Studio

Studio
Adam John Cullen

I dug a ditch. It took me the better part of a week. My studio is in my garage. It’s an unlined corrugated iron garage that is sub zero in winter and a thousand degrees in summer. I’ve been meaning to line the walls for years. The issue is that the previous owners of my place (Stanislav and Audrey) had—for an unknown reason—decided to backfill the garage with dirt, slabs of granite, broken red bricks, and various household items: dolls, marbles, shoes, building blocks and dog bones. Maybe the area between the garage wall and the back fence was a hiding spot for their children. Either way, the assortment of forgotten objects and dirt reached waist height and ran the entire length of the garage. Over time, the weight had begun to buckle and rust the walls and supporting beams, slowly pushing structure over. Digging it out with a shovel and fencing bar was a painful job. Dealing with solid clay and rock while raining sweat and occasionally stopping to run inside and show my boyfriend the severed dolls arm that I just uncovered sticking out of the dirt like a tiny plump zombie. It seems fitting to finally address the literal foundation of my studio while making work about the studio.

Usually, it has to be an odd number of works—never two—that sit together. Years ago, I saw a show by Lara Favaretto and the work Coppie Semplici / Simple Couplesstuck in my mind’s eye. The work was made with brightly coloured car wash brushes, hung vertically and connected to motors placed in front of large iron sheets. In random intervals the motors would turn on and a set of brushes would spin in unison. I like the idea of them being a couple, not necessarily in a romantic sense, but a couple of friends/strangers/family members interacting. Studio is full of couples. Hopefully they get along.

One night he was laying on his back in my lap, purring, I saw something flash across the floor; it was a small sky-blue marble rolling out from under the dresser and across the floor. It was beautiful, bright, and something not visible to me had set it in motion. It seemed a magical and forgiving omen, like the presence of this loving little cat. I put it on the windowsill, next to my father’s marble.– Mary Gaitskill, Lost Cat

Studio is a collection of passing thoughts and ideas that have been made into physical form. Made from materials and objects that have been waiting on the shelves and in cupboards of my studio for unknown lengths of time. Items that will “definitely be used” have finally had their day. Packing materials are used as moulds, fabric bought in overseas flea markets, Guylian chocolate packets cast in reclaimed pewter and fake pearls, nostalgic of Canberra’s outer suburbs in the 90’s—the setting of my youth. Studio combines these sculptural works with a series of photographs taken while on a residency with a disposable camera that expired in 2002. Also, the blue from the photographs leached across the studio and permeated the other works. Studio is multiple beginnings and a few conclusions.

I asked Jesse Boylan, Allison Gibbs, and Daisy if they would contribute a piece of writing to Studio, whatever they like; tangents, text as artwork, thoughts, fiction or critique (thanks for saying yes).

‘The blue things I treasure are gifts, or surprises in the landscape. The rocks I dug up this summer in the north country, for example, each one mysteriously painted round it’s belly with a bright blue band. The little square junk of navy-blue dye you brought me long ago, when we barely knew each other, folded neatly into a paper wrapper’ – Maggie Nelson, Bluets

While making these works, I’ve been thinking about each material/object I’ve been using or casting from and it’s hard to pin point why they are important. I could take you on a journey of each piece of fabric, each bead, but I don’t want to, and I assume you don’t really care. But I will pigeonhole the collection of works; it is grief (the colour blue), personal narrative (both positive and otherwise), texture and form.

‘Something I didn’t say correctly: I did not lose the blue marble from Santa Maddalena. I threw it away. When Peter lost his necklace, I decided that the marble was actually bad luck. I took it out into a field and threw it away.’ - – Mary Gaitskill, Lost Cat