Cornelia Krafft, Polixeni Papapetrou, Doug Spowart, Arthur Boyd & Indra Deigan
Collaboration, an intellectual endeavour that is creative in nature.
Artistic collaborations between artists in residence at Bundanon are a familiar occurrence and often unexpected. Such is the case with the film Aphrodite’s Dress which is the result of a spontaneous collaboration between Cornelia Krafft and dancer Alexandra McDonald, of dance troupe Overtones, while both were in residence at Bundanon.
Krafft, an Austrian artist, in residence at Bundanon in August 2007, describes her work as “performance & sculpture in nature”. Conversations, discussions and experiments led to both artists deciding to work together in film and still images. Krafft’s creation of the ‘dress’ made out of roots found along the river bank inspired McDonald’s work, and her movements inturn, inspired Krafft’s use of the form.
This exhibition also includes works by Arthur Boyd and Indra Deigan who collaborated on an artist book in 1993. At Boyd’s suggestion an Indonesian story was chosen as the subject matter of the book, the story of Sangkuriang: a legend of West Java.
Working on the book gave Boyd the opportunity to further explore collagraph printing. The rich colours and textures which are possible working in this medium lent themselves to Boyd’s expressive imagery. These images were superbly juxtaposed against Deigan’s subtle woodblock prints. Indra Deigan explained the process of making Sangkuriang:
‘Once the collagraph plates were completed I made woodcut images in response to, and to compliment the strong colour and fluent markmaking of Arthur Boyd. As a further contrast I chose semi-transparent paper, so allowing both images to harmoniously act as one when seen as overlay or as a ghost image on the left page when viewing the collagraph.’
Poli Papapetrou’s image of her daughter is part of a larger body of work named Games of Consequence. Working with daughter as muse the artist explores the landscape as a backdrop and a visual metaphor to consider the psychological and emotional landscape of contemporary childhood.
Images of artists in residence at work at Bundanon captured by fellow artist in resident, photographer Doug Spowart, give us an insight into their individual creative processes and the artist using artist as subject and content for his work. Spowart says “My fellow artists emerged as subjects for my camera. Not so much as a substitute for the flooded and sodden land that was difficult to engage with, but rather due to the sharing of intimate moments of their own experience”.
This exhibition celebrates some of the outcomes of a few chance encounters that take place at Bundanon.
