“It’s good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.”
Tim Burton
I have always been a movie buff but now I have taken that obsession to new levels. Most days and evenings I watch at least two movies on Netflix and most days it’s three.
I was talking with my friend the other day and I said that it would be great if cinema became a category in the Nobel Prizes and there are many male and female directors and actors and everyone else who work to make movies who deserve such a prize. I think this as I feel that movies are the medium of this era and mainly from Hollywood but also Australia and Europe and many other countries.
At the moment I am watching them on the Netflix platform but in the past on Stan, Disney plus and before that DVD and even earlier on VHS tape decades ago.
I pretty much love all actors and directors equally but Americans that stand out include female director Sophia Coppola and male director Tim Burton and actors Kirsten Dunst and Johnny Depp.
From England I love all the 007 movies and actors Kiera Knightly and Rowan Atkinson and films such as Bend it Like Beckham.
I also make video art but it is very different to cinema but is more grounded in contemporary video/ film art like Korean Nan Jun Paik and American Bruce Nauman’s video art and Australians Soda Jerk and the King Pins.
I started making video art in art school and in second year as an undergraduate made clay portrait sculptures and videoed one on the shoreline being washed over by waves as a sort of gentle catharsis.
Then as a postgrad in the sculpture department at COFA in the late nineties I made bigger video sculptures the first titled the Ocean Room which was shown at Particle Gallery in Clovelly then Manning Regional Gallery and then Sculpture by the Sea in 1999.
Then after art school I made a video sculpture titled Return to Sender which toured around Australia in a national touring show on the theme of the package and the Package was the title of the show and my work was a life, sized baby elephant made of wire, wood papier mache and latex. Inside a cavity in the back was a small tv I inherited from my grandmother and on it a digital animation I made after studying a six-month multimedia course at Crows Nest Tafe.
About four years ago I returned to video art with a video of me dressed up as Charlie Chaplin flicking through one of my books of drawings with the ocean behind me sitting on a stool and it was very windy and the hat, I was wearing blew up the beach and I had to run after it. I showed it as part of a multi-media installation at the Big Ci studio residency in the Blue Mountains with drawings, a compassion neon and photos.
Since then, I have made many videos including Who wants to be my Han Solo? where I dressed up as Chewbacca from the Star Wars movies on the beach again also flicking through a sketchbook and then ankle deep in the ocean.
While on a studio residency in New York last year I showed the Who Wants to be my Han Solo video at the Mothership residency Salon night in Brooklyn with the other artists.
Since the Chaplin video and Chewbacca one I have shown video art at exhibitions mainly at Kirra Hill Community Centre Gallery but also at the Big Ci Studio Residency and at Scratch Space in Sydney with big photos framed and a video of me in a space suit titled I am the Dalai Lama’s Stray Cat. Also a lot of my videos also end up on my website.
The reason I love watching movies so much is because not only for entertainment value and intellectual stimulation but also because it gives me ideas on how to make my video art better.
I look at the camera angles, music, jokes and costumes and they all inspire me.
I like these George Lucas and a Sophia Coppola quotes as they are two film directors I greatly admire.
“You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.”
George Lucas
I love this quote by George Lucas and I think it’s a very inspirational quote as it’s all about perseverance and working hard.
“Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I’ll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.”
Sofia Coppola
I feel the same way as Sophia and once I’ve finished one idea, I worry I shall not think of something new or even worse keep repeating myself and not covering new ground.
At the moment I am getting video editing lessons and I am using an iMac and edit with I Movie and recently bought a second Samsung monitor so I can look at two videos at once as I usually exhibit two channel videos along with big A0 photos framed and unframed, big drawings, sculptures and neon’s and artist books filled with drawings. All my videos are now shot with my I Phone.
