Open Studio: Sebastian Moody – QAGOMA Blog

Brisbane-based conceptual artist Sebastian Moody talks about returning to do the job at QAGOMA for his Open Studio set up — and his formative encounters with Fluxus artwork at the Gallery — just after pretty much 20 many years. Check out Open up Studio at the Queensland Art Gallery for insights into the inventive follow of present-day Australian artists.

Sebastian Moody introduces the Open up Studio task

https://www.youtube.com/enjoy?v=EGNwxoVIBc8

Mark Gomes: Open Studio, with its focus on audience participation and inclusivity, shares an ethos with your perform, a large amount of which has been created for public areas and utilizes language to discover how this means is developed and shared. Does your Open Studio undertaking goal to link people in a comparable way?

Sebastian Moody: To begin with, I want to note that I worked as a Gallery and Visitor Providers Officer at QAGOMA nearly 20 yrs back, and it is genuinely pleasant to be back again. Though performing at the Gallery — observing people hunting at artwork and wondering about what artwork is — I realised everyone comes to artwork with what’s presently heading on in their own heads. For me, art’s usually been a way to get men and women consider to recognize how these suggestions entered their heads in the 1st put. In this way, I think my operate sits strongly in the tradition of classic, 1960s ‘capital C’ Conceptual Artwork. What I’m seeking to do is get folks to feel about how they make their aesthetic possibilities, how they interpret performs of art.

Open up Studio: Sebastian Moody

MG: Are there unique artists functioning in this vein you were being drawn to even though looking into in the QAGOMA Exploration Library and exploring the Collection for your Open Studio job?

SM: There are two principal artists. The initially is the Swede Bengt af Klintberg and his Orange function of 1963, which I 1st don’t forget looking at on display screen at QAG when I was 17 or 18 in the Fluxus exhibition, ‘Francesco Conz and the Intermedia Avant-Garde’ (1997–98). It is basically an instructional get the job done for peeling an orange and lining all the pieces up in a row: in other words, reworking a sphere into a line. I genuinely like the uncomplicated poetry of it. A large amount of Klintberg’s will work have easy directions that, when you go through them, you kind of conduct in your intellect. Which to me is what Conceptual Art need to do. You don’t need to have to make big community artworks — which is what publish-conceptualism is, when Conceptual Artwork was offered a budget. Seriously, it is ample to only consider about these matters.

The second artist is Alison Knowles, who labored in New York and was a founding member of Fluxus. She has a whole lot of tutorial operates, way too, that illustrate what I suggest. I think, basically, Fluxus was striving to display you that you could be an artist. That, to me, is inspirational. I think we have misplaced that punk, emancipatory perspective, and it is time to renew it. Nowadays, Fluxus artworks are revered in books, but do they stand up when you truly abide by by way of their guidelines? Open up Studio is a good excuse for me to share these Conceptual artworks from the QAGOMA Assortment with audiences, have them stick to the recommendations and stimulate an anyone-can-do-it mindset. Like the Fluxus artists, I am fascinated in means of creating art the place, as the creator, I never have to be liable for the perform — the viewers is.

Sebastian Moody spoke with Mark Gomes, Senior Editor, Print and Digital Media, QAGOMA in March 2022.

Bengt af Klintberg ‘Orange occasion no. 3 (1963)’

Alison Knowles ‘Leone D’Oro (portfolio)’

QAGOMA Exploration Library

The QAGOMA Research Library’s exclusive collections are a loaded source of study product that is made up of exceptional and unique objects to inspire and notify. Products incorporate ephemera and objects (a frog skin, a rubber duck) to LPs, artist books, unusual textbooks, correspondence, and photographs. Notable collections contain the Peter Tyndall and Robert MacPherson Correspondence Archive 1970–2014 and the Asia Pacific Triennial Archive as nicely as a vary of Fluxus-linked methods.

Pay a visit to the QAGOMA Investigate Library on Degree 3, GOMA from Tuesday to Friday, 10am to 4.45pm to explore guides, exhibition catalogues and more .  Unique collections are out there by appointment.  

‘Open Studio: Sebastian Moody’ is at the Queensland Artwork Gallery from 28 May perhaps – 25 Sep 2022.

Highlighted Image: Sebastian Moody in ‘Open Studio’
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