September 2, 2025 • 42 mins
Gary Deirmendjian finds joy in the ordinary. Everyday found objects become works of art and his witty observations have been turned into books. A sculptor, installation artist, educator and flaneur, here is an artist who cannot be pigeonholed.
CREDITS Presenter and Producer: Claudia Chan Shaw Production team: Cathie Campbell, Sheena Rees, Sasha Satz and Krista Teran. Executive Producer: Miguel Olmo
Brought to you by Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Becoming vocal about that proposition, that's where art came in. I realised kind of thinking
(00:13):
my way back that at the bass level I'm just a maker. I'm good at that and I can't dance
or sing or write about these things but maybe I can put my meaning into my making and that
presented itself as a way forward for me.
(00:44):
Hi everyone, welcome to Art Chat, a podcast that takes you on a creative journey. I'm
your host Claudia Chan Shaw. So settle in and come along for the ride as we get chatty
with artists. Before we get started we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians
of the lands where we meet to produce this episode and pay our respects to the elders
(01:06):
both past and present.
Gary Dimension finds joy in the ordinary. Every day found objects become works of art and his
witty observations have been turned into books, a sculptor, installation artist and
Flanur. Here is an artist who cannot be pigeonholed. Gary Dimension, welcome to Art Chat.
Thank you for having me here.
(01:28):
You've been a regular exhibitor at Sculpture by the Sea, delighting Sydney Siders with your
very clever installations. In 2023 you created a piece of guerrilla art and art and art and
art and art.
In 2023 you created a piece of guerrilla art that had all of Sydney talking. Under the
(01:49):
cover of Darkness you installed a sculpture that you called the Lone Man on a dilapidated
waff at Berry's Bay on Sydney Harbour. It was all going well until the waff collapsed and
fell into the harbour. So tell me about the lone man and why you decided to install this
mysterious figure.
My work has pretty much spilled into the street one way or another, sometimes through
(02:13):
commissioned imitations and more recently and more so me being naughty enough to intervene
with lives. I kind of have a tendency to go where people are at and that's the real pool
as opposed to draw them into a white cube sanitiser gallery so to speak. It was a dream
(02:38):
I had of realising a lonely figure somewhere in the city and these things just brew or
stew slowly as you might imagine. A friend of mine who spends a lot of time in the harbour
Mark Simpson, he told me about a waff, a dilapidated waff where the main part of the waff had been
(03:01):
completely gone. The harbour is so healthy that the team is not lasting and this end
piece, this square end piece of the waff sat there as an island and I was so taken by
this amazing kind of arrival that this thing presented. At high tide it looked like the
sturdiest thing on the planet but at low tide you saw that a lot of those timbers had dwindled
(03:24):
away to nothing in some instances. He was the sort of place where he wasn't surrounded
by harbour mansions and he was facing nature scape really. It's the old shelled refinery
kind of complex that has become public space at present and the city set directly behind
him, this Emerald City, let's call it. So once I saw that then tailoring this dreaming
(03:50):
I suppose to that particular opportunity became to a juicy to ignore and yeah and I'm fortunate
that I work at the National Art School where I'm allowed to go off track and in the gaps
in between teaching and other moments of peace I tinker and the students seem to enjoy that
(04:13):
and so I decided out of cardboard to create this large sculpture and he's surrounded by
well skinned by alfoyle and Hessian and plaster and resin so really the inside is hollow and
the outside was a shell that supported itself. It was very sturdy but quite light and how
(04:35):
to get it to that amazing waff was the next question and Mark and a couple of students
I should say acrobatic students I can't swim but I was amongst them in a boat we took him
up there at pre-dawn and at high tide it had to be high tide so we can get to reach and
we simply sat him there with a lot of silicon on his bum so he was anchored to the waff
(05:04):
with his back turn, his heads down, his in the contemplative pose and he wasn't lonely
per se but alone, huge distinction between those two notions and content so contemplative
and of course when you do these things you don't know whether how it will be received
(05:26):
once it's in a public place the public has a mind of its own and certainly the authorities
have a mind of their own so I thought the waterways or North Sydney Council might intervene very
quickly and he might disappear after a few days but he didn't he kept staying there and
one morning I got a call I heard that the waff had gone down it was quite surprising soon
(05:47):
afterwards I got a call from Henry Mulholland who's a fellow artist painter and I think he's
to do some art reviews on the ABC he ranked to say hey they're talking about you on the
702 can I dub you in and next thing I know I'm talking with Sarah McDonald and the whole
(06:09):
session was spent of an ex-may who had witnessed the fall and there was this enormous lamenting
you know for this thing that had gone and I was quite touched that this thing to which
I wasn't privy to what degree he had infected people with his presence had touched people
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it was quite emotional actually a huge huge surprise there was an almost talk about resurrecting
him and I just enjoyed the poetry of the whole thing that you know that's where he wants
to go and I think that's where you should stay that's where he's now collecting barnacles
I imagine yeah he's saying didn't he yeah yeah he popped off as the wolf collapsed he
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survived enormous storms and everything and how long did he last three months I'd always
said he would be there as long as the wolf is and unfortunately the wolf decided not to
be there any idea what that three months is pretty good for a guy made of cardboard it
was dirty he was dirty he questioning my make me no no not at all but he was viewed
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as a temporary piece he really did become part of the local scene didn't he they adopted
him there was just extraordinarily odd the extent to which he was embraced but it was
interesting because I was looking at a photograph of him before his demise yeah and it's like
you know when you sit on a wall or on the end of the war and and your legs are dangling
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over the edge it was that contemplative feeling and the stance of his body it was beautiful
well I appreciate hearing that that's precisely what I was hoping to nudge this suggestion
towards he was a he was a special piece so the lone man is no more would you ever he
is he's down there barnacles are growing on him he's you know carried on and in fact I'm
(08:04):
just dying for someone to dive or whatever to actually photograph to see you know how
where where he's at in terms of you know how he sits at the bottom amongst all that rubble
we'll have to wait for the James Cameron film won't we are you were born in Soviet Armenia
and came to Australia when you were about 12 yes do you remember what were your impressions
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of Sydney the equivalent of going to Mars I guess you know there was actually the only
thing I knew about Australia was really one page in our geography book in our school and
most of that page was taken up by the map and another bit was taken up by Kangaroo and
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so there was literally very little text but my only in was skippy dubbed in Russian and
friends with the helicopter pilot you know Tony Bonner comes to Tropicana Roth and says very odd
to keep telling him he's Russian isn't as good as it used to be but there was one episode that
you know Mr Hammond and Sonny and the Skippy and I think others in their station wagon headed
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into town Falcon station wagon and I just remember in that black and white set trying to we knew
we were coming so this was suddenly oh oh to see the city so yeah it was a shocking shocking
experience and we were actually escaping right so but my brother and I were told that this was a
big adventure we're going to and we spent about a year in Moscow and traveled around there waiting
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for final approvals and got here and it wasn't until we're enrolling in school that it all dawned
on us that half of this was permanent so we always thought we were coming back you know
so Marikville would have been a far cry from Armenia in the 1970s
I'll look in many many ways just walking into a supermarket was a culture shock you know just
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the idea of abundance you know but Marikville did a lot for me it's something to be said about
going from being one of many to the odd one out and that does things to you have to deal with that
and as shocking as it was then it was my saving grace really of coming to understand
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that amongst all that diversity there was enormous sameness and that really hit home slowly and
a lot of my work is really based you know can easily be traced back to the understandings that
began to come to me that my own conditioning began to you know soften and my own beliefs and
attitudes began to soften and to the point where it's probably 180 degrees from you know what I
(10:53):
