Wonderful to be included in the exhibition, Door to Door, Berlin, courtesy of Art Aviso https://www.artaviso.com/plate-16/

Door to Door – 2022 Berlin

In March 2020 at the beginning of the Pandemic and the lockdowns, we invited Art Aviso Artists to be part of Art Aviso event Door to Door (Art in the time of COVID-19 or Art from isolation). This project began in Australia and then was shared across Europe

Art Aviso Artists were supplied via email with a page from Newnes’ Pictorial Knowledge 1950’s Encyclopedia (Edited by Enid Blyton) selected at random (or so we told the artists), which was to form the basis of an artwork to be exhibited at some time on the other side of the Pandemic. The page could act as inspiration for the colours, forms, texture, feeling or as a research starting point to dive down the rabbit hole!

When this project began there was no end plan for the output of the artwork, in fact it was very difficult to plan anything, it just felt important to be creating something together – apart.

What happened was, that we were inundated with requests to join the project, and as it began to unfold and the works started coming in with their accompanying stories, it became apparent that collectively the artworks were forming something special.

To date there are over 200 Artists currently part of this project and exhibition event.

The first phase of this exhibition was a virtual exhibition, which was all that was initially possible, then the Australian artwork was exhibited in Melbourne in February 2021 – this exhibition was cut short by yet another snap lockdown.

Now we take the Australian Artworks to Berlin to join the European Art Aviso Artists in the realisation of the project that began over two years ago!

Art

Thanks Rob Schackne for his poem inspired by one of my native ink paintings. www.facebook.com/notes/rob-schackne/a-fire-trail-redux/827694757736644/?comment_id=827697184403068&notif_id=1582681123711435&notif_t=comment_mention

Looking forward to being part of priNT at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art opening soon.

www.facebook.com/events/2395401687384436/

Writing

* Fantastic review of Short Fiction for an Absurd World on the US Review of Books. Here's an extract:

'It can be difficult to lock down a specific group of readers who would enjoy this title simply for the way it transcends genres so easily, but the quality of the prose and the mastery of description make it a brilliant choice for lovers of creative fiction. Jumping from something not out of place on The Twilight Zone to bizarre character pieces that evoke the most creative cinematic works from directors like Lynch, Tarantino, and Luhrmann, readers who appreciate treading far from the beaten path will be delighted and surprised by each story collected in this volume. The mainstream reader may be left scratching his or her head trying to decipher the meaning behind each of these stories, but this is creative writing for the creative writer at its best: It's challenging, inspirational, and nearly impossible to predict.

RECOMMENDED by the USR

http://www.theusreview.com/reviews/Short-Rodden.html#.VChWe5VxnX4

* There is a great new website with interviews by Australian landscape painters talking about their relationship to the land which you can find here.

* Creativity was the subject of my interview with Finnish/Australian artists and art therapists, Marjut Silvennoinen and Iris Ztarr. They are creating a video about the creative processes of Mid North Coast artists. I'm looking forward to seeing this! To learn more about their work read about it here.