JAMES DODD | WADE MARYNOWSKY DAVID LAWREY & JAKI MIDDLETON CAMERON ROBBINS | TRICKY WALSH
A solar powered and time-based drawing instrument; a remote controlled mutant power tool that creates painting; a theoretical communication device; three automatons powered by vintage gramophone motors, and eight custom built autonomous robots. DREAM MACHINES brings together five artists and collaboratives who are modern day Da Vinci’s – contemporary polymaths – whose practice intersects art, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. They are simultaneously artist, scientist, engineer and inventor. They are makers of things that do things. The artists, James Dodd, Wade Marynowsky, David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton, Cameron Robbins, and Tricky Walsh, are at the forefront of contemporary art practice in Australia. They produce functional artworks and imagined machines which audiences can engage and interact with. For Dream Machines, the artists have been commissioned to develop new works, or reconfigure and redevelop an existing work specifically for the exhibition. At the core of this project are ideas centred around DIY aesthetics, backyard inventors and the suburban shed, the adaptation of existing and utilitarian objects, the machine aesthetic, hacking and re-purposing, and how creativity is integral to innovation. Carrie Kibbler Curator
JAMES DODD: PAINTING MILL V3.5 James Dodd’s practice encompasses visual street culture, the urban environment and the gallery. Whilst his work revolves around painting, he often expands and integrates this with installations, machines, modified bicycles and performance. Dodd’s ongoing Painting Mill project grew out of his interest in simple machines and how they might be considered within a visual art context. He’s interested in ideas of adaptation and re-purposing; the creative outputs from suburban backyard sheds; and the alternative applications of pre-existing and often utilitarian objects. Employing a DIY aesthetic, in Painting mill, v 3.5 Dodd has created a stage using the basic construction material of plywood then added simple mechanics, a bike, and cordless drills and built them into a machine that can be used for making paintings.
The machine, which he describes as a ‘mutant power tool’ is remotecontrolled via a hand held device that implies a sense of video gaming or model aeroplane enthusiast. Dodd says: ‘The Painting Mill proposes a machine that might be as interesting as an object, as the outcomes that it produces. As a tool for making art its interfaces become the joysticks of a remote control that variously drive the primary components and roughly made attachments that feature conventional brush heads, scrapey blade objects and a litany of household cleaning items. It is not to be considered as a digital, precise or programmable outcome, only as an extension of the painter’s hands. The project is to be considered as my contribution to the ever-expanding genre which is the “painting machine”.’ James Dodd is represented by Hugo Michelle Gallery, Adelaide. The artist has been generously supported by the South Australian government via Arts South Australia. james-dodd.com
Painting mill, v3.5 2017 bicycle, bicycle components, remote control components, cordless drills, roller blades, skateboard wheels, lead screw, bearings, aluminium, steel, timber, hot glue, cable ties, bolts, screws, various brushes, canvas, stretchers
DAVID LAWREY & JAKI MIDDLETON: THIS ISN’T HAPPENING
David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton have been working collaboratively since 2005. Their practice draws inspiration from the themes and aesthetics of popular forms of entertainment from the past and now. Lawrey & Middleton are especially interested in pre-cinematic optical illusions, traditional museum displays, miniature models and theatrical magic, and the way these mediums have been used to explore existential questions and supernatural possibilities. They combine elements of these outmoded mediums with cinematicallyinfluenced scenes that for them symbolise recurring psychological crises relating to life, death, work, human relationships and contemporary challenges.
