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How do you do an art commission for a client 18,000 miles away?

May 29, 2020
2 min

How do you do an art commission for a client 18,000 miles away?

There’s no greater compliment for an artist to have someone recommend your work. It says they like your work. It says they like your work enough to share your work with other people. Is an art recommendation really that important? Yes. It’s not like recommending a sofa or a brand of milk. They like your work enough to stake their own integrity on your art. This is a big deal. Duffy’s Lane, (Courtcliffe Acres), Ray Monde, collage and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 2018. Th

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What to do when things go horribly wrong (in art)

Mar 10, 2020
2 min

What to do when things go horribly wrong (in art)

Sometimes art goes bad. Look at her face. The horror. This is not intentional. I wasn’t trying to create an image of a women who had been burnt in an accident. Or a woman trapped in a disfiguring face mask. I was trying to create a woman with attitude, cigarette in hand, giving the viewer a withering glance. I didn’t have the right colour papers to create realistic tones in collage. I ended up with a mess. A right awful mess. A week later, it happened again. I was struggling

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Art is dead. Long live art.

Feb 11, 2018
2 min

Art is dead. Long live art.

I’ve just gone through the most excruciating gestation for an artwork that I’ve ever gone through. And I’m still not sure the experience is over yet. It started fairly straight-forward enough. The place I live now is in the Australian countryside, on a river surrounded by vast paddocks grazed by black cattle. Ever since I moved here ten years ago, every now and then I glimpse a figure outside in the darkened windows. It’s not a reflection. It’s a horned man. The current serie

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Walking the tight-rope of an art commission

Mar 1, 2017
1 min

Walking the tight-rope of an art commission

Getting a commission is an exciting prospect, being asked to create a bespoke artwork for a benefactor is exhilarating. But it’s also a strange burden. Normally, when I create artworks, it flows, it’s a representation of what in my mind, a story I’m trying to tell, a feeling I’m trying to conjure up. With a commission, it’s not so straight forward. There’s a bit of second guessing, will they like this, what colours do they prefer, will this fit with their other works. Every t

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Is it up to artists to decide who can buy their art?

May 31, 2016
1 min

Is it up to artists to decide who can buy their art?

Here’s a strange one for you. In 2010, I created a series of artworks about words that sound the same but have different meanings. I called the series Same Same But Different. They were based on odd out-of-sync homonyms like Gulf Golf, Oprah Opera, Poor Paw and Line Lion. I created these at a time of great upheaval, when the world was looking at how the financial system could have gone so horribly wrong and how no one saw the financial collapse coming. There was an enormous a

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Bumping in to M16 Artspace

May 24, 2016
1 min

Bumping in to M16 Artspace

In just an hour I set up my works for my new show, It’s for your own good. These works explore experiences from my childhood that inform who I am now. It’s extraordinarily handy having all the works the same size and so expertly framed, because it was a simple case of banging in a nail in the wall and hanging the works. You can see how fast it was here: https://youtu.be/yMVVlC2XSqk The show opens on Thursday. I’ll let you know how it goes. #art #painting #contemporaryart #Pap

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It’s for your own good

Apr 5, 2016
1 min

It’s for your own good

Wait till your father gets home, collage and synthetic polymer paint, by Monde Monde I’m frantically working on my final works for my next exhibition at the M16 Art Space in Canberra. The works follow a similar theme to my last show – exploring our childhood experiences and how they shape us as adults. I’m obsessed about how as adults we relate to our child-self. As children we see every day things in extraordinary, disproportionate ways. This same distortion can be seen in h

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A sudden sale of artwork

Mar 29, 2016
1 min

A sudden sale of artwork

Workers Hut at Tempelhof Airport by Monde Monde One of the things I try and do as an artist is get my work in front of as many people as possible. I enter awards, I show as often as I can and I take part in community events. Every year, the Contemporary Art Society of Victoria has a fun show of A4 Artworks. Most of my work these days are far larger than A4 but I still have some of the works I did in Berlin when I stayed there for three months in the summer of 2011. I sent the

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Reworking old work is a great lesson in self-destruction #nohomo #art #collage

Mar 23, 2015
2 min

Reworking old work is a great lesson in self-destruction #nohomo #art #collage

Often when I’m creating work it’s in an absolute frenzy. I’m slapping on glue and paper, getting bits stuck to my face, the hairs on my hands become stuck together like childish dreadlocks. Then, once I’m done, I’m done. I don’t touch the thing again. Last weekend though, I went back inside the studio after not being in there a couple of weeks – and I pulled this old landscape from the cupboard. The colours were always a bit muted for me, it was something out of character. Th

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Drowning kittens; saying bye bye to my babies #art #artforsale #newhome

Jan 20, 2015
1 min

Drowning kittens; saying bye bye to my babies #art #artforsale #newhome

As a kid our cat Sally would mate with a feral Tomcat who lived in the wild. Two months later she’d pop out a litter of kitties, often in the washing basket in the laundry, amongst our dirty socks and pyjamas. Sally was a good mother and a beautiful cat with an incredible light grey fur, a colour I’ve never really seen since. And couldn’t mix on a palette even if I tried. Sometimes we’d find hessian sacks on the river’s edge under a bridge, filled with kittens and a brick. My

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Dry your tears: the child within us #art #collage

Feb 20, 2014
1 min

Dry your tears: the child within us #art #collage

I started this series almost on a whim. Experiences as children sharply determine who we will be as adults. As we mature, we become better at masking those childhood emotions, we build a stronger exterior to smooth the bumpy ride, but underneath, within us all, is still the little boy or girl, never quite believing where we are and what we’re doing. #art #painting #mask #bear #blue #collage #childhood #emotion #child #Green #braidwood #artist #paper #teddy #rayleggott #acryli

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SOLD, SOLD. Why sales validate artists.

