STUDIONONSTOP

‘There were projects which were not possible because of economic, time, space and technical problems. Some forgotten project will come back to mind when it is needed. I contain my projects in my body, which I find as my studio, and I don’t try to remember or describe them all.

My working process is intuitive and I believe its own logic. Being nothing/nothingness and making nothing/nothingness is my goal. It is a long process.’

– Kimsooja

from:

The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists
edited by Mary Anne Jacob & Michelle Grabner
University of Chicago Press, 2010.

* * *
Needless to say, Studiononstop has stopped. In 2010 my studio building in Surry Hills was renovated and the rent tripled. I could no longer afford a studio in Sydney. That year I took a year off art anyway, and these days I do other things.

I post occasionally at In the life world and currently on Cutting Edge Permaculture.

Packing before moving, getting rid of stuff and art. Returning unfired clay casts made for The__Hall back to the ground.

After five years of no-dig bed making and soil building – the soil I’ll leave behind…

Preparing the garden for seeds
I vow with all beings
to nurture the soil to be fertile
each spring for the next thousand years

– Robert Aitken

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Walking in the back streets of Enmore and noticing a mature macadamia tree in a front yard. A nice man coming out of his house says “Want some nuts?” Sharing them with Michelle Margolis when I get to her house for a garden tour as part of National Permaculture Day, May 1st 2011.

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Taking a self-sown mulberry tree for a walk along Parramatta Rd and planting it alongside the Hawthorne Canal bike path for future fruit foraging. May 1st 2011.

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Admiring the many mushrooms up after all the autumn rain.

Reading:

Mycelium Running:
How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
by
Paul Stamets
Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, California 2005

‘Year-round, fungi decompose and recycle plant debris, filter microbes and sediments from runoff, and restore soil. In the end, life-sustaining soil is created from debris, particularly dead wood. We are now entering a time when mycofilters of select mushroom species can be constructed to destroy toxic waste and prevent disease…’ p.10

photo: Lucas Ihlein

Moving the steel tree guards made for The Lively Plane (continued) over to the Tending garden for a second life as supports for climbers.

photo: Lucas Ihlein

Positioning the frames around the three palm trees in the SCA courtyard and noticing surprisingly old initials and dates carved into two of the trunks – W.L. 19-1-44, W.L. 11-10-46, D.M. 1-12-44, among others.

One year off.

Field left Fallow

Some notes on a year off art practice.
January – December 2010

THE LAB

Open residency project
Ocular Lab
West Brunswick

WEEK FOUR

NOTES.

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Adding the post-dinner loo bucket full of wet sawdust and wee to the growing heap. Seeing my regular route through the weeds now visible as a pathway at the compost site. Replacing the toilet bucket, topping up sawdust and cleaning the loo.

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THE LAB

Open residency project
Ocular Lab
West Brunswick

WEEK THREE

NOTES.

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Riding week two’s collected toilet and organic material back to the compost site on Thea’s bike as honey-wagon. Weeding the overgrown house garden and feeding it to the heap, enjoying time in the sun and air outside in this grassy meadow.

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THE LAB

Open residency project
Ocular Lab
West Brunswick

WEEK TWO

NOTES.

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Clover seeds pushing up through soil and sprouting.

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The red rose Bianca brought on my first day, opening and changing.

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The Lively Plane (continued).

February 2008 – June 2009
growing and ongoing
and part of:

There Goes the Neighbourhood

curated by Zanny Begg & Keg de Souza
The Performance Space
May-June 2009
Sydney

By June 2009 «The Lively Plane (continued)» will have played out along the leafy length of Wilson Street – plus inner-west & city sidelines – over two summers, two autumns, a winter and a spring. In February 2008 I used a commercially farmed London Plane tree (Platanus x acerifolia) in a work for the exhibition «1.The Lively Plane» at the Institute for Contemporary Art Newtown (ICAN) at 191 Wilson St.

Then and now, my interest is in the strong opinion and emotion that attends plane trees. They are both the most commonly planted street tree in Sydney, other Australian capitals and many world cities, and the most widely disliked for the profuse, fine, allergy-provoking bristles that aid seed dispersal from the flower-heads. They are the trees that everyone hates. While favoured for their tolerance of contemporary urban conditions – bad air, poor light, compacted soil and little water – their detractors are many, from talkback radio callers to prominent Australian scientist Tim Flannery. Flannery has often argued against the planting of London planes in Sydney streets, as both a persistent mimicry of European cities and a failure to explore alternatives from our ample native species that would better foster insect life and biodiversity, which plane trees notably do not. Continue Reading »

week one.

week two.

week three.

week four.

week five.

week six.

week seven.

week eight.

week nine.

week ten.

Wild Sown Understorey

Seeding action, project document & climate almanac.

February-April 2009

wBST
West Brunswick Sculpture Triennial
curated by OSW
March-April 2009
Melbourne, Australia

download wBST poster pdf [48KB]

Wild Sown Understorey is a seeding action for the front yard of 135 Union St, West Brunswick. In February green manure crop seeds were cast, and the grass left to grow until the close of the wBST. The potential for a shaggy transformation of suburban ground will lay dormant or flourish according to rainfall, becoming a simultaneous ten-week weather index. Using the methods of natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, the project plays out between disturbance to a lawn-scape, land remediation and productivity, the absence of wildness, probable failure and climate change.

Project document & climate almanac.

A6-ish ha-ha foldout with weeks one-ten card series
single colour printing in brown, blue and teal
printed with love on The Rizzeria
edition of 100
copies available ~ contact l kell 88 [at] gmail dot com
Continue Reading »