Berlin Residency: Social art making in Berlin at the Agora Collective

Happy New Year  from a very warm (42C) Melbourne.

I am applying for an artist in residence program called AFFECT at the Agora Collective Berlin  http://agoracollective.org/affect/about/

The application is in 5 parts -this post is to support my application especially with images of my work etc 

Why did Affect Program call your attention?

Germany is where the Reformation began and Berlin is the epicentre of Expressionist art from Max Beckmann and Franz Marc to neo Expressionist artists like Rainer Fetting today.  

Melbourne like Berlin is a city that constantly reinvents itself and has a rich and evolving urban culture.  It is the home of Australian Expressionism.  Australians are in a unique cultural position- although predominantly European we occupy a land at the opposite ends of the earth to Europe.

Gay men are also in a demanding position - while often culture makers we can experience isolation and oppression from mainstream society and religions.

After coming out as a gay man with children in my mid forties I have used art-making to make my own Reformation- reinventing my Catholic traditions into a contemporary approach to being a European in the Antipodes.

On a previous trip to Germany 5 years ago I was impressed with the sense of freedom and self determination of the Germans I met and the works I viewed at the Neue Nationalgalerie.

For the past three years I have worked alone in my studio and I am very excited about the prospect of close collaboration with other artists as well as the opportunity to be mentored by senior artists from several countries. 

A residency with Agora will help me integrate  all these strands together and take my practice to the next level, providing an opportunity to link my experience in practising and teaching community development more directly with my art making and with exposure to the international art scene

My definition of social art is art that is

·         connected with social or political change

·         collaborative with communities of interest

·         trans disciplinary 

·         interacts with the built as well as the natural environment

·         includes a component of research and interrogation of the subject matter

·          validates the individual’s right to experience deeply and to belong

·         examines hierarchies based on gender power race and money

As a qualified social worker whose consulting and teaching practice involves working collaboratively to improve services and achieve social change both my art and my community development has these dimensions. The Agora program can help me integrate these streams in my training and practice without sacrificing the quality or integrity of either.

A recent project I facilitated WESTANDPROUD that involved my social work students collaborating with a filmmaker contained each of these elements

http://eurekamichael.blogspot.com.au/2013_11_01_archive.html and I want to learn how  do more projects like this 

Describe your artistic way of working; what distinguishes you as an artist; what would you like to get from this program and what are you ready to share? 

My way of working

I write/ create in my journal several times a week and also use it to explore new themes in both my life and my art. I use the journal process to help me observe life more closely, to work out issues with my life, to cope proactively with change in relationships or work.  Journals vary from 30 -60 % handwritten text, the rest is drawing, collected materials including poetry or material I have photographed or downloaded and printed on my quirky inkjet printer and pasted in These journals have become works of art in their own right and were exhibited at Joel Gallery in January 2010.

Most of my figurative work is done in my studio in inner city Melbourne.

 Here is a video about my studio practice made by filmmaker Caitlin Bryan as a part of the WESTANDPROUD series establishing a queer archive for the West of Melbourne

Interview with Michael James O'Hanlon in his studio in November 2013 West Melbourne Australia  

 Work in progress is posted to my deviant art site http://michaelzer0.deviantart.com where I currently have 3,249 images on line and where my work has been viewed almost 26,000 times.  Almost 300 other artists watch my work regularly and their feedback helps me select work to refine and develop for exhibition 

Recent exhibitions include both community based galleries such as the Joel centre that I helped establish and commercial galleries such as Red Gallery

My art interrogates the traditions I come from – religious cultural gender and political.
Sometimes just making images of men in a loving intimate pose is challenging mainstream assumptions - this image has had over 1300 views on line 

Drawing and photo montage are my primary art-making processes but I also have done installations, video, life drawing and run creativity workshops