used to believe how long did it take for you to no longer feel like an outsider
after the initial shock and you know gosh that's a hard question to answer and and these things
kind of happen in a very oozy and slow way so it wasn't some big bombastic kind of realization
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might imagine it was something that sneaks up at you and you're asked to deal with this new scenario
your parents are working their bum off and suddenly multiple jobs and you're looking after your
brother and looking after your studies and huge responsibility that you feel to contribute
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like within a few months I suddenly had a paper run and and I'd have a paper run in the mornings and
go to school and after school mum had a cleaning job which was a second job in north siddney and
joining her to you know clean officers was you know you just didn't question you just contributed
and yeah did you speak english when you arrived there was absolutely no english and
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and the only guy I could relate to was a guy called Hassan and who was Turkish and
you know my conditioning involved as an Armenian you worshiped christ and you hated Turks and
as a Soviet youth you worshiped the state and hated the west this was the cementing I'm talking about
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and Hassan was the only one I could speak with I understood his language and were both in a
special english class and he didn't have the horns and talons that I imagine a Turk might have so
that's what I'm talking about the softening of these things that he was just a boy who wanted
to play marbles and and that was an important yeah encounter for me so you went on to become
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an aeronautical engineer but you didn't continue down that path so what drew you to a career in the
arts okay arts was never part of the thinking I must confess I had some facility in the
Soviet Union and they assess you for your capabilities early on kindergarten all that and somehow
ended up in an arts based school and but it certainly wasn't part of the dreaming and maybe I didn't
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even know what a concept of an artist really was back in Armenia we actually had an in-house
artist that who had his gallery and his studio and he taught art at our school but again it was
a concept far you know from my imagining I did the aeronautical engineering it's going to sound
stupid but you feel you know you're falling to that first generation migrant thing I've
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tried to do the right thing by appearance and you know fulfill their expectations and on top of
all that you know if you'll have something to prove and I yeah you know that whole you know that
notion of when something's not hard that the term of the statement that normally followed was
you know it's not rocket science and I thought rocket science must be hard I better you know
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this was essentially what aeronautical engineering is is rocket science so I did roll for the wrong
reasons is what I'm trying to say next thing you know you know I've got a job with defense and
and they've given me a scholarship to do a PhD and I'm in the middle of my PhD and and then as
abstract as what I was doing certainly was you know I had to come to terms that at the end of the day
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was you know contributing towards the sharpening of a weapon of sorts this was defense capability
that your research was contributing to and that began to undo me a great deal and I had also
come across people who were naturally gifted I had I had to realize that I had gotten there
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through grunt as opposed to be you know natural talent and that was daunting to me even though
I was selected so on paper I was good but I knew that I lacked something that the others didn't
you felt undeserving but you were deserving because you were selected
yeah on paper but when you when you realize that someone next to you is seriously gifted in that
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vein and they were happy as pig is in the shit and whereas I was I couldn't justify me being there
anymore so I really plugged away without art being part of it really it had to it took a long time
but at a personal level I kind of took a fall you know psychologically or whatever you want to
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call it but my firm ground I was on in terms of belief and and all those
existential questions that suddenly couldn't outrun anymore caught up with me so letting go of
God notion isn't an easy thing to do because you've been in it led to believe that to be the absolute
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truth and I certainly had a beloved grandmother who had suffered enormously and became the
recipient of her stories and and these people faced with certain horrors were given the opportunity
to let go of their faith and chose not to so it was black and white for them it was just you know
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we're absolute certainty so I was born into that way of being you know so it took a long time to
you know lose God and not out of carelessness but trying very hard to hang on to it really
but the harder I tried the more it you know fell through my fingers and so I had to face that
fact as my fact you know that I came to know that in a full sense that I'm an atheist now but
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when someone who hasn't been shifted to that degree it's easy for them to you know not
for this thing not to matter but if you've held that as your absolute truth to then
yeah to walk away from it becomes a difficult thing so really a lot of personal arrival had to come
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before the art thing even ventured as a possible way forward and that personal arrival was really
uncertainty was the one thing I realized I was running away from so and if uncertainty was the
only certainty there is a so you know I thought embracing that maybe would be the way forward and
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that's been my you know way forward ever since and becoming vocal about that proposition that's
where art came in I realized kind of thinking my way back that at a base level I'm just a maker
you know I'm good at that and I can't dance or sing or write about these things but maybe I can
(17:58):
put my meaning into my making and that presented itself as a as a way forward for me yeah
we're going to see your making when you exhibit in a group show repair replace at gallery lane
cove which runs from the 20th of August to the 12th of September and this is an exhibition that
brings together different artists who are looking at the need to rethink our relationship with the
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planet and the materials that we choose and the the stories that we tell because if we don't repair
that relationship with the planet then we may ourselves be replaced so you find beauty
in found objects the most surprising things and I think that's what you're going to be showing
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at repair replace that's why it's interesting that you said we'll be seeing your making
there'll be none of my making yeah there my making in this instance is I've had a private thesis
that I've been you know developing for some time under the banner of the aesthetics of nill
intent and ultimately I'm a truth finder and you know when I come across a hunk of truth
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you know I get excited and when I say hunk of truth in this instance as these things that have
that are made things that have become what they become through human agency but blind human
agency no contrivance in their arrival so there's a transformation of some sort that has happened
in some instances hundreds of thousands have contributed to that transformation in other
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instances only a couple of people but they've been blind to those things becoming what they've
become and that to me I know they're not lying to me these things you know so I've been hoarding
you know collection of these things over time and and I've been fortunate enough to
to be asked to air it by gallerina and cove but you have made them because you've taken
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the found object and you've seen the stories behind the object and by its positioning
you've made something new out of it so you have made it tell me about tommy and veto veto and tommy
um thank you for that assessment glaudia because it's not easily understood um in terms of what
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you said relating that to the making yes in some instances extraordinary effort and cost has gone
through to acquire these things and to house them um well the work that you just mentioned um
lataria um uh that sat next to kaluzzi in dalinghurst cafe very narrow cafe to young
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bankstown italian boys they've been running that for many years from their youth as sort of early
twinies now they're in their forties they've long sold the business but um because the shop was
so narrow underneath the coffee machine there was a trap door that they would fling open and that's
where they would you know it was a lump of wood they had there that they would knock the I don't
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know what it's called the coffee group do you get bash bash bash when you get to have your espresso
