These Moments Existed

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

The Collection

I would like to share some of my new collection for my solo show at Grunwald Gallery, opening in around one month. Thank you to Andrew Barcham for documenting my work - I'm thrilled with the images and can't wait to install...

artist book

From "These Moments Existed"

brooches

mixed Australian recycled hardwood, ink, oil pencil, silver, steel

From "These Moments Existed"

brooches

mixed Australian recycled hardwood, ink, oil pencil, silver, steel

From "These Moments Existed"

brooches

mixed Australian recycled hardwood, ink, oil pencil, silver, steel

From "These Moments Existed"

brooches

mixed Australian recycled hardwood, ink, oil pencil, silver, steel

From "These Moments Existed"

neckpiece

Australian hardwood, ink, oil pencil, steel & nylon thread

From "These Moments Existed"

neckpiece

Australian hardwood, ink, oil pencil, steel & nylon thread

From "These Moments Existed"

neckpiece

Australian hardwood, ink, oil pencil, steel & nylon thread

From "These Moments Existed"

neckpiece

inkjet print on photo paper, cotton thread

From "These Moments Existed"

neckpiece

inkjet print on photo paper, cotton thread

From "These Moments Existed"

Thank you to everyone who contributed to my recent Pozible campaign. I managed to raise over $2,000 toward my USA exhibition "These Moments Existed".

I really couldn't have travelled over to Bloomington, Indiana if it wasn't for their support - you all know who you are ;)

I'll keep everyone posted re: the trip and exhibition.

Not long now!

x Sim

Monday, 26 August 2013

America looms and Pozible Campaign Launched!

I have just launched my first Pozible Campaign to help with my current project for my upcoming exhibition in the USA These Moments Existed. I am traveling to Bloomington, Indiana at the beginning of October to install and launch my first solo exhibition in five years.

As you may already be aware, I have been working the past year on a piece-a-day project titled These Moments Existed. The project explores everyday moments with an air of ambivalence and melancholy.

My goal was to create a new body of work by making something each day for a year, and exhibit the collection at Gruwald Gallery at Indiana University in October 2013 as part of an upcoming jewellery conference Zoom: Examining the Future of Craft. At the same time, I will exhibit at the gallery I presented my piece-a-day Masters Thesis Exhibition The Temporary Nature of Things five years ago.

This year has been intense, and I have been making new work while working full-time and planning a wedding(!). With so many things to juggle, every little bit helps, so I am looking for the support of family, friends and the public to get over to the USA for the installation and exhibition of my new work. It's also a way to give a little back, so for every pledge I am giving a gift in return. The jewel in the crown (so to speak!), is one of five new pieces that I will gift for every $200+ pledge. These pieces are hot off the press and have never been shown. I am only just at the point of documenting them, so they are very shiny and new. If you want to know more about the project, please follow the link below. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email my or post a comment below.

Fingers crossed and thank you in advance for your support - moral or otherwise.

xx

Saturday, 17 August 2013

'These Moments Existed' is coming together

By my estimation, I need to get all my work done for the USA by the end of the month. I am in denial of course. Nevertheless, I continue to plough on like a mad woman having taken over my lounge room as well as my massive studio space. Come to think of it, I have also worked my way into my studio mate Nicole's space too. Such is the case when a crazy deadline looms. I guess I had better get back to it then - here's a taste...

Relic Series (from These Moments Existed) (Group)
2013
Dimensions Variable
mixed Australian hardwood, oil pencil, ink, silver, steel
brooches
© Sim Luttin, 2013

Relic #1 (from These Moments Existed)

wood, oil pencil, ink, silver, steel

brooch

8x9.5x1.7cm

3.1x3.7x.7inches

SL13-0001

Relic #2 (from These Moments Existed)

wood, oil pencil, ink, silver, steel

brooch

8x7.5x1.8cm

3.1x3x.7inches

SL13-0002

Relic #3 (from These Moments Existed)

wood, oil pencil, ink, silver, steel

brooch

6x8x1.6cm

2.4x3.1x.6inches

SL13-0003

Relic #4 (from These Moments Existed)

wood, oil pencil, ink, silver, steel

brooch

9.5x10x1.5cm

3.7x3.9x.6inches

SL13-0004

Captured Series (from These Moments Existed)

photographs and neckpieces

digital print, polyester thread

Friday, 3 May 2013

Photo a day - May 2013

Images from the everyday.

