STUDIONONSTOP

One year off.

The Lively Plane (continued).

February 2008 - June 2009
growing and ongoing
and part of:

There Goes the Neighbourhood

curated by Zanny Begg & Keg de Souza
The Performance Space
May-June 2009
Sydney

By June 2009 «The Lively Plane (continued)» will have played out along the leafy length of Wilson Street - plus inner-west & city sidelines - over two summers, two autumns, a winter and a spring. In February 2008 I used a commercially farmed London Plane tree (Platanus x acerifolia) in a work for the exhibition «1.The Lively Plane» at the Institute for Contemporary Art Newtown (ICAN) at 191 Wilson St.

Then and now, my interest is in the strong opinion and emotion that attends plane trees. They are both the most commonly planted street tree in Sydney, other Australian capitals and many world cities, and the most widely disliked for the profuse, fine, allergy-provoking bristles that aid seed dispersal from the flower-heads. They are the trees that everyone hates. While favoured for their tolerance of contemporary urban conditions - bad air, poor light, compacted soil and little water - their detractors are many, from talkback radio callers to prominent Australian scientist Tim Flannery. Flannery has often argued against the planting of London planes in Sydney streets, as both a persistent mimicry of European cities and a failure to explore alternatives from our ample native species that would better foster insect life and biodiversity, which plane trees notably do not. Continue Reading »

week one.

week two.

week three.

week four.

week five.

week six.

week seven.

week eight.

week nine.

week ten.

Wild Sown Understorey

Seeding action, project document & climate almanac.

February-April 2009

wBST
West Brunswick Sculpture Triennial
curated by OSW
March-April 2009
Melbourne, Australia

download wBST poster pdf [48KB]

Wild Sown Understorey is a seeding action for the front yard of 135 Union St, West Brunswick. In February green manure crop seeds were cast, and the grass left to grow until the close of the wBST. The potential for a shaggy transformation of suburban ground will lay dormant or flourish according to rainfall, becoming a simultaneous ten-week weather index. Using the methods of natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, the project plays out between disturbance to a lawn-scape, land remediation and productivity, the absence of wildness, probable failure and climate change.

Project document & climate almanac.

A6-ish ha-ha foldout with weeks one-ten card series
single colour printing in brown, blue and teal
printed with love on The Rizzeria
edition of 100
copies available ~ contact l kell 88 [at] gmail dot com
Continue Reading »

Urban grassland &
inner city seagull sanctuary
Prince Alfred Park pool
Surry Hills
Sydney

Closed for redevelopment and growing over.
Walk around the fenceline and seedball action.
27.11.08

Rainfall:
28/11
29/11
7/12
8/12
10/12
11/12
12/12

Mowed down & whipper-snipped:
17/12