I cleared quarantine with my family mid-September and then we moved into a temporary apartment for two months. We used that time in the city centre to navigate the bureaucracy of settling in and re-establishing residency after a long absence. Covid19 delays and protocols slowed the process and there were a few road blocks to navigate but it is mostly done! The dogs arrived safely which was a great relief and an even more complicated process than our relocation from Europe. We are now settling into our shabby and sweet terrace house and planning renovation. Almost all of my artworks, with the rest of our belongings, sit in a sea container at Botany. I am hoping the effort of scrubbing every shoe sole and boot, thoroughly cleaning the tent and carefully sorting through every item to remove any stray leaves or shells has paid off and they will soon release our goods.
I have a new studio in Newtown, Sydney where I am starting to draw and paint from memory the clearing in De Pauuw. I’ve started photographing sites around Sydney which I would like to draw in plein air. And I am actively seeking work as well! Art or education, or art education, something active and challenging and perhaps social.
I have the possibility of an exhibition in late January in a Sydney city gallery space so stay tuned! I will be showing the works that were meant to hang in May at Pulchri in The Hague.
There is a wonderful and breathtaking Streeton exhibition at the AGNSW. It is very exciting to see these works hanging together. It must have been a mammoth effort to negotiate and curate. Look closely at the works and you will see the beginnings of so many great Australian painters from the twentieth century, Boyd, Blackman, Olsen, Whitely, Williams. Get in among the brush marks and have a close look!
I am an artist and art teacher currently living and working in Sydney.
I studied undergraduate Visual Arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth, completed my Masters in Visual Arts at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Sydney and studied printmaking at the National Art School, Darlinghurst, Sydney.
I worked in Sydney in contemporary art galleries up until I left Australia and wrote and presented Professional Arts Practice lectures and seminars to final year undergraduates at the NAS. In Asia, the UK and Europe I have tutored and taught art privately including distance tutoring online. While living in Singapore I completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Secondary Education, Visual Arts with Monash University.
In The Netherlands I worked, in pandemic lockdown, in a small studio in the forest of De Paauuw thanks to the generosity of Dutch artist and printmaker, Florence Fernhout and the Wassenaar Gemeente. Our May 2020 exhibition at Pulchri Gallery in Den Haag (The Hague) was cancelled due to corona virus controls, reschedulaed and again cancelled in 2021.
To break the isolation and bring attention to artists and their works (including current exhibitions in lockdown or cancelled) I started the Art Zoom-Bus, AZ-B.
Initially AZ-B was to bring together friends and colleagues who usually meet annually at a conference. This years conference (in Lisbon) was cancelled. Though the work has gone online and continues, the social outings that give everyone a work/leisure balance, do not. Social outings are often to galleries and museums so, at the suggestion of friends in lockdown in remote places, we went online for gallery and studio tours! Other friends have joined the tours now and so we have AZ-B!
The Zoom Bus is temporarily parked as lockdowns have lifted and I carry on with my art studio practice in Sydney at One Plus 2 Studios, Balmain.
I am still pondering on whether I'll reboot the Bus and in what format! If you'd like to see the Zoom Bus back on the digital road let me know your thoughts!
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Lisa McKimmie, Artist 