Open Studio: Sebastian Moody – QAGOMA Blog

Brisbane-primarily based conceptual artist Sebastian Moody talks about returning to perform at QAGOMA for his Open Studio installation — and his formative encounters with Fluxus artwork at the Gallery — immediately after practically 20 yrs. Visit Open Studio at the Queensland Artwork Gallery for insights into the artistic exercise of modern Australian artists.

Sebastian Moody introduces the Open Studio venture

https://www.youtube.com/observe?v=EGNwxoVIBc8

Mark Gomes: Open up Studio, with its target on audience participation and inclusivity, shares an ethos with your do the job, a large amount of which has been designed for general public areas and uses language to investigate how which means is established and shared. Does your Open up Studio task goal to link persons in a equivalent way?

Sebastian Moody: To commence with, I want to observe that I worked as a Gallery and Visitor Products and services Officer at QAGOMA virtually 20 decades in the past, and it is really good to be back. Although working at the Gallery — observing men and women hunting at artwork and contemplating about what artwork is — I realised all people arrives to art with what’s presently likely on in their very own heads. For me, art’s often been a way to get people attempt to have an understanding of how all those tips entered their heads in the first area. In this way, I imagine my get the job done sits strongly in the tradition of vintage, 1960s ‘capital C’ Conceptual Artwork. What I’m striving to do is get people to consider about how they make their aesthetic options, how they interpret works of art.

Open Studio: Sebastian Moody

MG: Are there certain artists functioning in this vein you ended up drawn to whilst studying in the QAGOMA Research Library and exploring the Assortment for your Open Studio project?

SM: There are two main artists. The 1st is the Swede Bengt af Klintberg and his Orange event of 1963, which I very first remember observing on show at QAG when I was 17 or 18 in the Fluxus exhibition, ‘Francesco Conz and the Intermedia Avant-Garde’ (1997–98). It is fundamentally an instructional do the job for peeling an orange and lining all the parts up in a row: in other phrases, transforming a sphere into a line. I definitely like the very simple poetry of it. A good deal of Klintberg’s performs have easy instructions that, when you go through them, you kind of accomplish in your head. Which to me is what Conceptual Art should really do. You never require to make big community artworks — that is what post-conceptualism is, when Conceptual Artwork was supplied a spending budget. Actually, it is adequate to only believe about these items.

The 2nd artist is Alison Knowles, who labored in New York and was a founding member of Fluxus. She has a lot of educational performs, also, that illustrate what I indicate. I assume, essentially, Fluxus was attempting to show you that you could be an artist. That, to me, is inspirational. I consider we have dropped that punk, emancipatory frame of mind, and it is time to renew it. Nowadays, Fluxus artworks are revered in publications, but do they stand up when you essentially abide by as a result of their recommendations? Open Studio is a good excuse for me to share these Conceptual artworks from the QAGOMA Assortment with audiences, have them comply with the recommendations and stimulate an any one-can-do-it mindset. Like the Fluxus artists, I am interested in ways of producing artwork the place, as the creator, I really do not have to be responsible for the work — the audience is.

Sebastian Moody spoke with Mark Gomes, Senior Editor, Print and Digital Media, QAGOMA in March 2022.

Bengt af Klintberg ‘Orange celebration no. 3 (1963)’

Alison Knowles ‘Leone D’Oro (portfolio)’

QAGOMA Study Library

The QAGOMA Analysis Library’s special collections are a loaded resource of research materials that consists of exceptional and special objects to encourage and notify. Objects consist of ephemera and objects (a frog skin, a rubber duck) to LPs, artist books, rare publications, correspondence, and pictures. Noteworthy collections include the Peter Tyndall and Robert MacPherson Correspondence Archive 1970–2014 and the Asia Pacific Triennial Archive as nicely as a vary of Fluxus-connected assets.

Check out the QAGOMA Investigation Library on Amount 3, GOMA from Tuesday to Friday, 10am to 4.45pm to investigate textbooks, exhibition catalogues and additional .  Distinctive collections are out there by appointment.  

‘Open Studio: Sebastian Moody’ is at the Queensland Artwork Gallery from 28 May – 25 Sep 2022.

Highlighted Impression: Sebastian Moody in ‘Open Studio’
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