Posts Tagged ‘Damien Kamholtz’
MEMORY COLLECTIVE: Super Moon + Phoenix
Eighteen months ago Toowoomba artist Damien Kamholtz began a project that was to bring together a team of local artists to participate in a conceptual artwork that would have many states and private and public iterations. The first public presentation of the The Memory Collective was at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in August/September 2013.
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Two weeks ago a key element of The Memory Collective project was altered yet again into a new state. This took place near Cabarlah at a symbolic time for Kamholtz, the recent super moon…
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Here is part of the document made on that July evening.
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Damien Kamholtz before the burning Photo: Cooper+Spowart
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The super-moon rising and the embers of the phoenix rising
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Aftermath of the fire
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Aftermath: ashes of the painting the next morning. Photo: Damien Kamholtz
…. this is not an ending for the Memory Collective…
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THE BACKSTORY OF THE MEMORY COLLECTION
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An exhibition of the collaborative artwork as a singlarity
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Memory Collective image from the exhibition @ Toowoomba Regional
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A painting and a performance
The Memory Collective painting by Damien Kamholtz
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The Memory Collective is a multi-disciplinary collaboration orchestrated by artist Damien Kamholtz. Kamholtz states: The Memory Collective Project is a creative collaboration between 12 artists across eight artistic disciplines exploring concepts and themes relating to the human condition such as change, constants, history, refection and memory. The artworks created during the project will make up an exhibition to be held at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in September 2013.
There are different stages to the project. First Kamholtz created a large 2.2 metre square painting, while sculptor, Jessie Wright constructed the large vessel to hold the water. Kamholtz’s painting is embedded with personal meaning in the form of fragments of his past art, the ashes of diaries. In the presence of this artwork we are drawn into a poetic landscape where faces emerge; symbols and totems slip from passive dark spaces and come into conscious awareness.
The second stage of the work was the performance in the form of 9 responses to the painting by Kristy Lee. The painting and the pool created the reflective and reflexive performative space and the transformative process of the original painting then began. Integral to the space were David Usher’s delicate pots; these vessels contained the pallet of shades that then shrouded and clouded the memory of the work. Over the course of the day the painting’s physical form was transformed into something different loosing its current visual form as only a memory.
Our part of the collaboration was to witness, respond and record the transformation of the work over the day. The next stage of the Memory Collective’s work will continue over the next month our component will be to create 9 large collaged photograph memory states of the work for the show in September. Works by others include; a video art piece, a documentary video, a soundscape, interviews, prose and poems. It is a significant project and is being funded by the RADF and supported through the exhibition at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
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A fragment of photographic memories made by us for the MEMORY COLLECTIVE…
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Damien Kamholtz in the performance space with the painting and pool
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A performance
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Kirsty Lee and painting – in the early state…
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Kirsty Lee performs before the painting
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State 3 Kirsty applies paint to the paining…
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Hand paint
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Kirsty Lee and her interaction with the painting … around Stage 6
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Blue hand…
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Kirsty Lee in a frenetic stage…
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Kirsty Lee and brushes before the pool
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Paint fluid in the pool…
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Towards the final state…
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The final state …
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Additional material
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Damien discussing movement with Kirsty
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Kirsty Lee towards the end of the performance
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Another creative work from the performance by Jason Nash…
Jason Nash – Time lapse video
CLICK HERE to see Jason Nash’s ‘Memory Collective’ time-lapse video
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The Team: Front Ashleigh Campbell, Julio Dunlop, Kirsty Lee, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart
Back: David Usher, Jason Nash, Jesse Wright, Damien Kamholtz, Zac Rowling ( weakling).
Not present: Craig Allen & Jake Hickey
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Toowoomba Chronicle 17 June, 2013 by Kate Dodd PHOTO: Dave Noonan
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© 2013+2014 Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart for The Memory Collective
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Buildings with tattoos: First Coat Street Art Festival
Off Duggan St
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THE FIRST COAT STREET ARTS FESTIVAL
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The regional town of Toowoomba has been transformed over the weekend of the 21, 22 and 23 of February by a band of international, national and local artists, converting lane way walls into places of street art. Now dingy or dilapidated back lanes are the place where one can encounter art – or – has the art has come to us?
