FOREWORD

The Star/Dust program engaged and delighted visitors of all ages and backgrounds through a year-long series of contemporary art experiences. Developed by three Tasmanian artists, Lucy Bleach, Brigita Ozolins and James Newitt, Star/Dust was a bold statement of TMAG’s commitment to experimental contemporary art and education projects. In addition to the thousands of people who visited the three exhibitions, more than 3000 people participated in Star/Dust through organised programs in the gallery. The value and impact of Star/Dust could be seen in the audience engagement, visitor comments and press coverage throughout the year.

I would like to sincerely thank Detached Cultural Organisation without whose generous support Star/Dust would not have been possible, the Friends of TMAG who provided additional funding, the volunteer gallery guides who conducted public tours, and the TMAG staff who managed this program. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I would like to warmly thank the artists for their energetic and enthusiastic responses to the Star/Dust brief which encouraged audiences to become participants in the evolution of the artwork and to share the experience with one another.

Bill Bleathman Director

Contemporary art practice in Tasmania has flourished in the past decade with the opening of new gallery spaces, an increased national profile for Tasmanian art prizes and a growing public interest in the art of today. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) has played a significant role in this process, supporting and presenting exhibitions by some of Tasmania’s leading contemporary artists and acquiring new works for the State Collection through the Premier’s Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund.

Since 2007 TMAG has enjoyed a special partnership with Detached Cultural Organisation whose generous support contributed to the establishment of AccessArt, a dedicated art education program at the museum. Since its inception, AccessArt has become one of the most exciting providers of art education programs in Tasmania, working in innovative ways to stimulate artistic creativity, reflection and enjoyment.

LUCY BLEACH Volcano Lover 2011

Installation view [volcano laboratory]

2 3

Aiming FOR thE stARs

which draw people to visit our State Collection. Our roles as curators and art educators are to offer these visitors traversing the various genres and disciplines of TMAG’s galleries experiences that are compelling, relevant and that connect in some way to them.

The three Star/Dust artists – Lucy Bleach, Brigita Ozolins and James Newitt – are Tasmanian-based and leaders in their field. Highly experienced with TMAG’s site through personal experience, they boldly took on the invitation of this project and each responded with proposals for aesthetically rich, educationally stimulating and multi-sensorial installations. Descriptions of their individual exhibitions follow in later sections of this catalogue which outline three very different contemporary art experiences that tackled compelling, unrelated themes of the artist’s own choosing.

For some organisations the quest for greater public engagement leads down the path of sensation and spectacle in public programming. Instant entertainment, in many cases, is now seen as a worthy stand-in for deeper modes of engagement. The vision for Star/Dust was to carve out a different niche, to deliver an audience-focused project appropriate to this community’s scale and needs, which was consistent with our Museum’s long running commitment to open access and deep learning. The collaborative working model which brought together the expertise of artists and museum art professionals, acknowledged that addressing barriers to engagement with contemporary art were the concern of all key players in exhibition development.

A suite of free events accompanied each exhibition. Star/Dust artists were intimately involved in the design, development and delivery of all these events. Their openness to having others working, educating and creating within the spaces of their installations

In 2010 we began to develop a vision for a suite of vibrant contemporary art experiences for the spectrum of TMAG’s visitors – children, adults, art-lovers and non-art audiences. Entitled Star/Dust, this program was conceived as three exhibitions of new work by established local artists staged over the course of a year.

The aims and model of this project were experimental and self-consciously idealistic. Artists, art educators and curators would form a triangular collaboration in order to investigate what could be achieved when consideration of audience experience and engagement were placed forefront in exhibition development and delivery. We set out to blur the museum’s functional delineations between ‘exhibition’ and supportive ‘public programs’ in favour of working together from the outset to develop participatory and interactive modes of engagement embedded within the art experience itself.

The challenge we set ourselves was to maintain this shared focus throughout every stage of the process and across the life of each exhibition. It was an intense and at times demanding way of working for all involved, not least for the artists who contributed to a greater than usual level of planning, logistics and program delivery.

