Kerry Cannon

I arrived in Australia August , 1995. That was when I decided that sink or swim I was going to do what I wanted to do, create art, for the rest of my life. Art is a terrific game which I play as much as I can. My first exhibition was in Melbourne in 1998 and I’ve had various solo and group shows since then. Some of the highlights:

“Bloody Hard Yakka“, 1998, was my first show. I filled up the Chapel Gallery in Melbourne with art. There were 41 works in that show and the variety was excellent - paintings, drawings, wood carvings and bronze sculptures. We transported most of the exhibition down from NSW in a horse float through a rain deluge by Dubbo and then through a locust plague just before West Wylong. We had some Maoris help out with a performance at the opening.

“Alchemy-Golden Dreams Come True” was my second solo show that premiered 1999 at The Stanthorpe Regional Gallery in Queensland. I’m a member of The Borderline Art Group and we’ve had a show in Stanthorpe every year since then. I don’t normally sell too much at Stanthorpe, but I seem to have a good time.

“From Far Formosa”,2001, was show I put together with Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-Chung. I flew to Taiwan to talk Yao into photographing a story that I had made up. It was a nice exhibition at Bruce Watling Gallery in Southport, Queensland. Two of Yao’s photos were so hot that Bruce wouldn’t hang them up in the gallery, but if anyone wanted to see them, they were in his office under his stack of porno mags!

“The Tiger Club”, 2003 an installation of bronze, fibre optics and mirrors took me two years to knock out. It was wonderful to premier the piece during the Castlemaine State Festival in Victoria and then to show it during Australia’s Biggest Chook Show here in Warialda.

I’ve tried to finish a bronze series every year since 1996. The history of my series so far is: 1996-1997 A Midsummer Night’s Dream series and The Odyssey series, 1998 The Alchemy series, 1999 The Forbidden Love series, 2000 The Monkey series, 2001 From Far Formosa series, 2002-2003 The Tiger Club series, 2004 The Blockhead series, 2005 Clamdiggers series, 2006 Fantastic Voyage, and 2007, 2008, 2009 Los Caprichos and currently Life is Futile series. The Alchemy series is my personal favourite. It’s a three dimensional comic in 13 parts. A kind of Shakespearean tragedy in bronze.

I also try to make at least one larger sculpture per year usually in bronze. I've managed to finish 12 pieces since 1999. Some of these were editions and some were created just for the sculpture park.

Hi yall. I’m always a bit antsy about putting time limits on the website because invariably you forget to update and 2009 becomes 2015 etc. So caution to the wind, here goes.

I mentioned to my friend Susan that as long as an artist is getting his/ her studio time, they’re pretty happy. Unfortunately, life intervenes and intrudes on the studio time which is probably a good thing otherwise artists wouldn’t really have much to talk about.

Other happenings included about 19 other shows that I participated in from the Platypus Festival in Manilla, NSW to a show in San Antonio, Texas.

My wife Flute died in 2008 and her mates Gail and Lisa from Nimbin and Caroline and Jo from Tassie made one of the great funeral pyres of all time. Unfortunately a lot of boys got involved in beefing-up the rather feminine looking thing and it wouldn’t fit through the door to the display area.

The pyre had all her ephemeral possessions and things she loved on board. Her old t-shirts were ripped to shreds by the girls and then tied around the wooden bed posts that made up the pyre. It was a colourful, yet sublime work of art and I’m sure Flute would have loved it.

After the ceremony, Flute’s ashes were collected in a garbage can and 12 scantily clad, ochred females scattered her around our big hill in a Bacchanalia ceremony.

My plans for the next 12 months include a show in New York at The Agora Gallery with some other Aussies called Down Under and Beyond (chunder). My big show in 2009 is at the Castlemaine Regional Gallery in August called The Enlightenment Never Happened with Craig McDonald and Noah Grosz. It features my Los Caprichos series and it is a delight. I’m busily trying to finish 8 more compositions for this show. These are 8 of my best works in the series. They’re large and quite enigmatic and a nice tribute to the original Los Caprichos series by Goya. Noah and Craig are my foundry cronies and are both very good artists.

I’m also in a lot of group shows including ones in the Tamworth Regional Gallery and the Stanthorpe Regional Gallery. And the usual exhibitions I’m involved with in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.

I’m making a big effort to upgrade the user friendlism of Ceramic Break Sculpture Park. We’re making three large signs in strategic places in the park so that people don’t get lost. And there will be more explanation signs on and near the sculptures. I’m going to try to install four new works in the park this year, finish up the first phase of the tower project and build a bike trail between them. It’s all happening financial crisis or not (I hope!).

Our first show at Ceramic Break begins March 21 and runs through April into May. It’s a nice local show including Judy Mayne from the Warialda Bridge Club. Judy is as deft with her watercolours as she is when bidding a small slam. Our second show is June 7 and features Mark Gibson who manages the Croppa Creek Golf and Bowling Club and paints wonderful Aboriginal style work. We’re toying with the idea of having the fourth and last poultry event in September- Australia’s Biggest Turkey Show. Stay tuned…

Ceramic Break Sculpture Park apologises in advance for the views of The Lizard Queen- once a cheap bitch, always a cheap bitch.

