Can you remember how you were before the world told you how to be?

We live in an era of troubled thinking. A state of extreme restlessness and confusion. Like an animal peering out of a forest on fire, we’re putting very little trust in tomorrow.

The artists in Carpe Delirium seek to embrace the insanity of these days by seizing a moment in time and exploring its fragility, heartache and impermanence.

The voices in used things.

Landscapes of nudes, dancers, animals, and birds influenced by acute psychic states.

The transitory nature of demolition derbies, horse auctions and a brutal regional Australia now destroyed by fire.

The secluded bedrooms and bathrooms of Australia’s oldest homes in which women withdraw into themselves to reflect and dream.

The sad glory of streetscapes and abandoned buildings facing destruction.

The daily chaos of children, toys and mental noise in which a female body quietly declines…

Carpe Delirium invites you to enter through the broken windows of the lost, neglected and abandoned to discover the beautiful, haunting and erotic.

Join artists Jasmine Anderson, Renee Falez, Philip Ricketson, Melita Rowston, Jo Shand and Hiske Weijers in the back streets of St Peters among the towering warehouse walls of Tortuga Studios to celebrate the end of the world as we know it.

Embrace the chaos, seize your delirium, fuck the system!

Opening night – Friday 20 March, 2020, 6pm – 9pm

Vintage LP beats by DJ Anthony Allstarr
Live animated haiku projections by Jim Griffiths
Music from 7pm:
Peter Fenwick
Suburban Bukowskis Solo (AKA Benito Di Fonzo)
Huknee Puknee

Tortuga Studios
31 Princes Highway, St Peters, NSW
FREE

Gallery hours:
Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 March: 1-5pm
Friday 27 March: 3-7pm
Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March: 1-5pm
Saturday 28 March event: ‘Stories that never get told.’ An eve of performance poetry amongst the paintings, 6-8pm.
Sunday 29 March, Closing night informal drinks 5-7pm

www.tortugastudios.org.au

Our artists:

Jasmine Anderson

“My work is a collection of visual poetry that expresses introspection and the realms of fantasy. Narratives are derived from my own life experience: fragility, heartache, feminism, madness, and self-growth. The naive, dream-like and imaginative qualities of my work are often combined with a dark edge of erotica. My work is sentimental and raw – a dichotomy of confidence and vulnerability, an expression of grunge purity. I seek to explore the transitory nature of life, loss and impermanence yet I still desire to make a mark that lasts.”

Jasmine is a recent graduate of the National Art School. She works across multiple mediums including ceramics, painting, video, performance, and photography. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Redfern Community Art Show’, 2015, ‘Moonlight Feminist Wine Club Group Show’, 2018, ‘National Art School Graduate Show’, 2018, ‘Gaffa Crimson Wave Group Show’, 2019, ‘Alpha House Solo Show’, 2019, ‘Zed Gallery Group Show’, 2019, ‘Freda’s Down Under Space Erythrophobia’, 2019.

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/jasmine_velvet__
@jasmine_velvet__

Tumblr:
jasminevelvetconcetta.tumblr.com

Renee Falez

“Stains. Memories. Erased. Scuffs. Tears. Dirt. Objects. Shadows. Linearity. Loss. Photocopies. Ideas. Words. Lyrics. Scraps.

I’m living between worlds, not always able to project a clear path. I write/make music/make art. Sometimes this comes from disparate cultural spaces including, punk/post punk music, catharsis, poetry, journaling, parenting, and the experience of daily functions suffering sometimes.

There are voices in used things. I’m interested in the cultural signifiers carried in objects and garments. Remnants, sounds, colours, and how these piece together to form a whole – like an imprint left on the psyche after a dream.

I revere the old, imperfect and damaged. Irregularities in machine made commodities may be objects in rebellion. I like it when wallpaper is stained. It feels like the end of the world sometimes. My art is my inventory of these interactions.”

Renee graduated from the National Art School in 2009 with Honours in Printmaking.
Recent exhibitions include: ‘Philip Ricketson, Renee Falez’, Alpha Gallery, 2018, ‘Dirty Slutz’, The Old Sign Shop, 2013, ‘Thee Arbitrarium of Disappointed Things’, INDEXspace, 2011, ‘Surface to Space’, Sheffer Gallery, 2010,

Facebook:
facebook.com/yellowagainstthegrey/

Philip Ricketson

“My paintings are about layers of meaning being revealed in the doing of them. I don’t know what my work is about until l paint it. I paint people occupied by their environment. Usually their space is shared with animals or birds and a psychic event. Gradually, over years, new things appear, like a black bird maybe. I try to fit everything in.”

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/ricketsonphilip
@ricketsonphilip

Melita Rowston

“The house even more than the landscape is a psychic state” Gaston Bachelard.

In 2019, I became intrigued with the strangely preserved and very feminine spaces of Australia’s oldest ‘living museum’ homes.

As I tiptoed through these gentile Colonial relics: Elizabeth Farm, Ripponlea House, Ayers House, (among others), I wondered about the women who once lived within these domestic spheres. Exiled over the oceans from very far away, how did they make sense of a hostile landscape, ripped from its true custodians, to which they knew they couldn’t belong?