Street art or graffiti, whatever you call it was illegal with significant fines and community service being awarded those who were caught – perhaps even jail! Not being caught in the act as well as being outrageously brave in the places where work was to be placed and what it would say was what it was all about. Graffiti gave a kind of voice to a youth dispossessed by any means of being able to express how they felt or the creativity, perhaps even beauty, that can come from the nozzle of a spray can and a creative mind.
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Fintan Magee: 492 Ruthven Street
Fintan Magee: 492 Ruthven Street
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For years the domain of reckless and angry youth, the quickspray ‘tags’ adorned many buildings in public spaces. In time railway rolling stock became a moveable target for adornment. And while in the past, crews of official graffiti ‘strippers’ would attempt to remove these forms of creative expression it seems today that they have just given up–it’s far more interesting now to ‘graffiti-spot’ (like train spotting), at the train level crossings than ever before.
Working mainly in stencils the UK artist Banksy added to the genre’s acceptance in mainstream culture by his often ironic, humorous and insightful commentary. In his nocturnal art practice Banksy has maintained his anonymity and his works have passed into cult status.
Gone today it seems is the night work, gone too are dark clothes and a knap sack with a few cans–the limited palette of the graffiti criminal. Now, it’s all done in the light of day with the luxury of ladders, scissor lifts, fume masks and adoring fans. Most importantly is the visibility of the architectural canvasses being offered these artists.
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Liam Dibb’s cans
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National awareness, at least in Australia, arose through the acceptance and support of Melbourne’s laneway graffiti to the point where it has become a marketable tourist destination and has brought about the repossession of these once deserted grungy rear access thoroughfares.
Toowoomba’s ‘First Coat’ Street Art Festival has certainly left its mark on the town. Judging by the number of people walking around on the final day of the event, the media coverage and the deluge of Facebook posts by local residents it has captured the imagination of the community.
What remains is an assessment of the longer value of a project like this. Does the work look derivative of other places were this artform has been sanctioned? Will our children be doing graffiti workshops? – they are being offered in Toowoomba now, and will every wall become a tattoo-esque picture canvas? Will Toowoomba’s street art express community issues, concerns, icons and symbolism? Does the new street art become neutered in meaning becoming art entertainment, sanitised by its newfound sponsor – civil society and layers of government? Does any of this matter?
I’d like to think that out there somewhere – an angry young kid is expressing their life, concerns and messages to us by continuing in the foot-prints or sneaker-prints, and in the dark of night of those that have gone before…
Doug Spowart
24 February 2014.
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PANORAMA: Damien Kamholtz – 3 Bank Lane
Damien Kamholtz – 3 Bank Lane
Alice Weinthal – 239 Margaret St.
Liam Dibb at work – Mark Lane
Liam Dibb at work – Mark Lane
Gimiks Born: Bank Lane
In Bank Lane
In Mark Lane
Pic 1 Bell Street
Duggan St
Duggan St
Duggan St
Duggan ST
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LINK TO ABC Open + Toowoomba Chronicle pics+vids
http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/02/23/3950646.htm
http://www.thechronicle.com.au/videos/gimiks-born-first-coat/21759/
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About First Coat:
Toowoomba’s CBD – 19 artists – 17 walls – 1 weekend
21st – 23rd February 2014
First Coat is a street art festival brought to by Toowoomba Regional Council and GraffitiSTOP, in partnership with Toowoomba Youth Service & Kontraband Studios.
Over 3 days, First Coat artists completed multiple large scale murals being painted, a Stupid Krap exhibition and artist talks were presented by Analogue Digital.
