robbiekarmel

I have just got back from presenting my work at the Crack Theatre Festival as a part of This is Not Art Festival in Newcastle. I spent 3 days in a space drawing, both solo and doing participatory drawing exercises with people, which was fantastic.

The Crack Theatre festival were fantastic hosts, and put on a fantastic festival.  The festival facilitated some great cross-disciplinary discussion and exposure, which for a visual artist (or conceptual art maker) with a largely solo and solitary practice can be a bit lacking normally.

It was a great space and an awesome opportunity and I’m hoping to head back next year to do something new and exciting that progresses on from these experiments and hopefully pushes the collaborative participatory experience further.

^(My catalog arrived and it’s great! I’ll do a whole post on this soon! and look into setting up an online shop and maybe a PDF download)

^This is the chair I made to facilitate drawing exercises that involve drawing on the back of or behind a mirror.

^Finn O’Branagdin demonstrating how to use the chair, for the participatory drawings I trace on the persons face and ask them to make marks in direct response to the tactile and visual sensations.

^Andrew Styan

^Jane Walter

These last two drawings were done as solo exercises, I lay down next to the piece of paper with my eyes shut and attempt to map out a schema of my body relying on my proprioceptive awareness. I am particularly interested in our embodied ability to internally visualize what our bodies may look like from an external viewpoint.

this is a process that is heavily influenced by my knowledge of drawing, established methods I have of representation, and my expectations or internally simulated expectations of what the marks I am making will look like.

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On a less theoretical note— I’ve recently become incredibly excited about wood working with hand tools. Woodworking and my drawing/fine art practice merged for the first time in the drawing chair I made:

(these little guys were really into my chair) ^

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As well as the chair I’ve been going through a series projects of varying difficulty in order to develop hand working skills, I put together this workbench with my housemate Shane Wiechnik.

^I also made this Burr Puzzle for my cousin August’s 5th birthday present (he didn’t quite appreciate it but I hope he grows into it)

^This was my bedroom as I was frantically trying to get the chair done in time for TINA (which was a bit of mistake, I now know that woodworking is a thing you shouldn’t ever rush). You can also see my tool there tote mid-process: