Objects In Motion: Tuggeranong Arts Centre

‘An opportunity to bring together works by artists that make objects and use them in view and animation, Objects In Motion features glass and drawings by Tom Moore, marvellous modelling and video by sculptor Tom Buckland and amazing puppets and tiny props from award-winning stop motion animators Eleanor Evans and Giovanni Aguilar.  The show offers a glimpse behind the scenes and into the processes and imaginations of these magical artists.’

Ann McMahon, Curator

 

 

 

This is the first time Tom has been featured in an animation driven exhibition and there will be multiple screens showing short films and animations along with some of the starring glass creatures.  Tom writes, ‘The intention of my exhibition work is to present innovative craft objects in new and accessible ways that will amaze and delight a varied audience.  In the early 2000’s I began constructing mixed-media landscapes for glass characters to inhabit and interact with to make dreamlike stories.

 

These settings are rather like idiosyncratic museum-dioramas for imaginary specimens.  The protagonists are hybrid creatures that blur the boundaries between plants, animals and machines, these include Plantbird, Torpedoshark and Potatofishcar.

 

 

As the work progressed, I worked with Grant Hancock, an accomplished photographer to record these scenes.  I started wanting to animate glass creatures in order to show them blinking and twitching within the slideshows that I present to explain my art practice.  With this in mind I began collaborating with Nigel Koop, musician and self taught filmmaker.  I quickly realised the potential to do a lot more: to elaborate on the narratives that had previously been implied and to create cohesive stories.  And to display these little funny films surrounded by the objects and scenery depicted in the animations.

 

One of the features that drew me to glassblowing was the dangerous and dexterous fire-juggling feel of it.  I am similarly attracted to the smoke and mirrors trickery that is possible with digital animation.  The computer can be asked to make objects shrink, grow, warp change colour or explode without changing the original object at all.  There is something gorgeously contradictory about exhibiting an intact glass character alongside an animation which shows it being destroyed, and then whole again, and yet again destroyed.  [The first few shorts and films were combinations of stop motion, digital animation and using the glass creatures as puppets.  There were a lot of late nights and hilarity, along with trying to come up with sound effects for all the shenanigans.]

 

 

 

I remain optimistic that the combination of handmade glass with digital animation, which can so easily allow the characters to defy gravity, might also enable them to melt the coldest heart.

 

 

 

I was invited to participate in the 2016 Adelaide Biennial which included being selected to have my work animated and projected onto the Art Gallery of South Australia.  Lucky for me, I was paired-up with lead animator Jonathan Nix and we had some hilarious excitement collaborating to produce a delightful looping climate-change allegory.  I asked Jonathan to make an accompanying soundscape, and this animation was also presented in the interior of the gallery within a large installation of my work.

 

 

I could not wait to work with Jonathan again and had the opportunity in 2020 thanks to a grant from Arts SA to commission him to make an animation for a major solo exhibition that toured to 12 venues nationally.  It is difficult to describe how wonderfully Chorus of Wonders enlivened this exhibition.  Tragically, Jonathan became very ill and passed away in late 2023.  I am so glad that this exhibition will enable more people to see Jonathan’s incredible and joyful creativity.

 

 

Objects In Motion is on from the 18 October-13 December 2024

Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm, Saturday 10am-4pm

137 Reed Street, North Greenway, ACT 2901, (02) 62931443

 

At the Canberra Short Film Festival there will be a screening of animations from the exhibition on Saturday 30 November, 4-5pm.

Objects in the show are from the archives of Tom Moore and leant graciously from the private collection of Dr A. Reid.