In some senses Star/Dust floated upon lofty ambitions, however it also had its roots firmly grounded in an informed awareness of this place and community. In the public programs work we do every day we are reminded that TMAG is blessed with a remarkably diverse audience of locals and visitors who come seeking a very wide range of experiences from our site. Recent surveys indicate that visitors who come to TMAG exclusively to view art are but a small component of our audience. Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, colonial history and the natural sciences are just some of the many other attractions

enabled a complexity of outlooks to flow through the exhibitions, opening new doorways for interpretation. The individual events involved a wonderfully diverse range of content, presenters and target audiences, and ranged from hands-on science experiments for early learners, to lunchtime tours, Sunday family days and an ‘outside broadcast’ by the ABC local radio breakfast program. Critically, all public programs took place within the space of the gallery itself, maintaining a direct connection with the art and bringing the installations to life as they became spaces for shared exploration, discovery, questioning and response.

In many cases, events associated with the Star/Dust exhibitions were designed to intersect with topical events and interests existing outside of TMAG and the visual arts. This approach lead public events to be developed in collaboration with organisations including ABC Hobart, Book Council of Australia (Tasmanian Branch), Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania, Tasmanian Book Artist’s Guild, Ten Days on the Island festival, The Writer’s Centre, University of Tasmania Chemistry Department and XYZ Fullers’ book club. Numerous independent artists and specialists were also engaged to present programs that bounced-off the exhibitions.

These relationships were about more than just tapping into new audiences. They recognised the expertise and knowledge existing outside the museum and that exhibitions can be sites for free exchange and connection. It should not be surprising that a plethora of this activity around an artist’s work tends to enhance rather than compromise the conceptual integrity of the art work over time.

The Star/Dust experience reminds us that the creative process does not need to cease at the point that an exhibition opens to the public, but can continue and be continually challenged throughout the life of the exhibition. In participative artworks such as these,

audiences are an essential component, activating the elements and meaning of the work through personal engagement. Artists have a powerful role to play by remaining actively engaged during this phase of their work, but can only do so if supported and recognised for the work this involves.

In public museums and galleries, engaging thoughtfully with issues of access is core business. ‘Access’ is not a specialist interest issue but simply about enriching audience experiences.

We are also reminded that partnerships and collaboration have critical importance in stimulating creative endeavour. At an organisational level, this experimental project has been made possible by the philanthropic relationship between Detached Cultural Organisation and TMAG. The three-way collaboration between artist, art educators and curators that characterised the project’s methodology challenged all of us to make transparent – and indeed question – our roles, motivations and limitations. Partnerships, while often challenging to manage, can dissolve artificial divisions between worlds and between life experiences, enabling us to share our passions and knowledge to great effect.

Finally, Star/Dust proves that the values of idealism, curiosity and inclusion are not antithetical to ‘serious’ contemporary art. The title of the project was designed, without irony, as an expression of this spirit and as such inadvertently became a defiant statement against the status quo. Artists and art workers are all in the business of making magic happen, and the experience is complete when we realise we have nothing to lose by actively welcoming others in.

Rebecca tudor Coordinator, Art Education

4 5

JAMES NEWITT To Catch a Tiger 2011

Video production still6 7

VOlcAnO lOVER / lucy BlEAch

Lucy Bleach’s art practice frequently involves working with communities who live in tenuous environments, using participative experience and social interaction to explore notions of place and meaning. Volcano Lover (2011) was inspired by her experience of living with a family at the base of Mount Yasur, an active volcano on Tanna Island, Vanuatu. Immersing herself in this unfamiliar environment, Lucy spent time with local villagers learning how their daily lives and beliefs were shaped by the constant volcanic activity. Each day, one of the villagers would escort her to the summit, occasionally pausing along the way to request safe passage from the volcano’s spirit.

As a result of this experience, Lucy’s initial interest in volcanology expanded to include the symbolic, mythical and spiritual associations of volcanoes. For Volcano Lover swirling projections of psychedelic colour flanked the entry to the gallery, setting the scene for the playful exploration of the real and the symbolic which lay beyond. Inside, visitors encountered three circular spaces, each offering opportunities for shared experiences and different encounters with the spectacular, scientific or social aspects of the volcanic.

Of these, perhaps the most disarming was the experience of lying side by side with friends and strangers on a round, hibiscus-patterned ottoman, watching Mount Yasur’s explosive volcanic activity projected on a circular screen suspended above. Flickering flame lights ringing the screen added to the ‘swinging sixties’ nightclub ambience, and heightened the excitement accompanying shared anticipation of the next eruption.

