voussoirs: SWELL SCULPTURE FESTIVAL 2016 CATALOGUE

Friday, 23 September 2016

SWELL SCULPTURE FESTIVAL 2016 CATALOGUE

The 2016 catalogue of the Swell Sculpture Festival held at Currumbin Beach, Queensland, Australia has been published here to illustrate the review and commentary of this event: see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/swell-sculpture-festival-2016-more-of.html

This allows all sculptures to be illustrated and all texts associated with each work to be included in order to cover the broad scope of this outdoor exhibition as compactly and completely as possible.

The SWELL LIST 2016 below gives a brief commentary on each work.

THE SWELL LIST 2016

Note: The # tag represents those artists who exhibited in 2013: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/swell-sculpture-festival-2013.html

The * tag represents artists who exhibited in 2014: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/swell-sculpture-festival-2014.html

The ^ tag represents artists who exhibited in 2015: see -

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/swell-sculpture-festival-2015-art-of.html

There are 14 out of 48, nearly one third, (c.f. 19 out of the 55, nearly one third in 2015, and 21 out of 66 in 2014), who have submitted again this year. As was said in 2014: 'It is this core of repeated style, even materials, that gives the 2015 festival a feeling of the familiar that somewhat stifles one’s enthusiasm for creativity, its discovery; its experience - surprise and intrigue. One sees only variations of more of the same.' No more, or any different words, need to be said in 2016.

Comments have been jotted down on each work by way of a general overview, and to assist in the reassessment of the works with time. One's opinions do change, but they need substance to ponder, to assess and to challenge ideas and thoughts, to give something tangible to stimulate debate. First thoughts can be wrong: well, different to later ones; challenged by them, perhaps.

*#^01 Christopher Trotter Wheelie Hi Vis’ An Industrial Life Saver

An interesting, subtle change in Trotter’s work. This simple ‘lifebuoy’ presence ironically made of massive pipe connections, quaintly plays with perceptions while carrying ambivalent messages that concern.

02 Erica Gray Venemous Blue

A big bundle of markings on baggy forms that remind of the octopus, but seem struggle to maintain this identity. The sculpture seems happy to remain a deflated bundle of octopus-like markings ready to be revitalised: was it ever inflated?

03 Tom Emmett Hang Ten [Love Isn’t Only A Feeling]

Is this a bubble blower? One is reminded of the ring that delights children as it is dipped into detergent and blown; but the delight here is minimised, stylised. The reference to landscape is tenuous, even if it the view through the loop that holds a strange ‘dental’ quality about it.

04 Lisa Sorbie Martin Stillness In Time

This is an interesting piece, nicely made and detailed. It gives beautiful shadows. The text seems to read more into the work than one can appreciate or experience. Is it too hopeful?

05 Andrew Cullen & Kara Vaughan Anti-dote

Wiry little creatures! Quaintly art? - but not pompous.

06 Clayton Thompson Project Bread

It is always difficult to manage a political statement with artworks that manipulate form and beauty, but this is a good effort touching somewhat on Babylon. It is sad that this wonderful idea demeans itself with its title and references. It touches on Borobudur, and on the pyramids at Giza with its presence and qualities, and other really strong geometrical ideas. It is ingenious in its structure and assemblage. I see it as a possible winner, but it seems to have denied itself this outcome with its enigmatic ‘Bread’ politics. It is one of the few sculptures that has a role in the landscape while maintaining an intimacy and intrigue in its detail.

07 Joe Stark Swell’s Pumping

Jokey art stays more jokey than art. It is always difficult to overcome the pun. This work struggles with this problem.

^08 Ben Carroll Nothnig But Time

This work reminds one of the carved aboriginal poles at Kangaroo Point. Each work operates on a different level. Here, the tiny pieces make the wholes that stand with a delightful authority in the esplanade, as though made for it. The Gold Coast City Council should purchase this and leave it here. It is a very alluring work.

09 Pamela Lee Brenner & Johannes Muljana Bubble [Fountain Of Zero]

This piece seems to have been inspired by the famous Kings Cross fountain that has been so successful as a civic landmark. The artwork is nicely made but gets messy in the centre. It is not clear whether the bulbs should have been in or out. The light catches the cut plastic bottles very nicely.