Hi sweethearts. Hi you motivated artists that the critics ignore because they’re too busy taking care of their mates or just having a good wank on an easy target. Need a critic? I’ll try to fit it into my busy schedule, but I warn you The Queen can stroke, but she can scratch too. Scratch, stroke, scratch those with suicidal tendencies need not apply.

it’s Manhattan dawling! Full of skyscrapers, art, fun and Puerto Ricanish boys with swaggering hips and dark tan faces punctuated by deep strawberry lips. The Lizard Queen is mad about a cheap Spanish accent, Pakistani? Well these Mediterranean types do have a style about them no matter what their language(s)! So I asked my lovely boy Abdul where to for the hottest and I mean spicy-hot Bangladeshi restaurant? He taxied me over to Queens to his mother’s place where he introduced me to Mum. And wife. And three young children! (he didn’t look like he was even fifteen). The food was excellent, but not the exotic cuisine one really had in mind!

If you’ve never seen New York City, it is mind bogglingly clever. How do they fit all those tall buildings on one island? It’s chock a block with blocks end to end broken only by one gaping hole- Ground Zero. Lovely traffic, pungent smells, exotic food and life - life everywhere!

So where does one start the art tour? Chelsea dawling, home to hundreds of marvellous galleries, not just on ground level, but up in the air. There you’ll find really fine art next to first time art galleries and everything in between. The Lizard Queen confesses she was planning to spend 2 days in the art district and see everything, but most of the galleries didn’t open until 11 and closed at 5 so there just wasn’t enough time!

I saw only two of the many streets of galleries. The gallery workers seemed glued to their flashing computers and oblivious to the visitors that have come from all over the world to share the art. It seems to be the same anywhere you go-the snooty bastards in their smart clothes-Misses Mucks -just doing “their job” in the worst kind of way. I loath them. There were few exceptions like The Betty Cunningham Gallery where the nicely dressed lady was on her feet telling everyone all about the French artist on display.

My highlights in Chelsea were both featured in the NYC Gallery guide. Rani Carson’s paintings from Jamaica took me back to those happy times of Red Stripe and ganja. I was expecting to see a Rasta man, but Rani is a Rasta woman who seems to know a lot of the hairy beauties-nice colourful paintings. Oi Sawa’s painted metal pictures in the Viridian Gallery were unique. The show was a nice find in an obscure gallery up many flights of stairs. The paintings are beautiful architectural creations with nice colour schemes and a bright sheen- very easy to live with.

There was an outstanding Picasso “Mosqueteros” exhibition at Gagosian Gallery with queuing outside (do you mind!). Well worth the wait I might add. Chuck Close had a portraiture exhibition at Pace Wildenstein that was excellent-although the Lizard Queen must confess that she abhors portraits. Heads with shoulders are an uninteresting shape usually on an uninteresting background- I’d rather take a taxi! After 2 days in Chelsea that’s exactly what I did- I headed to the high profile districts.

Ricardo, Aziz, Manuel whatever his strong brown long muscled name is, dropped me uptown after a feed of goulash in a SOHO bungalow that had the distinction of a clean toilet and mouthwash. I thought he would cry when I slammed the taxi’s door. He refused the tip and that made me cry as he zoomed off.

The Met is the American equivalent to The British Museum. Not only a realm of antiquities, but also galleries of fine art. Plan on spending all day there and you’ll see art that is standard in most art history books. The lunch room however is a dismal expensive affair where people are herded, fed and excreted out in a hurry. It’s better to eat first.

The Whitney Museum was a disappointment. There was an amazing installation of lights by Jenny Holzer called Protect Protect that took up an entire floor. The Lizard Queen usually has a lot of time for political art and the flashing messages about the atrocities in Iraq and the issues of homeland security seemed quite current and relevant, but the installation was hard on the eyes and perhaps a bit too in your face.

After The Met the modern collection at The Whitney didn’t seem to stack up. The Claes Oldenburg exhibition was a good collection, but am I getting jaded thinking that works such as this just don’t deserve to be in the realm of fine art? It is different, but not very nice. I heard his giant hamburger in Central Park was very popular and maybe outside is a better place for this kind of “art”.

The works by Edward Hopper also disappointed. I’ve loved this artist from afar for so long that perhaps my expectations were a bit daft. Some of his landscapes were exceptional, but the figurative paintings weren’t at all as special as some of the art books would suggest.

The incredible Frick Museum, once home to the robber baron Henry Clay Frick, is a bit like a palace and a bit like a residence. It houses the most amazing collection of art that you’ll see anywhere. Rembrandt, Goya, Gainsborough, Vermeer etc. interlaced with bronze sculpture and a wonderful terracotta nude. Large halls, library, courtyard with pool, it’s awe-inspiring and rich-very rich.