"These Moments Existed"

www.simluttin.com

Time is hard; or at least the idea of living and capturing time "authentically" is anyway. The sense of it, the feel it; to really live it.

How is time represented for those trapped in a life lived through melancholy and ambivalence? Is it always indulged in the past - something that is longed for? Is it possible for someone of this disposition to live in and appreciate the immediate moment? Even in the present as "the real" is chosen and the photos taken of places travelled and moments visited, is it properly lived or merely presented to look that way?

According to Wikipedia, time "is a dimension in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them. Time has long been a major subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars. Nevertheless, diverse fields such as business, industry, sports, the sciences, music, dance, and the live theater all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems. Some simple, relatively uncontroversial definitions of time include "time is what clocks measure" and "time is what keeps everything from happening at once". (Cited from Wikipedia, 4 May 2013)

I have aways loved the quote by Charles Baudelaire, "I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy." This is the cornerstone of my art practice, and the context from which my work stems and is driven by.

Monday, 8 April 2013

Photo a day - April 2013

Images from the everyday.

"These Moments Existed"

www.simluttin.com

Nostalgia is something you should let go of in order to move forward. Or so they say. It's easier said then done, and who really wants to anyway? I certainly don't, and even if I wanted to, it's so much a part of my constitution that it won't leave me.

Having said that, I think more and more I move deliberately toward an indulgence in nostalgia - outside of work that is. Work is reality, anything outside is something else altogether. In that way, my life is an ambivalent and melancholic haze that, despite everyday demands, likes to indulge in moments that existed.

And what of those memories? They certainly have a funny way of distorting the past and reforming one's idea of what was; moments that may not be anything like what they ever were. As Marcel Proust said, “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” We tend to layer our memories with a variety of emotions that distorts the truth; one person's recollection of an event or experience can differ greatly from someone else who lived that experience too.

So why do we want to go back in time - why do we revisit these moments and places? Perhaps there is an innate comfort in these things, which is somehow nurturing or safe? Truthfully, I want to curl up and live there sometimes - in that space where romance exists and reality has been packaged up and neatly tucked away.

I read a draft of an essay by Geoff Newton from Neon Parc, Melbourne that he wrote about his exhibition at Arts Project Australia, Video Doctor. It touched on the fact that most artists explore nostalgia at some stage in their career. Nostalgia is a powerful subject to draw from; it's appealing in the context of our desire for an ideal time/experience/place. I continue to think about this as I record a version of some of my everyday moments in These Moments Existed.

“The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.” ― Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape

"The history of melancholia is that of an innately human experience of suffering becoming the object of a cultural construct. As a mood or emotion, the experience of being melancholy or depressed is at the very heart of being human: feeling ``down'' or blue or unhappy, being dispirited, discouraged, disappointed, dejected, despondent, melancholy, depressed, or despairing many aspects of such affective experiences are within the normal range. Everyone suffers from this kind of metaphorical melancholia, as Robert Burton said, because ``Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality'' ( The Anatomy of Melancholy, I.I.I.5.), that is, a figure of the human condition. To be melancholic or depressed is not necessarily to be mentally ill or in a pathological state. It is only with greater degrees of severity or longer durations when dispositions are transformed into habits as Burton would say that such affective states come to be viewed as pathological. On choosing to focus on melancholy as a clinical condition, we are faced with the issue of whether it is a disease or some other sort of assemblage of signs and symptoms. But we can rely on the very rich historiography of the theme in literature and philosophy, starting with the Letters of Hippocrates." (The History of Melancholy, Francis Zimmerman, Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 1995)