10 Emma Anna AWES_ME

Plays on words, like puns, rarely transform themselves into quality art. This piece suffers from this game, but remains interesting because of its reference to another game, with its pieces displayed with this change in scale. Unfortunately the familiar feel of the pieces, their smooth precision, is lost up close when one discovers the parts made of roughly cast concrete.

11 Vanessa Stanley Into The Daylight

A lovely surprising play of light that surprises, but unfortunately it is somewhat like a circus fair game: the mirror maze. It is difficult to take playful art seriously.

12 Sara Irannejad Multiverse

This delightful work intrigues. The stumps puzzle from the distance, but the decoration on the surfaces of the cuts is beautiful. One can sense the cultural references here: aboriginal trees; Islamic decoration and markings. Maybe it should have been called Markings after Dag Hammarskjöld little book and the United Nations reference that it holds.

13 Antone Bruinsma Beach Blossom

Stone blossoms are always difficult to handle. The stone here is very beautiful, nicely worked and finished. Unfortunately, it is the flower that jars awkwardly both as a mass and a colour.

*#^14 Greg Quinton Look From The Other Side

This piece has an inherent problem. It uses the fair game model of ‘put your face here on the fat lady,’ e.g., and asks one to try to put oneself into the position of a refugee child - ‘look form the other side,’ but what at? It is not funny; nor is it artful: just extremely awkward. Its prettiness also belies, belittles its serious intent.

15 Clare Urquhart Affordable Housing Initiative

Did this artist run out of time, or ideas? This seemingly shabby, ad hoc outcome challenges one, not on the basis of its title and any concerns that might come from this subject, but with its apparent slap-happy quality that chucks a few blue tarps around on a couple of sticks, stencils them and gives it a title and an ‘arty’ price because of its unique claim to be ‘ART.’

16 Lynne Adams Save Our Seabed

This work is playfully creative and inventive. Its political/environmental message can be sustained with this diversity of plastic that keeps the interest and intrigue alive. The colour and forms seem to overcome the weight of the issue with their presence.

^17 Dave Hickson Pigeons For Peace

The wooden image in the catalogue is far more attractive than the metal forms one sees on the grass. One has to struggle to see the ‘bird’ qualities in this welded weight. Wood appears to have a greater affinity with the idea.

18 Holly Pepper Mourning The Reef

Sadness does not rise in the native experience of this piece that is neat and precise, catching the light with interesting flickers. One needs to understand the text to understand the theme of the work and its issues. The piece has a lovely, beachy translucence.

19 B J Price The Alpha Turtle

A big one! It is impressive. One does wonder about such quality outcomes as this being on the merry-go-round of exhibitions. Was it invited? Did it come as an exhibition piece or as part of the festival seeking a prize? It is a very nice work with wonderful patterns. One is still struggling to understand the artist’s message in the pattern that is apparently there; but it is nicely made and decorated: rather spectacular.

^20 Tessa Bergan The Wash

Puns do no hold power in art: artists should recognise this. Puns can exist but never as the core of a work – c.f. Antonio Gaudi’s works. Art needs other roots. That this punning seeks greater depth than wash of water on the beach – first fleet and wash away sins - only makes one cringe more. Why do artists do this? What/where is the search for beauty/wonder?

21 Nick Warfield Gangarru

This is an astonishing work. It reminds one of an early Chris Trotter in wood. The sculpture has all of the rigour and energy of the animal in the choice of the parts that have a dual presence – furniture and kangaroo.

*#^22 Daniel Clemmett Jobs, Growth And The Anthropocene

Gosh, the technique is always taking over from the message in this artist’s work, as one recalls that of other years. One is puzzled by the words and the image. The work seems to lack coherence. It appears to be a struggle for meaning in an ad hoc idea.

^23 Rebecca Cunningham Resonance

Brassy! A playful piece of ‘science.’ Some visitors tried it out with mixed results. As a sculpture, one is left looking and wondering – art or gadget?

*^24 Giuseppa Filardo Finders Keepers

Lost? Yes. Found? No – but one might guess the idea. The big black ‘diamond’ that has been made so roughly changes ideas and feelings about this piece; but the work does have a lovely presence as pearls - too big to lose?