exactly um now that lump award started as a rectangular block and after two and a half years
of bashing and then of course they're quite careful with money as well turning that wood around so
you can bash the other side before they threw it away or got another lump of wood um this thing
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acquired an amazing form you know and we're talking about two guys who took shifts to
shared business partners um who from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day uh knocked this wood into shape
without realizing what they're doing or um you know not one of those knocks uh was conceived by them
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as um as i'm making a special mark you know but uh that uh cumulative knocks has uh transformed
these uh two lumps of wood over the course of two and a half years um each into something that I
think broncusia would uh salivate over yeah yeah I think Duchamp might have a have a moment there too
while while he was uh reliving himself at his urinal and notice board from Sydney University has
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become a work of art tell me about that piece oh well um this is rather special uh quite a sizable
notice board uh decommissioned um now uh a professor who saw me handling it um you know told me that
when he was a young student that notice board was there so we're looking at kind of a span of at
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least 40 years uh to 50 years and this notice board timber and um it was um it's uh basically
it's not stuck on the notices these are stapled on so um it's staple this message or that message
or some ad or some program staple tear staple tear literally hundreds of thousands of staples on this
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thing as well as bits of paper that have been left behind as residue and um and it's uh it's had
hundreds of thousands of collaborators who've blindly um pushed this to become what it's become
so to feature that truth is um really um uh you know is the thing that I'm kind of looking for in
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objects as I said sort of tangible bits of truth yeah remnants of thousands of stories yeah you
just mind boggles really um sometimes when you look at an artist studio on the floor or on the walls
or or left behind are these wonderful blobs of paint bits and pieces and colors that have been
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bought together unexpectedly and you have a piece rob and still are my goodness tell me about that
piece oh Ron and Stella um friends from billet tony's of some 30 plus years their husband wife
team who are cinemagraphic painters they're retired now um and these people um they make paint scenes
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for the opera for you know the ballet um and uh the canvases that they work on are just
absolutely enormous so they had a huge factory in new town and uh you know they paint with mops and
and brooms as opposed to brushes if you know what I mean and um so they had built this um pallet
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mobile pallet on wheels on casters where they would mix the paint and um fortunate enough
uh that uh I've ended up uh you know being gifted this on their retirement I did ask for it and
they did remember and um and uh this thing is just covered in luscious colors and um drips and
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drabs and and it has an enormous um presence as a as a color field but more so as I said the
underlying truth that they did not think for a second to make that special.
Mmm. These this accidental work of art and interestingly what what you're gathering together
even just with those three examples are the inner city suburbs of Sydney and the stories that
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they've left behind. Um I I tend to agree what became apparent was the stories were very much
part of the work um I had a chance last year at slot projects uh in the independent kind of
initiative by the artist Tony Twig um and uh he let me or invited me to take his studio space and
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and feature these works and that's where Miguel Alma the director of gallery land
cove came across the work and and was enticed enough to include it in this show. Um now um
um that was the first time I'd aired this proposition and in fact Tony's floor as you described before
um in a painter's floor you can imagine the drops and trips yeah and his floor was so rich that
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I made it I claimed it as the number one item in the room sheet you know so Tony's floor was
um very much part of the work for those six weeks um because even though that floor had come close
to high art you know um fine art um Tony didn't think for a second that you know this particular
trip he all there you know that he was making the floor special you know it had become
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special by virtue of the honesty with which it uh it had become what it become.
Found objects you've uh used very large shipping containers in your installation work.
Look the work is socially concerned in a broad sense and uh on the surface it may appear um
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quite broad and eclectic even but really the mortar for the you know for the whole proposition
is the intent is what holds it together and trying to point out um us being the same kind
life being and us you know us as a species being very small in the context of a vast and humming
universe and life being short and precarious and the idea that we are largely led you know uh
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ushered. I put up these propositions in the instances that you mentioned um the shipping
containers I turn them into installations or that kind of evoke some notion of house worship
so I guess if I'm talking about consumerism uh and the way we are adding endlessly to the
to the layer new layer that we call the Anthropocene now of um plastics and other junk you know to
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the earth um and I see more Ikea on the streets than I do you know McDonald's wrappers you know
and that's you know stuff is being made and stuff is being got rid of and uh bearing these things
uh you know our way of our crude way of dealing with it which we're not we're just uh masking over
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so to use the very items of the supply chain like pallets or shipping containers um to evoke
some notion of a house of worship it's the the faith that has brought these bits of architecture
into being is no longer dispensed there you know like the pyramids or the path along that say um
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or any temple for that matter that's not functioning anymore so uh and they have um yeah the assemblages
of ready-made but things that have lived uh so this shipping containers or the pallets have
moved crap from here to there and uh back again and they carry the scars and marks and
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and even smells of their servitude I suppose so if I did these with brand new shipping containers
it would suggest something else or if I made the shipping containers out of fiberglass let's say
that would be you know suggestive of something else but to use actuality that's become seriously
important that um the actual servitude is part of the story and um and uh once the installation is
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over these are temporary propositions you know a month or two in some cases that much longer
they go back to being shipping containers and pallets you know so there's something comforting
about that that um you know that as a practice I'm not generating crap you know um that's become
important as well um so the idea of the abandonment of the house of worship is that a metaphor for
(29:42):
your own departure from the church um that's uh I hadn't thought of it in those terms but
um I guess I guess there must be some truth to that yeah um you know um the church was an
important place in soviet aminea there was a Byzantine church that my grandmother used to take me to
and walking from the brutalist plaza into the church this Byzantine church full of incense and shafts
(30:09):
of light and against the you know the fog or the smoke of the incense and uh it was a portal to
another place you know so I've been hugely affected by um yeah a house of worship so I kind of tried
to conjure a sense of that but it's more so to do with we don't build you know cathedrals or pyramids
(30:30):
or temples anymore we've certainly built uh and office buildings and shopping centers and casinos
so the faith has shifted in that direction so for me to speak something of that um using the very
means and uh you know uh artifacts of that supply chain as I said um you know under the
mantra of growth you know they've justified a lot um haven't they there's a piece that you created
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for sculpture by the sea um which I find very amusing it's called don't touch this artwork
lovely lovely sense of humor it's oversized can you describe it for us well um sculpture by
the sea have these little small metal folded signs that they normally put around works that aren't
(31:19):
to be touched and it does carry that very message of please do not touch this artwork and um a year
before I proposed this I had a work there that was um you know the risk assessors deemed it uh
you know um risky as they do I mean there's no end to that risk business but uh suddenly my work
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was surrounded by these little buggers and and fortunately people ignored them and I certainly
