Viky Garden - Award Winning Pinhole Photography

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Posted:
June 3, 2019
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Viky Garden
Viky Garden
Set-up for pinhole photographs
Elaine's Shoes
Set-up
Close-up of Elaine's Shoes
ready for photographing
Shoes
Hand-made pinhole camera
used for CASTING SHADOWS
series
Pinhole Camera
Negative for
Portrait of Elaine's Shoes
Shoes negative
The finished product
Portrait of Elaine's Shoes
Limited edition print
Elaine
Wings (2018)

One of the two winning entries
submitted to the Julia Margaret
Cameron Awards, Barcelona Spain
Alternative Processes Category
Wings
Hands (2018)

The other winning entry submitted
to the Julia Margaret Cameron
Awards, Barcelona Spain
Alternative Processes Category
Hands
CASTING SHADOWS exhibition
Hallway
Hall 2
Main Gallery door to bay
Main Gallery 1
Main Gallery to Hall

Viky Garden – Award Winning Pinhole Photography

Viky Garden, born in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, is best known as a painter. From the age of 15, she predominantly used herself as the model for her work. Through this singular practice, and over the course of three decades, she has explored the transitory nature of change and impermanence, themes that offer a framework to consider personal and universal aspects of the female experience.

Last year, Viky entered two photographic images into the international Julia Margaret Cameron 12th annual Photographic Award in Barcelona, Spain. Out of over 6,000 entries from all over the world, both images won the Alternative Processes Award and will be exhibited alongside other category winners in Barcelona this May 2019.

The two works came from a series of pinhole photographs, Casting Shadows, created by Viky in 2018, when her curiosity in pinhole photography became a reality after she moved from her studio off the lounge, where she had worked for over 20 years, to a larger backyard shed with a room attached that is now her dark room.

Recognising through social media that everyone is now a photographer, she remembers wondering how far back she could take photography for it to interest and have value to her.

“As a painter, I am very aware of how a painting can, when the going’s good, invent itself. It develops outside of anything I’m doing to encourage it – often in spite of what I’m trying to do and which I never quite achieve (hence the next painting). So it is with photography, I love the mysterious revealing or developing aspect and it’s this that feels lacking in the digital picture-taking process.

Pinhole photography is very much hands-on and really does create a kind of spirit. For me, it’s  photography born of a cardboard box with no lens that I can look through to check the subject, only a pinhole to let light in onto a paper negative, where the exposure time is guesswork and frankly, anything can and does actually happen.

It can often take a day for me to do just a few shots because my guesswork can be wide off the mark and in winter, with no running water other than an outside hose and a large bucket, recognising and rinsing the failure shots to only go and repeat the process can feel rather dispiriting. At this point you’re thinking, why bother rinsing them? Well, they’re my lessons – I have to study those shots to learn what it is I’m trying to achieve – actually, what the camera is trying to achieve. If I trash them the way we delete displeasing digital images, I stand to learn nothing about the craft itself.

Because Casting Shadows are indoor poses, the exposures were up to 14 minutes long. This meant sitting as still as a statue, shallow breathing because even the rib cage moving created a blur. As I sat there, I had little idea what the camera was choosing to focus on but hoped serendipity graced herself and bestowed an exquisite result. Yes, it’s very much like a lottery. It’s about inviting chance into a process and respecting that very little will ever go to plan.

The resulting images have a recognisable idiosyncratic aesthetic. They are an analogue image as opposed to something digital. They are time and light crafted.”

Fe29’s exhibition CASTING SHADOWS was timed to coincide with the show in Barcelona. Limited edition prints from the series are available through the gallery.

Posted:
March 7, 2018
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Clive Barker – The Great Imaginer

When Sam Henderson walked into Fe29 and asked whether we would like to exhibit works by Clive Barker, we had to admit that we didn’t know who he was. That was until she mentioned Candyman and Hellraiser movies. Having spiked our interest, Sam proceeded to show us some of Barker’s paintings from the web. These works were certainly not what we had previously shown at Fe29, but it was obvious to us that Barker was indeed a very talented artist.

