The Vast Project: Turtle installations. September 8-14,2017.

Vast was a huge success, so many amazing artists, musicians, songwriters…all together in Cossack,

being inspired by the environment and each other. There will be a music album produced,

a documentary film, and exhibitions of the visual artists’ work in 2018.

For my project:

A kind of vast self-portrait.

I expanded the outline of my body, lying like a starfish, spread out to fill an empty room in the old post office building in the ghost town of Cossack.

I filled in the outline with…. terracotta turtles.

I made clay turtles using plaster press-molds, aiming to use my body weight [54 kg] in clay. It took a few hours every day, so was thankful to get a bit of help from visiting school kids and some of the other Vast artists and musos. On the last day I reached my target, 54 kilos of clay, approx. 283 turtles of varying sizes.

The result was photographed (best pic by Russell Ord Photography) in the room, then turtles were packed up and relocated on the salt-encrusted tidal mud-flats nearby, where Stormie Mills (famous street artist) and Bob Moore (ex-Mambo designer, muso and painter) collaborated on a giant drawing. Their work dwarfed my little installation in every way, but it was a fun new experience for me. (Mike Fletcher got some drone perspective overhead pics).

I was also out on the mud-flats earlier in the week, as ‘bride wrangler’, helping to get some shots and footage for Baby Guerilla‘s ghost bride concept.