Locations:
2 Station St, 16 Duggan St, 12 Little St, 488 Ruthven St, 296 Ruthven St, 6 Laurel St,
2 Mark Lane, 9 Bowen St, 86 Russell St, 5 Mark Lane, 239 Margaret St, 70 Russell St, 80 Russell St
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Proudly supported by:
Ironlak
Analogue Digital Creative Conference
Master Hire
40/40 Creative
Dulux
Coopers
ALL artworks © of the artists.
Photographic interpretations of the works ©Doug Spowart – Contact me if you were an artist and I will send images to you.
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My photographs and words are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/
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ADVANCE NOTICE: Memory Collective Exhibition to open @ TRAG
The Memory Collective Invite
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The Team: Front Ashleigh Campbell, Julio Dunlop, Kirsty Lee, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart
Back: David Usher, Jason Nash, Jesse Wright, Damien Kamholtz, Zac Rowling (weakling).
Not present: Peta Chalmers, Craig Allen & Jake Hickey
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Photographer Victoria Cooper reflecting on the Memory Collective project
Vicky photographs Kirsty
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Both Doug and I, familiar with collaborative projects, were excited to have the opportunity to connect with the multidisciplinary space that Damien Kamholtz was creating in the Memory Collective. So it was on one day in May, that each artist would bring to the chosen site their insights, instincts and life’s experience.
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There was a painting – a very large painting; a sculpture filled with water, a ‘pond’ to reflect and dissolve the evolving performance; a movement artist to reconfigure the idea or memory of painting; seven white ceramic bowls to containing pigments and a singular bowl left empty to float across the dark water of the pond.
The physical space did not easily present itself at first–but as the project unfolded and discussion flowed from the practical, logistical to the intellectual, conceptual–the site itself also became a collaborator in the project: the stage, the remnants of its warehouse history, the idiosyncratic control over the method of entering the space (all us had to crawl under a jammed roller door)
Was the space asserting its role?
This day was not just a visual experience–it was a total sensory and psychological immersion.
Although a part of the documentary team, including video and still photography, I was compelled to cross beyond the voyeuristic role of witness. I was motivated by the tension created from: anxiety for the loss of the original painting with the frisson of anticipation for the evolving transformation.
The movement artist’s touch with the painting was sensual and slow.
We moved like moths; entranced by the night-light . . . circling . . . unable to land nor escape . . .
This was not a performance rather it was about life, unrehearsed and ephemeral. Only through technology were small parts recorded to be later pieced, montaged and sewn together in a kind of rich layered memory tapestry. And, like memory, there are gaps, fuzzy distortions of scale and time lines, loud visually busy moments together with quiet, serene and ethereal meditations.
I began this project with an intuition that it would be both inspiring and exhilarating to work with this creative group of Toowoomba based artists. Damien has, with delicacy and grace, enabled and cultivated a fertile collaborative space, which continues to extend the potential for the creative work.
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Kirsty addresses the painting in performance
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A recollection of the MEMORY COLLECTIVE collaboration from Doug Spowart.
Doug photographs the performace
Working as a regional artist can be an isolating experience. Your networks are often big city based, coastal and a long way from your home on the range. I am familiar with collaborative art-making but it has usually been with my artist partner Victoria Cooper.
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The Memory Collective was quite a different collaborative affair. As an individual artist I could never have thought up let alone coordinated, as Damien has, all of the interdisciplinary artists and artforms into one time–one space–one purpose–one artpiece. Meetings, Facebook discussions and site inspections enabled a real feeling of connection with the creativity of these fellow regional artists and their ideas, aspects of each discipline’s needs and potential for contribution.
https://wotwedid.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/memory-collective-a-performance-documentary-project/.
https://www.facebook.com/memorycollectiveproject
Kirsty Lee – the paint portrait
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Damien Kamholtz: ‘My Icarus’ @ TRAG the VIDEO
My Icarus invitation
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FROM THE ART GALLERY WEBSITE:
‘My Icarus’ is a culmination of one painting, one sculpture and one film. These three interrelated works delve into poetry and mythology and showcase the Gallery’s recent acquisition of Mr Kamholtz’s painting, ‘The Spit that Joins the Magic Together’.