stole them and threw them up the cliff and that sort of stuff and it was like what else is there left
to do it when you enter public space you're kind of entering this mad real and particularly um
you know safety conscious or risk conscious or insurance conscious you know public liability
(32:05):
conscious kind of terrain that we exist in um you know uh the question of what else can I
could you possibly make and uh so I kind of decided to propose of very much you know an oversized
version of that very science I was a scaled up version and um and of course it became a touch
magnet for people and uh lovely handprints in the Jew um you know and um yeah children all over
(32:32):
it um you know you'd even have a homeless person who took a refuge under it and he had to be
ushered out uh I wish they hadn't he was very happy there um and lots of other
uh encounters I think job done with that one yeah yeah but you also do very interesting
(32:56):
video work and at the uh recently refurbished when you'd station you had a video work called
presence which is rather haunting hmm yeah that was a it was a commission and I say they commissioned
I think about a dozen of us and they rotate since 2016 they've been rotating monthly
(33:18):
video or moving image works um so that's a transport for New South Wales um project
um it uh it was a new entrance to it is a new entrance from Clarence Street to Wingard station
and it hooks up with the tunnel that leads to Barangaroo and this is a mezzanine level and it's a 23
meter long curved um LED screen essentially so monumental kind of um screen um and uh I saw
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and it's in between floors and I saw it as a bay window proposition I'm to have this notion of
who's watching and who's being watched so uh my video work um is um essentially a foggy terrain
and uh and uh in the in a horizon it's dotted by human figures and each one of them has been
(34:13):
recorded in a studio and stitch together so each one of them is moving quite slowly and every now
and then a while or two uh approach the screen they become full scale in life size and they become
denser and you see that their bodies are fuzzy and you know um jittery um they're alive so and
they're taking an interest in what's happening on our side of the glass so if uh you're part of
(34:37):
the masses going through um you know you may feel um uh heartened that uh there's more of you than
them uh but if you find yourself alone they're um you know uh the idea that these people
oids peopleoids humanoids are looking at you observing you is is a sense that people seem to
(35:01):
report on that the reason for the a click this at the of the work classally speaking when I
find myself repeating myself uh tend to close the book on that uh body work and move on and I love
the not knowing what to do next whether it's a technical leap or it's an artistic one I enjoy
putting myself in that position like with this instance all the um all the figures to start with
(35:26):
uh you know uh the talent let's call them as well as uh the the cleverness that with which we had to
uh like you can't greens uh we tried CGI just lifeless and dead and it had to be real movement
that we put all these effects on so in order to do that to have a small figure approach and become
large we had to have real space to make that happen um so uh you can't green screen a huge area
(35:53):
so um you know we we got like pursuits that were green and we did reverse green screening if you
know what I mean so we're able to mask out the figure on the movement um and uh to stitch all
that together storyboard and stitch that together I mean just the computational loan the dedicated
computer it took it took close to 70 to 80 hours to render just one 10 minute episode this is all
(36:18):
the stitching the weaving that goes on you know computationally so completely outside of my
understanding uh but um being close to others who are capable and know what they're doing and
contributing the talent uh it's a juicy place to be you know and taking your idea and making
it a reality because it when you walk through it's it's like um strangers walking through the fog
(36:42):
in in step with you as you as you commute sometimes yeah odd commissances um you know do occur there
was one uh I was just blessed to see this uh live there was a um came to he weaned up top looking
down and there was a boy with his uh school bag and his hands on the screen and is in front of
(37:03):
one of the silhouettes who've paused there for a while and I realized that the mum has um you
know gone up the escalators and realized that the boy is still down there he was just fixated on
this figure so she yells out at him and is ignoring her completely so she has to go back down again
and uh the boy was screaming when she pulled him away just would not budge for whatever reason
(37:24):
this particular silhouette had spoken to him and he wasn't willing to part with um yeah what he
had found and this was just a glass and you know monitor a lot of artists use social media to
share their work um behind the scenes images and videos or showing off their latest pieces
but you've created a whole dialogue around your practice with very witty observations of everyday
(37:52):
life in a book called common ground and uh you've taken over eight years of your social media posts
and put them into this publication um I began imagining social media as a valid form of public
space you know so amongst all that noise and distraction and um fragmentation and me them
(38:13):
here's my cat here's my lunch and all that stuff all his my artwork I painted last week and you know
um um you know uh can I be meaningful in that environment became a question uh for me and um
I was a kind of late user of social media and I approached it um from the get-go with that
(38:34):
intent in mind that uh what I would post would be a small work so you're looking at the actual work
as a post or a version or uh of that work if that makes sense so uh the formula kind of um
cotton onto was um um an image or a footage plus a caption suggestive caption
(38:57):
became the post or the work um like a cartoon it's like a loony or a lassen or a thirber um
there even though they happen a lot in and around Sydney but uh after the post uh these things
stop being what they are you know there's a transformation that's happened that's hopefully
nudging people's attention and thinking towards a certain suggestive paddock and those underlying
(39:20):
principles that I said before you know the worldview is always the you know the underlying kind of
prodder you know and some people are blind to it and some not but that's okay it's funny that
you know a certain post makes someone laugh the head off and someone else you know responds with
some uh poignant uh yeah replies or comments um so yeah I um uh you know I've decided uh for that
(39:46):
particular project to use nothing more than whatever the phone of the day is um and uh I only use
the features of the phone no specialist apps or I don't take the content out and treat it uh
in Photoshop or anything like that and then put it back in again it's just purely whatever the
phone allows me to do it's a moment in time yeah yeah but the the combination of that moment
(40:09):
of moment in time and your observation the caption that you put with it is what makes the piece
sing because not necessarily would the image that you put up resonators loudly as it does
with the the number of followers that you do have in her comment on the works because it's that
observation mixed with the visual that make these so so very special so does that being in the
(40:33):
moment appeal to you the fact that it's ephemeral it's gone um yeah yeah I mean the avalanche of
your feed uh you know um we've all experienced it the scroll that endless scroll uh but that's
okay um you know the question for me is as an as an artist can I be a pause moment for you know
someone in that scroll mode just like can I be a pause moment for someone walking from you know
(40:57):
leaving there leading their a to b life you know on the way to work or whatever can I you know
create a moment of curiosity for them to um to pause on that's uh yeah pause moment is probably
the best way I can describe it um but I'm not actively looking for these things I need to make
that clear I'm just you know I'm a walk I'm the wanderer and pre-dawn is my time I just need to
(41:20):
be alone before you know in order to face the day um and uh I end up encountering my
and pause moments of interest whether they're things or happenings or whatever that um you
suddenly are able to see and spend time with capture. Gary to mention you surely give us many
(41:44):
moments for pause and in fact you do stop us in our tracks from your immaculate formal sculptural
works to your disruptive subversive and amusing installation your outlook is so refreshing thanks
for joining me today on art chat. I'm very touched on it thank you for your interest really appreciate it.
Art chat is produced by Gallery Lang Cove and Creative Studios situated on the lands of the
(42:09):
Camarégal people. Gallery Lang Cove receives financial assistance from Lang Cove Council
and supporters like yourself. This episode of Art Chat is produced and presented by me Claudia
Chanshaw. Our production team includes Sheena Reese, Krista Taren and Cathy Campbell. Miguel
Omo is our executive producer. You can follow us or subscribe on your favorite streaming platform.
(42:33):
Thanks so much for joining us and we'll catch you next time on Art Chat.
Becoming vocal about that proposition, that's where art came in. I realised kind of thinking
(00:13):
my way back that at the bass level I'm just a maker. I'm good at that and I can't dance
or sing or write about these things but maybe I can put my meaning into my making and that
presented itself as a way forward for me.
