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Fiona sees eye-to-eye with Ocularis beadii...

Here I am, getting up-close and personal with my beaded sculpture on its plinth at the Fantasy exhibition, which is currently showing at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery.

Ocularis beadii (otherworldly garden specimen)

I am so delighted to have one of my beaded sculptures in a current exhibition called Fantasy at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (NSW, Australia). I have been working on this piece, on and off (in the last two months, mostly “on”) since January this year.

It’s been such an intense time of beading, and you should have seen my poor fingertips when I finally finished it a couple of weeks ago….the problem is that when I have to work to a tight deadline (which is most of the time for me, ha ha..), I end up beading way too long into the night, just to get enough work done on the piece, and when I get too tired I sometimes miss where I should place the beading needle, and into my fingers it goes…ouch!

Anyway, my piece is called Ocularis beadii (otherworldly garden specimen). I have this penchant for incorporating odd bits and pieces in my work sometimes, and at present it is dolls’ eyes. I have always liked odd-ball and spooky things, so putting eyes in my work just appeals to my aesthetic sense. But the eyes do also represent my desire to take in all the visual stimulation around me – if only I had more than the regulation quantity of eyes myself I might be able to visually “download” way more of what I see around me….

I wanted to create a piece that could be some kind of bizarre plant from a garden on another planet. My Ocularis beadii has 5 arms/branches which each have an eye on the end, and there are two smaller eyes on the trunk as well. So wherever you stand in relation to the plant, it will be watching you!

I’ve used brick stitch to create the beadwork for this piece. I have beaded over a wire, foam and fabric armature. It was such a fiddly thing to make, particularly the beaded arms/branches, because my beading thread just couldn’t resist getting caught on all the other parts of the piece as I was beading. And after every few beads I had to completely re-position the piece to get better access to the area to be beaded. It was slow slow slow! But now that it is done done done, I am pleased with the result. Phew!

One of the other things that pleases me about being part of this Fantasy exhibition is the amazing work of the other 4 artists represented in the exhibition. There are exotic and really lush digital photos by Alexia Sinclair; two amazing perspex-encased visions of the imagined afterlife of artist Judith Bradhurst (whose work also incorporates beads, so you know I’m going to love it!);  several “lost soul” sculptures by Russell Johnson – which incorporate all sorts of bits and pieces, including doll heads (Russell’s pieces really speak to me!); and the utterly extraordinary stumpwork embroidery creations of Jane Nicholas, my favourite being the display of beetles and bugs which look so like the real thing! Jane has also included some treasure boxes which seem so like the natural history specimen boxes you see in museums, and which she made just for her own delight – this is the first time she has shown them in public!

If you want to see all these glories for yourself, head to Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (in rural NSW, between Sydney and Canberra, Australia). The Fantasy exhibition runs until July 20. Gallery hours are 10 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday, and 1 pm – 4 pm Saturdays. The gallery’s website is http://www.grag.com.au

There are two great exhibitions on at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (NSW Australia) at the moment. The main exhibition is called A Convergence of Birds, and comprises paintings, plus three extraordinary “non-functioning” welded metal bird cages by renowned artist Ben Quilty.

Now I have to tell you that I am likely to be favourably disposed towards Ben’s work because he was one of the two judges who deemed my Nature’s Treasures beaded neckpiece to be prizeworthy in the 2009 Goulburn Art Award! But luckily I genuinely admire his work anyway.

I was lucky enough to catch the free floor talk at the gallery a couple of days ago – Ben Quilty was talking to Andrew Frost (who curated Ben’s exhibition). I am attracted to all that wonderfully thick oil paint that Ben uses in some of his work – it seems so sculptural on the canvas! (and apparently it can take several years for some of the thicker paint to fully dry! During the floor talk someone asked about how some of his earlier paintings used less paint, and he humorously quipped that the thickness of the paint directly relates to how much paint he can afford to buy at a particular time!

I particularly like his skull paintings (I saw some of them at a previous exhibition in Goulburn), which are both beautiful and a little spooky, but in this exhibition he mainly has his bird paintings, plus some others. My favourite in this exhibition is Pig, which is half bird-half car. Ben explained in the floor talk that it partly represents the junction between his car-painting period and his bird-painting period. I like that!

Ben’s exhibition continues until July 23. Catch it if you can. Gallery hours are 10 am – 5 pm Monday – Friday and 1 pm – 4 pm Saturday. Check out the gallery’s website for more info: http://www.grag.com.au

Sorry I can’t put a picture of any of Ben’s artworks on my blog (would contravene Ben’s copyright), but the gallery has printed a good catalogue for the exhibition.