The major motifs in my work are

The unclothed male especially as a metaphor for personal and political freedom

http://michaelzer0.deviantart.com/gallery/5904671

Stars of Eureka dreaming folder deviantart

this image Bush Concerto is the most commented on at my deviantart site 

this image of freedom is also very popular

The Word made Flesh – historically the pre-eminent image makers for the Catholic Church have been gay men, Michelangelo Da Vinci and Caravaggio for example, and yet the Church continues to oppress gay men while relying on their services at all levels of the church 
My work aims to  uncover connections between a gay aesthetic  and the art of the Catholic church in the form of photo-montage of contemporary gay men using the iconography of the Church 

http://michaelzer0.deviantart.com/gallery/11024834


recently I have begun to commission material  objects to explore these issues  for example this priest's stole made of leather and other items of gay fetish and satin  comments on the dual role of gay men in the Church

The mannekin for its commentary on body image and the nature of being human

see video at 

Mannekin Drive-By

Melbourne grungeglam – an exploration of Melbourne’s urban architecture

Heartland – exploration of my family history and the rural heartland that surrounds Melbourne

heartland images deviantart

I have work ready for exhibition in Berlin but I am also open to exploring new subject matter and new forms of art making

My artist Profiles are at http://eurekamichael.blogspot.com.au

http://michaelzer0.deviantart.com

 http://www.modelmayhem.com/eurekamichael

What distinguishes me as an artist? 

I keep making figurative politically aware art working from the traditions of catholic art in the context of an Australian contemporary art scene that values abstraction detachment celebrity youth and novelty

I am used to working cooperatively with a wide variety of urban professionals including architects city planners and librarians and have achieved success in related fields which I am now bringing to my art.

 My social interventions are a form of my art that involves intense team work and detailed planning for example I set up the Melbourne Multicultural hub that has more than 70,000 visits a year.

Another of my projects was was to organize a GLBTIQ archive for the western region of Melbourne so our role in the community over many generations could be acknowledged and to provide role models for people wanting to come out in this disadvantaged area 
Here is a link to the WESTANDPROUD website explaining how the project was designed and including two  short films documenting lives of GLBTIQ people in the western suburbs of Melbourne
WESTANDPROUD website 

I value both personal feeling and social responsibility

I have life experience which brings a humanist perspective to my art

I possess social research community development and business skills which add dimensions to my art 

I have a Bachelor of Arts, Melbourne (Australia) and Auckland (New Zealand) Universities, Bachelor of Social Work Melbourne University and a Masters of Business, Victoria University as well as visual arts qualifications.

I am ready to share

·         community development research program evaluation and Community engagement skills (see my company profile Eureka Community Development Services )   

·         Knowledge of group dynamics

·         Teaching and facilitation skills

·         Art-making skills

·         Ability to work with different disciplines and cultures

          (See letters of support FCAC and RMIT University sent by email ) 

Here is a list of selected exhibitions In Australia 

Solo

The Convent Gallery Daylesford Victoria August 2012

Selected Group Exhibitions

2013 Red Gallery Fitzroy North

2012 Pick’n’Mix Thousand Pound Bend Gallery CBD Melbourne

2012 GoWest Queer Culture Art and Stories Joel Gallery Altona

2011 Current 10: DUEL Roslyn Smorgon Gallery, Footscray

2011. GoWest Queer Culture Joel Gallery Altona

2010 GoWest Queer Culture Joel Gallery Altona

2009 Whole or In Part Footscray Community Arts Centre

2007 Big Brother BigSister Exhibition Dante’s Gallery Fitzroy

2006 Mis-en-scene Footscray Community Arts Centre,

Private Collections

Professor Martin Comte OAM

Irene Clarke Painter Melbourne and Berlin 

How do you intend to fund the program?

I have these funds at hand in savings but will apply for funding from the Australia Council and other sources –please note I am self funded and I can afford the program without government assistance

I am both an Australian and Irish citizen so I don’t anticipate the need for a Visa in Germany 

Heartland Christmas 2013

My heartland is Central Victoria where my parents met and married and where I lived in Colbinabbin in central Victoria in the early 60's -my dad was the headmaster of the local primary school.

