I had a residency at Artspace Sydney in 1998, for three months, resulting in No Wave, an installation in Gallery 1 the following year. This also included a series of live performances by the band Ovine Yonie link here to some of the recordings that became part of a CD release.

Fortunately I have been granted another residency this year at Artspace in the same studio space. It is such an important opportunity and an honour to work at such a substantial institution as Artspace Sydney, inside the Gunnery, in Woolloomooloo, Gadigal country. Also it is a great pleasure and inspiration to be meeting and working with fantastic people, most especially the other studio artists and staff of Artspace.

A lot of time is spent staring out at the transfixing view of Sydney harbour. On one side, some of the most expensive real estate in the southern hemisphere, if not the world. On the other, large floating war machines with their cannons pointing right at me. The Gunnery got its name, during the second world war when it was used as an instructional centre for naval cadets practicing their gunnery skills. “For this it used a “dome,” on the ceiling of which á cinema projects a plane. Members of the class would shoot at this with Oerlikons and Bofors guns, while attempts to distract their aim are made by the realistic sound of guns and planes”

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I feel like I am in training for something too? I have started in a typical derive through the streets I grew up in, I moved to Sydney in 1973 from London I was 5, my family first settling in Ruschcutters Bay, not far from where I am now.

On this occasion I began by continuing the automatic drawing process I have engaged in since the 1990’s, then I would draw automatic images of heads, hundreds of the them, I kind of self referencing, self nullifying narcissism. This time I started by making random shapes not thinking and cutting them out or cardboard, I thought, why just anamorphic shapes why not geometric shapes also? so cut them out too. I used these shapes as a starting point to make drawings without thinking and without worldly referent, to move beyond apprehension. Then I noticed the drawings leaving dots bleeding through the paper of the sketch book, I decided that I could connect the dots, these became new shapes. This started to feel like a seance where my actions where connecting with shapes/forces/ideas beyond my understanding or control. That is when I got interested.