Michelle Houlihan, Textured Paper.

This is my friend Michelle Houlihan's work from 2nd year painting. The work is beautiful and sensual. It just asks to be gawked at and touched. And it is even more interesting when you zoom in on it and observe the folds and cracks. If you only viewed the close-up you wouldn't know what it was.  It could be an old scrunched up discarded map. The sattelite image of a parched landscape line that of the Australian interior.

Construction of Australia Through Cardboard

This work started as an experiment to find a way of making a template for a mould in order to make future wax pieces. But I found that it wasn't going to be too useful for that as there were too many gaps for the wax to leak out. But I thought that it made an interesting piece on it's own. I like how it looks like a perimeter wall. It could be a statement on Australia's anti immigration policy. It has very tight restrictions on who they allow to enter the country. Not just anybody obviously.

Sattelite Image of Australia

Here, I was just playing around with the sattelite image of Australia. The shape of Australia like it's flag is instantly recognisable to me so I had the idea of revolving it just to get a different perspective. For example that's how Australia looks from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia/Malaysia, the Indian Ocean, New Zealand. I blew up the picture from an atlas and cut it out. It took effort and I think it should be merited as a work on it's own. The colours are appealing and you can see the contrast between Australia's lush forests and deserts.

Emigration - Sketchbook...so far

Convicts;
The first Irish that arrived in any great number were transported as convicts. The picture on the right is done in black ink. The one on the left is just a pencil sketch

Irish in Australia;
This is another ink. It is a composed of three scenes that revolve around the differant experiences of the Irish in Australia. One is of the famous outlaw Ned Kelly, who represents rebelliousness and anti-establishment. The one with the people panning for gold in the stream represents those Irish brought to Australia by the promise of opportunities and wealth. The church and family represent the way the Irish established themselves and proliferated in their new land, carving out a strond identity.

Gold Rush:
A pen drawing of fortune seekers in the Australian outback. They were composed of many Irish people.

Kalgoorlie; Evolution of a Gold Rush Town
These are a series of pen drawings of the story of how Kalgoorlie evolved from a miners camp to a jewel of Western Australia's gold rush age.

Paddy Hannon

 

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Emigration - Australia in Wax

The above pictures are my experiments in wax moulding. I was playing with the shape of Australia as part of the theme of emigration. They were straight forward to execute but it was time consuming. I started by making a mould of clay around the shape of Australia. Then I poured  wax into the mould. It hardened and I removed the clay mold. 

The first smaller mold of Australia was made through a combination of techniques that basically involved pouring and dripping different colored layers of wax straight onto the one before it. It wasn't exactly neat or precise but it had a very interesting dappled effect.

For the bigger wax mold I attempted to put in a bit more planning and precision. This time I separated the shape of Australia into different parts using bits of  clay that worked as kind of buffer or wall. These different parts were based on  the location of Australia's rain forests, deserts, grasslands et cetera... The orange in the middle for example is the desert while the dark green represents the forests. I poured wax straight into these molds and then removed the clay when the wax had hardened somewhat. Then I moved onto the next section. The important thing though is to remember to have an even layer between all, which I didn't have. This led to some parts being too thick and others being paper thin.