(00:44):
Hi everyone, welcome to Art Chat, a podcast that takes you on a creative journey. I'm
your host Claudia Chan Shaw. So settle in and come along for the ride as we get chatty
with artists. Before we get started we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians
of the lands where we meet to produce this episode and pay our respects to the elders
(01:06):
both past and present.
Gary Dimension finds joy in the ordinary. Every day found objects become works of art and his
witty observations have been turned into books, a sculptor, installation artist and
Flanur. Here is an artist who cannot be pigeonholed. Gary Dimension, welcome to Art Chat.
Thank you for having me here.
(01:28):
You've been a regular exhibitor at Sculpture by the Sea, delighting Sydney Siders with your
very clever installations. In 2023 you created a piece of guerrilla art and art and art and
art and art.
In 2023 you created a piece of guerrilla art that had all of Sydney talking. Under the
(01:49):
cover of Darkness you installed a sculpture that you called the Lone Man on a dilapidated
waff at Berry's Bay on Sydney Harbour. It was all going well until the waff collapsed and
fell into the harbour. So tell me about the lone man and why you decided to install this
mysterious figure.
My work has pretty much spilled into the street one way or another, sometimes through
(02:13):
commissioned imitations and more recently and more so me being naughty enough to intervene
with lives. I kind of have a tendency to go where people are at and that's the real pool
as opposed to draw them into a white cube sanitiser gallery so to speak. It was a dream
(02:38):
I had of realising a lonely figure somewhere in the city and these things just brew or
stew slowly as you might imagine. A friend of mine who spends a lot of time in the harbour
Mark Simpson, he told me about a waff, a dilapidated waff where the main part of the waff had been
(03:01):
completely gone. The harbour is so healthy that the team is not lasting and this end
piece, this square end piece of the waff sat there as an island and I was so taken by
this amazing kind of arrival that this thing presented. At high tide it looked like the
sturdiest thing on the planet but at low tide you saw that a lot of those timbers had dwindled
(03:24):
away to nothing in some instances. He was the sort of place where he wasn't surrounded
by harbour mansions and he was facing nature scape really. It's the old shelled refinery
kind of complex that has become public space at present and the city set directly behind
him, this Emerald City, let's call it. So once I saw that then tailoring this dreaming
(03:50):
I suppose to that particular opportunity became to a juicy to ignore and yeah and I'm fortunate
that I work at the National Art School where I'm allowed to go off track and in the gaps
in between teaching and other moments of peace I tinker and the students seem to enjoy that
(04:13):
and so I decided out of cardboard to create this large sculpture and he's surrounded by
well skinned by alfoyle and Hessian and plaster and resin so really the inside is hollow and
the outside was a shell that supported itself. It was very sturdy but quite light and how
(04:35):
to get it to that amazing waff was the next question and Mark and a couple of students
I should say acrobatic students I can't swim but I was amongst them in a boat we took him
up there at pre-dawn and at high tide it had to be high tide so we can get to reach and
we simply sat him there with a lot of silicon on his bum so he was anchored to the waff
(05:04):
with his back turn, his heads down, his in the contemplative pose and he wasn't lonely
per se but alone, huge distinction between those two notions and content so contemplative
and of course when you do these things you don't know whether how it will be received
(05:26):
once it's in a public place the public has a mind of its own and certainly the authorities
have a mind of their own so I thought the waterways or North Sydney Council might intervene very
quickly and he might disappear after a few days but he didn't he kept staying there and
one morning I got a call I heard that the waff had gone down it was quite surprising soon
(05:47):
afterwards I got a call from Henry Mulholland who's a fellow artist painter and I think he's
to do some art reviews on the ABC he ranked to say hey they're talking about you on the
702 can I dub you in and next thing I know I'm talking with Sarah McDonald and the whole
(06:09):
session was spent of an ex-may who had witnessed the fall and there was this enormous lamenting
you know for this thing that had gone and I was quite touched that this thing to which
I wasn't privy to what degree he had infected people with his presence had touched people
(06:30):
it was quite emotional actually a huge huge surprise there was an almost talk about resurrecting
him and I just enjoyed the poetry of the whole thing that you know that's where he wants
to go and I think that's where you should stay that's where he's now collecting barnacles
I imagine yeah he's saying didn't he yeah yeah he popped off as the wolf collapsed he
(06:52):
survived enormous storms and everything and how long did he last three months I'd always
said he would be there as long as the wolf is and unfortunately the wolf decided not to
be there any idea what that three months is pretty good for a guy made of cardboard it
was dirty he was dirty he questioning my make me no no not at all but he was viewed
(07:16):
as a temporary piece he really did become part of the local scene didn't he they adopted
him there was just extraordinarily odd the extent to which he was embraced but it was
interesting because I was looking at a photograph of him before his demise yeah and it's like
you know when you sit on a wall or on the end of the war and and your legs are dangling
(07:41):
over the edge it was that contemplative feeling and the stance of his body it was beautiful
well I appreciate hearing that that's precisely what I was hoping to nudge this suggestion
towards he was a he was a special piece so the lone man is no more would you ever he
is he's down there barnacles are growing on him he's you know carried on and in fact I'm
(08:04):
just dying for someone to dive or whatever to actually photograph to see you know how
where where he's at in terms of you know how he sits at the bottom amongst all that rubble
we'll have to wait for the James Cameron film won't we are you were born in Soviet Armenia
and came to Australia when you were about 12 yes do you remember what were your impressions
(08:26):
of Sydney the equivalent of going to Mars I guess you know there was actually the only
thing I knew about Australia was really one page in our geography book in our school and
most of that page was taken up by the map and another bit was taken up by Kangaroo and
(08:48):
so there was literally very little text but my only in was skippy dubbed in Russian and
friends with the helicopter pilot you know Tony Bonner comes to Tropicana Roth and says very odd
to keep telling him he's Russian isn't as good as it used to be but there was one episode that
you know Mr Hammond and Sonny and the Skippy and I think others in their station wagon headed
(09:15):
into town Falcon station wagon and I just remember in that black and white set trying to we knew
we were coming so this was suddenly oh oh to see the city so yeah it was a shocking shocking
experience and we were actually escaping right so but my brother and I were told that this was a
big adventure we're going to and we spent about a year in Moscow and traveled around there waiting
(09:39):
for final approvals and got here and it wasn't until we're enrolling in school that it all dawned
on us that half of this was permanent so we always thought we were coming back you know
so Marikville would have been a far cry from Armenia in the 1970s
I'll look in many many ways just walking into a supermarket was a culture shock you know just
(10:01):
the idea of abundance you know but Marikville did a lot for me it's something to be said about
going from being one of many to the odd one out and that does things to you have to deal with that
and as shocking as it was then it was my saving grace really of coming to understand
(10:26):
that amongst all that diversity there was enormous sameness and that really hit home slowly and
a lot of my work is really based you know can easily be traced back to the understandings that
began to come to me that my own conditioning began to you know soften and my own beliefs and
attitudes began to soften and to the point where it's probably 180 degrees from you know what I
(10:53):
used to believe how long did it take for you to no longer feel like an outsider
after the initial shock and you know gosh that's a hard question to answer and and these things
kind of happen in a very oozy and slow way so it wasn't some big bombastic kind of realization
(11:16):
might imagine it was something that sneaks up at you and you're asked to deal with this new scenario
