TAFE Enemy Number One!

Barry in his new home in the NSW Teachers Federation!

O'farrell government targets art in TAFE AGAIN!

I just posted the following rant on my Facebook page!

I  found out yesterday that the Fine Art departments of both Hornsby and Northern Beaches TAFEs were closed down late last week, one week before classes were scheduled to start, and despite Hornsby alone having in the region of one hundred students enrolled at the new commercial  fee rate  introduced by the O’farrell government last year.

This just demonstrates the contempt which the O’farrell government has for arts education in NSW. Indeed all education, the arts may have been hit first as a soft target, but the government plans to extend the commercialisation of TAFE to all departments eventually.

You can help by registering your support for the campaign to stop the cuts at

www.stoptafecuts.com.au and www.facebook.com/stoptafecuts

This morning I was part of a very well attended demo outside Hornsby TAFE, together with one of my Barry heads, which have already featured in this blog and which were made for exactly this purpose, after the draconian fee increases imposed by the O’farrell government last year. This is the first time he has had the opportunity to appear in person at a demo and I am pleased to say he has now been adopted by the representative of the NSW Teachers Federation to use in further action.

Here he is today. The accompanying plaque is meant to be read on two levels, WANTED ART! And WANTED for crimes against ART! But it didn’t come out well in the photo so I have agreed to NTF colouring the lettering red.

 

Barry O'Candle !

Barry O'Farrell, oops, I mean O'Candle... you'd enjoy watching him burn!

Last work on display in 2013

Well, as another academic year rolls to a close, I am happy to see my latest works on display in the See Street Gallery at Meadowbank.

Here they are in the foreground.

 

From the left, Barry, Clive and Tony, an unlovely trio I have entitled "Poliwood"!

 

Even better, from here they are moving to the Downing Center. It's not Canberra but it is the Sydney CBD!

Julie Bishop imortalised for posterity:)

Taking a look at our new bunch of unlovely politicians, I decided that, apart from Tony, the ones who show the most promise as subjects for caricature are Julie Bishop and Clive Palmer (assuming he gets in on the Nth recount as seems likely). I'll leave labour until they decide who's who, for now anyway!

I decided to start with Julie Bishop by making a silicon mould similar to the one I made of Barry in the previous post. Here is the finished mould opened up slightly so you can see the thickness of the wall.

 

 

 I made it by encasing the model with an outer wall of plasticine to minimise the amount of silicon rubber required, pouring the silicon as a one piece mould and then cutting it up the back to release the model and subsequent casts. This is the easiest way of making a silicon mould although it is expensive in terms of the amount of rubber used as the walls have to be thicker than if they were  backed with a plaster mother mould which is the more conventional way silicon moulds are constructed. This technique requires an awful lot of work but it can be scaled up pretty much  infinitely whereas my technique can only be used for small moulds.

 

And here is the mould closed and strapped shut ready for the cast to be poured, the other way up of course!

 

 

And finally, here is my first take on Julie! 

 

 

 

This time I poured the foam directly into the mould but, instead of dipping it in latex to get a latex skin covering the foam like last time, I decided to try painting on the latex/acrylic paint mixture directly. Although successful to a degree, it wasn't nearly as successful as painting over a latex skin. Basically dipping the model in latex seems to fill up all the little surface craters in the foam in a way which brushing the stuff on doesn't. Since I don't have enough latex at home at the moment to dip the model, I might try brushing on a couple of coats of pure latex on the next attempt before attempting to colour it.

 

At least the most expensive part of the exercise, the silicon mould, has been successfully completed. Compared to the cost of that, the foam is comparatively cheap. Just over A$80 for 2.9 litres but it expands up to eight times that in volume. That's a lot of foam!

 

I was using  S-FOAM, again from Barnes,  which comes in different degrees of stiffness. S-FOAM 60, which I was using, is at the more flexible end of the spectrum so I think it is possible that the firmer varieties may have less surface craters. I have seen pieces cast in foam with much smoother surfaces than I am getting so I guess I'll just have to try it and see unless anyone out there knows the answer. If so, please don't hesitate to add a comment.

More experiments with flexible materials!

Flushed with the success of my lightweight Barry O'farrell caricature (2 posts ago), I cast a foam version from a flexible mould in silicon rubber that I made some time ago.  The silicon I used was Pinkysil from Barnes, amazing stuff but very expensive! Partially because of the cost of the silicon, this head is much smaller than life size. However another other reason for the smaller size is that Pinkysil, being  an addition-curing silicon, cannot be used directly with water based clay so I was using a form of plasticine to make the model and was limited by the amount that I had, as modelling plasticine, like silicon rubber, is quite expensive although it is reusable. Nothing about this flexible modelling business is cheap:(   You can get in again, from Barnes.  I was lucky however, and was given a present of a large chunk of pre used stuff (I like to  think that it may have been part of an ANZAC figure in its previous life! Thanks Alan!).

A word of warning, cheap plasticine very often gives off sulphur vapour which can prevent the silicon from curing. I found this out to my cost, fortunately with a very small mould, ending up, not with a firm flexible mould but a sticky pink mess:(  So, if in doubt, test on a small piece!

Previously I had been using this mould to make casts in plaster, not light I know but very cheap. I have been using these to test out different finishes and patinas. This is my favourite finish to date. I used Porter's Paint's Liquid Iron and instant rust to get the look of old metal.

 

And here he is in flexible foam!

 

 

Because silicon rubber is non absorbent, it cannot be used to slip cast a latex skin so I created the foam core first by pouring the foam directly into the mould and, once it had cured (about an hour), removed it from the mould and created the latex skin by dipping it in latex. Finally it was painted in a 50 : 50 acrylic paint / latex mix as before. 

 

 

David Rowe's Exhibition

Visited David Rowe's exhibition at Ray Hughes Gallery  yesterday. It was absolutely brilliant. I only realised that it was on when browsing some of his Facebook photos and came across this flyer.

It is definitely worth a visit for those of us who enjoy a politically correct free zone:) But you only have until this Wednesday, 2nd October, to get there.