25 Katie & Derek Hooper With You

Is over-size a good enough variation to claim ‘art’? The text talks about its title, about ‘togetherness,’ but do two big chairs carry this sense? Maybe tiny might have been a better, but less impressive way to touch tenderness.

^26 Wayne Markwort Lobster Claw Hand Boy

One struggles to see quality here. There is something awkward in this work. Why lobster claws? Has the artist a problem with hands? A ‘confused, detached and mutated figure’? Has the theme been chosen to reflect the quality of the work, or vice versa?

*^27 Dion Parker I Was Here

A pissing dog is playful, especially when under the ‘NO DOG’ sign. The work has a sweet, compact and iconic identity that gives it some special substance as an object.

28 Shelly Kelly Monacle

This simple piece struggles to overcome its ordinariness in expressing what it is. The price-tag seems to hint at some mystery as ‘art’ that one can never really touch or feel.

29 Karl de Waal The Lost Art Of The 20th Century

?? What’s lost? Perhaps one’s tolerance is tested rather than lost. It is really difficult to stretch the experience beyond a few old boxes t’art’ed up. The tension leaves one not questioning the contents of the boxes, but the content as art.

*#^30 Mike Van Dam Life Is A Masquerade

One is familiar with the chain technique that seems to take over and reference other expressions of other years. These masks struggle to hold authority, although the decorated form has a Venetian strength and identity that works well.

31 Kirsten Baade Swirls

One is reminded of Jean Nouvel’s Arab Institute wall in Paris. This wall uses the camera iris as sun control. This artwork on the beachfront adds colour and little vistas. It is beautifully made and works well. The colour and movement intrigue, opening up changing glimpses through little portholes.

32 James Worth Seafaring Voyager

An interesting piece of metal work that looks like a twin seat. The words seem to unnecessarily force an idea.

33 Liesa Russell Cocoons

A beautifully made work with naturalistic references that do not seem to challenge one to go beyond the material and the technique.

34 Alex Polo & Michael Dowling Danicing In The Sun

The cut-out technique has become so familiar that one is left a little unsurprised, while always being impressed at how well it works. One has seen it all before. Peter Cole used this idea in the EXPO held in Brisbane in 1988. His work was relocated to the Kangaroo Point Boardwalk along the Brisbane River some years after the EXPO. This new artwork gives new stances on the beach. It photographs well. It is a clever re-interpretation of the planar silhouette model, with angles and folds in the steel sheet that creates interesting and changes perceptions.

35 Indra Stephenson Mermaid

A very strange and enigmatic object – the reversal of the mermaid? It looks poorly made and seems somewhat drab.

36 Greg Windsor Lighfbooat

A wooden mass is supposed to ask the question: ‘What does it mean to value?’ One still does not know. The mystery apparently remains in the artist’s head.

*#^37 Scott Maxwell Club House

Again, this work has the problem of art puns. It was suggested before the title was known that it might be ‘Tee House.’ Indeed it could be so; but what does one make of this beyond the play on words and ideas - seeing golf clubs as a shed?

^38 Kris Martin Earth Being

The Buddha eyes suggest something else than enclosure. A technically beautiful thing that is ‘eye-catching.’

39 Lauren Gray & Steven Hing Message In A Bottle

A lovely piece of decorative bottle tops. The message seems more about beauty and colour than environment.

*#^40 Monte Lupo Sandy The Dog Walker

This work feels like garden gnomes, plaster-cast clichés. One grimaces at the dogs, their naive forms. The work is neither playful nor serious; until a dog arrives and tries to join the troupe!

41 Matthew Bird From Creek To Coast

Nice birds; not a really good seat. One could feel threatened. It generates recollections of the rise of the Third Reich: its re-birth?

42 Village Bike Gold Coast (Inc) Wind In The Wheelos

This is a delightful piece of machinery doing more than it seems to be engaged in. It attracts the eye with its ‘bikey’ detailing. A simple joy.

43 Alicia Lane Rainforest Remnants

These pieces are very pretty. They have a lovely quality of seed pods. The copper is appropriate and works well with the expression and their location. It will weather nicely.

44 Potts & Jim Blower The Rusty Plank

Rusty planks stay rusty planks. One struggles to get joy from this large, rusty piece. The Beach Boys pun creates a struggle.

