THEO JANSEN- The art of creating creatures and Tom Shannon's Gravity defying sculptures

I always look up TED talks on youtube. often while I am working on something and wanting company. Two amazing sculptures are featured below, check them out.:-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b694exl_oZo&feature=plcp&context=C2f17bUDOEgsToPDskKPLYKGVUMkzRv5fmOsqWRd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zT7iKmfrCU&feature=relmfu

'What I Had I Gave Away' Exhibition @ Hardware Gallery Tuesday December 6, 2011

Please come along and celebrate the opening of our new exhibition with us. It is the second installment of a two part show, and a great closing show for 2011. It opens Tuesday December 6, Kicking off at 6pm at Hardware Gallery in Enmore. Bring your friends- all welcome! And thanks for your support in 2011.
Thomas and Amanda
Location: Hardware Gallery, 263 Enmore Rd, Enmore, Australia
http://www.hardwaregallery.com.au/EXHIBITIONS/42_What_I_Had_I_Gave_Away/42_What_I_Had_I_Gave_Away.html
http://www.thomas-c-chung.com/news.php
http://www.amandahumphries.mosaicglobe.com/
http://www.amandahumphrieslovesoscarwilde.blogspot.com/

Part Two
What I Had I Gave Away

Thomas C. Chung and Amanda Humphries.

What I Had I Gave Away is an exhibition of small soft sculptures and large watercolour and embroidery drawings and is the second part of a two-part show by Amanda Humphries and Thomas C. Chung. The first exhibition: All I Have I Hope To Keep was shown at Gallery Eight in September 2011.
In part one the duo were chasing the shadow, and freezing the real, accentuating the constant representations of life through making toys and embroidering ambitions. Everything was detached and preserved in this ever sensation-simulated world.
Just as part one is based on permanence and plasticity, then part two starts to contemplate its opposite. Processes of abandon and dissolve, of letting go, rather than holding on; the two shows are threading together the dance created between permanence and temporality, often employing the 'double' as a common vehicle for such concerns, whether through an awareness of time sequence (before and after shots) with Thomas' soft sculpture and running narrative, or through shadowed imagery with Amanda's use of contrasting mediums, light fluid bodies with heavily embroidered shadows, butterflied machines and lovers.
Taking into consideration the name of the venue Hardware Gallery, the art works occasionally play with tools and hardware as their subjects, often casting them in an organic light.
There is a certain amount of acceptance in this show, of our fragility and decay, and with the cyclical nature of the two show themes rotating and jousting. The work appeals to the holistic nature of the relationship between the real and the imagined.

What I Had I Gave Away - Our December art exhibition in progress.

It has been a while between posts this year, And now that it 2011 is drawing to a close I will be heavily updating both this site and my other website (www.amandahumphries.mosaicglobe.com). I have been working while in constant flux all year...living between three places, Moree, Sydney and Perth. Life is vibrant and my quiet contemplative times are far and few between for a change...though it's been a rather nice energetic change. I do miss the space to breathe and think about it all though. And now I have a computer! and a place to Sit still.
I moved back to Sydney and found myself a studio after a few years of working from the cottage on the farm. the studio is called May St Studios http://www.maystreetstudios.com.au/. There are 30+ artists that work from here. I will be moving to Perth in January 2012 so on to new adventures (and on to trying to find a great studio)

Projects/exhibitions of 2011 have been:
May: Illustrating a record by Fi Claus and exhibiting in the joint show ' Moving Landscapes' http://www.myspace.com/ficlaus;
March- Dec: 10,000 Rabbits Projects with the Australia Chinese Council, http://10000rabbits.wordpress.com/;
May: 'Medium Vinyl', Group show @ Hardware Gallery, www.hardwaregallery.com
September: Collaborative show with Thomas C.Chung @ Gallery Eight "All I Have I Hope To Keep", http://www.galleryeight.com.au/;
October: Sculpture In the Vineyards, Hunter Valley;
October: 'Affinity' Group Show @ Gallery Eight curated by Celine Roberts,
October: 'Rabbit Proof' -group show @ Hardware Gallery
October: Teaching art Workshops for the travelling Archibald exhibition at Moree Plains Gallery
December: 'What I Had I Gave Away' part two of our Collaborative Show with Thomas C. Chung @ Hardware Gallery

Floating Sculpture Pictures September 2011

The Project of making a floating sculpture was finally realised in 2010 and completed in September 2011. It was a large perspex box (restricted to the largest size I can fit in my car) with thousands of small holes drilled through the side, to allow a threaded suspended world of particles within. I organised the mass movement of particles to be in two heavy concentrated areas, and spaced out in-between this was a subtle way to create the illusion of movement, in particular, the movement of rising, floating. This was draft 4 of the project, the next step will be to make a floor to ceiling room wide installation (permanent installation) where the outside distraction of the perspex box dissolves. I will have to work from a ladder and I will make a form look like bubbles, an effervescent floating effect.

All I Have I Hope To Keep

All I Have I Hope To Keep
Thomas C. Chung & Amanda Humphries
Gallery Eight Miller’s Point September 16 – October 4
(part one of a two part show)

Floating sculptures, knitted toys and prettily embroidered machines, the duo have created art that alludes to the fabricated world, the game of chasing forever and evading entropy.
Everything is experienced through play in “All I Have I Hope To Keep” showing at Gallery Eight at Miller’s Point. It is the first part of a two part show that suggests ideas of the loneliness and detachment raised in an ever ‘sensation- simulated’ world.
Where would you go with a crocheted hobbyhorse, sunglasses and a pair of binoculars? Oh and don’t forget to pack your knitted umbrella. There could possibly be imaginary rain or even a thunderstorm of birds and battleships to contend with on the way. Tell me; what adventures await within? Can you take anyone with you? And what happened while you were away?
We are quickly threading together alternative worlds to keep pace with the real one decaying, creating suspended timeless worlds that will never leave us. Thomas illustrates this through a child’s eyes using toys and creating fantasy worlds and objects that the child never belongs to, but rather experiences as an outsider, a voyeur. Amanda continues this play into adulthood, where this primal otherness eventuates until we are other to ourselves, extending our ‘self’ into the machine.
Embroideries of machines sentimentally placed on the wall, the skeletal sculptures of toys placed besides; Amanda takes objects from nostalgic utopias and forgotten fantasies and plays with the idea of forever and progress. Her floating sculptures made with invisible thread also allude to that suspended timeless world, free from gravity and relativity, almost completely existential and free of form. Thomas keeps objects preserved in jars and knits away his fantasies, framing them as a modern still-life. Escapism is often used in his practice as a form of dealing with the feelings one might want to suppress, especially when one is still a child. Dreams, indulgence and imagination are also key aspects to his stories behind their creations.
Both of us are making worlds we can’t really ‘touch’, and are going on adventures to places that are intangible, yet continue to always exist