The Museum of Modern Art is a must see in NYC. There are many famous works, my favourite being three large abstract Kandinsky’s’. You’ll also see a potpourri of art that you might not like-architecture, a floor of post modern, minimalist, uninspiring rubbish, design displays-all interesting but not necessarily beautiful. There was a notable omission in the MOMA collection-Blue Poles. These NY collections have Pollock paintings, but none that resonate with the same vitality of colour, form and might I say the perfect size of our national Australian masterpiece. We got the best one dawling!

The Martin Kippenberger exhibition was notable as there was nothing there worth hanging on your wall or anything that you would even remotely like to be associated with. Where does the art world come up with these people and why do they try to ram them down our throats? One patron summed it up when he said, “Klippenberger was definitely a genius! It’s amazing!”

The courtyard at the museum was a bit sleazy, but it had a nice collection of figurative and abstract sculptures- a good place to people watch and rest one’s feet. Not too much talent however and what there was seemed to be attached with children.

The Museum of Arts and Design had a restaurant that wasn’t open. Luckily there was a mall next door where two large Botero corpulent nudes-man and woman guard the escalator to the restaurant on the first floor. Only in NY dawling!

The museum is a lovely space with different themes on each floor like ceramics, jewellery, glass etc. I’m not sure if I can add much to the Craft Arts International #76 article on the museum, except to say that sometimes craft isn’t what it’s made up to be. Bega, NSW artist Klaus Moje’s glass exhibition was displayed beautifully and was a good sample of his works, but it didn’t look like glass! It might have been painted pottery or canvas-nice, but a bit strange.

The Lizard Queen had a lot of time for the jewellery display. There are gorgeous things here in tasteful arrangements and drawers enclosed in Perspex glass with some of the most amazing little gems in the world. A must see.

The guards in The Design Building were large and black and very smart in their pressed blue uniforms. They were polite and helpful, but were intent on their jobs and had no time for dangling worms or other such mischief. They showed me how to use the state of the art collection display. You just touch the big screen and there it is! Zoom in; zoom out anything in the collection is at your fingertips!

The Isamu Noguchi Museum just over the bridge in Queens was the place for large hard rock sculpture. Socrates, Aziz, Ishmael or whatever your name is was replaced by a rather jovial polish émigré cab driver of questionable hygiene. He pitched and struck out-even The Lizard Queen has some standards sweetie! The museum is a practical display space with a courtyard and gift shop. There are some very nice marble and steel pieces that are also thoughtfully shown.

Too much city life got to this little country girl after awhile so she set off on the day journey to Storm King Art Centre. The bus leaves from the terminus just off Broadway, drops you at the gate of the sculpture park and then picks you up about 6 hours later. There is a sexy Storm King bus that drives you around the sculpture sites and you can go off on your own feet to explore the 500 acres of sculpture!

Momo Taro, Noguchi’s wonderful abstract work, has pride of place on top of a small knoll by the visitor centre. This sculpture was very popular with school groups that interacted in and out of the granite pieces. It is getting a bit dwarfed these days by all the other surrounding sculpture. David Smith was well represented although his figurative and abstract works seemed in conflict in their display area. George Ricky’s amazing kinetic sculptures were unfortunately marginalized.

I’m I being too hard? Actually the Lizard Queen loved almost everything she saw at Storm King. The danger she sees is that even with 500 acres the space around the sculptures will start to shrink until it gets too busy. Have you been to the McClellan Gallery in Victoria lately? Sometimes less is indeed more.

Storm King overall had a strong blokey feel to it. Most of the sculptures were mannish, made by gristly, tattooed, Neanderthals welding their hot metal and drinking their thick stout. The landscape was dominated by huge metallic monoliths by Mark di Suvero. These sculptures look solid and have interesting kinetic dangly bits, but are very in your face.

A wall by Andy Goldsworthy had a more sinuous feminine feel to it as it snaked out of the pond, around the trees and up the hill. It was almost impossible to photograph. The Arch by Alexander Calder was a magnificent sculpture that looked radically different from all angles-very pleasing. Perhaps my favourite piece was called Sea Change by George Cutts. This sculpture consisted of two twisted shiny steel poles that rotated with a motor. They looked interesting from every angle and evolved with each movement in the rotation -such a simple brilliant idea!

Storm King is a top venue well worth the bus trip. The pleasure tour on the Storm King bus is erotic and satisfying. But call me a bitch, I’d like to see more colourful and girly sculptures around. I think there are areas suitable for figurative works that wouldn’t conflict with the overall theme of abstraction. And the toilets are divine dawling!

Biff!

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I’d like to start a comic-type publication based on an art contest. I’d also like to direct some movies I’ve written and start showing my art internationally on a regular basis. A satirical quarterly newsletter involving comments about the current state of the enlightenment is also a possibility.

I’d just like to close this section with a selection from my artist statement that I submitted to the Florence Biennale:

..I abhor the overwhelming violence of human nature, but invariably this violence underlies almost everything I create.