tracelines

The exhibition, tracelines, was developed for the New Craft-Future Voices International Craft Conference, held in Dundee, Scotland in July 2007. http://www.newcraftfuturevoices.com/

The four of us involved – Maiju Altpere-Woodhead, Anna Gianakis, Anita McIntyre and I, Avi Amesbury, started the process by meeting as a group every three to four weeks. We would get together at a café and chat over coffee or a glass of wine – or more often than not, both. Having met one another through the Ceramics Department at the Australian National University we were familiar with each others work. Over the weeks we talked concepts and ideas, our backgrounds, and our materials and processes. What emerged was the framework for the exhibition proposal.

The selection process was rigorous and highly competitive. A web-based procedure of ‘visible reviewing’ was adopted with a panel of international referees reviewing the submissions. The first process was a 400 word submission outlining the intellectual framework of the exhibition proposal. If accepted we were to submit a full proposal of 2,000 words. Our abstract was accepted and we had a month to develop and write our full proposal. None of us had been through such a demanding process before, although we were stimulated and excited by it.

The time between our first get together to consider submitting a proposal and our receiving notification of acceptance was about 8 months. This made it very difficult to apply for funding to help support the exhibition and, in particular, for us as exhibitors to attend. To be part of such an innovative international craft conference and not have access to funding to help us get there has been difficult. Unfortunately, as we all know, ‘quick response grants’ for such occasions are no longer available.

The conference runs from 4-6th July, and the exhibition until 4th August.

We did receive funding from the Janet Holmes à Court Artists' Grant for freight, for which we are very grateful. This has been so helpful in getting our work to Scotland.

To end the evening, an excerpt from the proposal and an image of our work:

“The exhibition tracelines explores the potential of memory, narrative and process as strategies in negotiating concepts of ‘place’ and ‘belonging’. The four Canberra based artists all have migrant origins ranging from several generations of Australian-born ancestry to relatively recent post Eastern-block experience. tracelines draws upon both common and differing aspects of the migrant experience. Consequently, awareness of the role memory plays in art and life binds the four artists, though each bases their individual artistic vocabularies and creative processes on their own unique experience. “



Avi Amesbury
Dreams of home Series, 2007
Porcelain, celadon and clay glazes
Photo: Derek Ross



Anna Gianakis
Café Range, 2007
Porcelain, clear glaze
Photo: Derek Ross



Anita McIntyre
Mapping the Kimberelys, 2007
Stoneware paper clay, transfer print porcelain, coloured slips, terra sigilatta
Photo: Derek Ross



Maiju Altpere-Woodhead
Lending face 1, 2007 (detail)
Porcelain, coloured porcelain, mono-print
Photo: Derek Ross

RIPE Winners Announced!

The winners of the February round of the RIPE Art & Australia / ANZ Private Bank Contemporary Art Award are:

Mark Hilton
Helen Johnson

NAVA congratulates both of these outstanding artists who were selected from over 100 applicants. The 20 shortlisted finalists for the award were:

Monika Behrens (Highly Commended)
Penny Byrne
Michelle Hamer
Mark Hilton (Highly Commended)
Therese Howard
Helen Johnson (Highly Commended)
Karena Keys (Highly Commended)
Alice Lang
Kenzie Larsen
Alex Lawler (Highly Commended)
Owen Leong (Highly Commended)
Vivienne Miller (Highly Commended)
Lara O’Reilly (Highly Commended)
Victoria Reichelt (Highly Commended)
Rachel Scott
Mark Shorter
Kylie Stillman (Highly Commended)
Nathan Taylor
Christian Thompson (Highly Commended)
Joshua Webb

The RIPE: Art and Australia/ANZ Private Bank Emerging Artists Scheme promotes the work of emerging artists, publishing an image of the winner's work on the back cover of Art & Australia magazine. RIPE recipients are further supported via the purchase of at least one of their artworks. Entrants must be visual artists who have been practising professionally for no more than five years, and who have had their work publicly exhibited.

The shortlist of 20 artists for the February round were selected by members Art & Australia advisory board. The final decision is made by staff of Art & Australia (in consultation with the advisory board).

This is an Art & Australia scheme supported by ANZ Private Bank, administered by NAVA.

Art & Australia is published quarterly in March, June, September and December.

