ellis hutch

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Check out my website

I haven’t been keeping this blog up to date - though I may well get more active again in future. 

In the mean time I’m posting project updates and items of interest on the news page of my website 

https://ellis-hutch.squarespace.com/blog/

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Today I had the opportunity to visit YLTÄ JA ALTA also known as Up and Under - by Nancy Holt. 

I’m in Finland where I have the great good fortune to be an artist in residence at Arteles Creative Centre. I received funding from Arts ACT for this trip and so far I have had an inspiring and productive time. I’ll blog in more detail about the residency, today I wanted to share the images of this excursion. It was a stunningly beautiful Finland day. We had heavily falling snow, glorious changing light and the opportunity to climb and play in this wonderful piece of land art. 

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Fotos in Friedrichshain

Friedrichshain - anti-gentrification graffiti, punks and skaters, designer bicycle stores, boutique fashion stores, tiny galleries, evidence of old squats, old-style cafes where you can get a big plate of sausage, sauerkraut and mash for 4.50.

Next door to the Fotogalerie there is a book shop that gives away free second-hand books. In the Fotogalerie was an exhibition of the work of Jose Giribas - a Chilean photojournalist who has worked in Germany for a long time. This was an exhibition of his work spanning 1968 to 2015. My fave was an image of Pinochet blowing his nose with an enormous white hankerchief. There were some fascinating images in the show, including images from a Bruce Springsteen concert held in East Berlin in 1988.

My impressions of a brief walk around Friedrichshain below...

Gentri-fuck-you

Afternoon light, Fotogalerie

Cafe - Friedrichshain

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Hello Berlin

I rented a flat in Kreuzberg in a quiet street a few blocks away from the beginning of the cafe and shopping area. 

There is a particular feeling I have when arriving in a completely new place - it only last until I get my bearings and start to gain a feeling of familiarity - a sense of being alien - having no memories here. I love that sensation, everything is new. Before I have made a return trip and walked a street more than once, I am setting out into unknown territory. I stop on street corners and turn around, looking back the way I came so I can create a memory and will know what it looks like coming back. I mutter street names to myself like a mantra Eylauer-Monumenten-Katzbach-Kreuzberg-Bergmann. Withouth a phone sim I can’t rely on citymapper to tell me where to go, I have to pay attention. I use a tourist map I picked up at the airport, drawing my intended route in pencil to help me imprint the knowledge.

Window on Monumenten Strasse

On the first day I walk for a couple of hours finding place to eat, have coffee and get my bearings. I make it to the other end of Kreuzberg and meet Heike at a little hipster cafe where I learn that if I want a flat white - I should order a cappuccino. We head over to the Turkish market where I buy Turkish delight, purely on the basis that it is so pretty. I also find felt shoe liners and delicious buckwheat galettes.

Turkish delight and nougat

This was delicious...

Dessert shop

After wandering the markets and eating we popped in to the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien and saw this interesting work by Semir Alschausky in an exhibition calleh Bohme and Beyond - looking at the influence of German artist Lothar Bohme and including artists inspired by his work. The big yellow circle made of many smaller yellow and orange circles was mesmerising.

At the end of the day I headed back to the flat to rest up for an excursion to Freidrichshain. On my way I passed another couple of intriguing windows...

Looking through a window on Monumenten Strasse

Shop window on Katzbachstrasse

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Three-and-a-half days in London

23 hours flying from Australia to spend three days in London before heading to Berlin. It really was a flying visit, but I managed to cram a lot in to a few days.

Ai Weiwei installation in the courtyard at the Royal Academy

I’ve never visited London for more than a few days, and each time I discover new things I like, and always wish I was there longer. One down side is the hideous expensiveness of it. The last couple of times I was there the Aussie dollar was much stronger, this time I really felt the pain paying for food and accommodation. I also discovered that many train stations are not wheelchair accessible which is really worth knowing when you are lugging 30kgs of luggage – obviously not as much of a pain for me as it must be for people in wheelchairs who simply can’t use those stations. After the long-haul flight and transiting through Paddington and Kings Cross stations, arriving at Highbury/Islington to face carrying my luggage up many stairs was daunting.

Fortunately, a lovely bloke cheerfully lugged my case up the stairs for me. In fact, the entire time I was in the UK I crossed paths with cheerful, helpful people, including a bloke who chased after me to return a dropped glove, my air bnb host who made me coffee and gave me printer access to print a flight boarding pass, and all the lovely folk who served me mostly terrible coffee. The worst coffee I have ever encountered was served to me at the British Museum.

Highlights of day one were catching up with the excellent Shawné Holloway and being introduced to the also-excellent Kimmo Modig – who fed us green smoothies and took us on an adventure walking tour of Hackney. We had good food and coffee in a café called Larder, an excellent pub meal at the Windsor and stumbled across the very charming Klub Trop where we drank wine and mead.

Klub Trop with dog in residence greeting guests

Day 2

It was snowing when I woke up - just a little, but enough to be a novelty for someone that hasn’t seen snow in a couple of years.

On the second day it was time to trek across town to Rotherhithe and hear an artist talk by another Finnish artist Otto Bystrom - this was held at small independent gallery Jupiter Woods.

