My First Official Art Prize

The Coolamon Up-2-Date store, located right next to Coolamon library hosted their annual art exhibition last Friday.  I submitted five of my drawings of Arthur's head.

I was awarded my first ever art prize which was the 2011 CSU Annual Perpetual Art Prize.  As a result I have begun adding zeroes to the price tags of my work.

Finalist: Rural Art Competition

Everything you Need, 2011, was selected as a Finalist for the 2011 Rural Art Competition which will be judged in Seymour Victoria later this week at the Seymour Alternative Farming Expo.  

Weekends in Wagga

Weekends in Wagga from Sonya Gee on Vimeo.

I'm really lucky to know such a talented video producer who just so happens to bring her camera around out on weekends.  she has a great vimo channel which you can see by clicking on the link above.  Sonya Gee made this video while I was out at the Lakeside Markets showing off my wares and put it to a track from the alum I had for sale that day too.  

A New Body of Work - Plus a Debut Album

Everything You Need, 2011. Ink on Acrylic Perspex. 40 x 40cm

A Long Walk, 2011. Ink on Acrylic Perspex. 40 x 40cm

Lake Albert, 2011. Ink on Acrylic Perspex. 40 x 40cm

Almost There, 2011. Ink on Acrylic Perspex. 40 x 40cm

Remembering the Arctic, 2011. Ink on Acrylic Perspex. 40 x 40cm

This series of landscapes evolved from the studies I made for my stall at Art on the Levee a few weeks ago. those older works were made from sheets of acetate and were very small. I wanted to make something similar because the depth in the image is similar to the kind of expanding depth one feels when looking at a landscape in rural parts of the world. In this body of work I focused on images that I had seen in Australia but at one point an image of rural Iceland came to me. It was of a mountain range you can spot when driving on the road to Iceland's northern capital Akureyri, which touches the arctic circle.

I decided to road test these works at the Lakeside Markets at Lake Albert in Wagga Wagga. The response was positive. A lot of people refered to the work as "clever" and "thinking outside the box". Sonya Gee came along for moral support and took a bunch of photographs for me which looked stunning. Surprisingly the work was really popular with kids walking by. It might have had something to do with the position of the works - they were on a table at a nine-year old eye level. Parents often had to stop their children from touching the work. Nevertheless it was rather popular with people who walked by. I saw an old bloke groping one of the pieces as well.

In addition to the five new paintings, I also used this market as an opportunity to launch my debut album as Tone Destiny. Titled 1+0+ this album features 14 tracks of glitchy, synthy, sometimes poppy instrumental computer music which I have dubbed to be an album of digital utopia. Its structure is inspired by the soundtracks of Tron (1982) and Tron Legacy (2010), both strikingly different electronic musical narratives but both spectacular.

Each copy is hand painted. While 15 copies have been made there will be more printed depending on demand but at this stage they are a limited edition work.

Tracks Include:

Intro

Remain Behind the Yellow Line

Fair Weather

Second Best

New Distances

Last Chance

That's What You Told Me

Dragtime Gal

Together Again

Tomorrow Usually Blows

Absent Heart

Obsolete

Picture This

Beam On the Horizon

I've put the final track Beam On the Horizon for a free download here. Otherwise click below. I'll be putting the CD up for sale soon as well and you can order it online for $15 plus postage.

http://www.mediafire.com/?t6562eoycslctbu

Everything

I've been adding more detail of my new portraiture experiment called Everything, where I am creating an ever increasing amount of information into the scene.  I am developing it into a comprehensive account of a slice frozen in space and when I have done this it will be taken further and unfrozen. 

The project is simplistic in its design.  It relies on some very basic image rollovers in Java and HTML.  Some of the script has actually been appropriated from Olafur Eliasson's website.

The work will continue to develop over time.  Each of those squares pictured above will become smaller as the resolution of the scene gets bigger.  There is a futile side to this project which is similar to that depicted in the Kauffman 2008 film Synecdoche New York, however it fulills the dream to work on a project that will never have to be finished.

A New Exploration in Portraiture

I was playing around with a few ideas of producing narratives on the web without text or video file stuff.  Something that could be automatically interactive, wouldn't to buffer and wouldn't be a passive exploration for the audience as it would be controlled by them.

This work is a portrait.  The nature of the medium I am using is to explore the nature of the figure in time and space and how that is distorted when the viewer is able to determine spatial and temporal aspects of hte subject.  The process will be ongoing and develop over time and you should bookmark this address http://tonycurran.com.au/works/everything.html

Keep checking up on it and be sure to let me know what you think by commenting below.

Finishing Old Projects

I've just moved to Wagga Wagga.  Through the move I have discovered that I have so many bits and pieces that come from old projects that never eventuated.  I spent some time today filling a 64 page exercise book with some stickers that I bought at some weird stall at Broadway about a year ago.

