Art in The Hills
Culture creation.
Two friends of mine had an idea, they would open their studio up to a whole group of their artist friends, from all sorts of disciplines – sculptors, painters, drawers, photographers, performance artists – to put on a one night only, pop up art show. They didn’t dictate what the artists would exhibit, they didn’t want a commission on any sales, there would be no advertising, each artist would just invite a small amount of their friends.
The idea was to create a space for artists to meet other artists, for peoples work to be seen, for crew who are into art to connect and share ideas, drink and socialise together. An ongoing series of ‘one off’ events outside the commercial gallery scene.
The studio is on their block, 10 minutes out of Mullumbimby where I live, its up a windy gravel road in the forest. When you get there you park next to the road, avoiding the ditch and make your way up a steep path through the bush, 90 odd stairs painstakingly cut and laid into the hillside. Its an effort. On the way sculptures are dotted along the fairy light lit path, there’s an installation in a garden shed and at the top some punters may have been lucky enough to come across a panda playing a musical saw, some missed it but that too is the idea, when you come to one of these pop up events you might not see everything and the myth naturally grows – “You didn’t see the Panda playing the saw?!”. The location and the effort required to get there adds to the surreal nature of popping out of the bush into a full blown art gallery opening cocktail party.
It was different for me to be invited to be part of a visual art exhibition, to view my work as ‘Art’.
I chose to exhibit a collage of almost 100 photographs of my community, our community – the circus, cabaret, physical theatre and fringe festival dwelling subculture taken over the last 5 or so years – on stage, off stage, candid, set up, as well as projecting video into a small space so it felt like it was a picture coming alive. I was showing my community to a whole new one. Being so used to showing my work to other ‘circus’ heads it was great to introduce it to a whole new appreciative audience and the amount of images drew people in, made them realise the breadth of the subculture and the depth of the documentation.
It was the 2nd time this pop up event has happened and the whole concept of the night is a roaring success.
18 artists presented their work, 200 odd people came, they connected with each other, all the cocktails were drunk and the legend continues to grow, now the hard bit will be keeping it that ‘small’.
COMMUNITY . CONNECTION . CULTURE ………….. and I brought the CIRCUS to the party.
X Hamish
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