Big West Festival 20 - 29 November, 2009

Parking Fleet Preview: Thursday November 19, 6 - 8pm, carpark, rear of eFFeMMera Studios, 66 Napier St, Footscray

eFFeMMera - "Foliate"

You can cover a car but you can’t hide it.  ‘Foliate’ is effeMMeRA’s response to the car plague:  Karenne Rees, photomedia artist, exposed shoe shapes to the sun to tell us to get walking; Llawenyth Power Davies, multi-media artist, made waterfalls to remind us that water is precious and beautiful; and Heather Horrocks, textile-obsessive, made native plants out of recycled things (and her stash) because carparks used to be foliated...

Elaine Hogarty - "Chic Magnet"

Chic Magnet explores the car as a sex symbol. The artwork references the rich tradition of early advertising campaigns displaying women draped across bonnets, in passenger seats or swooning at men with the hottest set of wheels. It reflects upon the culture of the car as a place for sex - where “parking” didn’t always ensure a stationary vehicle and where steam may cloud the windscreen.

In stark contrast to the cool masculine metal protective armature of the motor vehicle, this car cover provides a soft feminine approach whilst comically acknowledging the false pretences presented by advertising media that females are magnetised to the status/sex symbol of the car.
 

Materials
 
Preloved Lingerie, recycled pillow stuffing, Rubber, Wire, Foam, Magnets.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Lynda Roberts from Public Assembly who has been both a sounding board and support for the development of this concept. And also for her assistance with stitching and making. Great thanks also to the staff and participants of Seaview Manor at Ocean Grove for assistance with hand stitching
bras. (Activity Program Coordinator - Cindy Vaux-Miller Residents - Val Rowlands, Norma Forshaw. Shirley Minster, Noreen Scott, Yvonne Devitt, Peg Kennaday, Joyce Mousley, Nellie Spruit, Dorothy Pietsch and Cindy Vaux-Miller)
Also thanks to the generosity of the Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads Opportunity Shops who sold the bulk purchases of preloved lingerie at reduced prices to help support the project.
Without your kind support this project would not have been realised.

Wen Jun, Geoff Hogg, Michal Teague - "Slipstream"

Traditional Chinese imagery and contemporary Australian art combine in Slipstream. The symbols are wishes for health and wealth. The Peach and Crane symbolise longevity and the Sea, happiness. The ‘Flying Lady’ is a fairy, a daughter of the God, who spreads flowers of happiness. The Fish and Lotus represent abundance and healthy life. The ‘Round Treasure’ on the bonnet also indicates wealth.
A golden map of the southern sky at night continues the celestial theme while pearlescent lines reference the slipstream of a car and the art of place, feng shui, which translates literally as ‘wind and water.’

Michal Teague - "Infringement"

I am intrigued by the ephemeral infrastructure used to delineate permissible public space from unsafe territory. These materials appear to travel in a virally nomadic nature, transmitting simultaneous ambivalent signals of protection and danger.
My work harnesses these transient, mass-produced barriers, to create hand-made references to human behaviours, nature and its patterns occurring within a city and its suburbs.

Tim Craker - "Untitled"

A stencil leaves the trace of its presence as a design transferred to another surface. Here I have used orange plastic safety-fencing as a stencil to cover my car-cover with an all-over, but discontinuous, pattern.

The plastic fencing, usually seen as a highly-visible protective barrier around building sites and by the side of the road – and here, paradoxically absent - lends its pattern of holes to create a monstrous gingham tablecloth, a camouflage blanket for a cloud-dotted sky, and a symbolic representation of the city grid…. 

Biographical statement

Tim Craker is a Melbourne painter, sculptor and installation-artist, living in Seddon.

Following an Honours Degree in Fine Art from RMIT (graduating in 1993) he has exhibited extensively in Melbourne in both group and solo shows. Solo exhibitions have included Out of Print at Nellie Castan Gallery in 2004,  Transcript at Monash University’s Gippsland campus Switchback Gallery in 2005 and most recently Take(n) Away at the Substation, Newport in 2009.

While previous work was based on the meaning and appearance of language and text, an artist’s residency in Malaysia in 2006 saw a significant change in direction in Tim Craker’s work, in both subject matter and materials. The residency led directly to the exhibition dot-net-dot-my in Melbourne in 2007, and to a touring exhibition dot-net-dot-au in Malaysia and Singapore in 2008 (both exhibitions held jointly with Melbourne artist Louise Saxton.)

Tim is represented by Gallery 101 Melbourne.
 

Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre - "The Blooming Car Full Garden"

This garden of a car cover is a combination of volunteers, helpers and staff from the Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre in Altona.The Trumpet and Puff Ball Flowers plus Vines are all hand knitted, lengths of multi coloured, multi-textured scarves and beanies that have been gathered, twisted, stitched and pinned.  What has been created is this enormous splash of vibrant artistic hand crafted talent that is known as ‘The Blooming Car Full Garden.’

Jade Walsh - "Car cover for a Wedding" (from my joke fabric)

I translate heartbreak, longing and immediate emotional states through visual art and bring humour to difficult subjects such as singledom. Fuelled by my own experience and the people in my life I explore intimate dialogue in the private and public domain and how print media can be used to incorporate my writing, language, photography and drawing.

The car cover is part of a series of works called my joke fabric - which uses the screenprint medium to print text from the beginning of a joke, my poems or my friends’ conversations and turns them into a commercially applied form; competition ribbons hung as if over the recipient, pinned onto a chest, or in this case re-interpreting the traditional and romantic form of the white ribbon on the bonnet of a bridal car.

Patricia Holleley - "Amulet's for a Car Cover"

“ An Amulet is a device, the purpose of which is to protect,

but by magical and not physical means.”

My car cover Amulets are made from ‘Green Bags’ embellished with objects and bit’s and pieces found, donated and from my own collections. The Amulets cover many subjects from the everyday to the absurd and offer protection from the green bag and the automobile...

Jennifer Kamp - "Playgrounds Dancing"

My artwork Playgrounds Dancing, 2009 evokes happy memories of play with children in recreation spaces that have now morphed into drop off points for parents driving their children to school and parking spaces for those attending nearby football and cricket matches.  

CV statement      

Jennifer Kamp is a Geelong based artist who through her practice examines the impact of change on the environment and contemporary urban life style. Jennifer has recently completed a PhD research study funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship at Victoria University Footscray Park. Her works are processed in a range of diverse media that incorporates video and digital installations and a variety of printmaking and painting techniques. Jennifer’s work is represented in collections at the National Gallery of Australia ACT, Latrobe University Victoria, Department of Schools Geelong and the Australian Print Workshop.

Phung Diep - "Changing Faces"

This work is about the changing faces in the west. I have used the five colours, red, white, blue/green, black and yellow, which represent the different elements of nature - water, wood, fire, earth and metal required for balance, and an abstract expressive technique for this work. I believe deeply in the importance of a multiculture society, in sharing the ideas and the experiences of the others. I greatly enjoy this aspect of living in the west.