45 Tim Elliot & Kate Millington Kingfisher

A big bird, but a sentinel? Kingfishers are not beach birds. It is a beautifully made work.

46 Georgia Morgan Flow Of The Seafaring

An artful work that seems to leave one appreciating the effort without knowing the reason why, or its emotional references. John Betjeman once commented on his poems being put to dance and music, saying: “I don’t know if it adds anything, but I appreciate the effort.”

47 Oatricia Hoffie & David Sawtell Kyoto Photocol Revenant

A lovely set of quirky silhouettes that appear to have very little to do with climate change.

48 Glenn Barry & Neville Torrisheba Bujerum Means Spirit In Yugembeh Language

Netting dreams – are the artists dreaming? It is a great disappointment that the hill, its prominence, has not been enhanced as an icon. One can talk about things being subtle, discovered, etc., but it would have been wonderful to have had a landmark for the festival. The event seems to lack presence this year.

THE WINNER OF THE SWELL SCULPTURE AWARD 2016

No comments:

ON GARDENING

I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exulted criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants, but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the best. Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden Mitchell Beazley London 1998 – Introduction (first published 1908)

MORE IS LESS

Significantly, in the era of the ‘information revolution’, the same process is now affecting disinformation: whereas in the past it was lack of information and censorship which characterized the denial of democracy by the totalitarian state, the opposite is now the case. Disinformation is achieved by flooding TV viewers with information, with apparently contradictory data. The truth of the facts is censured by over-information, as we have seen from the press and television discussing the Balkans. The globalitarian state, built out of economic-strategic alliances, is no longer old ‘Anastasia’ with her scissors: it is Babel. Now more is less. And in some cases, less than nothing. Deliberate manipulation and unintentional accidents have become indistinguishable.

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

‘That which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause,’ claims the wisdom of the ancients. p.76

As Negroponte has rightly remarked, with the ‘liberation of information’ on the Web, what is most lacking is meaning or, in other words, a context into which Internet users could put the facts and hence distinguish truth from falsehood. On the Web, where, as everyone knows, the terrorist temptation is constant and where depredations of hackers are committed with impunity in a strange state of legal indeterminacy, the difference between (true) information and (false) deception fades a little more each day. In entering the looking-glass worlds of television and home computers, we are in the end left in the position of Kinglake’s old ‘English soldiery’. As they saw it,

insofar as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no size, no shape and was made up of nothing . . . In such conditions, each separate gathering . . . went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging.

As Albert Camus asserted: ‘When we are all guilty, that will be true democracy.’ p.78

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

At the end of his book, Kapuściński asks whether, in our encounters with others in the future:

Will we jointly wish to refer to what – as Conrad puts it - ‘speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity of dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.’?*

* J. Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’: A Tale of the Sea, New York: W.W.Norton, 1979.

Architecture stands in between of all of these circumstances of encounter, but how does it explain itself beyond being a bespoke ‘grand design’ of a potential genius?

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

Herodotus . . . wanted to know them because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the world, he did not believe that we should isolate ourselves from Others, or slam the gates in their faces. Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be.

“And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.”

Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/04/steve-coogan-interview-stan-and-ollie

HILLS

The hills bespeak a healing power and closeness to unseen help now lost in the security of modern welfare. Those who befriend the silent peaks in a lifetime's work know well their embracing strength. (p.91)

For only once is it given to man to lie in the arms of the eternal forces which give all matter form. (p.98)

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

This blog began as a co-operative concept. While the idea and the stimulus was generated through discussion, the blog has turned out to be an individual enterprise. SPAN stands for ‘Spence and’ in the context of others. As a word, it fitted in nicely with the idea of voussoirs - parts and pieces, complete with keystones, that could ‘span’ the gaps in understanding and communication. The word SPAN also allowed for a shared input into a blog.

Spence Jamieson is an architect and the author of these articles. The blogs show the scope of his interests.