The exhibition title refers to the artist’s fascination with Greek mythological figures, Icarus and Daedalus, and the works of 19th Century French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Additional creative ‘spittle’ for the performance was delivered in verse by guest speaker and former USQ lecturer in literature Dr Brian Musgrove with a simultaneous performance by Toowoomba movement artist Kirsty Lee.
The exhibition works include the recently acquired painting, an assemblage and a collaborative film produced by Mr Kamholtz, Jason Nash, Kirsty Lee and Craig Allen.
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Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery attendees witnessing the event
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Kirsty Lee in performance
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Photos and Video © 2013 Doug Spowart
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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MEMORY COLLECTIVE: A performance documentary project
The Memory Collective painting by Damien Kamholtz
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The Memory Collective is a multi-disciplinary collaboration orchestrated by artist Damien Kamholtz. Kamholtz states: The Memory Collective Project is a creative collaboration between 12 artists across eight artistic disciplines exploring concepts and themes relating to the human condition such as change, constants, history, refection and memory. The artworks created during the project will make up an exhibition to be held at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in September 2013.
There are different stages to the project. First Kamholtz created a large 2.2 metre square painting, while sculptor, Jessie Wright constructed the large vessel to hold the water. Kamholtz’s painting is embedded with personal meaning in the form of fragments of his past art, the ashes of diaries. In the presence of this artwork we are drawn into a poetic landscape where faces emerge; symbols and totems slip from passive dark spaces and come into conscious awareness.
The second stage of the work was the performance in the form of 9 responses to the painting by Kristy Lee. The painting and the pool created the reflective and reflexive performative space and the transformative process of the original painting then began. Integral to the space were David Usher’s delicate pots; these vessels contained the pallet of shades that then shrouded and clouded the memory of the work. Over the course of the day the painting’s physical form was transformed into something different loosing its current visual form as only a memory.
Our part of the collaboration was to witness, respond and record the transformation of the work over the day. The next stage of the Memory Collective’s work will continue over the next month our component will be to create 9 large collaged photograph memory states of the work for the show in September. Works by others include; a video art piece, a documentary video, a soundscape, interviews, prose and poems. It is a significant project and is being funded by the RADF and supported through the exhibition at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
.
A fragment of photographic memories made by us for the MEMORY COLLECTIVE…
.
Damien Kamholtz in the performance space with the painting and pool
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Doug documents the space …… Photo: Victoria Cooper
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Kirsty and painting – in the early state…
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Kirsty Lee performs before the painting
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State 3 Kirsty applies paint to the paining…
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Hand paint
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Kirsty Lee and her interaction with the painting … around Stage 6
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Blue hand…
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Kirsty Lee in a frenetic stage…
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Kirsty and brushes before the pool
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Paint fluid in the pool…
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Towards the final state…
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The final state …
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Damien discussing movement with Kirsty
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Kirsty Lee towards the end of the performance
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Another creative work from the performance by Jason Nash…
Jason Nash – Time lapse video
CLICK HERE to see Jason Nash’s ‘Memory Collective’ time-lapse video
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The Team: Front Ashleigh Campbell, Julio Dunlop, Kirsty Lee, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart
Back: David Usher, Jason Nash, Jesse Wright, Damien Kamholtz, Zac Rowling ( weakling).
Not present: Craig Allen & Jake Hickey
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Toowoomba Chronicle 17 June, 2013 by Kate Dodd PHOTO: Dave Noonan
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© 2013 Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart for The Memory Collective
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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THE RANGE: Damien Kamholtz – Artist’s Talk@The Grid
Damien Kamholtz portrait Photo: Doug Spowart
A commentary of Damien’s presentation is being prepared and will be posted soon… Email Subscribe to this Blog to get the notice of new posts and updates. The subscription box is at the bottom right-hand side of this page… scroll down.
Damien Kamholtz audience @ The Grid Photo: Doug Spowart
Damien Kamholtz discussing work Photo: Doug Spowart
Damien Kamholtz’s painting ‘The spit that joins the magic together’
wotwedid 