your parents are working their bum off and suddenly multiple jobs and you're looking after your
brother and looking after your studies and huge responsibility that you feel to contribute
(11:38):
like within a few months I suddenly had a paper run and and I'd have a paper run in the mornings and
go to school and after school mum had a cleaning job which was a second job in north siddney and
joining her to you know clean officers was you know you just didn't question you just contributed
and yeah did you speak english when you arrived there was absolutely no english and
(12:04):
and the only guy I could relate to was a guy called Hassan and who was Turkish and
you know my conditioning involved as an Armenian you worshiped christ and you hated Turks and
as a Soviet youth you worshiped the state and hated the west this was the cementing I'm talking about
(12:27):
and Hassan was the only one I could speak with I understood his language and were both in a
special english class and he didn't have the horns and talons that I imagine a Turk might have so
that's what I'm talking about the softening of these things that he was just a boy who wanted
to play marbles and and that was an important yeah encounter for me so you went on to become
(12:51):
an aeronautical engineer but you didn't continue down that path so what drew you to a career in the
arts okay arts was never part of the thinking I must confess I had some facility in the
Soviet Union and they assess you for your capabilities early on kindergarten all that and somehow
ended up in an arts based school and but it certainly wasn't part of the dreaming and maybe I didn't
(13:18):
even know what a concept of an artist really was back in Armenia we actually had an in-house
artist that who had his gallery and his studio and he taught art at our school but again it was
a concept far you know from my imagining I did the aeronautical engineering it's going to sound
stupid but you feel you know you're falling to that first generation migrant thing I've
(13:43):
tried to do the right thing by appearance and you know fulfill their expectations and on top of
all that you know if you'll have something to prove and I yeah you know that whole you know that
notion of when something's not hard that the term of the statement that normally followed was
you know it's not rocket science and I thought rocket science must be hard I better you know
(14:08):
this was essentially what aeronautical engineering is is rocket science so I did roll for the wrong
reasons is what I'm trying to say next thing you know you know I've got a job with defense and
and they've given me a scholarship to do a PhD and I'm in the middle of my PhD and and then as
abstract as what I was doing certainly was you know I had to come to terms that at the end of the day
(14:34):
was you know contributing towards the sharpening of a weapon of sorts this was defense capability
that your research was contributing to and that began to undo me a great deal and I had also
come across people who were naturally gifted I had I had to realize that I had gotten there
(14:56):
through grunt as opposed to be you know natural talent and that was daunting to me even though
I was selected so on paper I was good but I knew that I lacked something that the others didn't
you felt undeserving but you were deserving because you were selected
yeah on paper but when you when you realize that someone next to you is seriously gifted in that
(15:18):
vein and they were happy as pig is in the shit and whereas I was I couldn't justify me being there
anymore so I really plugged away without art being part of it really it had to it took a long time
but at a personal level I kind of took a fall you know psychologically or whatever you want to
(15:40):
call it but my firm ground I was on in terms of belief and and all those
existential questions that suddenly couldn't outrun anymore caught up with me so letting go of
God notion isn't an easy thing to do because you've been in it led to believe that to be the absolute
(16:04):
truth and I certainly had a beloved grandmother who had suffered enormously and became the
recipient of her stories and and these people faced with certain horrors were given the opportunity
to let go of their faith and chose not to so it was black and white for them it was just you know
(16:26):
we're absolute certainty so I was born into that way of being you know so it took a long time to
you know lose God and not out of carelessness but trying very hard to hang on to it really
but the harder I tried the more it you know fell through my fingers and so I had to face that
fact as my fact you know that I came to know that in a full sense that I'm an atheist now but
(16:53):
when someone who hasn't been shifted to that degree it's easy for them to you know not
for this thing not to matter but if you've held that as your absolute truth to then
yeah to walk away from it becomes a difficult thing so really a lot of personal arrival had to come
(17:14):
before the art thing even ventured as a possible way forward and that personal arrival was really
uncertainty was the one thing I realized I was running away from so and if uncertainty was the
only certainty there is a so you know I thought embracing that maybe would be the way forward and
(17:36):
that's been my you know way forward ever since and becoming vocal about that proposition that's
where art came in I realized kind of thinking my way back that at a base level I'm just a maker
you know I'm good at that and I can't dance or sing or write about these things but maybe I can
(17:58):
put my meaning into my making and that presented itself as a as a way forward for me yeah
we're going to see your making when you exhibit in a group show repair replace at gallery lane
cove which runs from the 20th of August to the 12th of September and this is an exhibition that
brings together different artists who are looking at the need to rethink our relationship with the
(18:23):
planet and the materials that we choose and the the stories that we tell because if we don't repair
that relationship with the planet then we may ourselves be replaced so you find beauty
in found objects the most surprising things and I think that's what you're going to be showing
(18:46):
at repair replace that's why it's interesting that you said we'll be seeing your making
there'll be none of my making yeah there my making in this instance is I've had a private thesis
that I've been you know developing for some time under the banner of the aesthetics of nill
intent and ultimately I'm a truth finder and you know when I come across a hunk of truth
(19:13):
you know I get excited and when I say hunk of truth in this instance as these things that have
that are made things that have become what they become through human agency but blind human
agency no contrivance in their arrival so there's a transformation of some sort that has happened
in some instances hundreds of thousands have contributed to that transformation in other
(19:37):
instances only a couple of people but they've been blind to those things becoming what they've
become and that to me I know they're not lying to me these things you know so I've been hoarding
you know collection of these things over time and and I've been fortunate enough to
to be asked to air it by gallerina and cove but you have made them because you've taken
(20:02):
the found object and you've seen the stories behind the object and by its positioning
you've made something new out of it so you have made it tell me about tommy and veto veto and tommy
um thank you for that assessment glaudia because it's not easily understood um in terms of what
(20:26):
you said relating that to the making yes in some instances extraordinary effort and cost has gone
through to acquire these things and to house them um well the work that you just mentioned um
lataria um uh that sat next to kaluzzi in dalinghurst cafe very narrow cafe to young
(20:47):
bankstown italian boys they've been running that for many years from their youth as sort of early
twinies now they're in their forties they've long sold the business but um because the shop was
so narrow underneath the coffee machine there was a trap door that they would fling open and that's
where they would you know it was a lump of wood they had there that they would knock the I don't
(21:12):
know what it's called the coffee group do you get bash bash bash when you get to have your espresso
exactly um now that lump award started as a rectangular block and after two and a half years
of bashing and then of course they're quite careful with money as well turning that wood around so
you can bash the other side before they threw it away or got another lump of wood um this thing
(21:35):
acquired an amazing form you know and we're talking about two guys who took shifts to
shared business partners um who from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day uh knocked this wood into shape