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

the wedge to isolate, array and shape ideas; the keystone to highlight core, supporting issues. voussoirs is a concept to start an architectural discussion to span the large gap in the debate on things architectural; a bridging of the void in architectural issues by exploring considered bits and pieces. The state of the profession today is highlighted by silence and self. It is introvert and protective. Educational centres remain isolated within their own constructs, being run primarily as businesses. They put very little back into the community. They indulge themselves in their own interests and exclude contrary and different ideas and ideals. They constantly avoid any challenge on concepts or strategies that might change the plotted course. Rarely does comment ever come from this academic world into the public or any arena. Very few publications help direct the public interest. Rarely do newspapers grasp the issues and explore them. One aspect may be given space in the popular press, but architectural debates and concerns are rarely given attention. The professional institutes are doing much the same as the educational institutions. Private practice is doing likewise, offering, if anything, only its own pushy propaganda to the public. Yet there is a discussion and debate in these silences that needs a larger and more open platform. Discussion is alive and well amongst a few in at least one curry house, but the debate needs to be a broadened. voussoirs is the place for this discussion. It is a site for ideas, comment, articles, and critiques on things architectural and associated issues. It is here that matters can be aired and ideas discussed and debated without fear of the neglect and disdain that institutions and private groups and publishers give to open speaking and differing ideas.

There can be no true understanding of any idea if discussion and debate are curtailed in favour of a preferred position.

ON COMMUNICATION

. . . there has been a growing feeling of concern to solve what is now commonly called “the problem of communication.” But if one observes efforts to solve this problem, he will notice that different groups who are trying to do this are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.2

ON ART & METHOD

Even in relationships with inanimate objects and with nature in general, something very like communication is involved. Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it be properly said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.4

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

The early 50's and 60's is a period that is gaining interest in architectural ideas. Perhaps this is why Princeton chose to republish The Tao of Architecture. It is a beautiful little book that discusses the implications of traditional wisdom in architecture. Given the astonishing lack of direction in current architectural theory, the publication is very timely.

Amos Ih Tiao Chang, The Tao of Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956, reprinted 2017.

p.26

Laotzu's idea of formation is heavily concerned with emptiness or non-existence. To him who regards nothing as persistent, what is essentially important in things is the possibility of becoming something, not the opportunity of remaining as something confronting deterioration. Consequently, meaningful incompletion is taken as the most desirable state of tangible being.

p.22

. . . the full meaning of existence is beyond the power of any manifestation. What appears tangible, architectural or natural, is only a means to suggest that which is lacking in appearance and existing in man's intangible understanding and aesthetic feeling.

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts – serious, sad thoughts – and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That's because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not just a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self. Whereas imagination is nothing but compensation. There's even something horribly autistic about sitting in one spot and spinning out invention by the yard. How much more interesting an open and poetic process involving contemplation, study, movement, meditation and composition.

Kenneth White Across The Territories Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa Polygon Edinburgh 2004 p.86

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time - - - is he who shall create poems in stone.

When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

. . . no one can relieve (the architect) from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but (the architect). It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.

H.B.Creswell The Honeywood Settlement Faber and Faber Limited London 1967 (fourth edition: first edition 1930 Architectural Press) p.128

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

Everything is the symbolical representation of an idea. p.28

The same artists, who had to follow a strict rule when treating the history of God, could use all of their imagination when treating the ornamental: whence the blossoming of the grotesque and the original. p.38

In those days religion, drama, and art had the same aim and sought to provoke the same thoughts. They did not pretend to amuse the people; they endeavoured to teach them. p.51

This way of thinking and reasoning takes sometimes a very subtle turn. p.53

Hélène Fouré The French Cathedrals Their Symbolic Significance Bruce Humphries Inc. Publishers, Boston, 1931

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow that it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people’s; for you have some right to your own time, but none to their’s. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you; for those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for immortality.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture George Routledge & Sons Limited, London p.109

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

But how much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture and Painting George Routledge & Sons Limited; New York: F.P.Dutton & CO - p.64-65

ON EDUCATION

'. . those who are responsible for giving instruction in the theory of architecture should be practising architects. The warning is necessary because, strange though it may seem, English schools of architecture to-day tend to be run by men who either do not practise at all, or whose practices are for them a very subsidiary spare-time occupation. Often a teaching appointment is a means by which a clever student avoids the humiliation of entering an office as a junior assistant, thus depriving himself of the only opportunity he will ever have of learning something of the practical side of his profession from the bottom upwards. There can be no doubt whatever that the teaching of theory has suffered severely as a result of this habit: and this leads me to the conclusion that no man should be permitted to teach until he is recognized by his Faculty as a Master of Theory and Practice. In other words, he should be not only a practising architect but also, what is unfortunately a much rarer specimen, a good architect.'

