Dave Edgar

Hi, my name is David. I am a visual artist who over the past decade has worked mostly in drawing. I live in Hobart, Tasmania and have a Bachelor degree majoring in printmaking, a Masters degree in drawing, and I’m currently half way through a PhD in the creative arts.

My current art practice explores a deep interest in drawing, place, landscape and geology (particularly remote and isolated places), phenomenology and memory, the composition and form of film, and creative arts pedagogy. You could say that I'm a drawophile, a topophiliac, a nisologist and a cinephile. Basically, I love drawing, being in remote places and am inspired by creative and enigmatic films.

   
(Above: Untitled, 120x120cm; and Untitled, 120x120cm - charcoal on paper, 2015/16)

I have recently been invited to become part of a (Northern) Summer Artists Colony, the inaugural artist residency program in the high elevation desert and red rock energy vortexes of Northern Arizona in the USA, by the Director of the Sedona Arts Centre, Eric Holowacz, and the new Head of the Verde Valley School, Paul Amadio.


(Above: Verde Valley School, and Cathedral Rock)

The residency is a partnership between the Sedona Arts Centre and the Verde Valley School – a school campus that houses students and faculty staff during the year, but is vacant from June to August. To fill the campus, and establish a summer colony and residency program, Holowazc is inviting over 50 artists, producers, and cultural managers to be his guests between 19 June and 10 August 2016. I anticipate my residency occurring over a 3-week period from around 15 July until 10 August.


(Above: Grand Canyon, and a ruin in the ghost town of Jerome)

The Verde Valley School is set within the red rocky mountain landscape of the Coconino National Forest, next to Cathedral Rock. Nearby is spectacular Antelope Canyon, the even more vast and spectacular expanses of America’s Grand Canyon, and the ‘ghost town’ of Jerome. These immense and powerful landscapes provided a plethora of material for me to work from in relation to my arts practice not just on a geological level but also on a morphological and spiritual level. 


(Above: Antelope Canyon)

Conceptually, my current practice is focused around an interest in the morphological qualities of rock. I use drawing, in charcoal, to explore rock as characteristic, and as a metaphor, for being. An altered form of being, relative to humanity, but in a much looser, slower, quieter, as well as seductive and dark and shadowy way – with many of these qualities being more likely linked as human in character rather than geological.

The rock forms that I draw attempt to imbue a subtlety relative to these characteristics. The works reveal surfaces around threshold zones of exterior and interior, such as found looking into or out of rock crevices, or at the entrance to caves and mines. (I once spent a year assisting an engineer with structural inspections at a number of different collieries - coalmines and the buildings and equipment associated with it - so they have quite a strong and mysterious resonance for me.) Specifically where there is some sense of a visible surface counteracting against a zone of dark or void like space – suggesting the hidden and unknown or a mysterious and enigmatic interior kind of space. I have also, very recently in the studio, began experimenting further with this idea in the form of built environments, such as dilapidated buildings (where the interiors are caving in and the exterior leaches into the interior), and with ghost houses and ghost towns – a ghost house is the remnant of a building that was once connected to another building but has been removed. Fragments remain of the outline of building, such as doorways to nowhere, or the outline of where a wall once was.

      
(Above: The deep, 100x100cm; and Untitled, 105x105cm - charcoal on paper, 2015)

The nucleus of these developments in my art practice have been derived from a long standing and concentrated focus with Tasman Island, a small island characterized by its clearly defined and dramatic looking cliff edges off the south east coast of Tasmania. The island has dominated my work since 2001. But these new ideas take existing thinking about being on the island and extend them to new areas of thought based around developing the morphological qualities, and threshold zones, both as psychological and physical zones - from working with rock forms and void spaces of the island, to exploring where similarities and associations are occurring in other parts of my experiential consciousness.

  
(Above: Cultivation, 95x95cm; and Untitled, 120x120cm - charcoal on paper, 2015)

Another influential residency was in 2013 in the wild North and North West of Tasmania. Concepts of edge/cave/built/threshold emerged whilst visiting sites such as North Cave and South Caves, and Lee Ann and Wet Caves in the Rocky Cape National Park, the ghost like town of Gormanston just outside of Queenstown, and a number of fenced off mine entrances near Murchison Dam.

From this residency two exhibitions were produced in partnership with the University of Tasmania, the Makers Workshop in Burnie and 10 Days on the Island, shown during the 2015 10 Days on the Island arts festival.


