Market/Place

             

Some words about the residency by Sasha Gattermayr

Seeing is the first draft of experience. Once eyes have observed, then the brain processes. The order of things goes: senses, intellect. 

Two artists who have taken up temporary residence in a former chemist on a Sunshine corner understand the lineage of this process well. One, a painter enamoured by colour grades and streetscapes, the other, a textile artist who makes bags from woven rope and mesh. For six weeks in this one room with large windows and open doors they are making, researching and exhibiting works inspired by their urban milieu.

They have been playing a game for a while now, the two of them on one team and the scenery of life and capitalism on the other. The Game is to find moments of beauty or humour in regular places. A perfectly symmetrical stack of potato cakes in a train station bain-marie. A man on the platform wearing a camouflage-print akoubra and sneakers that are three sizes too big. Two wooden poles streaked with the exact shades of yellow and brown of an old banana. A cemented suburb in an industrial heartland called ‘Sunshine’. 



You’ll notice the game is played most successfully in places of transit or commerce, places that most people don’t even consider as they pass through on their way to somewhere else; but which read to Olive GIlbert and Evie Cahir as sites of community and adventure, the public places where life is actually lived. In a time of excruciating pressure on land - who owns it, who pillages it, who makes money from it, who gets to live on it and on which part - The Game recaptures ownership of the public space. After all, a built environment is still an environment.Playing the game has created a shared visual language between the two artists. What they see is life in its mundanity, funniness, contradiction, playfulness, spectacle and messy grace. Their artworks contain an excitement at really seeing what we’re all constantly looking at. Their bags and paintings are the result of watching, listening and living closely. They are details in focus.

Artistic medium separates the two makers only in form, as their mutual love of play and humour threads across both practices. 

“I think it's our shared eye for colour, shape and texture. It's complementary. We joke about it being our job, knowing full-well it is indeed our job as artists to look, process, create and share, which makes it even funnier,” Evie says. 

An easy online friendship blossomed after the discovery of this shared perspective, which has now translated, seven years later, into a fleeting partnership. For a short moment in time their shop-front studio is an expression of their artistic brains working in concert, not quite a collaboration but more a mutual zone of inspiration and response. Olive and Evie are in the temporary space at least two days a week, making as much as they can in the limited time they have together before a two week exhibition concludes the residency. The doors stay open while they make so strangers can walk in to witness their production. In this way, the space is mutable, inhaling and exhaling with constant foot traffic. Artist studio as public commons, as a site of coming and going, play, experiment, life, pace, joy, re-vision.

“I toyed with the idea of wearing handmade lanyards, high-vis vests and carrying clipboards on our 'site visits' to the market or city centre. It means we can adopt different roles whilst we are out of the residency space collecting 'raw data' on what Makes Sunshine So Good,” says Evie. “The mock seriousness of the tone is actually a way of pointing to how urgent it is to find a way to share joy and foster civic pride.”

The temporary studio has been adorned with evidence of their game: Olive in woven macrame bags made from coloured rope and neon mesh; and Evie in paintings, large hazy clouds of colour beneath solid gestural marks

Evie’s bright painted papers are taped to the walls, the insides of a giant sketchbook spilled out and suspended on the building interior. Even more painted sheafs hang from the ceiling by bulldog clips like washing on the line on a still day. The sensation of their walks around the surrounding streets are catalogued in this riotous ecosystem: a fast food shop facade; a collage of smudged, abstract colour palettes exuding various states of energy, joy and pace; the hues of an overripe banana splashed onto a giant roll of receipt paper and then wound around the ceiling join like organic cornicing. Wide brushstrokes of contrasting colour are like a blur of energy streaking across its surface, creating movement and atmosphere. This is a scenery of immediate feeling, where urban life is at once still and frantic. 

Olive’s sewing machine sits in the opposite corner beside a steel apparatus reappropriated as a bag display rack. Bags in various stages of completion are piled between the two workstations, a mess of shocking pinks, electric orange and construction site yellows against duller shades of grey utilitarian rope found in two dollar shops or hardware stores. Human-sized rolls of neon mesh lean against the wall in relaxed anticipation. 

      

 

Stitched from fibrous knitted knots and finely gridded netted lining, the bags are vivid and bright but ultimately functional, made to be used and worn in public. It’s no accident she uses these materials, which are deliberately industrial and coded with flashes of neon to reflect the colour palette of a working class neighbourhood awash with high-vis. The artworks sink into the streets their makers love so much, finally embedding Olive and Evie into a landscape they have observed and traversed together for months.

“We will go for a walk around the town centre and arrive back buzzing. It can take some time to settle back into our flow after those walks, but that’s when the collaborative part of our time together always happens — when we are pointing out notes of detail on the streets and egging each other on with particulars that have caught our eye. Back in the space we make meaning out of what we’ve seen,” says Olive.

As seen in Brimbank star weekly;
A shining light on Sunshine
By Hannah Hammoud

Inspired by the vibrancy of Sunshine, the duo has embarked on a journey to showcase the beauty of the suburb through their respective art forms, offering visitors a colourful interpretation of everyday scenes found in the Sunshine area.

Olive, known for her handmade bag label Olive Made, has delved into the world of macramé, crafting intricate rope bags using materials sourced from local shops. Evie, a Melbourne-based illustrator and painter, brings her unique perspective to the project, reinterpreting familiar sights and scenes with a humorous touch.

Evie said she hopes the exhibition will draw visitors’ attention to the “modest but remarkable moments in Sunshine.”

The residency, which spans six weeks, has provided Olive and Evie with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the community, drawing inspiration from local markets, Lunar New Year festivities, and the rich tapestry of stories shared by others.

“There has been lots of ‘site visits’ to the Sunshine street markets on Fridays, excursions to the local bowls club and RSL and lunchtime Bahn Mi’s in the Sunshine town square,” said Olive.

“MARKET/PLACE Residency is all about the process of seeing things in Sunshine with fresh eyes. We will do so by freeing up familiar views by reinterpreting them as paintings, drawings, bags and keychains – all to build a tableaux that will best show our shared preoccupation with looking and collecting,” said Evie.

Their studio space, located at the Sunshine Art Spaces and supported by Brimbank council, has become a hub of creativity, where visitors are invited to witness the artists at work and engage in conversations about art and community.

“We want people to come and celebrate their neighbourhood by recognising familiar colours and scenes from their everyday [life] in the work we’ve made,” said Olive.

“We also hope it makes people feel proud of their local area.”

The exhibition opening celebration is scheduled for Friday, February 23, from 6-8pm. The exhibition will be open on February 24-25 from 10am-4pm and again on March 1, and March 3 from 10am-4pm.