BLUE KING - Warp Magazine

26 Arts
ARTIST INTERvIEW: DAvID EDGAR
HOBART-BASED ARTIST DAVID EDGAR EXPLORES THE NOTIONS OF ISLAND TIME WITH
LARGE-SCALE WORKS ON PAPER AT INFLIGHT ARI IN MAY. WARP’S ALISON MCCRINDLE
TALKS WITH HIM ABOUT HIS ARTISTIC INSPIRATION.
Warp: Describe yourself to me - as if you
were submitting an ad into the adult services
classifieds of a newspaper.
David Edgar: I don’t think I have ever submitted
an ad to an adult services classified, but if I had
to I’d probably tell the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth. I’m sure you can
note a hint of sarcasm there.
You are experienced in many aspects of
the arts industry. Do you see yourself as an
established artist?
Established? No. My philosophy is one of
constant learning, trying new things out,
exploring. I certainly haven’t got the experience
of an established artist, but one who is
attempting to establish himself, maybe.
When did you discover your creative streak,
and in what medium?
Finger painting - or should I say finger
scribbling - and funnily enough, I’m still using
and playing with finger scribbling today.
“The native grasses on Tasman Island are
truly wild,” you write in an artist’s statement.
What’s the fascination?
On Tasman Island, you can’t help but notice
the grasses, most of the island is covered with
waist-high grass, and so navigating through
them is sometimes a challenge. It’s also a fullon
windy place. The sound the grass makes in
the wind is like nothing else.
Describe manoeuvring through the waist-high
grass.
IMAGE: DAVID EDGAR
There are places where the grass is so high
that all you have to do is fall backwards, it’s
like melting into a bean bag. A lot of the time
though, we are slashing paths with a lawn
mower. I feel like a twisted environmental artist
or designer when doing this, making these
linear, yet functional interventions in the grass.
You have been visiting Tasman Island for
nine years. Are you obsessed? What’s the
attraction?
A bunch of things, but essentially, moving from
one big island to a smaller one; from Sydney
to Tasmania. Then visiting the Cook Islands
shortly afterwards and experiencing what the
locals call “island-time.” This was followed
shortly after by my first trip to Tasman, where it
was all there; the edges, the isolation, the cliffs,
vast ocean vistas, silence and noise, intensely
varied weather, fear, trepidation, awe...
What defines “island time” and how does it
relate to your work?
The Islanders describe it as a much slower
sense of time than what you and I might
perceive in our busy, clock-regulated life.
Nothing is rushed or done quickly on the island
as there is no reason for it to occur this way.
What I like about this is an abstracted notion
not just of time, but of the perception of place.
For me it alludes to a warping abstraction of
how we live with and think about time. Another
example, that I read somewhere recently, may
be the experience of travelling into an old city.
We may feel like we have stepped back in time
and therefore reminisce about the past.
These warped notions of time occur a lot
within ideas of place, and it’s where this idea
of time slows down, for me caused by island
landscapes, or island-scapes, is somewhere
where my drawing can be located.
What can you tell us about your exhibition at
Inflight ARI in May?
Leaving off from the previous question about
time, this upcoming show is also about time,
but more importantly about drawing, and its
possibilities.
I want to create a new system of mark making
found unconsciously in the real life of the every
day. I will do this by extracting online weather
data from Tasman Island on a daily basis, and
blow it up, layering the data onto the walls of
the gallery.
The intention is to formulate a new system of
marks created against the collection of the
other system. I really have no idea how the
work will look at the end, as I am dictated by
each day, but I’m more interested in what the
possibilities will engender throughout
the process.
Are you happy in your art, in yourself?
Moments of happy, moments of anxiety,
moments of bliss, moments of unknown; life
fluctuates, like the weather, and so does my
mental state.
A lot of this relates to life in general, but
making drawing can be crucially relational to
this also. I don’t know, one day I’m happy, the
next not, maybe my mind is in a constant state
of imbalance... and so to the drawings that
I produce.
ALISON MCCRINDLE
‘David Edgar an evolving drawing installation’
at Inflight ARI (100 goulburn St hobart)
opens May 6 and runs Wednesday to Saturday
from 1pm-5pm. The show concludes with
closing drinks on Friday May 27 at 6pm.
www.inflightart.com.au
EIGHT yEARS
FLyING HIGH WITH
INFLIGHT ARI
SINCE 2003, HOBART’S INFLIGHT HAS EXHIBITED
EXPERIMENTAL CONTEMPORARY ART PRODUCED BY LOCAL,
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS.