The circular volcano lab at the centre of the gallery became a hub of playful scientific enquiry for visitors where multiple activities contributed to an evolving

Volcano Lover was inspired by the artist’s sojourn to a village in the shadow of an active volcano. The exhibition brought together elements of documentary video, geoscience, material experiments and symbols of human passion to explore the simmering subterranean world of which most of us are barely aware.

LUCY BLEACH Volcano Lover 2011

Installation view

artwork. During group sessions, mini volcanoes were made from clay and placed on shelves around the lab. The vivid ‘lava’ eruptions flowed down the chromatography paper lining the walls, creating vibrant rainbow-coloured drip paintings which grew in scale and intensity through layering over several weeks.

Lucy’s curiosity about geological time and the qualities and behaviour of different materials manifested as experimental works within the lab where she set up situations for change to occur beyond her control. Delicate outcrops of salt crystals grew gradually upwards from the floor. In a nearby glass cabinet, a suspended boulder-sized block of hard toffee slowly morphed into thick elongated drips, eventually oozing into a liquid pool that spread across the cabinet’s base.

Passionate allusions abounded in the third space, a small circular theatrette enclosed by heavy red velvet curtains. Putting your ear to a gold microphone nearby, love songs such as Ring of Fire could be heard playing softly. Inside visitors sat together on a loveseat to watch Lucy’s interviews with villagers living in the shadow of Mount Yasur.

Volcano Lover was presented in early 2011 at a time when the world had been stunned by the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and later the drifting volcanic ash cloud which disrupted flights globally for weeks. Against this backdrop the relationship between the Tanna Islanders and their volcano could be viewed as a microcosm of the global situation. Anxieties regarding the potential power of natural disasters were widely felt, and the themes of the exhibition and the soundscape of Mount Yasur’s regular eruptions took on a more ominous tone.

8 9

LUCY BLEACH Volcano Lover 2011

Volcano laboratory activities [middle right]10 11

thE READing ROOm / BRigitA OzOlins

Visiting The Reading Room was a sensuous experience. A softly lit den with deep red walls, Persian rugs covering the floors, reading lamps and inviting couches, the gallery became a sanctuary that invited visitors to linger. Books containing history, culture, discoveries and stories from all over the world lined the walls and lay in scattered piles throughout the space. Audiences browsed and delved, relaxing on couches or kneeling among small stacks on the floor, becoming an active part of the artwork through participation.

On the walls, small mirrors spelt out a fragment of an ancient philosophical text, ‘As it is below, so it is above’. A meditation on the self and the universe, the text invited viewers to consider the relationship between one and the other, the microcosm and the macrocosm.

The heart of The Reading Room was a video projection of many Tasmanians from all walks of life reading from a favourite book. Reading passages of personal significance, each reader shared an intimate glimpse of a life enriched by literature and stories. Exhibition visitors could enjoy the experience of being read to, or could choose their own book and engage on a more private level.

The Reading Room celebrated books as physical objects to be randomly discovered, handled and experienced, and encouraged consideration of the influences which shape our perception, thoughts and identity.

The Reading Room was a library liberated from the bureaucracy of order, celebrating the aesthetics of the book and the transformational pleasures of reading. Privileging chance discovery over orderly classification, The Reading Room encouraged consideration of how knowledge is pre-packaged, and the powerful influence this has in shaping the formation of our perception, thoughts and identity.

BRIGITA OZOLINS The Reading Room 2011

Installation view

Through her installation-based art practice, Brigita Ozolins explores the relationships between language, knowledge and subjectivity. Central to her work is the idea that language is a powerful cultural and social tool that both shapes and restricts who we are and how we think.

From our earliest moment of awareness we absorb sensations and information, influences which shape the development of our thinking and responses long before we begin to exercise conscious control over them. We derive meaning through the subjective interface of personal experience, and attempt to share what we’ve learnt or feel through language. But words carry subtly different meanings for each of us, and the nuances of thought or emotion can be misinterpreted in their expression.

Brigita’s mistrust of bureaucratic systems of collecting, classification and the way information is controlled and encountered sits somewhat uncomfortably alongside her passion for libraries as places of random inspiration and discovery. This tension has been explored through previous works by the artist which have used books or libraries as their central inspiration.

