More Burnt Globe Works

These burnt globes were first made when I was working with wire cages. It was an accidental discovery that I then used for a number of years. For a sculpture class, I made a series of the globes that were tied with hair, and which had salt dried on them. I then hung them in a few places around the campus, with different configurations and different numbers. These works are collectively known as Comfortably Numb:


I had been working with chopsticks for awhile and decided to combine the two elements. The first work I made was called Hanoi Hilton. I conflated a couple of memories I had about the Vietnam War (umm, not personal memories... From TV and movies.), but particularly a scene from The Deer Hunter where someone is kept in a bamboo cage and then submerged in water. I don't think this was anywhere near the actual Hanoi Hilton where they also tortured prisoners, but the ideas merged for me:

This one is Hanoi Hilton II. It's the same idea, but the lines have become cleaner and more ordered:

I tried a few different configurations on the same theme:

Furr Exhibition

This is another post from the archives: the Furr show from Kudos Gallery, curated by Penelope Benton, from 2000. The other artists in the show were Juliette Arent, Nicole Barakat, Elspeth Cameron, Simon Cooper, Chet Danby, Tania Petra Daniels, Boots Dexter, Hayden Fowler, Anna Jaaniste, Kitty Kat, Kate Mitchell, Sam Roseman, Jenny Wilder and Yiorgos Zafiriou. The first image above was the invitation to the show, with each invitation having a piece of fake fur stuck on it. Below is the catalogue, and the fur here is just a printed image.



I joked at the time that the show should have been called "Furr, with Rodney Love and Friends" because I had so many works in the exhibition!

My work extended down one side of the gallery:


This is Hairy Ted (sitting forlornly on the floor in the photo above). It was made of Hessian and stuffed with hair, so little bits of hair stuck out through the holes.

I wrote about this work once before (see this post). I'm just cutting and pasting the text:
This was a piece I made for the Furr show at Kudos, another great show curated by Penelope Benton. It was called Tiny Teddies. It's a giant Tiny Teddy made out of Tiny Teddies. Penelope liked the idea and thought two of them would look great. I dutifully made two, but regretted the decision when it came time to dismantle the work. The teddies had been glued directly to the gallery wall and proved rather difficult to dislodge! It smelled great, though.

This work is Shattered By Fate. Each of the hair-filled wire boxes was velcroed to the wall. I later framed the work (see here).

I've also written about this work before. This " is called Death Closes All, from 2000. It was exhibited in the Furr show at Kudos Gallery. This was an early experiment, and only has a very thin central warp (of linen), with the unspun hair just placed in the warp and flowing out the sides, and sometimes relooping back into the warp. It was about 3-4 metres long (3 pieces of different lengths were sewn together) and was hung down the wall, and flowed onto the floor."



This is one of the earliest hair textiles of mine. It's called Arbeit Macht Frei, and is another Holocaust-related work from the early 21st century.

Luggage... Not Baggage

This post has info about an exhibition I was in at PCL Exhibitionists in 2000.


Luggage... Not Baggage PCL Exhibitionists
August 15 - September 2, 2000 - PCL celebrates its 100th show

Rodney Love, Richard Morecroft, Jo Kot, Peta Morris, Sophie Gralton, David Sayer, Lesley Turnbull, Joan Rabinowitz, Irene Kindness, Julie Byrnes, Sarah Bishop, Elizabeth Wadsworth, Gabriella Hegyes, Deb Morrell, Dominique Downing-Hickey, Vanessa Forbes, Lyndal Campbell, Jo Tracy, Gwenda Hall, Izette Felthun, Yan Fletcher, Gail Joy Kenning, Alexandra Gray

Here is an installation shot, coming in the front door of the gallery:

This is the second room, with my work on the left:

My work includes the two sculptures on the floor, and the hanging bags in the middle:

This work was called In Darkness My Heart Was Won. Click on the 'chopsticks' link at the bottom of the post to see other works in this series. I'm not sure whose painting is on the wall behind my work, but they go quite well together:

This was another reworking of the hair dolls that have featured in a number of previous posts (here, here and here). It was called The Part That Wants Beauty To Suffer. I think I made this soon after the massacres in East Timor. It was supposed to be reminiscent of mass graves, and bodies found in burnt-out buildings.