First grant winners for 2007

NAVA is pleased to announce the first round of grant winners for this year. The following successful applicants have received their Janet Holmes à Court and Visual and Craft Artists Grant, which will financially assist them in the presentation or exhibition of their artwork.

Winners for the February round of the Janet Holmes à Court Artists' Grant/Visual and Craft Artists' Grant Scheme are:

Jane Barney, ACT $500
towards her Miscellaneous Correspondence conference and exhibition;

Kevin Todd, QLD $550
towards printing a catalogue and freighting works of computer generated organic forms;

Tracy Cornish, SA $500
towards mounting of photographic works for her solo exhibition;

Shoufay Derz, NSW $500
towards space rental, travel costs and promotion of a collaborative video installation;

Anthea Williams, VIC $550
towards freight and documentation of her exhibition of exhibition;

Sandy Elverd, SA $500
towards travel costs for participating in the 12th International Triennial of Tapestry;

Sue Codee, WA and Jenny Crisp, WA $1100
towards a catalogue and mail-out for an exhibition of work created as a result of a mentoring program;

Nicholas Uhlmann $500
towards freight for a sculpture in an exhibition in England;

Anna Gianakis, ACT and Avi Amesbury, ACT $1000
towards freight and insurance of ceramic works participating in New Craft - Future Voices, Scotland.

Richard Skinner, TAS and Sally Brown, TAS $1000
towards the production of an exhibition catalogue showcasing emerging Tasmanian designers.

Congratulations to all and we hope to see blog posts by some of these artists about their experiences in the weeks to come.

On Desolation Row: the Marketing Grant, part two

The application was a bit more of a rush than was ideal. I had to wait till Peter had the chance to visit and we could talk about it all and I could get some of the information I needed. He was very generous with his assistance, suggesting some ‘names’ I could put in the marketing strategy, and in what context, and filling me in on all the details I was unsure about.

DESOLATION ROW (detail), at Silvershot. Installation of 28 sculptures, Dimensions variable. Max. height approx. 1.9 metres. Paper, textiles, mixed media. The Ergas Collection, Canberra.
Jade Pegler, 2006.

To be honest I found the application process kind of weird. This would have more to do with my own naivete regarding these things than any inherent weirdness. Nearly a year has passed since I applied, and with a little more experience with that sort of thing I don’t think it so strange, but I remember that’s what I thought at the time. Part of the reason was needing to be so exact with the income and expenditure, (which have to be equal) when so much of what you put in to calculate these is really just your best guess, like the time you've put into the project (to calculate labour costs). All that ‘educated guessing’ made me a bit nervous.

For me quite a few things turned out differently. I was very wrong about ‘estimated income from sale of work’ – I was lucky, it was all bought for the Ergas Collection.

I learnt a lot. At first I had a lot of trouble getting my income to equal the expenditure, mainly because the gallery was donating the space so that had to be part of the income. Eventually someone told me that it could also be included in the expenses bit.

Despite the hard work it was well worth the effort. I did not have to borrow money, and was able to do things like visit galleries (useful research), meet with artists, collectors and curators, and of course, document the work, which had been impossible to do half-decently before it was in the gallery, despite several attempts.

Some other good things to come out of it are that I was commissioned to make five large sculptures and will be having a show in Sydney later in the year.

More photos of the work here and on my website.

Getting a Visual and Craft Artists Grant

I have applied for and received two Visual and Craft Artist's Grants through NAVA. One was for my solo exhibition, 'Love is a Rose' at Conical Gallery in 2004 and the other was for 'Paradise', a solo show at TCB Gallery in 2006. The grant amounts for a solo show were (and I think still are) $500.

This might not seem like a lot of money. For each of these exhibitions, my work cost over $5,000 to produce. The show at Conical wasn't funded by any other source, but the show at TCB was funded by Arts Victoria (a Creation grant). I saw the $500 Visual and Craft Artists Grant in both cases as directly covering the cost of the gallery hire. For artists exhibiting in artist run spaces, I would venture to say that this fee, that goes toward the hire/running/admin costs of the artist run space, is one of the most difficult financial costs to bear. While it usually seems worthwhile or necessary to fork out my own cash for the making of new work, I think most artists, despite seeing how hard artist run initiatives are working for them, would agree that paying-to-show is both intellectually and financially challenging!

