meroogal women's art award

I've been so distracted by bushfires and dying modems and the like that I've completely forgotten to tell all and sundry about the news from the meroogal womens art award... duh!

the big (ok - medium sized) news is that the piece I sent in to the meroogal award not only was selected for the exhibition - but actually received a commendation (it seems to be the word that I'm mostly attached to lately... hmmmm.......)

I posted a pic of the artwork in its unmodified manifestation in an earlier post - just as a reminder this is kinda what I sent in....




well - it was a cropped and very enlarged version of this at any rate!

the final printed piece was almost life size - at about 4ft tall and 2ft wide (and mostly the books where in the frame) - block mounted (my framers were in full heart attack mode - 'aggghhhhh you want to block mount this - are you an idiot!?!!') hey what can I say - most art awards demand no glass and 'd' ring fittings and all that..... (up to and almost including the rights to your first born child...)

The theme for this year's award was 'Books and the world of ideas' - and you guys all know I have PLENTY of IDEAS! Originally I was making something totally different for the award (go check out my flickr site...) but at the last moment changed my mind and settled on one if my burning books images instead

This is the brief artist statement I included with the work....

'Fahrenheit 451' refers to the dystopian novel of the same name written by Ray Bradbury in the 1950s. In the novel, books are outlawed and burned 'for the good of humanity' - Fahrneheit 451 is the temperature at which books auto-ignite. Burning books has historically been the means of suppressing ideas and alternate viewpoints… even though the books used in my work were discarded encyclopaedias – destined for landfill, the action of destroying them by fire remains an uncomfortable practice.

With 'Fahrenheit 451' I'm presenting the antithesis of what the Meroogal library represents: the preservation of Books and the World of Ideas...



next weekend (Saturday 19 Sept), all things being equal, I'm hoping to get up to the Shoalhaven City Arts Centre and give a slightly longer chat about the making of the piece et al. whilst the exhibition is still in Nowra... I'll give a confirmation on my fb page before the date - fingers crossed I'll see some friendly familiar faces there!

and right now I'm working on creating a short edition of the work (again I'll let you know both here and at my fb page how those plans are progressing) - so much work - so little time!