These works all ended up with questions as titles: Just What Is It That Makes Today's Boys So Different, So Appealing? What Is It To Be Human? Why Prolong The Agony? What Price Love? I think the white bag is Why Prolong The Agony? but I'm not sure why. What Price Love? is the work on the right. It was made from acetate sheets with cards sewn in, and assembled into a bag. Each of the cards had the name of someone I'd "met" and we'd swapped numbers. It has since been destroyed, and I don't think I have any close-up shots:

This is What Is It To Be Human? It's made from human hair sandwiched between sheets of flywire, and sewn together. The handles are made from plaited artificial hair. Hmmm... Further research suggests that this is actually Why Prolong The Agony? The white one with fake fur on the outside and woven Gladwrap on the inside must be What Is It To Be Human? It still doesn't make any sense!

This is Just What Is It That Makes Today's Boys So Different, So Appealing? I've used the same title a couple of times.



Here are some shots of me getting the work installed. The chopstick sculpture is placed on a square of sand, and I had to sift it onto the floor to make it even and smooth:

Some More Catalogues I've Been In

Re-Frame, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, 20 July - 26 August 2006
Foreword by Rod Bamford
Essay by Robyn Daw




The exhibition also included work by Nicole Barakat, Suzanne Boccalatte, Julia Charles, Patrick Hall, Anne Harry, Trent Jansen, Selena Griffith + Brad Miller, Alexander Lotersztain, Paull McKee, Katherine Moline, Linda Lou Murphy, OPOS, Oxidise, Elliat Rich, Swapan Saha, Six Degrees, Stutchbury & Pape, Szuszy Timar, and Mark Vaawerk.

From Lausanne to Beijing: 5th International Fiber Art Biennale Catalogue, 25 November - 25 December, 2008


This show had too many artists to mention, but did include Sydney artists Brook Morgan, Cecilia Heffer, and Liz Williamson.

Textile Fibre Forum Articles

I'm showing some more publications in this post. Both articles come from Textile Fibre Forum, an Australian journal. The first is an article written by me which was an excerpt from my book (currently #3,351,095 on Amazon...):



(Textile Fibre Forum vol. 26, iss. 4, no. 88)

Technically this article doesn't actually mention me, but it's about the Momentum exhibition, and lists all the participating artists at the end, so it goes on my c.v.!


(Textile Fibre Forum vol. 27, iss. 3, no. 91)

Applications

I've been a bit busy the past couple of weeks with various applications and proposals. Most of these applications have had variations of the same works, or at least the same types of work, mostly hair weavings. I'm still working on some textiles made with old socks, but mainly out of an interest in using all the material that I have rather than an overwhelming desire to keep using socks. I am eager to make new hair textiles, but am trying to also finish some paintings I've started, then use up a number of canvases and panels on some new painting projects, THEN get back to some hair weavings. I guess the most high-profile application was for an Australia Council New Works Grant of $10,000. I got the application in at 11:46pm on Friday, with a midnight deadline. The grants are very competitive, and heaven knows I deserve one, but there would have been hundreds of applications, so chances are probably slim for getting one. My proposal for this grant was to buy my own loom, and then work on a new series of much larger hair weavings with more complex patterns and weave structures. I gave examples of past work including the large sock installation I Am Because We Are, plus a variety of past hair weavings, some of which I've shown here before:






The sock installation shows that I'm able to work on a large scale, and the hair weavings show a variety of textile structures, size and patterning.

The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award entries also closed last week. I showed four works for consideration: the kimono from the installation above, a new sock weaving work based on African kente cloth traditions, The Devil's Cloth series, and a panel from the Six Degrees series:







Kente cloth is made by weaving narrow strips of often (usually? always?) striped cloth, and then sewing the strips together to make a larger textile. Mine is still a work in progress as the strips have not yet been sewn together.

I've also put in an application for a show with Margarita Sampson at Craft Victoria in Melbourne. This is for a show in 2010. I've proposed an exhibition of The Devil's Cloth series, and the Violence, Abjection and Ecstasy series (all of which can be seen in this post):