the indirect Object
PARADISE
2020-2022
Our 2020-2022 creative theme exploring the world we have, the future we want and all that may be lost. Projects are varied with crossover between our installation and community engagement practice.
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Simplicity, play, sustainability
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Natural and/or recycled materials
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Off Grid power when possible
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Accessible, free arts experiences made for a better tomorrow
This is Definitely Not a Chair
creative design workshop using recycled and reclaimed materials
Exhibition January 17 - February 5
Footscray Community Arts Centre
Artworks created by the FCAC School Holiday Arts Program participants in collaboration with the indirect Object artists.
Readymades (found object sculptures)
Created January 15 & 16 Young people in the Outsiders (grade 1-2) and Cubists (grade 3-4) created found object sculptures inspired by Dadaist Readymades. On the first day, participants were divided into groups and given a secondhand, non-structural rescue chair as their starting point. They were encouraged to disassemble, reassemble and alter both the form and the function of their chairs. On the second day, groups were invited to incorporate small found objects and recycled materials into their designs.
Recycled Windows
Created January 14 The Surrealists (grade5–6) worked alone and in pairs to design and make their own large-scale “stained glass window” in response to the view through the RSG feature window. At the time, the Melbourne skyline was obscured by thick smoke haze. The final artworks capture this moment in time, depicting the haze, as well as the river, trees, roof tops and passing vehicles.
All chairs sourced responsibly, and all chair parts have been recycled into new art.
Kaleidoscope Viewer Workshop
See the world around you in a new way
February 2020 - Ongoing
Make your own Kaleidoscope Viewer prism using a combination of rescued and recycled materials. Each viewer transforms what you see into breathtaking abstract, geometric patterns.
Chromatica
A giant kaleidoscope, Chromatica turns the classic childhood toy into a large scale interactive installation. Low tech by design; spin the wheels, look through the viewers and see prismatic moving colour.
February 2020 - Ongoing
CHROMATICA is a large-scale kaleidoscope in three parts. 6 large octagonal wheels stand between 2 x l.2m long mirror prisms. Turning the wheels creates endlessly changing colour patterns. Designed for cooperative play, community members must take turns spinning the wheels for each other.
Suitable for day and night events. At night, rings of LEDs inside the kaleidoscope viewer tubes gently change colour, while 3 white spotlights set into the ends of the viewers illuminate the colour wheels.
Chromatica and sustainable practice
Chromatica is designed to run off-grid. At night, the lights of Chromatica are powered by concealed rechargeable lithium batteries.
MATERIALS SOURCING
Chromatica uses recycled materials where available. The wooden stands for the wheels and viewers are made from recycled red gum fence posts and reclaimed steel pipe. The colour wheels are decorated in a shifting pallet of reflective and translucent scrap acrylic and recycled overhead projector lenses.
Bloom
An immersive landscape of illuminated Australian gumnuts and gumnut flowers.
February 2020 - Ongoing
Bloom is an immersive installation of large inflatable gumnuts and gumnut flowers. Designed for presentation during the day as well as at night, Bloom is a relaxing, tactile and playful landscape for all ages. Crawl inside a gumnut or nestle into the flower spikes and listen to the meditative soundscape featuring native bush sounds.
Each flower is internally illuminated with soft glowing shades of salmons and pinks, with a feature ring of yellow and white light glowing from the face of the flower. The Gumnuts are lit in blues and yellows from a single point. Intimate and mysterious, the gumnuts are a magical place to relax.
Bloom and Australian Flora
Inspired by the Corymbia ficifolia 'Fairy Floss' flowering gums (native to south west Western Australia). Like the soft pinks of the Fairy Floss blossoms, our giant flowers glow pinks, golds and salmons at night, and are white with pale pink flower spikes during the day.
Bloom and sustainable practice
BLOOM is designed to run off-grid for up to 5 continuous hours, or can be powered for longer durations. Their purpose made wooden "stem" boxes safely house their blowers, batteries and inverters.
Bloom is our first inflatable installation, inflatable structures have a smaller carbon footprint than equivalent solid constructions as well as offering a soft, safe tactile surface. Inflatables are also smaller, lighter and easier to transport.
Isolation
Development - March 20 - 31, 2020
Exhibition - April 1 - 12, 2020
Treasure Hill Artist Village
Taipei, Taiwan
An exploration of the theme of isolation drawing connections to the ascetic history of self-isolation in the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.
As Covid-19 swept the globe in March 2020 and closed borders, social distancing, shuttered venues, cancelled events and self-isolation became the new norms, TIO artist Beth McMahon found herself alone in Taipei. Unable to undertake the planned creative development for the postponed 2020 Light Festival installation, Isolation was born.
Conceived, developed and created in the final 10 days of March 2020, Isolation was a rumination on our new shared normal. A series of illuminate still life installations made quickly using simple, domestic objects.
Visitors to Treasure Hill Artist Village were invited to peer through the windows of the Frontier Galleries to see a glimpse of imagined self-isolation scenarios where loneliness, longing and hope combine.
Quarantine
April 11 - 24, 2020
Holiday Inn Potts Point
Sydney, NSW
Quarantine was a daily image or video response to my 14 day mandatory hotel isolation. There was no plan, just a daily insight into what I saw, how I felt, and what I was doing and thinking about.
Reflections 2020
August 23rd - October 4th 2020
the indirect Object Laboratory
171 - 173 Moorabool Street, Geelong
REFLECTIONS 2020 is a program of illuminated and community-made artworks designed to be experienced through the windows of our Belcher Arcade studio on Moorabool St, Geelong.
Neon Stories
Development - July - November 2020
Exhibition - December 9 2020 - January 15 2021
Footscray Community Arts Centre
Neon Stories is the culmination of a six month collaboration between Footscray Community Arts Centre, Western English Language School Footscray Campus, and the indirect Object. As the second wave of COVID-19 took hold, the need to radically change our process and outcome became clear. Gone were the weekly sessions of group play and tactile exploration, replaced with hour long online classes.
We asked ourselves, how do you retain the essence of a fundamentally fluid, exploratory and hands on collaboration while working in isolation?
Our approach was to embrace the possibilities this seismic shift in scale and space gave us. We used our online classes to emphasise transformations, just as our online process would be transformed into a real, tangible exhibition. Here around you, the handmade becomes digitised and the digital is made real.
An artist led process was replaced with cooperation and mutual support between teachers and artists. The teachers became the creative team in the classroom, and none of this would have been possible without them. Through a week-by-week curriculum of focused creative activities, the students developed 2D and 3D design skills in response to simple questions designed to promote creative thinking, informal communication, and new language acquisition.
Presented by Footscray Community Arts Centre and Western English Language School in collaboration with the indirect Object. Supported by Creative Learning Partnerships - A Victorian Government Initiative
North Geelong Community Lantern Trail
Development - March - November 2021
Exhibition - November 13 - 28 2021
Norlane Community Centre, Cloverdale Community Centre, Rosewall Community Centre, Focal Point Gallery
An immersive journey through a recycled plastic garden created with community members at Norlane, Rosewall and Cloverdale Community Centres.
Over 9 months, and through 3 lockdowns the indirect Object artists worked with community members at Norlane, Cloverdale and Rosewall Community Centers to design and make illuminated sculptural lanterns using locally donated recycled plastics.
Culminating in an immersive exhibition, all the artworks, large and small, were displayed together in an illuminated journey through Focal Point Gallery in North Geelong. Each day the exhibition evolved, with community members working on site in a dedicated workshop space creating new details, textures and sculptural elements for the display.
This project is supported by the City of Greater Geelong through the Arts & Culture Arts Industry Commissions