We searched the web further and found that, not only was Barker a talented film maker and artist, but also a poet, novelist, director, screenwriter and dramatist. Apparently his early creative journey began in Liverpool, England – he ran the Dog Company performing plays and theatre productions. He then moved into writing, drawing and painting. He has been described as a polymath in the same manner as the artist, director, and poet, Jean Cocteau.

We found the following quote from film director Quentin Tarantino where he sums up Clive Barker’s work as an author:

‘To call Clive Barker a horror novelist would be like calling the Beatles a garage band. Always creating and always pushing into the farthest reaches of the human mind, he is an artist in every sense of the word. He is the great imaginer of our time. He knows not only our greatest fears, but also (what) delights us, what turns us on, and what is truly holy in the world. Haunting, bizarre, beautiful. These are the words we can use to describe Clive Barker  only until we invent new, more fitting adjectives.’

Apparently Sam and her partner (also in films) knew Barker, and had been in his home/studio in Hollywood on numerous occasions, even getting the opportunity to watch him working. Sam told us of 30 something works that she wanted to sell from her private collection, and we agreed to take a look.

It turns out that many of the works form the inspiration for paintings that later evolved, as well as fantastic illustrations for his fantasy novels of Abarat and Weaveworld. The images in this blog show some of these drawings alongside the finalised paintings.

Sam shares briefly a little of what she learned about Barker during her visits to his studio.

‘I first met Clive Barker in Los Angles in 2004 at his Hollywood hills home. Although best known as a successful novelist and filmmaker, Clive Barker has been creating paintings and drawings for over twenty years, but the man I met also had drank cups of British tea by the litre and had a sweet tooth requiring Tunnocks tea cakes and Kendal Mint Cake. I spent much time in Clive’s huge triple height studio, access only gained by a winding multi levelled staircase. The room was full of stacks of paintings, leaning up against one another. The easel area was surrounded by tubes of paint, some squirted onto paper plates, others used directly onto the canvases. Clive painted in a very physical manner, with huge large pieces needing him to move across the canvas. In creating his deeply expressive paintings, Barker brings to life the landscapes and figures that inhabit his mind. His colours are bold, paint application thickly layered, and surfaces often scratched or sanded, his tools were what ever he found at hand, including steak knifes and forks from his lunch plate.’

While we showed these works at Fe29 in 2016, we had not long been open and many people had not heard of the gallery. We decided that this years Fringe exhibition would be a good opportunity to exhibit them again alongside the works of a couple of other interesting artists – Marion Beaupère – a young French artist currently living in NZ – (also exhibited in 2016, not long after we opened), and Peter Bradburn (an itinerant Kiwi artist and poet) new to the gallery.

Enjoy!

 

 

Posted:
October 15, 2017
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Marian at Home
Working on The Earth Remembers
World Climate Change
Island Timer
Ancestral Remote
Peas

Forging a Career in Paris – Marian Fountain at Fe29

Featured on the Arts page of the Otago Daily Times, Thursday, October 12, 2017

Paris based New Zealand artist, Marian Fountain’s works are being exhibited at Fe29 Gallery in St Clair this month. As she explains to Rebecca Fox, one of her greatest honours has been to create a bronze monument as a tribute to New Zealand tunnellers in World War I, in Arras France.

Q Is there any particular work or series of work that is a favourite or stands out for you? 

‘The Earth Remembers’ monument stands out for me because it was made for the people of NZ and France about our common history, and it will live it’s own life from now on.

Q – What did it mean to you to be commissioned to make a statue to  mark the First World War centenary commemorations at the Carrière Wellington Museum, Arras, France? 

It was a huge honour and responsibility. Finding the idea took time but once it was there it was complete and nothing needed changing. Immersing myself in the subject of WWI was very subduing, I took my role – of representing the people who suffered and the need to condemn war – very seriously. It was a 4 year process and the fabrication itself took 22 months.

Q – Where did you grow up?

In Papatoetoe, South Auckland. We lived off the garden which had 36 varieties of fruit, there were vegetables, chickens, and the occasional lamb. When I was 7yrs the family moved to Whanganui where I stayed till returning to Auckland to go to art school.

