Poetry Sydney x Gaffa Gallery

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Transformations in the attitudes and behaviours of our time, Poetry Sydney partners with gaffa Gallery to challenge poets, artists and audiences on the relevance of permanent newness. This year marks the centennial of the origins of Surrealism with the publication of the Surrealist Manifesto in October 1924. This is an inaugural program that seeks new discussion and new work of an emotional intensity that reimagines past, present and projected future into something new, and then something newer.

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MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM by André Breton (1924)

Those who might dispute our right to employ the term SURREALISM in the very special sense that we understand it are being extremely dishonest, for there can be no doubt that this word had no currency before we came along.

Therefore, I am defining it once and for all: SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

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Emerging from a philosophical challenge to deconstruct reality to create something new through concepts and processes of play to embrace the daring and unexpected, we engage the present thoughts of poets, artists and academics to promulgate thoughts into artful action.

The program launches with a panel discussion on oppositional thinking in the arts and whether it should be encouraged. The panel includes perspectives from artists, academics and a poet: Amy-Rose Finch / Gareth Jenkins / Justin Harvey. Hosted by Angela Stretch. Featuring two performances: from a touring American poet based in Paris, Jason Stoneking and panellist, Gareth Jenkins.

A workshop with artist and scientist Steven Durbach aka Sid Sledge on Machine Assisted Poetry will be held and a ticket purchased for the launch of the program’s panel discussion, provides free attendance. A series of three street midday performances are planned outside of the Queen Victoria Building. The program will culminate in a limited edition printed book which is set to be launched in early December. Submissions will be open to poets from 5 October and close 5pm, 30 November. Criteria and submission terms and conditions will be made available in October.

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Hosted by Angela Stretch
Performance: Jason Stoneking and Gareth Jenkins

Gaffa Gallery, 281 Clarence Street Sydney

Friday 27 September 2024

6:00 - 8.00 PM

Artist Statements:

Amy-Rose Finch

“Like the surrealists and Metaphysical painters, I seek to explore the unseen and expose the truth, or at least my truth. My hope is that my work and the practice of making revered objects can provide myself and the community with an accessible form of hope and healing, much needed in today’s world.”

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Gareth Jenkins

“I mine the slippages in language to expose the unstable relations latent in the substrate of experience. The self is unstable and porous. The body intra-acts to construct and reconstruct the surfaces of reality, boarder-zones of time blur as the nebulous cacophony of sensory experience, memory, imagination and the dream flare from the extremities of our self like a vaper trail. Our movement just a minor disturbance in the underlying resonance, a continual beating of now now now in the flow of the entanglement. Here I search language for understanding - the meaning in chance, the synchronicity within indeterminacy. Are there ever any coincidences? Do we uncover or do we construct? Are there ever any accidents?”

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Jason Stoneking
“My job as a writer is not merely to record words. It is also to consider how the methods of creation and delivery will contextualize and transform the reception of those words. So I take inspiration from all the artists who break ground in this, whether it’s Jackson Pollock turning his paintings into a depiction of gesture rather than subject, jazz legends like Charlie Parker whose live performances challenged the conventional dominance of the studio recording, or the surrealists reaching into the unconscious looking for new realms in which to situate the moment of creative genesis. By destabilizing tired modes of perception, these artists reawakened our senses and invited us to engage more fully. In each of my writing and performance projects, I begin by seeking a freshness of form, in the hope of opening a space for that engagement.”

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Justin Harvey
“Though not stemming directly from, nor being explicitly aligned with the tenets of surrealism, my artwork skews toward the unconventional, the irrational and the metaphorical, often taking abstract forms that to greater or lesser extents represent ideas of the subconscious. My glitch work rejects traditional notions of beauty and is deigned to be politically and aesthetically challenging, seeking to express the digital subconscious, that in turn can be equated human consciousness in a context where the ‘digitisation of culture’ as espoused by communication theorist, Manuel Castells, is complete. My digital video feedback work builds on the video art of the 1960s and 70s, exploring the forces at work within digital video technology through various methods. My recent generative AI work asks after the subconscious of the machine as well as divining a kind of ‘creation myth’ from the digital archives that form the basis of ever evolving diffusion models.”

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Saturday 7 December 2024

6:30 - 9:00 PM

The program will culminate in a limited edition printed book which is set to be launched in early December.

Submissions will be open to poets from 5 October and close 5pm, 30 November. Criteria and submission terms and conditions will be made available in October.