It’s great to get away from the big institutions and discover what’s going on in small spaces. The double bonus of this afternoon was hearing about an artist run initiative Sorbus Gallery in Finland at the same time. The format of the event was to have a talk by the visiting artist, then share a meal. It was great to have the opportunity to talk informally afterwards and have some quite lively conversation among the 12 or so people there. Jupiter Woods was collaborating with Sorbus in Helsinki working out an exchange project – great to see small artist run initiatives organising their own international collaborations and building exciting artists networks outside of an institutional framework.

Day 3

Breakfast at Dishoom! I love this place, inspired by the Iranian cafés of Bombay – this café has the most delicious chai and excellent breakfasts. I could sit there all day enjoying the atmosphere as much as the food.

Then on to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was very crowded, but there were rooms that were less populated and I enjoyed visiting some favourite objects and spaces, as well as discovering new curiosities.

Unicorn with millefleurs

This is the smallest tapestry in the tapestry room. There are objects from the middle ages and a gorgeous Arts and Crafts William Morris piece - every one is stunning, but this one is my favourite. I think it’s the smaller scale and the modesty of the little unicorn as well as the wonderful detail of the flowers.

It was made in Belgium in approx 1500 and it is thought that it may be a fragment from a larger work.

Apparently this dress is so wide in order to be able to display a wide area of elaborate decoration. The shape enables the wearer to go sideways through doorways while still presenting an enormous canvas on which to display their exquisite taste. This is a court dress from 1740-50s England.

And speaking of extravagance...

The Norfolk House music room is delightfully indulgent.

I couldn’t resist a selfie in this one, though my facial expression is a bit zombie-like - I put the weird stare-face down to jet-lag.

A quick drop-in to the British Museum ended my very brief cultural tour of London. The BM had gem of a show right up the very back of the building Drawing in Silver and Gold presenting metal-point drawings from Leonardo to Jasper Johns. I was surprised and amused to see one of the works in the show by Peter Sebastian Graham had been drawn using a stylus made from James Mollison’s melted-down gold watch. 

I have mixed feelings about museum visits. The BM has a spectacular collection and I really enjoyed seeing many artefacts from ancient Britain. The overwhelming feeling when looking at most of the objects was that I was looking at stolen loot – Egyptian mummies, ancient middle-eastern artefacts – pirated treasures from all over the globe. As a privileged person of European descent I look at the way museums and galleries construct their histories and tell their stories, and I feel deeply uneasy. I have a similar feeling about the V&A but I guess to a lesser extent as this time I was mostly looking at European objects which don't convey the same sense of having been robbed from graves and temples.

I was interested to read this morning a review in the Guardian about the current exhibition at the National Museum of Australia that addresses some of these issues in relation to Aboriginal objects collected by the BM.

After such a short time in London - next stop - Berlin...

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Doing the exhibition admin wile Blaide's work is installed in the background #relativeconstructions #poeticlens

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The Poetic Lens at Tamworth

The Relative Constructions team are thrilled to be installing our show The Poetic Lens at Tamworth Regional Gallery this week. The fabulous Tamworth staff have made us feel very welcome and given us great professional support for the exhibition install. We’re enjoying installing in a beautiful, big gallery space.

We arrived on Monday morning and got the van unloaded. The excellent Pam Brown gave us an induction to the space and sorted out all the paperwork. We had a quick meeting to work out where the walls would go and adjusted our exhibition plan from our original design. We had a rough idea of where everything would go, but once in the space we worked out some adjustments to really make the most of the gallery space.

Our fourth member, Genevieve is away working on another project this week, so Blaide and Caroline carefully unpacked and checked her work. Genevieve is down the south coast working on an exciting collaboration - we’ll get her to post her own update some time soon!

Once the works were unpacked, we were able to get them up on the walls. It’s so exciting seeing the show coming together again in a new gallery! In the foreground Blaide is working on the layout of her Walkin’ the streets: New York series and our fantastic exhibition installer Brian is up the scissor lift doing some adjustments to the lights.

We’re looking forward to seeing everything up and having a chat about the work at the opening tomorrow.

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Day 2 #relativeconstructions #poeticlens Tamworth slow and steady progress

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First light #relativeconstructions #poeticlens

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#relativeconstructions #poeticlens unpacking the van in Tamworth

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Relative Constructions on the road to Tamworth

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Fun with watercolours

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words

it's in the words  

how they feel in the mouth 

move out into the world and over the tongue

phen-om-en-olo-gy

phenomen - phenome - sounds hands marshes bogs

how the word looks on paper how it sounds

olo - rolling across phenomenology

but ending solid like a lump geology

biology - gee g different to philosophy 

filos philo a pastry

pillow

philharmonic

and osophy

officer hiss essing at the eend of an ology

but an osophy not landing, sliding snaking away

some words

some words make sentences

some do not

some words are a poem and some are a plot

some words are pictures

and others cause pain

they can be thought - spoken - written - shouted and sung

some words are tender

some heavy

some stark

some are given

some feel good to say - rolling, lolling. lashing, splashing

some words can be spat, flung, dropped

some words stick

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New Glass 2015

New Glass 2015: Archaeology, Excavation and the Arcane was curated by Magda Keany and includes an intriguing array of contemporary art by young artists working with glass. I wrote a catalogue essay for the show, available to read online.

If you are in Canberra, you can see the show at the Glassworks until August 30. 

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#workinprogress #watercolour

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#watercolour #workinprogress

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#shadows