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First Iteration of video work

>After making this work I felt that I should use the fact that this work is time-based to create more of narrative.

>I also thought that the editing could be used to reinforce the analogy between political crisis and car crash. E.g. including multiple video and audio tracks, fast cuts etc.

>more footage is also required to reinforce this analogy.

Market Crash, Video, 1 min 27 sec

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Source material for work

>Aging couple in a Ford Falcon driving through Nambour

>The fact that the passenger has a phone tilted up towards the google street-view camera creates an interesting dynamic with the subject addressing the camera and the breakdown of privacy within the quasi-private realm of the car.

Digital rendition of work created on Illustrator

Process shot of work

Bycatch Data: My House is Your House, MDF, primer, matte sticker, 84x5x59cm

>The text for the work came from Jean Baudrillard's book System of Objects where speaks cars as a kind of quasi-domestic space. As he writes, "It is not simply that the car rivals the house as an alternative zone of everyday life: the car, too, is an abode, but an exceptional one; it is a closed realm of intimacy, but one released from the constraints that usually apply to the intimacy of home, one endowed with a formal freedom of great intensity and a dizzying functionality" (1968, p.67).

>This idea of the car as a closed realm of intimacy is challenged by the way that google street view unintentionally captures images of people inside their cars without their permission. In this work I tried to play with this tension between public and private space.

>The idea for the title came during the crit when people were talking about the way google street view captures lots of information that is not useful or necessary for its main purpose. This excess data reminded me of the term "bycatch" in fishing to refer to fish that caught unintentionally in large scale comersial fishing.

>In my next work I would like to experiment with orther forms of found imagery that relates to cars. I was thinking of using dashcam footage.

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I wanted explore similar themes and subject matter but I wanted to experiment with different mediums. I thought of digital images of cars that were immediately available and I decided to use images from google street as I use images from places close to where I grew up which gave the images more meaning to me. These images ended up bringing up other questions around surveillance and autonomous photography that I feel provided interesting grounds to explore whether cars were private or public. I was Aware of Jon Rafman's nine eyes Series before starting this work. his exploration of surveillance in his use of google street view certainly influenced me.

digital rendition of work created on illustrator

>I decided to pair back the images to the windows in the frame. I felt that that brought up questions around the threshold of the vehicle and the barrier between inside and outside; public and private.

This is not my Beautiful House, Vinyl sticker on acrylic, 29x3x42cm

>I felt that the work's themes and imagery had potential, but I felt that the composition of the work was random at best, the text was a bit too literal for my liking and the work did not use the transparency of the acrylic to its full potential.

>On my next iteration of this work I would like to have a less cluttered composition, experiment with scale, and try placing the work off of the wall a bit to give it more physical presence.

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>I found this broken windshield at my local train station and thought that the glass could be arranged to form words in the same way that Ed Ruscha used tobacco to paint the word "Spread" in his 1972 work by the same name.

>I tried to emulate a a road using ply, bitumen paint and gravel

>The first iteration did not feel particularly effective

>I felt that I needed to make experiment with positive and negative space

>also, it didn't seem clear that the bottom surface was meant to imitate a road.

>I added a solid white line to make it look more like a road and started placing the text in negative space as I felt it made the text look more natural and effective.

>Due to the fact that the psychoanalytic theory drives includes the opposing death and sex drive, I thought it would be interesting to include both drives as a series.

>the staff at the Digifab showed me how to install vinyl stickers using hinges

Driven Young Man, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic bumper, vinyl sticker, plywood, bitumin, aggregate, primer, broken windshield, variable dimension.

>One thing that came up in the crit of this work was that it could be read as a narrative in that the work is read from left to right from life to death.

>Narrative seems to be a theme that keeps coming up in my work, maybe I could explore that in a time-based work.

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Immanent Collapse, found bumper with vinyl sticker, 22x5x46cm

Process

I initially tried engraving the work onto another bumper but I was not happy with the font I chose and my typesetting. I then took this as an opportunity to do another iteration of this work using a vinyl sticker. Not only was I able to experiment with a different medium, working digitally rather than by hand, using a vinyl sticker seemed appropriate due as it works as a literal bumper sticker. I realise now, that between making my first and second iteration of this work that I changed the spelling from "imminent" meaning ready to take place to "immanent" meaning existing or operating within. Both work but my original intention was to have the work read "imminent collapse" referring to both the seeming inevitability of a bumpers collapse as a sacrificial member while also evoking questions around societal or ecological collapse.

I was glad that I did a second iteration of the work because I was able to use a font that had more relevance to the work's text. While the font name Papyrus might remind viewers of new age health clinics from the 2000s, the font's name comes from cypress papyrus plant used in ancient Egypt to create paper. Due to the immanent collapse of the ancient Egyptian Empire, the use of Papyrus font and it's association with ancient Egypt seems fitting in the work's reference to societal collapse.

