Splendid has announced not only who Australia’s eight hottest up and coming artists are for the 2010 Splendid program, but also which three works will be installed and create a sensation at Splendour In The Grass 2010.
From the press release:
Splendid threw the studio doors open during April and invited young and fearless emerging artists to apply to be a part of Splendid 2010. With close to 100 applications submitted from around Australia, the Splendid curatorium team (Craig Schuftan, Craig Walsh, Jessica Ducrou, Julian Louis, Brett Adlington, Lois Randall, Anne Marie Kohn) made some difficult decisions and narrowed it down to a final eight who have a skill set ranging from conceptual and participatory artistic traditions to performance, costume and set design to mixed media, digital print and animation.
Splendid is part of the Federal Government’s Young and Emerging Artists initiative, managed by Lismore Regional Gallery in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, Splendour in the Grass, NORPA and Arts Northern Rivers.
The Splendid program affords artists an opportunity to develop their critical thinking and experimentation in an intensive 2-week residential arts lab in Lismore, NSW as well as have the opportunity to premiere the new work that is collaborative and cross artform at Splendour in the Grass 2011 – one of Australia’s largest music, arts and youth festivals.
Congratulations to the following artists who have been chosen to participate in Splendid 2010 (please see attached PDF for further information on each of these artists):
Alana Hunt (NSW), Matthew Kneale (VIC), Anna Madeleine (ACT), Jordana Maisie (NSW), Jimmy McGilchrist (SA), Rose Skinner (WA), Lan Nguyen-hoan (ACT), Willoh S.Weiland (VIC).
These eight artists will work with each other, the Splendid Producers and five highly skilled Provocateurs (established artists) throughout the Arts Lab process and the remainder of 2010 to exchange ideas, develop skill sets and create new masterpieces to be realised at Splendour in the Grass 2011.
The success of the inaugural Splendid project in 2009 is set to be unveiled on Friday 30 July when Festival audiences arrive on site and experience three works installed by the last years Splendid Artists. Best Time Ever, Where The Party Is and Generative Power of Opposites. have each been devised, evolved and created over the past year and directly from the workshops and sessions that were the 2009 Splendid Arts Lab.
Best Time Ever by artists Lauren Brincat and Dominic Findlay-Jones is the product of Tom Rivard’s and Tom Barker’s manifesto class at the Splendid Arts Lab 2009: ‘think of a title’.
“I closed my eyes and saw a massive staircase rising up from the crowd at Splendour, as it continued to elevate and fade into the clouds it really was a stairway joining heaven and earth. It had to be made.” Lauren Brincat (2009 Splendid artist)
‘A stairway to heaven’ soon became the title and Best Time Ever has taken shape in the form of a timber staircase, 23m long that captures that essential feeling of wonder and possibility. Taking the form of a huge ‘stairway to heaven’ the work is a catalyst for the imagination to run wild. A work of art that is in its very nature a symbol of aspiration and a tribute to the time they are having at Splendour in the Grass, ‘Best Time Ever’. It is a large sculptural piece that will be seen from the approach to the festival site, but up close will reveal another face – a clock face.
Lauren Brincat and Mish Grigor are set to entertain a large guest list for Splendour’s 10th Birthday in July. Where The Party Is features a giant birthday totem built on the festival site to facilitate a durational performance piece in which the artists stand atop giant scaffolding, towering above the festival crowds, inflating thousands of balloons over the three days of the festival.
In true rock ‘n’ roll style; the artists will then destroy the work on the final day. The tower will come down, balloons will pop, and all kind of snaps, bangs and smashes will occur, echoing the sounds around the Splendour site. Life and colour will erupt in spurts of movement.
Generative Power of Opposites is the title Carl Scrase has given his fourteen metre inflatable sculpture of a 3D scan of his hand doing a ‘V symbol’. Made up of a patch work of re-used commercial signage, this sculpture is going to inflate and deflate constantly throughout the festival and will have internal lighting so that it has a night presence. Depending on where the audience member is on the festival site, this work will speak to them in very different ways, they will perceive it as either a peaceful or an aggressive gesture.
‘During Splendour in the Grass 2009, I was going through a phase of gesturing the ‘peace’ symbol; index and pointer fingers in the air, palm outwards with my thumb and other two fingers clenched. At some point during the festival, I think during the phenomenal Flaming Lips performance, I had the realisation that the ‘peace’ hand gesture, or symbol, turned the other way, can be taken as a rude ‘up yours’ gesture’
Music festivals have always been associated with counter culture. There could not be a better place for ‘a giant symbol of the revolution!’
Log on to www.splendid.org.au to read more about the 2010 artists and provocateurs as well as the three works being realised at Splendour in the Grass 2010 (Fri 30 July – Sun 1 August)