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Biographies:

Amy-Rose Finch‍

I am a multidisciplinary artist living and working on Dharawal Country. My current practice specialises in Ceramics as clay provides such a grounding connection to earth and our innate humanness. My art process is an act of clairsentience, an inner knowing that a piece is calling to be brought into existence. Working with motifs such as snakes, shells, stars, chilli’s, water, moon and third eye. Often used in folk magic, the use of these symbols is inspired by my rich cultural background and life experiences. Common themes of my work relate to collective consciousness, ancestor worship, human connection, Animism, transformation and healing.

Justin Harvey

Justin lives and works on Gadigal land, with a practice spanning moving image, installation, and virtual reality experience. He nurtures an ongoing fascination with the creative potentials of human machine interaction, embracing experimental methods that seek to exploit digital imaging technologies, including the evolving ‘artificial intelligence’ systems that increasingly drive them, in playful ways. Justin’s solo works have explored web-based video-chat platforms, ‘glitch’ as aesthetic and conceptual movement, shaping digital video feedback, and collaboration with generative diffusion models. His work has been exhibited widely in Sydney and internationally. Justin lectures in media arts at University of Technology Sydney.

Dr Gareth Sion Jenkins

Gareth is a poet, artist and publisher. His creative practice involves assemblage, electronics, video, text-based works and immersive UV-light, sound and sculptural installations. With collaborator Kathryn Cowen, he was a finalist in the North Sydney Art Prize, a feature artist at Cementa24 and has recently created Serendipia, an immersive installation at Yarrila Arts and Museum - Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery. Over the last seven years Gareth has exhibited at Stanley Street Gallery, Grace Cossington Smith gallery, Stella Downer Fine Art gallery, Disorder Gallery, SLOT and Airspace Projects. Gareth’s first poetry collection Recipes for the Disaster, won the national 2019 Anne Elder Award. Gareth’s second book, The Inclination Compass, a multimedia poetic narrative based on an early immerse installation work, was published in 2023 with Puncher and Wattman. Gareth’s doctorate focused on artmakers who experience schizophrenia, and particularly the work of the prolific Australian outlier artist and writer Anthony Mannix. Gareth selected and edited The Toy of the Spirit - the collected works of Mannix which was published in 2019. This was done in close collaboration with Anthony. In 2020 Gareth founded the archive and small press Apothecary Archive where he specialises in editing, designing and publishing books that bring text and image into conversation. Gareth works in community engagement and teaches creative writing at Macquarie University.

Steven Durbach

Steven Durbach, aka Sid Sledge worked as a scientist doing genetic research on bacteria and viruses from 1995-2008 before turning to art full time. Upon emigrating to Australia, he worked as an artist drawing on his knowledge and insights from the study of evolutionary theory to see what story that could tell in the arts. His principal media are drawing; kinetic sculpture and drawing animation. He has recently taken on a more research-based performative approach where during installations, performances and residencies, primarily at science institutions and other non-art spaces, he uses an experimental approach to engage the audience and evolve his work.

Jason Stoneking

Jason is a poet, diarist, and performer originally from the United States, who has made his home in Paris. He has published several collections of poetry and essays, written songs and films, and has been performing his art and writing live for more than 25 years, at venues ranging from the main stage at Lollapalooza to the Pont Neuf in Paris and the rooftops of Cairo. Recently, his practice has concentrated on the creation of handwritten and site-specific texts. For his Bespoke Books series, he writes an entire unique book by hand, in a single draft, for an individual reader, an event, or a residency, then reads it live only a single time. For his Portrait Sittings series, he invites subjects to pose for him as they would for a painter, while he composes their portrait in handwritten words, then presents them with the original manuscript he has drafted during the session. In his newest series, Sky Sketches, he writes impressions of the sky as he travels, reading them aloud at each stop on his tours, so as to create site specific texts for every reading.

‍Angela Stretch

Angela lives on Gadigal land, Sydney. She is a poet, curator and writer from Aotearoa, New Zealand. The artist uses language and poetry through different mediums and has been exhibited and published nationally, and internationally. She is the director of Poetry Sydney and intelligent animal. She produces Arts Friday on Eastside Radio and is an administrator at Arts Law Centre of Australia.

Poetry Sydney

Poetry Sydney nurtures innovation, discovery, and inspiration through the poetry of today. We present established, emerging and early career poets from diverse poetry practices.

Host or Publisher Gaffa Gallery and Rooftop