without realizing what they're doing or um you know not one of those knocks uh was conceived by them
(21:58):
as um as i'm making a special mark you know but uh that uh cumulative knocks has uh transformed
these uh two lumps of wood over the course of two and a half years um each into something that I
think broncusia would uh salivate over yeah yeah I think Duchamp might have a have a moment there too
while while he was uh reliving himself at his urinal and notice board from Sydney University has
(22:24):
become a work of art tell me about that piece oh well um this is rather special uh quite a sizable
notice board uh decommissioned um now uh a professor who saw me handling it um you know told me that
when he was a young student that notice board was there so we're looking at kind of a span of at
(22:46):
least 40 years uh to 50 years and this notice board timber and um it was um it's uh basically
it's not stuck on the notices these are stapled on so um it's staple this message or that message
or some ad or some program staple tear staple tear literally hundreds of thousands of staples on this
(23:10):
thing as well as bits of paper that have been left behind as residue and um and it's uh it's had
hundreds of thousands of collaborators who've blindly um pushed this to become what it's become
so to feature that truth is um really um uh you know is the thing that I'm kind of looking for in
(23:34):
objects as I said sort of tangible bits of truth yeah remnants of thousands of stories yeah you
just mind boggles really um sometimes when you look at an artist studio on the floor or on the walls
or or left behind are these wonderful blobs of paint bits and pieces and colors that have been
(23:56):
bought together unexpectedly and you have a piece rob and still are my goodness tell me about that
piece oh Ron and Stella um friends from billet tony's of some 30 plus years their husband wife
team who are cinemagraphic painters they're retired now um and these people um they make paint scenes
(24:18):
for the opera for you know the ballet um and uh the canvases that they work on are just
absolutely enormous so they had a huge factory in new town and uh you know they paint with mops and
and brooms as opposed to brushes if you know what I mean and um so they had built this um pallet
(24:39):
mobile pallet on wheels on casters where they would mix the paint and um fortunate enough
uh that uh I've ended up uh you know being gifted this on their retirement I did ask for it and
they did remember and um and uh this thing is just covered in luscious colors and um drips and
(25:00):
drabs and and it has an enormous um presence as a as a color field but more so as I said the
underlying truth that they did not think for a second to make that special.
Mmm. These this accidental work of art and interestingly what what you're gathering together
even just with those three examples are the inner city suburbs of Sydney and the stories that
(25:26):
they've left behind. Um I I tend to agree what became apparent was the stories were very much
part of the work um I had a chance last year at slot projects uh in the independent kind of
initiative by the artist Tony Twig um and uh he let me or invited me to take his studio space and
(25:49):
and feature these works and that's where Miguel Alma the director of gallery land
cove came across the work and and was enticed enough to include it in this show. Um now um
um that was the first time I'd aired this proposition and in fact Tony's floor as you described before
um in a painter's floor you can imagine the drops and trips yeah and his floor was so rich that
(26:14):
I made it I claimed it as the number one item in the room sheet you know so Tony's floor was
um very much part of the work for those six weeks um because even though that floor had come close
to high art you know um fine art um Tony didn't think for a second that you know this particular
trip he all there you know that he was making the floor special you know it had become
(26:39):
special by virtue of the honesty with which it uh it had become what it become.
Found objects you've uh used very large shipping containers in your installation work.
Look the work is socially concerned in a broad sense and uh on the surface it may appear um
(27:01):
quite broad and eclectic even but really the mortar for the you know for the whole proposition
is the intent is what holds it together and trying to point out um us being the same kind
life being and us you know us as a species being very small in the context of a vast and humming
universe and life being short and precarious and the idea that we are largely led you know uh
(27:26):
ushered. I put up these propositions in the instances that you mentioned um the shipping
containers I turn them into installations or that kind of evoke some notion of house worship
so I guess if I'm talking about consumerism uh and the way we are adding endlessly to the
to the layer new layer that we call the Anthropocene now of um plastics and other junk you know to
(27:53):
the earth um and I see more Ikea on the streets than I do you know McDonald's wrappers you know
and that's you know stuff is being made and stuff is being got rid of and uh bearing these things
uh you know our way of our crude way of dealing with it which we're not we're just uh masking over
(28:14):
so to use the very items of the supply chain like pallets or shipping containers um to evoke
some notion of a house of worship it's the the faith that has brought these bits of architecture
into being is no longer dispensed there you know like the pyramids or the path along that say um
(28:36):
or any temple for that matter that's not functioning anymore so uh and they have um yeah the assemblages
of ready-made but things that have lived uh so this shipping containers or the pallets have
moved crap from here to there and uh back again and they carry the scars and marks and
(28:57):
and even smells of their servitude I suppose so if I did these with brand new shipping containers
it would suggest something else or if I made the shipping containers out of fiberglass let's say
that would be you know suggestive of something else but to use actuality that's become seriously
important that um the actual servitude is part of the story and um and uh once the installation is
(29:20):
over these are temporary propositions you know a month or two in some cases that much longer
they go back to being shipping containers and pallets you know so there's something comforting
about that that um you know that as a practice I'm not generating crap you know um that's become
important as well um so the idea of the abandonment of the house of worship is that a metaphor for
(29:42):
your own departure from the church um that's uh I hadn't thought of it in those terms but
um I guess I guess there must be some truth to that yeah um you know um the church was an
important place in soviet aminea there was a Byzantine church that my grandmother used to take me to
and walking from the brutalist plaza into the church this Byzantine church full of incense and shafts
(30:09):
of light and against the you know the fog or the smoke of the incense and uh it was a portal to
another place you know so I've been hugely affected by um yeah a house of worship so I kind of tried
to conjure a sense of that but it's more so to do with we don't build you know cathedrals or pyramids
(30:30):
or temples anymore we've certainly built uh and office buildings and shopping centers and casinos
so the faith has shifted in that direction so for me to speak something of that um using the very
means and uh you know uh artifacts of that supply chain as I said um you know under the
mantra of growth you know they've justified a lot um haven't they there's a piece that you created
(30:58):
for sculpture by the sea um which I find very amusing it's called don't touch this artwork
lovely lovely sense of humor it's oversized can you describe it for us well um sculpture by
the sea have these little small metal folded signs that they normally put around works that aren't
(31:19):
to be touched and it does carry that very message of please do not touch this artwork and um a year
before I proposed this I had a work there that was um you know the risk assessors deemed it uh
you know um risky as they do I mean there's no end to that risk business but uh suddenly my work
(31:43):
was surrounded by these little buggers and and fortunately people ignored them and I certainly
stole them and threw them up the cliff and that sort of stuff and it was like what else is there left
to do it when you enter public space you're kind of entering this mad real and particularly um
you know safety conscious or risk conscious or insurance conscious you know public liability
(32:05):
conscious kind of terrain that we exist in um you know uh the question of what else can I
could you possibly make and uh so I kind of decided to propose of very much you know an oversized
version of that very science I was a scaled up version and um and of course it became a touch