Jan 7, 2014
1 min

SOLD, SOLD. Why sales validate artists.

SOLD. Idolatry, Acrylic and collage on canvas, Ray Leggott 2013. Stur Gallery, Xmas Group Show, 2013. Art for art’s sake is a beautiful idea – but artists have to eat. Few of us have generous benefactors to lavish funds upon us, so a sale means we can keep going. Selling work means we can buy new art supplies, sales mean we can secure a space in a studio or artist-run-initiative (ARI) and sales mean we can keep doing what we love. Sales also give us critical feedback. Selling

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When scrimping and penny-pinching are the artist’s enemies

Oct 2, 2013
1 min

When scrimping and penny-pinching are the artist’s enemies

Part of the reason I create collage is because it’s cheap. I tear up old magazines to create images and use boxboard as my canvas. It’s rudimentary, but effective. I’m lucky that paper is in love with glue and glue is head-over-heels about paper. As I move more towards assemblage and mixed media, I need to pick up a brush and paint, so of course, I chose the cheapest I could lay my hands on – and I’ve really struggled. The vibrancy of the paint wanes, bristles fall and stick

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Why kitchens are so inspiring (and messy)

Feb 20, 2013
1 min

Why kitchens are so inspiring (and messy)

The kitchen is a mess. There’s no question about it. I have a studio, so there’s no reason for the kitchen to look like this, but I work better in this space. The light is great, I’m close to hot buttered toast and endless cups of tea. The dog is just outside and I great great views to the fields to north and the changing weather on Gourock Mountain to the west. My partner is away, he’s rushed to England to be by his mother’s hospital bed, so I can leave the mess and work in

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Rauschenburg and Jasper Johns at MoMA

Dec 4, 2012
1 min

Rauschenburg and Jasper Johns at MoMA

The first one is Rauschenburg, the second isn’t Jasper Johns. What I loved about my visit to MoMA today was seeing things I’d seen before with new eyes. Since I’ve become focused on collage, I’m always on the look-out for people doing things with paper. I don’t care what they’re doing, I just want to eat up what they do. Seeing Rauschenburg’s ‘Combines’ was a special moment for me. In the past, I would have walked by them. Not any more. My collage and work with paper is reall

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Married in the car my sister was murdered in

Feb 6, 2012
1 min

Married in the car my sister was murdered in

As you know, I’ve been working on this series of collages about the death of Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru in 1980. This car collage is the last in the series. It’s a 1977 Torana Hatchback, but interestingly, the eldest son Aidan (who I depicted earlier eating a can of baked beans) was married in this car in 2008. I guess it was a way of putting it all behind him, but acknowledging the past. I like the bright yellow exterior, it’s sunny and positive but also is as sharp as the

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Picasso vomit on a bad day

Feb 2, 2012
1 min

Picasso vomit on a bad day

I’ve been working on this collage series for months now. I have a firm deadline as there’s about to be a Fourth and final inquest, on February 24, into the death of the baby girl, Azaria; a case that has lingered on for over 30 years. I thought this piece was going to be the best yet, but something went awry in the creative process. I thought I’d experiment with colour on the woman’s face and be a little less concerned about likenesses and instead create a feeling for the per

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A strange thing happened to me today

Jan 30, 2012
1 min

A strange thing happened to me today

Today, the latest edition of GQ Australia arrived in the post. That’s not the strange thing. I don’t remember subscribing but that’s not the strange thing either. The weird thing is that as I was flipping through the pages I realised that I wasn’t looking at the articles or the ads. I was looking at the colours and textures of the pages. I was thinking; That’s a great orange; I like the dull edge to that white; I like the pattern of that coat. Now as I look around me, I see t

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Back tracked, collage of Aboriginal tracker

Jan 24, 2012
1 min

Back tracked, collage of Aboriginal tracker

After Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo, Aboriginal trackers traced dingo footprints in the sand that was carrying a large bundle. There were clear imprints of knitted clothing where a dingo had rested a large bundle. This testimony was inadmissible as the man giving evidence spoke on behalf of his wife, but in first person, which was the local way. This collage is of a Anangu man in a woman’s dress; him speaking on behalf of his wife. There’s a tree of knowledge in the

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Jan 23, 2012
1 min

Collage Showdown finalists announced

It’s really exciting to see the Top 300 artworks selected for the Saatchi Online collage showdown. I am disappointed that my work didn’t make the cut, but the voting is a “Hot or Not” style voting and I knew it was always going to be an outside chance that I’d be shortlisted. It good news for the shortlisted artists and exciting to think that an artist’s work will get shown in the Saatchi Galleries. It’s amazing exposure, especially for an unknown artist. After a full house o

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