Hello Blue Sky, 2019
Hugo Michell Gallery
Hello Blue Sky.
It has been ten years since I first exhibited with Hugo Michell Gallery in Adelaide. We use time as a marker, for obvious reasons, and this milestone has had me wondering whether I’ve spent more time in my creative place - a virtual space - than in the real world.
Hello blue sky.
The title for this new series of work stems from the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a short-lived but global thinking social movement in England throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. Led by John Hargrave and comprising writers, artists, scientists and campaigners, the Kibbo Kift espoused practices of well-being, handicraft, pacifism, teaching and philosophy across a peaceful community. Discovering their art, attitude, rituals and manifestos has had a resounding effect on me: their vision, ambition and optimism providing a source of not only of deep reflection, but action.
Hello blue sky.
I’ve collected and created this body of work over the past two years, working across different spaces, utilising new materials and returning to older mediums from my first exhibitions with the gallery as a means to make sense of this ten-year span. The series of crafted, totem-like shrine objects can be seen as echoes of guided thoughts. Artworks are bearers of secrets. Perhaps some are revealed, maybe others are shared, and many will go untold, but I am absolutely sure that stories are passed in their existence. I created these sculptural objects so that people can hold them, because frankly, that’s the best part.
Hello blue sky.
The installation shows the works almost sliding on and off the walls, as if scrolling on forever. This is, at times, what my mind feels like when I’m searching for a memory or saved image. And so I offer to you this exhibition as an invitation into my mind over a period of time, where I have looked both backwards and forwards, where you can take a moment to sit atop the green grass and find something of me in this world, me in you, you in me or you in the world.
Hello blue sky was the Kibbo Kift’s warm welcome, and so too is it mine.
photos: Matthew Stanton, Sia Duff, Mark Lobo and Sam Roberts