Inflight Artist-run Initiative was created by a
group of Hobart artists to address the serious
lack of gallery space available to exhibit
emerging and experimental art. The first show
opened in February 2003 showcasing the work
of its founding board in a space at the Letitia
Street studios in North Hobart where many of
the artists worked.
In the eight years since, Inflight has held
around 150 exhibitions and events featuring the
work of local, national and international artists.
Inflight’s mission is to provide affordable
and professional gallery space and arts
related opportunities to young, emerging
and experimental artists and curators, and
is funded by the Australia Council and Arts
Tasmania and run by a board of volunteers.
inflight works closely with other artist run
initiatives in Hobart and elsewhere in Australia
and has over the last five years facilitated an
exchange program with mainland galleries,
bringing artists from the mainland to Hobart
and in turn offering the chance for Tasmanian
artists to exhibit in other Australian cities.
Inflight’s first international artist exchange
in 2009 sent two Hobart artists to Spain
and Germany, while 2010 saw the return
leg of this exchange when European artists
Sara and Andre’ exhibited at Inflight. The
exchange program aims to foster and develop
independent networks and opportunities
across the country and further afield to share
resources and promote current contemporary
artistic practice.
The continuing success and energy of Inflight
is a result of its dedicated board and staff
members who mostly work for free and provide
every service to its exhibiting artists including
assistance in exhibition installation, publicity
and promotion and critical feedback.
The board regularly changes members,
keeping a fresh and energetic team grounded
by long-serving members making a mix of
emerging and established artists, writers,
designers and curators. Being on the board of
inflight provides its members with invaluable
experience in the arts industry and many of
its board members have gone on to become
prominent in the national arts scene exhibiting
in an array of disciplines and spaces nationally
and internationally.
inflight is centred around a gallery exhibition
venue which hosts projects by individuals and
groups, collaborative activities and events, at
100 Goulburn Street, a move made recently
after 5 years in a North Hobart warehouse.
Reopening by transforming a drab office
building into a beautiful street-frontage Gallery
Space, generous support was offered by Arts
Tasmania allowed Inflight to further renovate
the space and we are now settling in to
an exciting program of upcoming exhibitions
and events.
During our recent renovation we ushered in the
first frosts of the coming winter with weekly
curated outdoor film screenings hosted by
Tom O’Hern, Andrew Harper, Pip Stafford and
Emma-Jean Gilmour, in our car park complete
with fires, cushions, pop-corn and astroturf.
Inflight exchange took us recently to the
famous HELL Gallery in Richmond, Melbourne
for a giant group exhibition exploring the
Tasmanian Gothic; a huge success and packed
to the brim with audio performances, ritual
inductions, curious and beautiful objects,
images and mixed media works.
Inflight also took place in the inaugural
exhibition of Launceston’s newest ARI
Sawtooth, in the ambitious Panoply exhibition
featuring work from Six_A Gallery and ARI,
Death Be Kind, Inflight and Sawtooth in
another full show filled with the amazing
breadth of Tasmanian contemporary art
practice within the broader national context.
warpmagazine.com.au warpmagazine.com.au
Arts 27
IMAGES: INFLIGHT ART
Inflight’s upcoming gallery program was
recently re-launched with a bang with the
group SAAS (Support Arts Appreciation Society)
donning their alter-egos in a performanceinstallation
in a packed to the rafters gallery;
those outside unable to enter and those inside
unable to move.
Upcoming exhibition include David Edgar,
Laura Hindmarsh, Anthony Johnson, Noni
Gander & Iona Johnson, Amanda Shone,
Maarten Daudeij and Joel Crosswell in a series
of exhibitions that will see us through 2011
with a new show every month.
In addition we are working with a group of ARIs
alongside The National Association for the
Visual Arts (NAVA) and the Australia Council
for the Arts (Ozco) to produce a National Artist
Run Initiative Conference in Sydney in late
2011. Inflight is flying high with exchange
projects with Felt Space Adelaide and DF Arte
Contemporaneo, Spain, this year too.
Join us for the ride at what is quickly becoming
a new mini-cultural precinct in West Hobart
with Inflight, Goulburn St Gallery, Sashiko
Design and the Artists Billboard project all
planted amongst artists’ studios, architecture
firms and backpackers.
Info: www.inflightart.com.au
Contact: gallery@inflightart.com.au