I encourage artists to apply for small grants like this one, because it makes the experience of showing in an artist run space a 'free' experience. After both the Conical show and the TCB show, both those works went on to tour to different places in Australia including the Melbourne Art Fair, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Brisbane and Sydney, and those works were invited by organisations and the freight/my airfares ended up also being paid for. In effect, by gaining even small grants to show your work in pay-spaces, you are creating a space to be seen, where other potential opportunities may come your way.

Love is a Rose, 2004,
Exhibited at Conical Gallery, Melbourne; Canberra Contemporary Art Space; Melbourne Art Fair
DVD, 1 minute, curtains, candelabras, hedge work: cardboard, knitted wool, hot glue (5m wide x 2m high)



PARADISE, 2006
Exhibited at TCB Art Inc, Melbourne; First Draft Gallery, Sydney; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; and Raw Space, Brisbane
hand knitted, machine knitted and hand rug-hooked wool, clay, fibreglass, plastic, metal, glue.
lifesize, lawn is 320cm x 300cm.

On Desolation Row: the Marketing Grant, part one.

This is a long story for what was, in the scheme of things, a very small grant. But it was very helpful, and I think the story may be more helpful with more details.


Somewhere toward the end of 2005 I was asked by curator and collector Peter Fay to make some kind of larger scale piece or pieces, possibly for a show.
He gave me the words from Dylan's DESOLATION ROW as a kind of starting point.

This photo, taken march last year,
shows the work in its very early stages.

Back then my work, in paper and textiles, was very small scale (often still is) - space to work was very limited. They had to be big, but not heavy, and I needed to be able to disassemble and reassemble the work.



By March I had started the sculptures and knew the general form that they would take. And I knew they were heading for a Melbourne Gallery; Silvershot on Flinders Lane, to be in a group show that Peter was putting together, with Simon Yates, Michelle Hanlin, Simon Scheuerle and Stephen Freiberg, which would open at the end of August.


Silvershot, which operates as a 'gallery-for-hire' were donating the space for Peter's project, and were not taking a commission.

Peter gave me a deadline; to have the sculptures finished a month prior to installing the show, to allow time for labelling, packaging and travelling.


Not only was this a considerable undertaking for me in terms of the scale of the work, and my lack of workspace. It was also a challenge because I had never exhibited a body of work outside Wollongong. At first I had no idea of the best way to get the work there; I had never had to freight anything. And I am rather untravelled myself.


It became evident that it was all going to be a rather expensive exercise, at least on my small income. There main costs would be the freight, the airfare, and the accomodation. Also, I felt I needed to take my partner along to assist me where necessary, and, of course, for a bit of moral support - and he's even poorer than me.


So I had a look at the NAVA small grants that might be applicable to the project; the NAVA Visual and Craft Artists’ Grant and the NAVA Marketing Grant. Actually, at first I did not really think the Marketing Grant would be applicable, but after talking to a nice NAVA person, I found out it would be, at least for some of the associated costs.


It was daunting, I had never applied for a grant and I really don’t like maths, or forms, or any of that stuff. In fact they make me nervous. Just reading the application form was rather off-putting. Very different to making a submission for an exhibition. No pictures!?


But I thought I should have a go, a bit of extra cash would allow me to make the most of the opportunity. And hopefully spare me having to go into debt, or ask the parents.



This photo shows a detail of some of the work in May 2006. Still a long way to go....
By this point the show had a title; IT'S PAINTING SO IT MUST BE GERMAN. That was Peter's brilliant idea, of course.

Part 2 coming soon.

Watch This Space: New Year, New Look

NAVA has been expanding its grant programs over the last year and we've decided to celebrate that by expanding this blog to include updates from for all our grants. It will combine the experience of a range of NAVA grant winners, as well as occasional advice and information from NAVA staff, assessors and even patrons. We're hoping that, as well as being an interesting read from real life grant winners, it will also answer questions you have about applying for grants and make the whole process a lot less daunting.

As of the 14th February, this blog will now be called How I Got a NAVA Grant and will sit on the URL www.navagrants.blogspot.com.

Don't forget to change your bookmarks!

If you've recently won a NAVA grant and think "I'd like to tell everyone about my experience", click the "I Got a NAVA Grant" link on the new blog site and send us an email.

If you've already posted on this blog and haven't received anything from us, click on the "I Got a NAVA Grant" link on the new blog site, send us an email and we'll send you the details.

See you on the new site!