In developing The Reading Room, Brigita laboriously salvaged old, out dated and superfluous books destined for pulping from libraries and bookshops around Tasmania. The tens of thousands of volumes she eventually assembled crossed many disciplines of knowledge and included fiction and non-fiction written in several languages. Together they represented a microcosm of the enormous richness of human thought and imagination.

12 13

BRIGITA OZOLINS The Reading Room 2011

Installation view [above & left] Family Day activities [bottom left]14

tO cAtch A tigER / JAmEs nEWitt

phenomena or memories of things half seen to the To Catch a Tiger archive. Interviews with thylacine experts and enthusiasts formed another element of the visual archive, reflecting different forms of knowledge based on personal experience, encounters and scientific research. Often contradictory, the views of these seekers, sceptics and scientists created points of ambiguity and represented the multiple notions of truth which permeate contemporary discussion about the thylacine.

The heart of the exhibition was the powerful personal account of Hans Naarding, a national park researcher whose sighting in 1986 is considered to be the most credible in recent history. Naarding’s compelling story of catching a thylacine in the beam of his torch formed part of the video, When a wolf might look like a dog 2011. Playfully blending eye-witness account with fantasy, the video Seekers 2011 followed an imagined love story between hunter and hunted in which a thylacine-costumed figure lounges, perhaps imprisoned, in an ornate colonial salon while a rugged ranger roams the Tasmanian wilderness, eternally searching.

To Catch a Tiger created a point of connection between issues and opinions related to conservation, wildness and notions of ‘truth’ relating to the Tasmanian tiger, but on a broader level, provided insights into the human compulsion to connect with objects of desire and mystery beyond our reach, regardless of how elusive.

James Newitt’s art practice is characterised by his investigations of connections, divisions and isolation within communities which form around a shared purpose or interest. Combining documentary film-making techniques and performance, James’s video and photographic works both record and enact processes of social engagement, personal histories and events that bind people to one another.

To Catch a Tiger invited people to investigate the realms of fact and fiction surrounding the Tasmanian Tiger.

Hunted to endangered status in the early twentieth century and eventually declared extinct in 1984, the thylacine is a potent symbol of Tasmania, used extensively in branding to promote Tasmania’s wild and natural environment. To Catch a Tiger provided opportunities to explore notions of desire and loss, memory and history within Tasmania’s colonial and contemporary narratives, and to examine the disparate groups who unintentionally form a community of interest around the thylacine.

A wall of historical thylacine imagery including photographs of animals captured by hunters, stuffed museum specimens and strange artefacts were presented alongside early scientific illustrations and the artist’s exquisite photographs of wild Tasmanian landscapes. Hidden among the rocks and fern trees were infrared surveillance cameras and monitors on which visitors could catch occasional glimpses of unidentifiable movements from around the gallery.

In keeping with the unsubstantiated nature of all contemporary thylacine sightings, visitors were invited to contribute their own reports of unexplained

To Catch a Tiger was a site-specific installation in which visitors became part of a loose community of truth seekers in a dark wilderness of towering outcrops, ferns, projections and computer screens, providing encounters with the perplexing realm of thylacine fact and fiction.

JAMES NEWITT To Catch a Tiger 2011

Installation view16 17

JAMES NEWITT

To Catch a Tiger 2011

Seekers 2011

Video production still [above]

Archival digital print [top right] Family Day activities [middle right] Installation view [bottom right]18 19

ARtist BiOgRAphiEs

lucy BlEAch Lucy Bleach has an active and experimental art

practice and exhibits regularly in solo and group exhibitions. She has participated

in national and international art festivals and undertaken local

and international residency programs.

Lucy has been the recipient of several Arts Tasmania and Australia

Council grants for new work and professional

development. She has participated in three Ten Days on

the Island festivals, and was the 2009 Asialink Visual Arts Resident in Japan

where she participated in the 4th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial. In 2010 she received the

Qantas Foundation Contemporary Art Award.

