am no different to most other people; enjoying the space, calmness and beauty of the country, I also find I need the convenience, stimulation and ‘vibe’ of city life.

Having spent my first 20 years in the country before I moved to the city, I feel I have a foot in both spaces, and each year I have 5 or 6 trips from the city to the country and back. This contrasting vista has influenced me so much that last year I exhibited 35 woven tapestries on this theme.

ROBYN PHELAN : Ornaments for Return

Hand built porcelain paper clay, stoneware glazes

Ornaments for Return are a series of sculptural landscapes that capture two contrasting horizon line views, one from the balcony windows of North Melbourne and one of the mountains approaching Merrijig in Victoria’s high country.

Tourists buy souvenirs as a take-away memory. Ornaments for Return acts as a personalised and tangible reminder of my CITY|COUNTRY experience.

Growing up in a suburban division in the 1970s was like living life on the periphery of something greater; home was both marginalized from the city and remnant of the country. It whet my appetite for both.

I now live a life divided between two contrasting environments. Unlike the permanent tree-changer or the city dweller who has made a full commitment to rural living, my life would lack balance lived entirely in one of either locations. However, it is immensely fulfilling moving between the two.

NATALIA MILOSZ-PIEKARSKA : Forest for the Fences

Timber, enamel paint, cotton; hand whittled and painted

Populations grow and urbanisation spreads. Forests become cities and natural landscapes become private property. We flatten hills and replace trees with fences as we conquer, control and contain land in pursuit of a little something that we can call ours. A haven divided from the rest of the world by a thin line bordering mine from yours. We cut, shape and mould a home, a garden, a sanctuary from land that provides much of what we need to satisfy our nesting needs. As we continue to spread, to cut and divide, to manipulate and consume our natural resources, how much do we forgo when we can no longer see the forest for the fences?

VICTORIA MASON : Tyre Swan

Sterling Silver and cold enamel; rolled, sawpierced, filed, cast, polished and painted

This Sterling Silver Tyre Swan is part of a group of swans I make. It reminds me childhood holidays driving out to the country when my sister and I would peer through the car windows trying to be the first one to call out “swan!”. Around that same time there was a house I used to walk past which had all of that beautiful Australian flair – a post box held up by a stiffened chain, garden gnomes, a driveway flanked by scalloped half tyres painted white, and of course the tyre swans as both hanging plant basket variety and the ‘sitting’ plant holder.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one in the wild, so this is a tribute for long car trips and Nannas’ gardens.

LIZ LOW : Fragment

Thrown and constructed porcelain

Fragment stands alone and worn. Once part of a vibrant coral formation, it is bleached and eroded, waiting for the next storm to knock it to the sea bed.

This Fragment is part of a system of supply, demand, degradation and aggregation.

Increasing city populations and export markets demand more sugar. Sugar farming in Queensland expands. Excess fertilizer and turbid runoff affect the corals of the Great Barrier Reef. The coral dies, bleaches and erodes. The coral particles will accumulate and, in time, perhaps form a white sandy beach.

City. . . Country. . . Sea.

LIZ JONES : Alpine Snow Globe Brooch

Recycled Lino, laminex, plastic

The snow globe captures a small slice of the country within its transparent sphere and allows those in the city to experience snow capped Alps and alpine wildlife without having to leave their urban environment.

Snow globes were traditionally a souvenir from a holiday out of town. A quick shake and a wintry rural wonderland will appear wherever you are, evoking the indelible memories of a childhood trip to the snow.

This snow globe brooch has been crafted from recycled linoleum rescued from a house in inner city Melbourne and a country house in Clunes. The plastic rabbits (from a child’s coat hanger) sit happily in the rural tableaux, although their gaudy colours are decidedly urban.

SATELLITE EXHIBITIONS: Melbourne


Anita Cummins’ Pompoms


Bio-accessory by Brittany Veitch and Ben Landau

PANTONE POMPOM
by Anita Cummins
Dates: Tuesday 30 June – Saturday 22 August
Venue: Mailbox 141, Entrance 141-143 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

Explores the relationship between colour, landscape and urban topography.

Anita Cummins is a Melbourne based textile artist. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Creative Arts. Having exhibited in a number of group shows, Anita is making her debut as an independent artist with her installation Pantone PomPom. Anita is an obsessive knitter and maker of pom-poms and has recently launched a commercial range of handmade scarves under her own name.

 

BIO-ACCESSORIES
by Brittany Veitch and Ben Landau
Dates: Sunday 2 – Sunday 30 August
Artist talk: Saturday 8 August, 2pm @ City Library Seminar Room
Venue: City Library Niches, 253 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

Living in the city isolates us from the natural world. Built environments are barriers to greenery, fresh air, sea breezes and sunlight. Skyscrapers soar above us instead of trees, while laneway stench emanates from the city grid. Bio-accessories is a series of wearable couture pieces which mask the unpleasant sights, sounds and scents of the city in an attempt to bring some of the natural world back into civil living.

Each work in Bio-accessories incorporates a living organism to accompany the wearer throughout their day, creating a symbiotic relationship. The human tends to the animal or plant, which reciprocates by bringing fresh air, light, greenery, privacy or birdsong to the wearer. The pieces are representative of mobile natural environments, framed within a fashionable alternative the couture accessory. With a trend towards boutique individuality, Bio-accessories provide an unusual take on the wearable garment.

Bio-accessories is an experimental speculation of responsive, functional, fashionable and emotional craft within a city living context.

Ben Landau recently graduated from Industrial Design at RMIT, where his focus was on interactive, exhibition, experience and theatre design. He is currently a freelance designer, working at Melbourne Museums MV studios and tutoring at RMIT. Bens interests stem from speculative and experimental designs which examine the way people interact with each other and their environment. Ben hopes to travel, learn every day, design valuable experiences for users/audiences and continue to work with creative companies of various disciplines, in Australia and abroad.

Brittany Veitch is a Melbourne based felt and soft sculpture artist. In late 2007, Brittany created The Vibrant City to incubate ideas and give a home to an ever-increasing collection of hand-sewn curios. Brittany makes designer hand-sewn toys and soft sculpture, influenced by macabre and kooky humour using handmade felt and vintage fabrics. A self-taught textile enthusiast, Brittanys interest in working with natural fibres stems from her family’s Alpaca farm. As a trained Industrial Designer (BA Design, Industrial Design, RMIT University, 2007), Brittany is a Toymaker at heart, with a love for all things fabric, the tragically cute and Cribbage.