After making this work, I started to think of the other ways that cars and car parts could be used as metaphors for broader societal concerns. For instance, in our current inaction on addressing climate change we could be said to "asleep at the wheel". In online political discourse in the late 2010s there was a belief amongst some that we should lean into the extremes of capitalism to bring about its collapse. The term "accelerationism" was used to refer this group of ideologies. The verb "accelerate" is generally used in relation to vehicles, therefore the use of the term "accelerationism" seems to present the society or the economy as a vehicle that can be driven out of control. The use car and driving related terms to talk about the economy is also clear in the phrase "economic crash". It might be interesting to create a work that explores the car related language that we use to talk about the economy and society more broadly.

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Artist Research

Ant Farm, Cadillac Ranch, 1974

As a part of Ant Farm, Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels partially buried ten Cadillacs dating between 1949 and 1963 in a row in chronological order from when they were produced. The specific cars were chosen as they document the rise and fall of the tail-fin in car design, a symbol of US manufacturing in the post-war era (Harris 2006). The work is typically read as exploration and critique of consumer culture. As Patrick Maguire writes, “The decayed cars that comprise Cadillac Ranch have indeed reached a kind of terminal state, and their tailfins (marking the terminus of the automobile) read as an epigraph for historical styles caught in the cycle of adoption and abandonment” (2014, p.7). In this context, displaying changes in tail-fin design shows in the relief the ways that consumers buy into arbitrary aesthetic changes in consumer products that have little practical purpose.

What interests me about this work in my art practice is that it presents cars as consumer items with personal and cultural significance rather than simple being functional tools. The work uses cars as readymades, much like I do in my engravings on plastic bumpers. I would also argue that in making mobile objects static, the viewer is better able to think of cars outside of their functional purpose.

Paul Harris, “How the US Fell Out of Love with Its Cars: Tail Fins and Chrome Grilles Were Once the Symbols of a Superpower. Now, with 36,000 Jobs Cut in a Week and Foreign Vehicles Filling the Highways, Paul Harris in New York Surveys the Collapse of an Industry,” The Observer (England),Jan. 29, 2006

Maguire, P. (2014). Terminal structures: Ant farm's cadillac ranch, 1974 (Order No. 1566512).

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For as We Have Many Members in One Body, engraved Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene plastic bumper, 32x8x58cm.

Intentions for the Work

-I heard the phrase “sacrificial member” in the context of brake pads on a car and was struck by the way the phrase had other associations with cults and religious sacrifices. I then remembered that bumpers were made of plastic due to the frequency with which they break. In other words, they are designed to be sacrificial despite having the appearance of being permanent and rigid.

Notes from Crit

-The use of the phrase “sacrificial member” with the Old English font reminded one viewer of cults

-the work can be understood both literally as a sacrificial part while also bringing to mind broader associations

-The use of capital letters makes the phrase into a proper noun. Does this make the object a person?

-Given the religious undertones, placing the work high on a wall could play with the idea of an alter as a focal point for worship and sacrifice

-Like in other works of mine, the piece is fragmentary. Physically, the work is a fragment of a car and the use of the phrase member suggests that there it is one part of a greater whole.

-One unintended association that came up was the use of the word member to refer to the penis. This brings the work back to the ways we treat cars as a gendered objects that I explored previously in Shamelessly Unbridled.

           >Castration anxiety

           >Cars as vehicles or expression of one’s masculinity

           >Cars as phallic

Reflection and Further Research

When I researched the etymology of word member to refer to the body I found that it appears in the bible in the context of sacrifice:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us…” Roman 12:1

In my interpretation, this verse in the bible is advocating that each person serves God as “living sacrifice” in the same way that each part or member of the body serves the body’s ability to function. In light of this, could the car be considered a body? In their work, Automotive Prosthetic: Technological Mediation and the Car in Conceptual Art Charissa Terranova refers to cars as “Automotive Prosthetics” (2014, p. 5). In other words, the car can be understood as an extension of the human body. How could this idea of the car as an extension of the human body relate the recurring psychoanalytic themes of the car as a phallus? I would like to explore the relationship between these two themes.

