“Coltrane’s Jive”
Kinetic Floor Sculpture 2012 Timber, steel, coal, rope, chain.
200 x 140 x 200cm –work in progress
Artist’s Statement:
"Coltrane’s Jive" signifies power and violence, a single-minded machine, crude and unvarnished, offered up as the saviour of Australia’s failing economy. The work suspends thought on a J-curve trajectory: Australia the prisoner of a runaway privatised coal industry propped up by a ‘railroading government’. Locked within the rails of economic determinism, it is drawn toward the inevitable conclusion of exhaustion and impoverishment, leaving us empty handed for future generations. Coltrane’s Jive is an in-your-face predicament/dilemma: a collusion of technology and economics resulting in profits before sustainable energy solutions. The structural violence of no choice― the one way agenda― delivers injustice for all social classes. There is no happy-go-lucky take home message, just a stark reality ― one we must all come to face. As an environmental activist and artist my work is self-consciously orientated towards commentary upon the tragic and wholly preventable social and ecological crisis into which we are heading.
Installation "1,2,3." 1994 Marshal Arts Gallery , Memphis, TN
Interestingly this is a work that I did utilising the rubber from a tire shredding company next door to the gallery in Memphis. The coal and shredded tire used as a rich source of black is interesting as it is energy resource and an energy rich material. The numeral progression is an observation that this is the beginning of all things counted, even and odd and the rule of addition and subtraction, these are the numbers one needs..exception to zero!...from the first even number..
Similar too are the uses of rust as colour as with Coltrane's Jive. It is fun to extend the drawing surface on the floor as the tire shreds are easily laid down. Wondering about coal as the drawing medium.?
