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.