Artist interview – Clare McCracken, our first Artist in Residence for 2012

Today we’re rather excited, the first of our 2012 Artists in Residence is arriving onsite! The lovely Clare McCracken is taking up residence in our Old School Room for a month to create a body of work inspired by Heritage Hill. We wanted to introduce you all to this very talented artist, so we sat down to have a quick chat with her about herself and her work… Ladies and gentlemen, Ms Clare McCracken!

 Tell us a little about yourself and your work …

I grew up on one hundred acres of bush in North Eastern Victoria and spent my childhood building cubbies, observing Australia’s fauna and fauna and hiking. We didn’t have a TV, so when I was not running around the bush, I’d discuss history and politics with my parents, or leaf through one of their art books. What I loved about art at that stage was its ability to reflect and contribute to society.  I loved the way you could look at a Rococo painting like Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing and see the incredible wealth and excess of the French aristocracy, which less then 15 years after the painting was finished, led to the French Revolution.  Art seemed to be the best way to express and debate the issues that I was most passionate about.

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Exhibit at Heritage Hill 2013

Are you an artist looking for exhibition space for 2013? Heritage Hill has thrown open it’s application doors and we want to hear from you!

You can find all the details about our various gallery spaces at our website here. Down the bottom of that page are also links to application forms, a full application pack and our Terms and Conditions.

If you’re a beginner, emerging or mid career artist and you’d like to organise a solo or group show, we’d love to chat. So contact us with your ideas!

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Be an Artist in Residence at Heritage Hill

Here at Heritage Hill we are starting to put together our 2013 program and as part of that, we are expanding our Artist in Residence program.

We are offering 5 Artist Residencies in 2013, providing free studio space onsite for a negotiable period (usually between 1 and 2 months) to create, develop or continue a body of work. Work produced during an Artist Residencies must be connected to Heritage Hill in some way – it’s past, present, future, exploration of spaces and buildings. This is open to a wide interpretation.

The studio is our old school room, which is a single roomed, self contained, lockable building set amongst 2 hectares of beautiful landscaped gardens. Artists will be free to come and go as they wish in accordance with negotiated access hours. Heritage Hill will also offer each artist modest in-kind support including, but not restricted to, publicity, drafting and management of press releases, support for public forums and discussions, creative development showings and hot cups of tea.

Access to shared office space and a computer is offered as part of the residency.

For more information please contact us either via email at heritagehill@cgd.vic.gov.au or call us on 03 9793 4511

Image credit: Tracings of You by Ilona Nelson, produced during her residency at Heritage Hill in 2011

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Things that go Bump in the Night – Walker St Gallery

Ever wondered what happens after dark?

Walker St Gallery’s latest exhibition looks at the notions of all things spooky, gothic and a little bit nightmarish.

The month long exhibition called Things that Go Bump in the Night will incorporate paintings, drawings, installations, photography, video, performance art, as well as a string quartet and a rock band.

Featuring some of Australia’s most highly regarded visual and performing artists, the exhibition will run in conjunction with Dandenong’s annual winter arts event, Nocturnal.

Things that go Bump in the Night opens on Thursday, 31 May and runs until Saturday, 30 June
The exhibition will feature the works of Fabrice Bigot, Jane Burton, Jon Cattapan, Edward Colless, Mat Coyle, Irene Hanenbergh, Kotoe Ishii, Georgia Metaxas, Stephanie Monteith, and Mia Saljso and Heidi Yardley.

Two special performances will also take place during the month long visual arts exhibition. Silo String Quartet will play a free concert on Thursday, 7 June at 8pm and Post rock band Laura will perform on Thursday, 14 June at 8pm.

Walker St Gallery is located on the corner of Walker and Robinson streets in Dandenong.

The gallery is open 11am to 5pm, Monday to Friday and 11am to 3pm on Saturdays. It is closed on public holidays.

Entry to the exhibition is free.

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Nocturnal: Lighting up Dandenong at night

There’s something really interesting going on in the streets of Dandenong this month… All throughout June the streets will come alive with a series of temporary art projects by over 45 artists as part of the Nocturnal festival.

Nocturnal focuses on bringing Dandenong to life after dark and incorporates:
• Eight-storey high art projections
• A series of artworks by established, emerging and student artists
• Popular guided night walks through the streets of Dandenong exploring art projects, light works and performances

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Yarn Bombing street art movement

There’s a new street art movement growing softly out in the urban environment. Artists are looking to inject warmth and humour into cities, reclaiming and personalizing the streets. These artists install temporary knitted and crocheted ‘cozies’ around poles and along seats, they crochet scarves and leg warmers for public art statues and create joyful knitted gardens along window ledges. It’s called yarn bombing, or knit graffiti and it’s becoming more and more common in the streets of big cities.

Yarn bombs are usually cheery and colourful, textured and homely, and we thought we’d share a few that have been snapped around Melbourne recently.

 

All these images come from flickr user Haikugirloz and you can find them here.

To see some more yarn bombing, including some work by Magda Sayeg, the lady credited with the creation of this world wide trend, you can follow this link to Time magazine online.

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And then the city (Broken City Lab)

A few days ago we discovered an artistic collective based in Windsor, Ontario in Canada, called Broken City Lab. They focus on exploring and revealing the narratives of cities via interviews with locals, research into histories and interactive events. This is from their website: Our projects, events, workshops, performances, and interventions offer a sometimes momentary, sometimes extended, injection of creativity into a situation, surface, place, or community. These projects continually connect various disciplines through research and social practice, generating works and interventionist tactics that adjust, critique, annotate, and re-imagine the city that we encounter.

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Occasional Public Art Tuesday – Urban Artscape by Zabelski Han

Urban Artscape
Zabelski Han
Brady Rd, Dandenong North
2002

The Brady Road area presents itself as a normal suburban neighbourhood. Houses built on suburban blocks and carefully maintained front yards are a key feature of the suburban landscape. The good times that can be had working in the garden, tinkering with the car, going down the street are all part of daily life in North Dandenong.

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Occasional Public Art Tuesday – Chaise Lounge by Big Fish P/L

Chaise Lounge (locally known as the Casting Couch)
Artists/Designers: Big Fish P/L
Drum Theatre Stage Door
2006

With a prop like appearance, the bright red whimsical Casting Couch at the Drum Theatre was created to be a talking point as well as being utilised by visitors, shoppers and performers.

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Melbourne CBD Street Art Tour

Last week some of the office crew went on a Street Art tour of the Melbourne CBD. Our tour guide was a very knowledgable chap named Micheal who took us on an hour and a half walk filled with street art of all kinds and really interesting stories. We took about a thousand photos, check out some of them below:

Micheal down Hoiser Lane telling us a bit about the history of the place

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