Central to their work is a preoccupation with an in-between state: the twilight space between seeing and knowing, natural and supernatural, existence and absence, aspiration and action. Lawrey & Middleton’s work, This isn’t happening, is a series of three hand-built automaton-based works, powered by hand-cranked vintage gramophone motors activated by the viewer. Lawrey & Middleton explain: ‘Each work depicts a lone woman in a domestic space repeatedly struggling: to find something lost, to erase an error, to fall asleep. The dreamlike scenes depicted here convey a universally recognisable feeling of anxiety and despair; one that, for us, is magnified by the current socio-political landscape.’ David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton are represented by Gallery 9, Sydney. wayback.net.au
This isn’t happening 2017 timber, vintage gramophone motor, pulley belt, screws, magnets, bearings, hinges, glue, paper, polymer clay, plastic, fabric, paint
WADE MARYNOWSKY: ROBOT OPERETTA
Wade Marynowsky specialises in experimental and emerging art forms, including robotics, immersive and interactive installation, performance, music and video. His practice combines technology with humour to unsettling effect and raises questions about our relationship with technology, machines and artificial intelligence. Robot operetta is the first installation version of Marynowsky’s 2015 work Robot opera, a robot opera for eight autonomous robot performers. As viewers slowly enter the space the autonomous robots will detect human presence and respond, with light, sound and movement, breaking the fourth wall and making the viewer an active participant in the performance. Whilst futuristic, Robot operetta draws on a multitude of historic reference points; visually the work embraces minimalist sculpture and the machine aesthetic.
Robot operetta also asks viewers to consider what opera and performance can be. Marynowsky explains: ‘Real opera seems robotic to me at the moment. Traditional works are repeated over and over. There’s nothing different. It should be about finding new and exciting ideas. I’m commenting on automation in industry and the arts and showing you don’t even have to be human to be a performer.’ In the future, Marynowsky hopes to extend the current experimental version of the work to produce a fully autonomous robotic opera. Dynamic and engaging, the work also draws on human anxiety around the automation revolution and advancements in artificial intelligence and their ever more present role in the future. The original project was produced with support from the Australia Council for the Arts and Macquarie University and co-presented by Performance Space and Carriageworks. Dr Wade Marynowsky is an academic, artist and researcher. marynowsky.net
Robot operetta 2017 8� steel frames, custom electronics, arduino controllers, motor drivers, motor controllers, Kinect version 2, laptops, DMX lights, amplifiers, computer speakers, LED light strips, Perspex, sealed lead acid batteries, powered wheelchair motors and wheels, motors, sensors, sound, code
CAMERON ROBBINS: SHADOW PHASE Cameron Robbins has produced site-specific installations and exhibitions in art centres, disused buildings and outdoor sites in Australia and internationally. He creates structural devices including solar, kinetic wind or water powered mechanical systems that are result of both careful engineering and resourcefulness. The resulting physical outputs, including solar and wind drawings and sound compositions, interpret the dynamics and scale of the physical world and make tangible the underlying structures and rhythms of natural forces. Shadow Phase is a solar powered and time-based drawing instrument. The site specific work was commissioned by Hazelhurst for Dream Machines and was developed during a studio
Shadow phase 2017 solar powered and time-based drawing instrument, 12V Solar panel, speed control paper roll mechanism, arduino stepper motor, stainless steel wire, feather, shell, Uniball pigment ink pens, 200 gsm watercolour paper, coal, rainwater
residency in December 2016 and January 2017. The drawings, displayed in chronological order, show the variations in sunlight during this period. Each day throughout the residency and exhibition, drawings accumulate from thousands of lines of ink on paper as sunlight passes through clouds, atmosphere and trees to activate a solar panel located outside the gallery which directly, without battery storage, powers a motor driven drawing arm and pen. In contrast, the mechanical roller controlled by an arduino stepper motor is powered by 240 volt electricity which is predominantly provided by coal-fired power stations.
