Exhibition by Luke Foster at Kirra Hill Community Centre
Monday 16th June to Monday 30 June
1 Garrick St, Coolangatta QLD
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Dalai Lama
This coming exhibition at Kirra Hill is my second and last solo show of the year. This quote by the Dalai Lama sums up the philosophy I aspire to in my art.
The show shall be a mixed media installation with four videos, three big A0 photos at this stage maybe more, a sculptural installation and two big drawings with portraits and text one with the text the same as the title of the show. There shall also be fruit boxes with Woollies bags painted black and two white crayon portraits in each one of the Dalai Lama, Mary MacKillop, the Pope Francis and Saint Francis. The boxes shall have TEMU neon’s in each one blue one: Possible and the other yellow: Forever and the ideas are that if we choose good mentors like these then it’s definitely possible to save this beautiful blue planet forever. Also above the boxes is an old ink on paper drawing I did decades ago of an astronaut in their suit and I feel that if we can land man on the moon then we can overcome all the major problems in the world: world peace, saving the environment, overcoming global poverty and saving this beautiful blue planet forever. Bellow the boxes shall be a big blue neon with one word: compassion. I feel having a sense of compassion towards all people and for the environment then these goals can become reality.
There shall also be two plaster sculptures sitting in black TEMU carts sitting on white Kmart pillows and a single TEMU neon in each one with a green TEMU gratitude neon and the other a white happiness neon. I feel the sculptures are more complex than I first realised and thought they were metaphorical stairways but now I realise that they are also bridges of world peace.
There shall also be the same ocean room sculpture that I showed in my last show but this time it shall be turned upside down and filled with multicoloured converse shoes and I love their logo all-star as I feel no person is an island and I feel the best things in the world are achieved if we work as a team.
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”.
Malala Yousafzai
I always try to have an equal number of male and female people of inspiration or mentors and Mala is wise and kind beyond her years.
I have finished two of the videos and their rationale is as follows:
“Never see a need without doing something about it”
Mary MacKillop
This is a two-channel video installation that me and Yannick shot recently at my apartment for the first video and the second video at the beach. Normally we do just one simple video at a time but this time there were many shots and props and many ideas shot all at once.
There are many ideas in the videos and many come from my ten drawings a day project where I draw ten drawings every morning mainly on the back of cut up Woollies bags where I study the teachings of the saints and the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis and try to make attempts at humour mainly cat jokes.
The clothes and shoes I wore for the installation include: TEMU straw hat, Levis 501 jeans, Kmart white t-shirt, Kmart brown and white-collar shirt, Swatch watch and Converse shoes and brand-new New Balance shoes. The props include fruit boxes, a black cardboard box, a small plaster sculpture (a stairwell with a doorway in it) Woollies bags, Sharpie pens, TEMU neon signs and Mont Marte colour pencils.
“A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just. “
Pope Francis
I love this quote by Pope Francis and I feel I need more mercy and kindness.
The most complex shot was when I was dropping my ten drawings a day from a cardboard box I was holding into a black box on the sand and the drawings were on brown Woollies bags that hold my groceries. The bags had one-word affirmations on them like compassion and altruism. There is kind of a bridge in the world peace game and they metaphorically feed me food and I cut up the ideas and rephased them in simple single words sometimes. Also, sometimes I think inside and outside the box with drawings and text of gratitude.
In conclusion my coming exhibition is over two months out so I can imagine I shall edit some of the ideas I wrote about here and add other ideas but most of all I hope the local and global community shall have tolerance for my attempts at humour.