magnet for people and uh lovely handprints in the Jew um you know and um yeah children all over
(32:32):
it um you know you'd even have a homeless person who took a refuge under it and he had to be
ushered out uh I wish they hadn't he was very happy there um and lots of other
uh encounters I think job done with that one yeah yeah but you also do very interesting
(32:56):
video work and at the uh recently refurbished when you'd station you had a video work called
presence which is rather haunting hmm yeah that was a it was a commission and I say they commissioned
I think about a dozen of us and they rotate since 2016 they've been rotating monthly
(33:18):
video or moving image works um so that's a transport for New South Wales um project
um it uh it was a new entrance to it is a new entrance from Clarence Street to Wingard station
and it hooks up with the tunnel that leads to Barangaroo and this is a mezzanine level and it's a 23
meter long curved um LED screen essentially so monumental kind of um screen um and uh I saw
(33:49):
and it's in between floors and I saw it as a bay window proposition I'm to have this notion of
who's watching and who's being watched so uh my video work um is um essentially a foggy terrain
and uh and uh in the in a horizon it's dotted by human figures and each one of them has been
(34:13):
recorded in a studio and stitch together so each one of them is moving quite slowly and every now
and then a while or two uh approach the screen they become full scale in life size and they become
denser and you see that their bodies are fuzzy and you know um jittery um they're alive so and
they're taking an interest in what's happening on our side of the glass so if uh you're part of
(34:37):
the masses going through um you know you may feel um uh heartened that uh there's more of you than
them uh but if you find yourself alone they're um you know uh the idea that these people
oids peopleoids humanoids are looking at you observing you is is a sense that people seem to
(35:01):
report on that the reason for the a click this at the of the work classally speaking when I
find myself repeating myself uh tend to close the book on that uh body work and move on and I love
the not knowing what to do next whether it's a technical leap or it's an artistic one I enjoy
putting myself in that position like with this instance all the um all the figures to start with
(35:26):
uh you know uh the talent let's call them as well as uh the the cleverness that with which we had to
uh like you can't greens uh we tried CGI just lifeless and dead and it had to be real movement
that we put all these effects on so in order to do that to have a small figure approach and become
large we had to have real space to make that happen um so uh you can't green screen a huge area
(35:53):
so um you know we we got like pursuits that were green and we did reverse green screening if you
know what I mean so we're able to mask out the figure on the movement um and uh to stitch all
that together storyboard and stitch that together I mean just the computational loan the dedicated
computer it took it took close to 70 to 80 hours to render just one 10 minute episode this is all
(36:18):
the stitching the weaving that goes on you know computationally so completely outside of my
understanding uh but um being close to others who are capable and know what they're doing and
contributing the talent uh it's a juicy place to be you know and taking your idea and making
it a reality because it when you walk through it's it's like um strangers walking through the fog
(36:42):
in in step with you as you as you commute sometimes yeah odd commissances um you know do occur there
was one uh I was just blessed to see this uh live there was a um came to he weaned up top looking
down and there was a boy with his uh school bag and his hands on the screen and is in front of
(37:03):
one of the silhouettes who've paused there for a while and I realized that the mum has um you
know gone up the escalators and realized that the boy is still down there he was just fixated on
this figure so she yells out at him and is ignoring her completely so she has to go back down again
and uh the boy was screaming when she pulled him away just would not budge for whatever reason
(37:24):
this particular silhouette had spoken to him and he wasn't willing to part with um yeah what he
had found and this was just a glass and you know monitor a lot of artists use social media to
share their work um behind the scenes images and videos or showing off their latest pieces
but you've created a whole dialogue around your practice with very witty observations of everyday
(37:52):
life in a book called common ground and uh you've taken over eight years of your social media posts
and put them into this publication um I began imagining social media as a valid form of public
space you know so amongst all that noise and distraction and um fragmentation and me them
(38:13):
here's my cat here's my lunch and all that stuff all his my artwork I painted last week and you know
um um you know uh can I be meaningful in that environment became a question uh for me and um
I was a kind of late user of social media and I approached it um from the get-go with that
(38:34):
intent in mind that uh what I would post would be a small work so you're looking at the actual work
as a post or a version or uh of that work if that makes sense so uh the formula kind of um
cotton onto was um um an image or a footage plus a caption suggestive caption
(38:57):
became the post or the work um like a cartoon it's like a loony or a lassen or a thirber um
there even though they happen a lot in and around Sydney but uh after the post uh these things
stop being what they are you know there's a transformation that's happened that's hopefully
nudging people's attention and thinking towards a certain suggestive paddock and those underlying
(39:20):
principles that I said before you know the worldview is always the you know the underlying kind of
prodder you know and some people are blind to it and some not but that's okay it's funny that
you know a certain post makes someone laugh the head off and someone else you know responds with
some uh poignant uh yeah replies or comments um so yeah I um uh you know I've decided uh for that
(39:46):
particular project to use nothing more than whatever the phone of the day is um and uh I only use
the features of the phone no specialist apps or I don't take the content out and treat it uh
in Photoshop or anything like that and then put it back in again it's just purely whatever the
phone allows me to do it's a moment in time yeah yeah but the the combination of that moment
(40:09):
of moment in time and your observation the caption that you put with it is what makes the piece
sing because not necessarily would the image that you put up resonators loudly as it does
with the the number of followers that you do have in her comment on the works because it's that
observation mixed with the visual that make these so so very special so does that being in the
(40:33):
moment appeal to you the fact that it's ephemeral it's gone um yeah yeah I mean the avalanche of
your feed uh you know um we've all experienced it the scroll that endless scroll uh but that's
okay um you know the question for me is as an as an artist can I be a pause moment for you know
someone in that scroll mode just like can I be a pause moment for someone walking from you know
(40:57):
leaving there leading their a to b life you know on the way to work or whatever can I you know
create a moment of curiosity for them to um to pause on that's uh yeah pause moment is probably
the best way I can describe it um but I'm not actively looking for these things I need to make
that clear I'm just you know I'm a walk I'm the wanderer and pre-dawn is my time I just need to
(41:20):
be alone before you know in order to face the day um and uh I end up encountering my
and pause moments of interest whether they're things or happenings or whatever that um you
suddenly are able to see and spend time with capture. Gary to mention you surely give us many
(41:44):
moments for pause and in fact you do stop us in our tracks from your immaculate formal sculptural
works to your disruptive subversive and amusing installation your outlook is so refreshing thanks
for joining me today on art chat. I'm very touched on it thank you for your interest really appreciate it.
Art chat is produced by Gallery Lang Cove and Creative Studios situated on the lands of the
(42:09):
Camarégal people. Gallery Lang Cove receives financial assistance from Lang Cove Council
and supporters like yourself. This episode of Art Chat is produced and presented by me Claudia
Chanshaw. Our production team includes Sheena Reese, Krista Taren and Cathy Campbell. Miguel
Omo is our executive producer. You can follow us or subscribe on your favorite streaming platform.
(42:33):
Thanks so much for joining us and we'll catch you next time on Art Chat.
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