Terranova, C. N. (2014). Automotive prosthetic : technological mediation and the car in conceptual art (First edition.). University of Texas Press. https://doi.org/10.7560/754041

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Subject/Object/Verb

Wall-mounted sculpture, approx. 6x4x70cm

Notes on the Intention

For this work I was interested in exploring how people feel as though they gain a new sense of self or confidence through purchasing a new consumer item. Buying a new car would be an obvious example of this.  For example, buying a particular car might temporarily fulfill a desire to signal their membership within a certain social class. I chose to make the work out of fibreglass and polyester resin because I had mainly felt this temporary rush of consumption when buying new surfboards. In the immediate period after buying a new surfboard I would feel brief few weeks of a new confidence. This confidence would eventually fade as I would begin to take my new board for granted and as small dings and discolourations would occur.

Notes from critique

>Italisation turns the text into a quote

>The phrase "loaned confidence" reminded some viewers of banking and the stock-market. The discussion of loans and confidence together makes me think of the GFC and sub-prime loan crisis.

>The lack of capital letters and punctuation marks creates the sense that the text is mid-sentence. The text is the fragment of a larger sentence in the same way that the object could be the fragment of a larger machine

>The use fibreglass and ply reminded certain viewers of boats and boatbuilding. Is the text the name of the boat. Naming boats has a gendered aspect to it due to the use of female names.

>The size and shape of the object makes it seem like it could be a trophy. Trophies can be activated by the person who is given the trophy. How could the work be activated by the viewer? Could the work function like a fish that someone holds to show their masculinity or status.

>One person who viewed the work said the work reminded them of an uncle’s poolroom trophy.

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Process for Creating Loaned Confidence

This work began with plywood bed-slats that I found in curbside collection. I cut them to shape using a jigsaw and then fastened them together using liquid nails and clamps. Once they glue had set I started to smooth out the contours of the ply using grinder with a heavy grit sanding pad on it.

I then created the outline for the text in illustrator and slowly transferred the text over by hand in pencil before applying acrylic paint to the text. To create the yellow wash I used spare coolant top up that I'd bought for my car. Finally, I created a glossy finish by applying fibreglass, polyester resin, and acrylic clear coat.

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Inspiration:

Alexis Kanatsios, Submission Drawings 23-5, 2025.

I saw this work by Kanatsios at IMA's exhibition You Are Here Too which featured the works of various Australian queer artists exploring sexuality and desire. To me, the work was familiar in its use of everyday materials and a recognisable symbol, while also difficult to pin down. As the Curator Callum McGrath states, "Submission Drawings blur the boundaries between abstraction and representation, resisting representation in favour of abstracted or coded messages". This idea of the "abstracted or coded message" really stood out to me given we have been focusing on text in class but also because I like art with a degree of ambiguity and slipperiness. Given the exhibition's focus, I gather that the work may refer to subtle codes and visual cues within the gay community, which has its own fascinating history.

On an aesthetic level, I also like objects and text that have been warped. Does this work present text as an object? What happens when text is attached to an object? This is something I would like to explore further.

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Live Streamed Atrocities, Vinyl Sticker

This is not a great image of my window display commission, but I’ve included it because I felt that it accidentally worked in tandem with the banner on the wall behind it which reads “either we rot or we riot” in both English and what I believe is Arabic. While neither explicitly mentions the genocide in Gaza, both could quite easily be interpreted as commenting on this genocide given recent events. This was certainly my intention when I created the text.

 In response to the brief’s emphasis on “Penumbra…something emergent, an in-between threshold— of light emerging and shadow receding”, I wanted to use the material of the glass window as a possible metaphor for a screen. Both windows and the screens provide a view into something beyond themselves while also creating a partition or barrier. When you are viewing a genocide through a screen, you are both viewing atrocities that need to be reckoned with while in some cases becoming desensitised to these atrocities. This tension was explored by writer Shumon Basar when he chose to remove all images from on issue of The Real Review, accusing Israel of “normalising ultraviolence by layering horrific images on top of obscene images every single day, like rubble on top of rubble.”

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The Messiness of a Dispersed Existence, Digital image

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Shamelessly Unbridled

found exterior car part

Variable dimension

When I showed my work to the class I was pleased to find that people brought up themes and interpretations that I hadn’t intended. One student stated that there was a funny clash between the vocabulary of the text and class associations of the material. In his words, this tension reminded him of a “poetic bogan”. This brought up questions around class and status that I would like to explore. For example, why do we associate certain materials and objects with particular social classes. The plastic bumper has a finish applied to it that makes it look like steel, but the scratches and engravings reveal its plastic underside. Does this represent a failure at signalling a certain class position.

Another theme that I hadn’t thought of was the ways that people gender objects. One student said that the engraving reminded them of a “tramp stamp” for a car. She also spoke about the “bimbofication of cars” which I thought was funny and made me think about the ways that we customise objects to make them our own. In what ways do we develop relationships with objects that give the objects a life of their own? Once we enter into a relationship with an object does it become a subject?

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Mid Truism 1, PNG, 210x297mm.

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