The Sport of Art

2/2 – 7/4 2013 PERTH INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL & FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE PRESENT INSIDE RUNNING The Sport of Art Erin Coates Simon Horsburgh Richard Lewer Gabriella Mangano & Silvana Mangano Todd McMillan Sarah Jane Pell Patrick Pound Nick Selenitsch A PROJECT BY RICHARD LEWER & RIC SPENCER INSIDE RUNNING The Confessions of a Sport 2 . & Art Addict Ric Spencer THE CONFESSIONS OF A SPORT & ART ADDICT INSIDE RUNNING Ok I admit it I’m a jock at heart, I Likewise hanging off a ledge, structure and feedback loops. As he says Steel springs”) and of him developing his love sport. As a kid I was always throwing judging the next hold or optimising the “Shooting hoops is a meditative training legendary skills by repeatedly hitting a golf a ball and catching it – up and down, path of a bouldering run, through her exercise for playing basketball. Art is a ball with a stump up against the water- throwing the tennis ball against the wall, climbing Erin Coates also responds to meditative training exercise for real life”. tank near his house. And who can forget kicking the footy up onto the roof and these types of stress levels on the body and Within sport, and particularly Cliff Young, the Potato farmer who ran catching it as it came bouncing back down. the need to internalise knowing. Her work here team based pursuits, the idea of (shuffled) in gumboots for over five days The ball changed depending on what for Inside Running has been developed team becomes the focus… and the teams to win the first Sydney to Melbourne ultra- season it was but the premise didn’t, over through seven years of climbing, learning exploits become synonymous with the marathon or Shane Gould’s five Olympic and over, the relationship between ball and techniques and building confidence in individual. Over the 34 seasons, Selenitsch medals in the pool as a fifteen year old hand becoming subconscious, body and her body’s capabilites. Coates’ work has scored more then 10,000 points, In Australia sport has a definitive ball becoming one. As a kid sport seemed reflects the technicalities of climbing and in the process pushing his life into the link with mythology, it often conjures less a word to me and more a state of being the precision and planning required for a realm of the team, and the legend of their images, in a sense it is the stuff of legends – of simply being in a state of activity; of successful climb, but also the challenge and accomplishments. and those legends become collected running, climbing, riding, swimming. The the fun of interacting with the landscape Team sports are battles; for a team and engrained in our cultural psyche. idea that sport was something that was (whether it has been formed over millennia to go into battle, training and the constant Mythology has a social function, it builds separate to other parts of life didn’t cross or built in the last twenty years) and the rigorous pursuit of skills needed for ethics and through this a sense of cultural my mind. Equally neither did the notion spontaneity required to get the best out of survival are required, constantly refining identity. Through perceived personal that drawing was separate to jumping these interactions. Incorporating elements both defensive and attacking moves. relationships with those that play out or making something out of cardboard of climbing and bouldering, “buildering” However today, particularly in the media, these myths (icons) we develop a sense different to learning headstands. Maybe or urban climbing brings to the fore the sporting hero’s endless training is of self worth and from that a broader life growing up in the hills of Perth was knowing the limits of the body and where usually forgotten. Today the sportsperson nationalism. As it’s played out in Patrick different to elsewhere (I’m sure it was) it is situated and what it can achieve - in seemingly appears on the big stage ready Pound’s work, folklore and mythology built but for me learning to swing and learning essence the phenomenology of being for battle and if they win then they are around sport become fundamental to the to draw a straight line seemed to be two conscious of the self as it moves through ordained incomparably gifted. (Unlike tenant of understanding the self within a inseparable things. its environment. ninja films) we are rarely privy to the broader and socially identifiable narrative. Inside Running is not a treatise Gabriella Mangano and Silvana endless hours of training that prepares Pound himself emerges to fight the good on the equality of art and sport nor Mangano’s work also involves itself in this these athletes for their moment in the fight - always there when the action is a theoretical dissertation on the (in) type of nuanced dialogue, incorporating sun. And we are definitely not privy to the taking place. Through his engagement with comparable position of sport and art in a series of choreographed movements burnout and faded dreams of the many walking around Princes Park (home of the life. Neither is it specifically related to the which relate back to their penchant for which help paints this moment for the Carlton Football Club) Pound is conscious history of the two (a long one) but rather trying sports that involve fluidity through one. The cultural climate of sport and art of the importance of the encounter, the it brings together the work of nine artists space. These include attempting a variety in this sense are not so different and what moment that changes a game, a career, a for whom the idea of activity (particularly of sports which have led them to recent the world tends to miss when the media life… but also of collecting these moments as it relates to a sport) is central to the excursions into somatic practices that speaks of the creativity of particular artists and how memorabilia is used to develop way they view their art practice. Like me involve a holistic body-centred approach, is that they too spend many, many hours myths. To be remembered in history we they’re addicted to sport and art and the like Kung Fu, Tai chi and Qigon. Rendered in training and that within the arts burnout need to achieve but history of course is nexus of the two - which culminates in in video, their movements capture the and failures can also be a part of the reliant on embellishment to survive. 3 . different approaches to coaching, learning, flowing gracefulness and energy that landscape. Todd McMillan delves into the Central to the premise of Inside adaptation and translation. For all of them exudes from bodies conscious - through murky waters of judgement, critique and Running is getting inside sport and the though the skills they have developed training - of their breath and vitality: “We the fear of not being good enough – but rationale behind playing, but to also as artists is testimony to hours spent in enjoy training as a group, the dynamic for me his videos of swimming and rowing recognise that such things as sport and the studio and also equates with lessons energy in a room. The rhythm of training; are not so much about failure but the idea art are built on mythology and the desire of discipline and training learnt through sounds, silence, vibrations, movement, of pushing yourself into the unknown to to literally, through skills development, much time in the practice and playing silence, breathing… our bodies belonging see what lies there. In this sense his work build a narrative around yourself through of sport. to this.” is brave and the idea of “not succeeding” engagement and participation. I spent many hours learning and Understanding the dynamic becomes secondary to the idea of just Sport, like art, offers us moments honing sports skills - both in my own time relationship between body, space and beginning – and of filling the void of time of such sublime novelty that it persuades and through training sessions – developing others is also pivotal in the confines of the that lies in front of each of us. us that the world is not predictable and that what is now termed “muscle memory”; that boxing ring. Richard Lewer’s large scale Simon Horsburgh’s sport of choice we are better, much better, then the sum of is through the repetition of an act acquire drawing installation for Inside Running is also water based and also incorporates this ourselves. Both art and sport can offer us the strength and consolidation of a specific responds not only to the ring but also sensation of taking off into the unknown. that, the possibility of possibility, in striving motor task into the very fibre of your being. the training gym and the tactility of the Each wave is an individual element of for a newer, better benchmark we come So much so that when your body is under equipment used in boxing. A nostalgia nature and deserves the complete attention across such unfathomable occurances stress and your mind hasn’t the time or for the atmosphere of the gym eeks out of and acknowledgement these gifts bring. and outcomes that we can only nod with oxygen to think, your body can take over Lewer’s work; as the body responds to all For Horsburgh surfing is not something disengenuosness at why we bother with and perform in its own right. Sarah Jane the senses; touch, smell and taste as they undertaken on the weekends but rather plans. Creativity needs discipline, skill and Pell’s work takes the idea of training as a become apparent though his drawings.

Load more