I had two sticker books; one was a Barbie Princess sticker book and the other was a Wrestle Mania sticker book.  They were two dollars each and I couldn't resist the temptation.  The end product is 32 works which utilize almost every one of the stickers that were there to create a weird kind of world where the fantasy figures of boys and girls are collaged together in a way that might be considered a more adult relationship.  There is almost nothing sexual in the imagery that is created, however what has come out of it are images which infer gender politics and sexuality in way that is mostly comical.  It has a curious kind of perversion to it which reminds me of another project I did this year titled When I was 5 I had 12 Imaginary Friends.  


I'll be making a PDF for download at a later stage.  I am currently working out how I could exhibit it.

I have also just joined the Wagga Wagga art society and attended my first monthly members meeting two days ago.  There will be some great exhibitions coming up and I expect a whole lot of cool stuff that will end up on here in time to come.

Gestating

I've been playing around with watercolours since I've been out of Fraser Studios.  I've been painting under the concept of Individual as I develop the first issue of the Quarterly Collection, which is a fine art by subscription package.  Although I am still working through these images I find it interesting to save them at different stages of the process.  I always have a fear of ruining an image when I continue working on it and so I want to keep a logue of the stages for my own reflection.  It also provides any readers the opportunity to make any early comments and to see my artistic process.

As you can see with these images they each have very different processes, intents, and themes.  I will post updated images as I make significant additions to each.  Please forgive any "dirt" type noise in the images as I've been having difficulty getting acrylic paint off the glass.  I'd love to know if you have any favourites from these.

Australia's Special Broadcasting Service has for a long time had a relationship with Foxtel's World Movies Channel andhas recently branched out with an arts channel called STVDIO. Stvdio is devoted to the arts in all forms and handles different sectos of the arts on different days of the week so that perfomrnace, painting, music composition etc are represented. I wish I had cable for this reason.

The STVDIO online crew invited me to be a one of their weekly features of artist studios for their website so Website Coordiantor Nicolette Lorraway and talented photographer Lucien Alperstein came to my studio space in Fraser Studios to see how I worked and to check out the great rustic building and heritage elevator which inspires my work. Lucien (photographer) donated his ear to AuralDynamics.

You can check out the interview the STVDIO website and it will be on the homepage from the 15th of July (I think for a week).

FROM CONCEPT TO FINISHED WORK II: A Visual Essay

Illustrating Anger

COMB FILTERED Mentioned on CHANNEL V

"I saw one with actual ears on it, like, big giant ears" - A testament to Comb Filtered - my entry to Medium: Vinyl at Hardware Gallery in Enmore. Look below to see the painting they were talking about.

ON SHOW AT WORLD BAR

Currently on show in the Club room at Sydney's World Bar is AuralDynamics. As a part of Watch This Space's exhibition program this work has replaced Robbie Bennett's stylish framed paste up paintings.

To visit this exhibition you have to go when there is a club night on to get access to the room. Head to the World Bar website.

The World Bar is located at 24 Bayswater Rd in Kings Cross. Recommended club nights are Wham! (Saturday nights), Mum (Friday nights), and The Wall and Stand Up Get Down (both on Wednesday).

A Weekend In The Life Of: Tony Curran

My weekend started with a stella group exhibition at Hardware Gallery in Enmore. Medium: Vinyl featured a hundred and thirty something artists who had all made a record from or on a vinyl record supplied by the gallery. I went with my favourite two people ever - Sonya Gee (left) and Brendan Hough (right). We had dinner at Moretti's in Leichhardt because their pasta servings are massive.

This is the work I submitted. It's called Comb Filtered. My dad asked why and I said......

We ran into another old mate of mine Lucy Parakhina who worked with me at the Australian Centre for Photography back in '09. An emerging photographer you should probably look out for. Right now she shoots for throwshapes.

The rest of the weekend was spent making zines for the inaugural Sydney Writers' Festival Zine Fair which takes place every year at The Museum of Contemporary Art since 2008. I had one zine which was ready to go but had already promised another one which I had made in only my mind, Les Acoustrements. I spent Saturday writing and printing the two zines I was to sell, Les Acoustrements and When I was 5 I had twelve Imaginary Friends.

Up until 3am - awake at 7:30am finished production by 11:30am, late to the zine fair by one hour and selling zines, recruiting ears for AuralDynamics. About half of my zines sold out and the day ended at 5, no lunch break, but devoured some serious Yaki Udon at Sakura afterwards and bouht a cherry ripe cupcake from Cupcakes On Pitt as a reward for my good behaviour. Then I had to come home to finish some concept drawings for a guy in Israel and of course finish 30 Rock Season 4.

As of yet, no photos have emerged from the zine fair featuring me and I didn't take any so I don't feel comfortable putting any others up here but there are a few on the MCA Facebook page.

If you missed the zine fair and would like to buy either of the aforementioned zines I have a few left and they are available on my website shop.