Richard William Wheater: Neon Workshop…

 

Here at the Hideout, Megsie’s had a hankering to do neon for years – not the sign variety*, more of a nebulous yearning to play with ethereal installation (out in the landscape) and maybe the odd Ned and Shwe – so she’s been known to pour over programs at the ‘Chuck or Northlands that offered neon workshops from time to time – only to set them wistfully aside in the light of more pressingly prosaic commitments. Such is life and don’t we all know it.

So when she saw that Richard William Wheater (who’s work she’d been clocking on and off over the last few years) was out from the old Dart to run an intensive workshop at the Canberra Glassworks, well, it was just too good an opportunity to miss. [Notwithstanding that it’s been in excess of a decade since she dallied with a torch (with the wonderful James Minson) and that it patently takes more than 4 days to get even a vague grip on Neon, duh!! n(Ed)] And off we went.

And a very interesting 4 days it was, as one might expect; plenty of challenges, lots of fun (in terms of Megsie’s very peculiar sense of humour), anxiety in spades, lessons learnt (again!) and progress (of sorts) made. So hey, Ops Normal!

 

 

Days ended with James Turrell (or Hotel Hotel) and one morning started with Light Yoga…which really isn’t our thing ‘cos, as you know, Megsie would only assume this position for mooning…

 

 

or this one for the Haka…

 

…but, hey, the shadow play was fabulous…

 

After which we swung by Ken+Julia Yonetani’s Crystal Palace at NGA Contemporary…

 

Gorgeous.

A surprise treat was a visit and demo by Melbourne Neon maestro Steven Cole (whose father made the iconic Skipping Girl sign!) with his protégé Katie and Ferdinand…

 

And the rest of the time was spent torch hopping (and bung hunting!) with a little hot shop thrown in…

 

Anyways, it was all quite intense and exhausting – but not entirely discouraging. And it was quite marvellous to be there to witness one of Harry’s hearts charged up and glowing/flickering (we predict a wave of emotive installations coming soon to a gallery near you…)

So what, you may ask, has Megsie taken away from it all? Well, a serious determination, it goes without saying, to get hold of a torch pronto and get bending! And plenty of affirmation, on various other counts. And it was great to do the workshop with Bernz (we’ll definitely be kicking the studio footy around coast-side.)

 

[ *as a writer, Megsie’s disinclined to use text in her artwork – the only exception being…yep, you guessed it…’cunt’. n(Ed)]