(Above: Remote exertion, charcoal drawing - exhibited at Makers Workshop in Burnie during the 2015 10 Days on the Island international arts festival - 300x1050cm, 2015)

Which brings me back to the residency opportunity in Arizona. Being within a completely new environment, replete with significant and unique geological features, that has deep spiritual connections and meaning to local inhabitants and tourists alike, provides me with fresh insights and approaches to my current line of inquiry in the consideration of a landscape imbued with morphological characteristics. I envisage my work to be significantly effected by it in ways that currently defy imagination.


(Above: the red rock mountains of Sedona, and Devil's Bridge in the Coconino National Forest)

It is my intention that the actual residency itself will act as an introductory phase to a greater project, in that it will provide the raw experiences to draw from as well as initiate exploration towards opportunities to develop future exhibitions both here in Tasmania and/or in the US. As the residency program will invite a wide number of artists and cultural workers, there is much scope for networking, such as future collaboration, artistic exchange and/or market development. It will also provide exposure to new networks and markets by being around the arts community of Verde Valley and Oak Valley, and at the Sedona Arts Centre. The potential outcomes are intriguingly vast.

The timing of the residency for me is ideal. In fact I see it as a golden professional development opportunity with enormous potential for profile/market development. Being midway through a PhD at UTAS, this residency project offers a well-timed exit from the studies and an opportunity to take on a fresh tangential approach, in a different landscape and environment, to build on an existing premise and push the boundaries of this as a way to develop new work. Furthermore, it will renew and refresh my confidence as an artist, and networker, adding prestige and recognition to my arts practice when back in Australia.

  
(Above: Untitled, 105x105cm; Untitled, 105x105cm - charcoal on paper, 2016)

Finally, I envisage testing some of the ideas, formed during this residency, at an exhibition that is currently in development as a collaboration with artist Mary Scott and independent curator Eliza Burke proposed to occur during the 2017 10 Days on the Island arts festival in Hobart. The exhibition concerns the notion of the full void, as characterized by a number of artists and writers during the 20^th century, but we intend to explore it through the velvety and seductive dark medium of charcoal. 

Thank you very much for your time. If you are able to assist to make this project occur I will be eternally grateful. If not, your more than welcome to come along to a future exhibition and check out how it all went. 

The Sedona Arts Centre have offered: free accommodation and meals as well as support with organising excursions, field trips, and assistance with developing creative work during the residency.

There is no stipend or travel support included with the invitation, and that’s why I’m here, as I somehow need to make my own way over to Arizona, take my own materials, and cover the cost of other essentials such as field trips.

Budget

Income
$2,520 (In-kind - provided by Sedona Arts Centre and Verde Valley School)
$1,750 (Pozible)
$875 (Crowbar/Arts Tasmania)
$300 (Cash contribution)
$5,445 (Total)

Expenditure 
$1,825 Airfares (inclusive of taxes and insurance) (return Hobart-Phoenix)
$300 Stipend (art materials, etc.)
$500 Internal travel (side trips to canyons and ghost towns)
$1,680 Accommodation ($80 per day x 21 days - in-kind)
$840 Meals ($40 per day x 21 days - in-kind)
$300 Miscellaneous
$5,445 (Total)

"It is better to make mistakes than to perpetuate the old ones to the point of unconsciousness." - Yaak Karsunke (Quoted by German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1969 to introduce his second ever feature film 'Katzelmacher'.)

This residency opportunity, for me, is one those rare moments in life that has presented itself following a long period of concentrated studio practice. I understand the possibilities, challenges and risks involved with arts residencies. My experience with them involves undertaking my own in 2013 in the North West of Tasmania and for 10 years prior to this I assisted numerous artists from Tasmania, and from around the globe to come to Tasmania, to develop their own art practices through arts residencies in some of the most remote and wild parts of the State. Speaking with many of these artists following their experiences and hearing their stories of awe and wonderment attained from a long and concentrated period in a different environment affirmed for me that residencies are not only beneficial to ones art practice but are also life changing experiences.

The nature of undertaking residencies in foreign places, meeting different people, living to a different tune of life and having the freedom to explore an arts practice forces a rethinking of ones own self in ways totally unexpected. Sure there are risks but the benefits seem to far outweigh them. I've experienced this before with my first residency, as did Fassbinder following his first film, and I relish the chance to experience it again but with a more mature mind and on a more significant scale.

Thanks again, for making it this far...