There’s so much happening for upcoming SALA Festival, South Australia’s celebration of all things visual arts.
Artist James Dodd has his finger in all sorts of exciting pies, including a Bike Art Tour Adventure, and several exhibitions.
You've got lots of exhibitions and events coming up. What are you most excited about for SALA Festival this year?
A couple of things are equally exciting for me. 'Pigment High', my solo exhibition at Hugo Michell Gallery, is an exhibition that I have been working towards for almost a year. It is a large collection of paintings that show variations of experiments and new angles that I have been testing out. It's the most abstract show I have produced for a long time and I'm quite curious to see how people will respond to it. I have been trying to make myself paint in ways that I wouldn't usually, which has been quite nerve-racking at times.
Your Bike Tour Adventure is a wonderful idea. What kinds of places can people expect to roll into?
'The Ultimate Bike Tour Adventure' will start in the CBD and meander via a few galleries and public art sites. I have been organising a couple of local artists and performers to join us along the way and give us some unexpected, and very fun experiences. I don't want to give too much away though!
What other exciting projects are on the cards for you in the near future?The other major project that I've been working towards for SALA will be presented at Light Square Gallery, as a component of the CACSA Contemporary 2015 exhibition, launching on the 6 August. I have been working on a painting machine and this outcome is kind of it's first test-run in an ongoing development process.
I find myself influenced by DIY, hacking and various industrial machinery and this machine is made up of a bunch of dismantled cordless drills, some bike bits and a whole lot of MDF and alloy strips that hold it all together. The machine isn't conceived as a robot or digitally controlled thing, more like a super-sized, shed-flavoured blender that is able to make marks on canvases.
At the launch of the project the machine will be presented alongside a suite of blank canvases and over the period of the exhibition I will be in the gallery, working the machine, making paintings. I'm excited because I have a bunch of ideas of how the thing will work, but I'm not totally sure what sort of outcomes it will produce.
Coming up next I am really looking forward to a possible day off! I will actually be out of town for a couple of weeks of SALA as I am going to Groote Eylandt, in Arnhem Land to do some workshops with remote communities out there. We will be painting some murals as part of a festival that takes place. I've been up there a few times and always have a great time! After that I will be back working on a kind of bike project with Tutti Arts and OzAsia Festival, which kicks off late September. So maybe I won't get that day off after all.
James Dodd's 'Ultimate Bike Art Adventure' takes place on 1 August. 'Pigment High' exhibits Hugo Michell Gallery until 22 August.
