Showing posts with label decay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decay. Show all posts
Old Bega Hospital
Old Bega Hospital is my favourite building in the local area. Sadly fire has left it in a state of disrepair. Recently funds were allocated to re-roof the building as a start towards restoration. It is obviously needed as an important part of the local heritage. However, I like it just the way it is, and although I recognise that it won't remain like this forever, I do think that it is in a perfect state for an intervention. Whether this be projection or performance or both I am open to suggestions. Of course, all highly illegal, but nothing ventured, nothing gained? Contact me if interested...
Untitled abstraction (for John Peart)
Bob Georgeson, Untitled abstraction (for John Peart), 2015, Photography
Self portrait on top of the scrap-heap
I love going to the tip. Not only the satisfaction of offloading a ute load of rubbish, usually gardening prunings, that earn me a couple of brownie points for a few days (believe me not that easy!), but I also get to admire and photograph the mangled piles of human detritus that would for the want of a few simple tools be turned into accommodation in the poorer cities of the world. There aren't too many favelas in Bermagui, so the piles build until crushed by machines or torched by delinquents.
The staff at the tip often get suspicious seeing someone taking photographs, thinking it must be going to end up a negative reflection of their work practices splashed across the front page of the Daily Telegraph so I am always excessively polite in asking their permission and explaining that I am artist who uses this imagery in my artwork. "What do you do?" asked the attendant at my last visit. She looked a little apprehensive when I explained I worked in photomedia and video art and am involved in online collaborative projects, but when I added that over the past two years that my subject matter had changed from erotica to an interest in decay, disorder and social disintegration I could visibly sense the relief in her eyes...
Self portrait as toxic waste
Bob Georgeson, Self portrait as toxic waste, 2015, Intervention at Bermagui Rubbish Tip (destroyed by crushing 23/03/2015)
The last broadcast
Bob Georgeson, The last broadcast, 2015, Mixed media
Apocalyptic perhaps? Video to follow soon. An ending you would
Je suis Charlie: four points of a compass (a view of the world)
Bob Georgeson, East, 2015, Digital print
Bob Georgeson, West, 2015, Digital print
Bob Georgeson, North, 2015, Digital print
Bob Georgeson, South, 2015, Digital print
Bob Georgeson, Four points of a compass, 2015, Digital print
Happy New Year! Not. Last year ends with mindless violence in Martin Place in Sydney. This year begins with it in Paris. These photos seem to sum up the situation. I have generally avoided politics in my art and on this blog (Twitter is a different matter if you want to follow me). There have been a few exceptions: the Worlds in Collision series and the Why is this happening? video to name two, but it does raise the question of whether there has been (or perhaps should be) a link between politics and art, and ultimately what purpose that might serve. And do artists have a responsibility as the eyes of the world to address the socio-political situations that we find ourselves in?
I don't have an answer for this any more than I have a solution to the Islamic problem, or any other issue you choose to pull out of the hat. What I do know is that silence and a reluctance to, or fear of speaking out against injustice will always play into the hands of the perpetrators. And so we set the tone for the year ahead...
The future
One of my favourite examples of Australian architecture. The silo and flour mill at Tocumwal on the Murray River in New South Wales. A premonition of the year ahead?
doin' me head in...
I stopped counting after about 15000 kilometres on the road. The car was still going...I think I was driving, home or away was getting increasingly hard to tell.You go through good towns, and you go through those that don't feel so good, but wherever I went I always felt at home. It is only in the cities that I start to feel alienated. There is always a romanticism about driving down a country road exploring new territory. At the same time one can only marvel, and at times, cringe at land use and our desire and capacity to alter the landscape. The above pic is in Yeoval, a small settlement on the road between Wellington and Parkes. Someone somewhere along the way had decided to create a sculpture park and a 'benefactor' had kindly donated this bronze split 'portrait' of Henry Moore. Considering Moore's oeuvre all one could do was wonder why?
Needless to say with all the travelling this year time in the studio has been infrequent and disjointed at the best of times. The blog has been sadly neglected, collaborations come and go, being focused on particular projects has remained elusive, and yet on occasion I think I have managed to produce my best work, certainly in video anyway, and my photomedia work has seen a gradual shift from the theme of sex and death (no doubt disappointing some of my audience) to architectural decay, disorder and disintegration.
So, a year of contrast in a land of contrasts. The tunnel below is on the freeway heading east from Adelaide, town of my birth but a long way from where I live today. And below that is Bunjil, creation spirit depicted in aboriginal rock art from near the Grampians in south western Victoria. The two pics kinda summed up the situation. Massive engineering works so I can get home faster, and a timeless painting from a race who no longer have their home. I sit somewhere in between scratching me head...
Kaspar's mantelpiece (for Arp)
Bob Georgeson, Kaspar's mantelpiece (for Arp), 2014, Mixed media, 12m x 3m
The Illusion of Freedom
Arguably my most ambitious project to date I return to my surrealist roots homaging Joseph Cornell and Luis Bunuel. Eroticism, religion, sex and death interspersed with industrial decay and wastelands combine in a mashup that underpins the futility of decadent desire, religious ecstasy and the conflict with the reality of our mundane lives.
I am (again) indebted (and indeed honoured) to be working with the soundscape Ayesha (She Who Must Be Obeyed) (the muse perhaps?) from the album Rosa de lobo by Hyaena Fierling Reich (aka Ana Cordeiro Reis). Her website can be found here...
The album Rosa de lobo can be downloaded from Bandcamp here...
The video files can be downloaded from the Internet Archive here..
Return to Reason
This mashup (like the title suggests) is a return to some of my favourite themes, and working again with the soundscapes of one of my favourite musicians (emptywhale), who I blame entirely for the development of my cinematic 'style'. The themes of eroticism, passion, death, decay, disintegration, decline and disorder combine in a (humble) homage to Man Ray...
The delightfully dulcet soundscape is From A Clear Sky taken from emptywhale's third album Some Hollow Lullabies. You can download it here...
The HD MPEG movie file on the Internet Archive can be downloaded here...
You can see all of my videos here...
Stating the obvious...
...was a comment levelled against(about?) me many years ago in conversation with a friend. "Always stating the obvious Bob", she said. Oh well...I just find the so-called interesting mundane and the mundane interesting. And the more mundane the better I say. Paths leading nowhere, doorways always shut...kinda like a metaphor for something. Oh dear...there I go again! The obvious...
Some snaps from the recent trips...
Some snaps from the recent trips...
All images by Bob Georgeson 2014