Robbins explains: ‘The character of each day comes through its skein of lines, as the infinitely changeable atmosphere governs solar energy falling onto the Photo Voltaic Panel and electrically driving the motor and pen. The sun stops shining, the line stops. Cloudy moments and nights the pen lies still, while the paper constantly creeps along. A gap left between each day of lines, revealing the white paper…a drawing of time, trees’ dappled light and shadow, and solar energy.’ Cameron Robbins is represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne. cameronrobbins.com
TRICKY WALSH: THz (Terahertz transceiver.) Tricky Walsh has a practice which encompasses architecture, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, film, comics and radio. The works are grounded in the overarching research subjects of speculative science, the imaginary machine concept, communication devices and the electromagnetic spectrum. THz TRNCVR (terahertz transceiver) is a theoretical communication device: it receives radio waves, amplifies them in its resonant cavity into the terahertz range, embeds them onto a light wave and converts that original radio frequency into a perceivable, optical signal. Theoretically, Walsh envisages it would be worked like Morse code with the spectrum-based telegraph key. Terahertz waves (tremendously high) have only been detectable since the 1980s. They sit between microwave and infrared rays on the electromagnetic spectrum from range from radio waves and microwaves, to infrared waves, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma radiation. Like X-rays, they enable materials to become see-through, but without the health hazards. Walsh explains: ‘Our once sparse atmosphere which was initially broken by the first signals and voices of radio pioneers is chock full so we’re opening up new real estate. The Terahertz part of
THz TRNCVR (working drawings) 2017 digital prints
Tricky Walsh has a practice which encompasses architecture, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, film, comics and radio. The works are grounded in the overarching research subjects of speculative science, the imaginary machine concept, the electromagnetic spectrum and communication devices.
the electromagnetic spectrum is about to get popular. Once we figure it out properly, they’ll be safer that X-rays for medical imaging, we’ll generate energy with them and also (not entirely sure on this one) embed bubbles into DNA to stop it from doing whatever bad thing DNA does when left unattended (I’m pretty shaky on biology).’ Walsh continues: ‘I’ve been living in a speculative world for the last few years, one which imagines the development of technologies to have taken a different path than the one we’ve taken – one which has evolved a multitude of functions from one device, rather than expanding from one idea to the next with little reflection.’
THz TRNCVR 2017 pine, maple, hand-carved basswood and balsa wood, acrylic, optic fibres, copper leaf, copper pipe, concrete, light engine, Rochelle salt (KNaC4H4O6•4H2O)
The thin green baize 2015 gouache on paper
Tricky Walsh’s painting practice evolved from narrative to abstraction, focused on hard-edge and geometric styles which use mathematical methods in their image making. The contents of works like The thin green baize include both abstract machineries and optical architectures among other things; seen as two-dimensional representations of Walsh’s sculpture and installation works. Walsh explains: ‘I’m interested in that point in time when invention occurs. It is something that artists and scientists (and backyard inventors) share – the ability to imagine something into existence that has not existed before, or to show it in a new light. It’s the point of suspending disbelief, the point of what-ifs, and in some ways, the point where everything before and after ceases to exist, and even gravity takes a break.’ Tricky Walsh is represented by Bett Gallery, Hobart and MARS Gallery, Melbourne. trickywalsh.com
DREAM MACHINES artist short film: 6 min 10 sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O_yBlIO-Lc
DREAM MACHINES James Dodd Wade Marynowsky David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton Cameron Robbins Tricky Walsh 22 July - 17 September 2017 Š 2017 Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre 782 Kingsway Gymea NSW 2227 Australia T: 61 2 8536 5700 E: hazelhurst@ssc.nsw.gov.au www.hazelhurst.com.au
Project team Artists: James Dodd David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton Wade Marynowsky Cameron Robbins Tricky Walsh Curator: Carrie Kibbler Project Assistant & Catalogue: Naomi Stewart Exhibition installation Marc Etherington | Gilbert Grace Megan Hanson | Tom Hungerford Alex Kiers | Al Poulet Paul Williams | Chris Zanko Courtney Lomax (intern)
ISBN: 978-1-921437-89-2 Hazelhurst team Director: Belinda Hanrahan Curator: Carrie Kibbler Arts Centre Coordinator: Grahame Kime Education & Public Programs Coordinator: Kate Milner Education & Public Program Officer: Ingrid Dernee Senior Marketing Coordinator: Andrea Merlak Marketing Coordinator: Viola Soliman Administrator: Caryn Schwartz Administration: Sophia Egarchos,Vilma Hodgson, Cameron Ward Artwork documentation by Silversalt except: Pages 4, 10, 29, 32, courtesy the artist.
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