“But part of the enjoyment I take in it is finding the most efficient way to do it, which doesn’t mean the corrections aren’t made. I like to have a feeling of the whole task before I start, even if it changes.”
Bruce Nauman
I like this quote by American conceptual artist Bruce Nauman and I got exposed to his work as a student at art school in the early nineties through books at COFA’s library.
In recent years his neon works have inspired me to make neon installations and the first was a big blue neon with the text compassion at my last Big Ci studio residency several years ago. It is the amalgamation of Buddhist philosophy boiled down into one word.
“But if you can find that spot – I suppose it’s like running – I used to be a swimmer and swim laps, and you just have to be there with what you’re doing.”
Bruce Nauman
I like this quote about living in the moments by swimming laps as that’s what I try to do.
My friend Fernando Pino at art school was even more of a Nauman fan than me and we did a show together at Particle gallery in Clovelly Sydney called the Space Beneath my Chair perhaps in 1997 named after a Nauman sculpture. However, he lost the documentation of this work as the house he was staying in Chile while visiting burned down and he lost all his slide documentation. He was in Chile as a sort of assistant teacher at an art school there and took six months off from the two-year part-time masters in sculpture course at COFA.
My most interesting neon works were made during solo shows at Kirra Hill Community Centre in 2024 and 2025 and some paired with lots of multi coloured converse Chuck Taylor high tops.
Many other artists have used neon’s in conceptual art particularly with minimal art in the nineteen seventies such as Dan Flavin.
I have been working on neon works for my coming exhibition and the following photos are works in progress in the studio/ My living room:
In conclusion neon’s have been around a long time as adds for business’s but in, the late sixties and seventies were used in conceptual artworks and one of those artists was Bruce Nauman.