Q – Did you always know you wanted to be an artist? How did that evolve?

As a young child I was often wrapped up in observing a leaf or stick, creating scenarios with objects. The sense of wonder has always been there, I felt that a scientific career would inevitably become too specialised, and that by making art I could discover more about the universe and our existence by playing with juxtaposing ideas.

Q – How did you come upon sculpture and medal making?

Professor Beadle at Elam School of Fine Art introduced me to his techniques in his fascinating world of working with wax.  As he became too ill to work he passed on some commissions to me : portrait plaques of the former deans of the art school, and a sundial for Auckland Medical School. So the first year after art school was a formative time for learning how to create art work in the real world.

Q – What is it about these arts that have grabbed you and hold you?

Bronze is a material which has a rich history in many cultures through time. Making sculptures with this age-old process seems to bridge time, informing us at once of our present and our distant ancestral past.

In the process of making a sculpture I mainly work with plasticine, wax and plaster. They are natural materials which are pleasing to manipulate, not toxic. The negative and positive steps in mold making add more stages in which to intervene, building up a situation of many creative possibilities.

I work alternately between small and large scale: a large work is concerned with form and presence, whereas a hand-held object lends itself to a more narrative intimacy, whereby one can hone in to the microcosm as though looking through a microscope, to find out about the nature of something.

Q – How has your work developed over the years?

Arriving in Europe in 1984, the multitude of cultures, styles and eras led me to look for a certain essence or universality. A period of museum research ensued, culminating in an exhibition at the Museo Archeologico di Milano, where I exhibited in the Etruscan room, proposing a series of objects from a ‘yet undiscovered’ or ‘possible’ culture.

In contact with contemporary artists in Eastern Europe during the early 90’s, my work underwent a transformation, and ‘metamorphic’ tendencies evolved in direct response to shifting politics and the changing situation for Eastern-bloc artists. With the series of ‘beings in transition’ I was analysing the actual structure of change.  At this moment I got ‘out of the museums and into the subconscious’.

The Remote Control series (2000 – 2010) looks at our evolving relationship to touch and form in our everyday lives, with levers and buttons replaced by touch screens.

Q – What is it like making medals for things like commonwealth games etc?

First I try to imagine the spirit of the finished object, then brainstorm the possible aspects of the subject by drawing a lot of possible scenarios. It’s then often a process of elimination to hone down the design to a satisfying whole.

Q – How is technology impacting on casting in bronze if at all?

I’m starting to use 3D printing for making some effects at the model stage. The actual casting process is age-old, but foundries in the Paris region are becoming scarce.

Q – Why move to Europe and settle in Paris?

I was attributed a QEII Arts Council Grant in 1984 to study foundry techniques in Europe,  first training at the Italian Mint School in Rome before living for a time in London. In my travels Paris became a mid-way point that became more and more essential, I made friends here and took up the opportunity for free studio space.

Q – What do you like about living in Paris?

Everyday conversations here have always been inspiring. I’ve lived in 3 different neighbourhoods each with their own particular feel and history, and there will always be more to discover. The diversity and resilience of Parisians inspires confidence.

Q – What is a ”normal” day like for you?

Every day is different, starting with meditation I then get on with the most urgent thing whether it be the project or sculpture at hand, meeting people or administration, with exhibition visits and communal gardening whenever possible.

Q – How does your NZ background influence your work?

Nature and the land is our life-source.  It’s enriching to have grown up in contact with the Maori culture : the presence of another world view from that of Europe, with different creation stories, customs, understanding of nature and the land, language …and reasons for making art. Resourcefulness and creativity are alive and well in NZ.

Q – Would you ever come home to NZ for good?

I live in the present.