The Fields of Colbinabbin are not the fable green fields of Athenry that my grandfather came from. They are however golden with the summer harvest of wheat that is stored in the towns whose only feature is  the large concrete silos stretching above the railway line. In the last 5 decades since I lived there as a small child most of the surrounding countryside has gone from the fat lambs and wheat of the Victorian school’s geography book to wine growing on the surrounding Mt camel range


I remembered a scene from my childhood where a crop-duster -a biplane has landed on the road in the mainstreet and the pilot has gone into the pub. I imagined that they had opened up the top floor and served a big Rutherglen red glass of claret in his honour amongst the dusty table clothes ...could this be a film one day ?

After we moved to the city I spent many very happy holidays in nearby Nagambie with my grandmother and extended family and later as an adolescent got to know the areas with my school mates as a member of the Vale Meadows Adventure Club.. skinny dipping in Lerderderg or camping like swaggies on the banks of the Campaspe or the Loddon rivers..

these images are a taste of what I hope to make a major series of paintings and mixed or multimedia work on this return to my heartland ( see http://michaelzer0.deviantart.com/gallery/25283035 for more details 

This year I have spent a lot of time in Castlemaine Maldon Daylesford Malmsbury and Kyneton 

Sue and Gavin  are kindly  hosting pre Christmas at Scotch Pie House in  Maldon again this year and then Anglesea for Christmas dinner with my brother Richard and his family 

I have prepared some cards for close friends and family based on some images of fretwork and country roses i took in Kyneton in the last few weeks

Hope you enjoy them. In the  coming year I will

be exploring ways of living and working in my Heartland 

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here is the countryside on the way to maldon

This is the garden at scotch pie house  

Desley Mike and myself our hostess Sue and hard working Gavin in the kitchen !

Baptist Church at dusk Maldon 

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This Uber friendly cat is up for adoption 

Sunday morning sketch with Coffee main street Maldon

signs of life in this old bluestone homestead on the way to maryborough

post office at Gordon town where Dad grew up

Time to go home 

Is this William Lee in the Old Gordon cemetery an ancestor ? If so I might have a Eureka ancestor !

WESTANDPROUD

When I came out as a gay man living and working in the West I was married with three children. There were no queer role models and no support services locally and it has been a very challenging and sometimes lonely journey. I instigated this project because I want others who are contemplating coming out to have access to stories of other queer people in their community who have become WEST AND PROUD.

I teach and practice in community development, I am a member of Hobsons Bay Council’s GLBTIQ advisory group and I have been involved in a personal artistic and professional way in creating opportunities for GLBTIQ people in the west since 2005.  Currently I am employed by RMIT as a sessional social work tutor teaching community development to 7 students across 3 councils in the North and West of Melbourne

 Bridget and Sophie Social Work students RMIT

I was delighted when Hobsons Bay City Council Libraries agreed to support two final year RMIT University Bachelor Social Work students, Bridget McLennan and Sophie Klein, both on 70-day field education placements. Beginning in July 2013, under the guidance of library and community development staff and myself the students have developed a detailed project plan, recruited expressions of interest from community members to participate in telling their stories of GLBTIQ life in the West and begun gathering historical data for a timeline events.

 By the completion of the pilot in mid-December 2013, the students and library staff will have collected a maximum of ten accounts of queer life in the West, edited into long and short documentary films. Along with the photographed archival material and historical timeline, these films will be uploaded to the WESTANDPROUD Website, currently in its development phase.

Last week it was my turn to be interviewed and filmed,I chose my studio as the location 

A special thank you to volunteer MQFF filmmaker Cait Bryan   and her colleague Dan the sound man. it was quite a different experience for  a social worker and artist like myself to be interviewed and documented ! 

There will be a huge launch including a rainbow crossing project during  Midsumma and a forum where I interview the interviewees - stay tuned for details 


Update - here is the link to the website hosted by Hobsons Bay Libraries - great night full house and I felt we were witnessing the birth of a new generation of diverse leaders in the West ! WESTANDPROUD website this gives you the background to the project

here is the actual final edited interview Interview Michael WESTANDPROUD