TRANSART: City of Perth

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TRANSART

TRANSART is a series of annual public art commissioning initiatives that aim to integrate temporary artwork into the urban fabric of the everyday.

Each year the City of Perth opens Expressions of Interest for two individual temporary public art installations through public advertisement.

The budget for each TRANSART Commissioning project is $15,000. This budget must cover all costs associated with the practical delivery and de-mount of the installation.

The City of Perth Arts and Culture Policy encourages and fosters creativity, innovation and excellence by providing assistance to local arts and cultural activities through initiatives such as TRANSART.

The fundamental vision for TRANSART is that artists consider a project that fulfils, as much as possible, their own artistic vision in relation to the city. All art forms are eligible for consideration.

The commission, without a theme or specific agenda, is intended to engage with an extremely broad and constantly shifting audience and location. The ambition of any artists selected for this commission should be to achieve maximum impact with minimum risk (to the work, surroundings and public).

The work can be created with no limitation on the location, other than it should be within the central Perth area and, that its placement and construction complies with all relevant regulations and does not negatively impact on business and other users in the immediate vicinity.

For further information please contact:

Paola Anselmi

Arts & Cultural Development Coordinator

City of Perth

Tel: 9461 3382

Email: paola.anselmi@cityofperth.wa.gov.au

THE 2012 TRANSARTISTS – PAUL KAPTEIN and GRAEME BURGE

PAUL KAPTEIN (WA)

1– 17 May 2012

The Continental Drifters #20-22; 2012

Stirling Gardens, Perth (cnr Barrack Street & St Georges Terrace)

Paul Kaptein is a Perth-based sculptor with a national practice. Kaptein has an Honours Degree in Fine Arts from Curtin University and a Diploma of Technology in Interactive Multimedia from AMTC TAFE. He has been exhibiting his work since 1999 in solo exhibitions in Western Australia, New Zealand and Queensland. His work was selected for the City in Perth Art Award in 2007, the Bunbury Biennale in the same year and Kaptein has been selected for Sculpture by the Sea Cottesloe in 2011 and 2012.

The Continental Drifters #20 – 22 is an interpretation of a Zen garden in which a small, anonymous figure (Gobi) rakes a traditional water pattern into the sand and is apparently unnerved by what transpires. Instead of the traditional placement of rocks, this raked body of water carries the residue of history and is alive with aquatic references a whale’s tail and a shark’s fin, human activity and sinister collateral such as sea mines. As such, the work aims to explore ideas of transformation and connection.

Alongside this work, an identical but empty Zen garden and raking area is set up for public interaction through which the audience may respond to the artwork or simply engage in traditional Zen practice as a counterpoint to their daily experience.

Photography: City of Perth

GRAEME BURGE (WA)

7– 28 MAY 2012

Capital S; 2012

Murray Street Mall, Perth (cnr Barrack Street & St Georges Terrace)

Graeme Burge is a young Perth-based sculptor. Graeme comes from a trade-based practice in building as a plasterer and the automotive industry. He graduated from Edith Cowan University in 2008 and only two years later was awarded the $12,000 City of Joondalup Art Award in 2008. He has been exhibiting as a professional artist since 2005.

In Capital S the looped movement of lines reflects the changing definitions of street art, graffiti and urbanism. It tackles the balance between the intrinsic and fluid qualities of an urbanist aesthetic and society's conventions and restricitions in relation to it, all of which requires negotiation and compromise.

The monochrome nature of the piece is in stark opposition to the vivid and intense colour of much street art. The finish resembles a cast concrete architectural form, again questioning the nature of uniqueness, impermanence and immediacy versus replication and stability.