W.A. Eden, The Process of Architectural Tradition, Macmillian & Co. Ltd, London, 1942, p.p. 86-87

ETHICS

Thus Pugin laid the foundation stones of that strange system which dominates the nineteenth-century art criticism and is immortalised in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: the value of a building depends on the moral worth of its creator; and a building has a moral value independent of, and more important than, its esthetic value. We must not consider this emphasis on morality peculiarly Victorian. Whenever esthetic standards are lost, ethical standards rush in to fill the vacuum; for the interest in esthetics dwindles and vanishes, but the interest in ethics is eternal.

Kenneth Clark The Gothic Revival - An Essay in the History of Taste, (1^st edition Constable 1928); third edition John Murray 1962, reprinted 1974, p.149.

MODERNITY

The everyday is covered by a surface: that of modernity. News stories and the turbulent affectations of art, fashion, and event veil without ever eradicating the everyday blahs. Images, the cinema and television divert the everyday by at times offering up to its own spectacle, or sometimes the spectacle of the distinctly noneveryday; violence, death, catastrophe, the lives of kings and stars – those who we are led to believe defy everydayness. Modernity and everydayness constitute a deep structure that a critical analysis can work to uncover.

Henri Lefebvre, The Everyday and Everydayness, in Stephen Harris and Deborah Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1997, p.37.

NAMING

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself. . . . All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended; the unique insistence is, for the moment at least, sacrificed on the altar of continuity.

Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art, The University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p.1.

ON BRANDING

Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. It's about the manipulation of the virtual reality in which so many live. The manipulators include anyone with an interest in what we might think of them - not just big companies with products to sell but political parties with votes to win, design gurus with clients to attract - anyone, in other words, acting in some kind of market. They all have an interest in controlling their appearance to make us believe it is the reality.

John Humphrys Beyond Words How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain 2006, p. 86-87

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/faking-provenance-misuse-of-meaning.html

PRECONCEPTION

Leone Huntsman Sand in Our Souls The Beach in Australian History Melbourne University Press 2001, p.16:

Thus first impressions were filtered through existing preconceptions, starkly revealed in Sir Joseph Banks's description of the people seen from Captain James Cook's Endeavour when it first touched on the Australian continent in 1770:

In the morn we . . . [discerned] 5 people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Here Banks refers to William Dampier's unfavourable accounts of the West Australian aboriginal people in published accounts of his landings in 1688 and 1699, and reveals his own awareness of the extent to which perception was influenced by expectation.

see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

"It can be in the morning, any old time, I wake up with an idea and it starts following you around.

"You go, 'Ah that's good' because you know when it's going to work, it's going to be fruitful.

"Other times you'll get the edge of an idea and maybe it fades away or there's just no way it can be made to serve, you know?

"Then you just, it takes its time and you work on it and if necessary you work on it more than once. I'm known to work on it two or three times before you get it right."

Les Murray

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/les-murray-latest-volume-reflects-on-bunyah/6816714

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

The world seems to find it necessary to use more and more jargon in general reporting and conversation. It is especially noticed in accounts and discussions on the arts. The ABC TV arts programme presented on 7 January 2017 at 6:15pm had more jargon than usual; indeed, had more unusual expressions than previously encountered, ones that had not been heard before:

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

looking at "the fan deck of what you do."

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

“to unpack an issue,” meaning to analyse it in some detail;

and

“to segue,” meaning to shift to a new topic or activity.

This last term is a favourite of radio announcers. The Italian word is often misspelt as ‘segway’ because of the similar phonetic sounding that is more commonly understood as Segway, the brand of a human transporter.

The parallel is interesting, as the idea of being ‘transported’ is common to both words, but it seems to hold little interest to the radio voices that appear just too cleverly happy with the use of this different, interesting expression.

Friday, 23 September 2016

SWELL SCULPTURE FESTIVAL 2016 CATALOGUE

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