#ellishutch

[ellishutch]

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/

[ellishutch]

Ellis Hutch, from the Lost astronaut series 2014-2015, photo: Birgit Larson

My work has been included in Innerspace at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, opening tomorrow night. Come check it out - or if you are not in Canberra - have a read of the catalogue online: http://issuu.com/ccas_canberra/docs/2015_-_innerspace___ccas

[ellishutch]

Why Art?

I've been re-reading Why Art? for an article I'm writing and really enjoying what Alison Croggon has to say about art. In previous reads I've focussed on her use of figures to debunk myths about how the arts does or does not contribute to the wider economy in Australia and her argument for why art should be publicly funded. Today I'm really enjoying what she has to say about what art is, how it works and what artists do.

Alison Croggon Overland 212 Spring 2013

https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-212/feature-alison-croggon/

Art, too, is a system. It is a network of independent relationships: firstly of the artists with themselves and the world in which they live, and then with the artwork they create; next, with those who encounter the art and who then create relationships between the art, the world and themselves. Art is made and received in a dynamic structure of exchange in which order and disorder are in constant tension and flux. Its potential excess of sensory and emotional stimuli makes art particularly subject - as the body is - to forces of control. Art both expresses modes of control and exceeds them, and art always, for better for worse, overflows its intentions. Art makes us recognise and cognise: it re-arranges what we know so that we can perceive what we don't know. Art isn't moral in itself - it cannot be moral in itself - but it activates and articulates moral thought. The artist brings into play all our ways of perceiving: the mind and the senses, the fantastic and the real, the material and the intangible. It is a means by which knowledge, as intellectual apprehension, is transformed into lived experience.

And this: 

Every artistic act contains within its genesis a wager: that we exist as subjects, not as objects. Art is a technology for consciousness that comes with no guarantees, but that always contains within itself a seed of revolt - the possibility that we are agents in our own lives, that we can perceive and feel and be.

When I think about art, I mean freedom.

[ellishutch]

Lost Astronaut

Many thanks to Brigit Larson for taking the following photographs. These images are early work-in-progress shots of a project called Lost astronaut that I'm continuing to develop. The photos were taken in the area around Arteles Creative Centre in Haukijärvi Finland, where I was an artist in residence in December 2013.

[ellishutch]

Watercolour sketches

More drawings from December at Arteles in Finland - these ones are watercolours inspired by ice, snow and water

[ellishutch]

Helsinki-Tampere

In lieu of an update here's some footage shot yesterday from the train between Helsinki and Tampere.

[relativeconstructions]

Where's Ellis?

While the rest of the Relative Constructions team have been flat out in Canberra attending openings, supporting the Capital Arts Patrons Organisation, and cooking up fabulous plans for our 2014 activities, Ellis has been having art adventures interstate and overseas.

Yep it's been a busy couple of weeks!

A couple of weekends ago I attended SEAM, a fantastic conference run by Critical Path in Sydney.

One of the highlights for me was David Pledger's keynote on the opening night. He asked if it is possible to curate society - and discussed the possibility of artists taking on this role. He talked about his own history as a footballer and asked if he would have more of a voice in society if he chose the role of a sportsperson or politician - rather than taking the path of the artist. I found his paper timely and compelling - a call to artists to critically assess their situation and to find ways to create a voice for themselves in the national conversation.

Deborah Ascher Barnstone's discussion of the notion of fakes, forgeries and the concept of the original in works of art was lively and really engaging. She drew examples from different artistic modes of production to play with the idea of what could be considered original in ballet, theatre and visual art - opening up the question of what is authenticity anyway?

There was so much great material presented over the weekend I can't possibly do it justice here - and I'm writing from Helsinki having left my notebook in Canberra ...

What I enjoyed most about this event was the combination of presentations in different formats: conference papers, performances, combinations of performances and demonstrations, round-table discussions... The organisers reconfigured the presentation spaces to accommodate the range of work shown, and this made for a dynamic atmosphere over the course of the weekend.

Highlights for me included Erin Brannigan talking about Cage, Rainer and Contemporary Dance Authorship; Siegmar Zacharias and Kate McIntosh performing Invasive Hospitality and James Cunningham's performance Antennae.

After a weekend of art overload I then attended Kate McIntosh's workshop Misuse/Displace - run as one of the SEAM events. I'll write a brief report about that in my next post.

In the meantime here are some pics of James Cunningham's Antennae from the weekend:

[ellishutch]

CAPO

Capital Arts Patrons Organisation is a group of Canberra based philanthropists who raise funds to directly support artists. Many local artists donate work to the annual auction and the funds raised go into a number of grants and awards that fund exhibitions, projects, travel and residencies.

I have submitted a work to the CAPO auction this year and am looking forward to going along tonight to see the show of fantastic local works, and see our wonderful community on an art shopping spree!

For info on CAPO visit:

http://www.capo.org.au/