Posted:
October 13, 2017
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Marian in her first official squat - a home and studio in Montmartre
Marian Fountain 1
Home and studio No. 2 - 400 m2 of factory space in the centre of Paris
Marian
Marian at work and at rest surrounded by some of her bas-reliefs
Marian at work and at rest
Marian's morning for work on the school rooftop garden
Marian school rooftop garden
A sense of touch shared with our ancestors
Ancestrl Remote

Featured Artist Marian Fountain

MARIAN FOUNTAIN – Sculptor & medal artist

Marian Fountain is a New Zealand artist who has lived in Paris for 22 years and returns regularly to the country of her birth. She takes her inspiration from simple and recognisable forms in nature: a fish, a leaf, a pea pod – food from the earth. And on the surface of these forms the traces of underlying life – movement and energy are evoked with fine reliefs of waves, camouflages or tattoo. Her work has been exhibited at the British Museum, The National Gallery of Scotland, the Museo Archeologico of Milan, York Museum, Auckland Museum, and the French Mint. Some of her creations include the winners’ medals for the Commonwealth Games in 1990 and the America’s Cup in 2003, and the “Entente Cordiale” centenary medal in 2004.

Fountain currently lives in an ‘atelier d’artiste de la Ville de Paris’ (social housing for artists), which was provided for her in 2008. Up until that time, from the time she arrived in Paris (1991), she had been living in official squats. For the first eight years, she was  in a little house built in 1900 in Montmartre with no bathroom and an outside toilet. Conditions were very ‘bohème’ but the garden cascaded down three terraces to the Bateau Lavoir at the bottom. ” The little house felt like the Grandma of Paris so I had an open-door policy and met Parisians that way.”

For the next eight years she lived in a 400m2 factory space in the centre of Paris, and there too it was open door with people using
the downstairs area for theatre, music and various courses. “In 2000 we held ‘Picnicart’ parties every month where people bought
their own food and five or six artists exhibited.”

She is happy now to have her own workshop and living space with a garden at the end of a grassy courtyard. “I have been extremely
lucky to be able to work outside and to have had three gardens and sky in Paris.”

First experiences with bronze casting – “It was actually a piece of wood that introduced me to the foundry. I was in my second year at art school studying design and sculpture. In the wood workshop on the first floor, a small piece of wood that I was trying to mill, shot out of its clamp and nearly took my stomach out on its fast trajectory towards the window, which luckily was open. Rather shaken, I went outside to look for the wood and came across David Reid, who ran the foundry in the courtyard. Then and there he started showing me the process of simply burying polystyrene and pouring metal into it : the simplest of molds/casts. I was immediately hooked. Somehow it seemed to me a more ‘balanced’ process than the violent machines often used to manipulate wood. And it seemed you could create something from scratch.

An opportunity to go to Italy and receive training at the Rome Mint – “I’ve been involved with the British Art Medal Society since 1984, attending weekends most years which provide a fantastic opportunity to visit museums with curators, around the UK and on the continent. During an international congress (FIDEM) dinner in 1984 in Stockholm, I met the person in charge of medals at FAO in Rome, who helped me apply for the school at the Rome Mint. There were no fees but I plunged into Roman life, earning my own living and also making enough work to exhibit in a gallery on the Spanish Steps. I was involved with a family who cast sculptures in their foundry on the seventh floor of the medieval tower where they lived. It was fantastic to have first-hand experience of the artistic and artisanal traditions in Italy.”

A sense of touch shared with our ancestors – “It’s a thrill when sculpting to feel in touch with the artisan ancestors by repeating exactly the same manual gestures, understanding better how many artefacts from the plethora of cultures and eras were made. Through practice, the hand-eye coordination blends the conscious and the unconscious, and we begin to feel part of the collective lake of consciousness. I feel that creating things with the hands is like keeping the sap flowing through the branches and roots of a plant, keeping the organism (myself and the community) alive and healthy.” Fountain’s Ancestral Remote is reminiscent of Maori rakau whakapapa (used as a mnemonic aid to Maori elders reciting long genealogical histories).

Bridging Time – ” Bronze is a material which has a rich history in many cultures through time. Making sculptures from it seems to bridge time, informing us at once of our present and our distant ancestral past, and emphasizing that the present is but a notch in time. In the process of making a sculpture I mainly work with plasticine, wax and plaster. They are natural materials which are pleasing to manipulate, not toxic, and furthermore the negative and positive steps in mold-making add more stages in which to intervene, building up a situation of many creative possibilities.

See how Marian Fountain came to exhibit in Fe29 Gallery, and learn more about Marian and her works.