She completed undergraduate studies at COFA, University of NSW, 1990 and in 2007 undertook a Masters of Fine Art program at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania where she is now Associate Lecturer in Sculpture.

www.lucybleach.com

BRigitA OzOlinsBrigita Ozolins is an installation and performance artist, who has been exhibiting regularly in solo and group exhibitions since the late 1990s. Her commissions include large scale projects for the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Tasmania; the State Library of Tasmania, and the Soros Foundation, Latvia. Brigita has also received numerous grants from the Australia Council and Arts Tasmania and in 2008 received the inaugural Qantas Foundation Contemporary Art Award. She has undertaken international residencies in Riga, London and Paris, and in Tasmania at Port Arthur and Gorge Cottage, Launceston. In 2013 she will be undertaking an Australia Council residency in New York.

Brigita has a background in the classics, librarianship and arts administration. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours in 1999 at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania and was also awarded the University Medal. She completed her PhD in 2004 and her thesis was awarded the Dean’s commendation. Brigita is a Lecturer in Fine Arts at the Tasmanian School of Art where she has been teaching since 2000.

www.brigitaozolins.com

JAmEs nEWittJames Newitt has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and more recently internationally with exhibitions in Berlin and Croatia. His work has been included in major surveys of Australian contemporary art including Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010 and Handle With Care, 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2008. He was a founding member and past director of INFLIGHT artist run space in Hobart.

James has received numerous state and national funding grants for individual and collaborative projects. In 2012 he won the prestigious Samstag Scholarship and was also awarded the Australia Council studio residency in Liverpool (UK). In 2008 he undertook a 3-month studio residency at the Australia Council for the Arts, Los Angeles studio and in 2009 he was awarded the Qantas Foundation Contemporary Art Award. In 2010 he won the City of Hobart Art Prize.

James completed his PhD in fine arts from the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania in 2007, where he is now Associate Lecturer in Fine Art and Head of the Visual Communication Studio.

www.jnewitt.com

20 21

AcKnOWlEDgEmEnts

LUCY BLEACH would like to thank Mathilda and Johnson at Mt Yasur volcano, Vanuatu; Jon Bowling, Paul Colegrave and Dean Banks-Smith; Warrane Primary School, Glenorchy Primary School and South Hobart Primary School; the University of Tasmania School of Art, Ten Days on the Island 2011 and Detached Cultural Foundation. Volcano Lover was presented as part of Ten Days on the Island 2011.

BRIGITA OZOLINS would like to thank Gerard Willems, Raef Sawford, Claire Krouzecky, Paul Roberts, Darren Cook, Ingrida Hawke, Mike Singe, Terry Lobban, Phillipa Foster, Jenny Jackson, the State Library of Tasmania, the University of Tasmania Library, Fullers Bookshop, and the Bellerive Branch of Rotary.

JAMES NEWITT would like to thank Guy Paramore, Pat Beretta, Hanna Parssinen, Jason James, Col Bailey, Hans Naarding, Nick Mooney, Bob Paddle, Ed Hill, Trudy Richards, Kathryn Medlock, Barry Batchelor, Sarah Jones, the University of Tasmania School of Art and Detached Cultural Foundation.

CATALOGUE TEXT Rebecca Tudor, Coordinator, Access Art and Bryony Nainby, Senior Curator of Art (Contemporary Art), Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

PHOTOGRAPHY Simon Cuthbert and Peter Robinson, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (unless otherwise credited). James Newitt: pages 7, 18 and 19. Lucy Bleach: pages 9,10 and 11 (Main image and top right), 22. Brigita Ozolins: page 13 (Main image)

GRAPHIC DESIGN Liminal Graphics

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, GPO Box 1164, Hobart Tasmania 7001, Australia

www.tmag.tas.gov.au tmagmail@tmag.tas.gov.au

Star/Dust was a year-long series of contemporary art exhibitions by three Tasmanian artists presented with the support of Detached Cultural Organisation. The exhibitions were held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) during 2011 – 2012.

LUCY BLEACH Volcano Lover 18 March – 19 June 2011

BRIGITA OZOLINS The Reading Room 23 July – 16 October 2011

JAMES NEWITT To Catch a Tiger 4 November 2011 – 11 March 2012

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery would like to thank the following for their support of the Star/Dust program:

The Children’s Book Council of Australia Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania (CAST) Detached Cultural Organisation The Friends of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Fullers XYZ Book Club MONA National Parks and Wildlife Service Project Queenstown Southern Cross Television Tasmanian Paper and Book Artist’s Guild The Tasmanian Writers Centre Ten Days on the Island The TMAGgots University of Tasmania

LUCY BLEACH Volcano Lover 201122 23