Stepping into these women’s most intimate spaces, I felt compelled to paint the mirrors in these rooms and to reflect back real women I know. In many ways we are them and they are us.

Standing on the shoulders of Edouard Vuillard and Grace Cossington Smith, this series explores loss, memory, the conflation of woman/landscape/culture, and general white anxiety about identity and place.

Melita is a writer, director, performer, and painter. She holds a Grad Cert, Art and Design, Swinburne, BFA – Painting, VCA, Grad Dip – Directing, NIDA, MA – Creative Writing, UTS.

She held her first solo exhibition at The George Paton Gallery, Melbourne at the age of 21. In 1998, she put down the brush to follow her passion for theatre. In 2018, she picked it up again. Recent exhibition: Modern Nostalgia, Tortuga Studios, 2018.

melitarowston.com

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/melitarowston
@melitarowston

Jo Shand

Jo Shand explores themes of transition, loss and regeneration.

For over twenty years, Jo has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions in independent and regional Australian galleries. Selected for many shows, including North Sydney Art Prize, Mosman Art Prize and S.H. Ervin Gallery’s Salon de Refuses, Jo was a finalist in the City of Sydney’s City of Villages Art Prize (where her work was shown throughout the city in large scale reproductions) and she won the St Stephens Newtown Art Award. A graduate of National Art School, she is currently based in Newcastle, NSW.

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/jo_shand_art
@jo_shand_art

Hiske Weijers

“I feel increasingly desperate about being ignored by this relentless tunnel-vision government. Since 2007, my studio has been based in St Peters. I have painted the character and beautiful colours of old walls and buildings in the surrounding streets –
abstract versions of houses and telegraph wires. I’ve then watched these places be destroyed for freeways, more cars…

In Berlin, I love to explore the sad old glory of abandoned buildings. My recent focus has been an abandoned ballroom in Grunau. I entered through a broken window to discover this derelict, rotting ballroom, its antechambers and dark cellars. The amazing beauty of the light shining on the grand piano as I played. They have now started to take it down…

My work comes from a connection I feel with the subject. Capturing these moments before destruction makes time stop. I seek that simple impression.”

Hiske Weijers lives between Sydney and Berlin. She was born in the Netherlands. She studied Fine Art at TAFE SA then returned to Amsterdam to study modern dance. Back in Australia, she graduated from COFA with a BA- Fine Art in 2001. During this time, she helped run Kilo Studios in Regent Street, Redfern. She then moved to the artist-run Mekanarky Studios in Turrella where she managed and curated their gallery space before basing herself in St Peters.

hiskeweijers.com

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/hiskeweijers
@hiskeweijers

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/HiskeWeijers/

https://www.facebook.com/events/3067087753342496/

Opening night – Friday 20 March, 2020, 6pm – 9pm

Tortuga Studios
31 Princes Highway, St Peters, NSW
FREE

Gallery hours:
Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 March: 1-5pm
Friday 27 March: 3-7pm
Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March: 1-5pm
Saturday 28 March event: ‘Stories that never get told.’ An eve of performance poetry amongst the paintings, 6-8pm.
Sunday 29 March, Closing night informal drinks 5-7pm

The post Carpe Delirium – group exhibition – 20.3.20 appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

Set to roar into life as the sun slinks over the horizon on Saturday 10th August, the garden will feature the work of over 40 artists, fire-based installations, interactive works, sculptures, projections, live music, DJs, campfires, food trucks and more beneath the jet trails at Sydenham Green.

“Fire’s real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences” Farenheit 451

— See you in The Fire Garden —

The post The Fire Garden – at Sydenham Green – 10.08.19 appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

LET’S EAT CAKE.
Photography exhibition opening as part of the 2019 Sydney Mardi Gras festival.

Come along to celebrate!

About the Exhibition:

“It’s personal. I have always marched and have felt it important to document our journey, our fight for equality. I am thrilled and proud that this has happened in my (our) lifetime…”

The importance for the legalities of the recognition of equal rights for marriage is that the LGBTQIA+ communities see this as a step forward for communities and families for the equal respect, acceptance and acknowledgement of loving relationships between people. A human right to be acknowledged equally.

For more than fourteen years, Australians have been taking to the streets to protest for equal rights for gay marriage in Australia. Hunt’s photographic series documents the Sydney and Melbourne LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as our straight allies, marching together to acknowledge gay marriages as equal to straight marriages.

This exhibition is a celebration of our first year of equal marriage rights in Australia, coupled with an exlcusive book launch of LET’S EAT CAKE, with copies available on the night.

Maylei Hunt is a local social documentary photographer who is now based in Melbourne.

Artist Talk:

Sat 23 Feb at 2pm, at Tortuga Studios
Bookings via:

Mardi Gras Info Link: http://www.mardigras.org.au/events/lets-eat-cake

The post LET’S EAT CAKE. – by Maylei Hunt – 16.02.19 appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

In the crevices of a darkened world in the back streets of St Peters glow exotic urban flowers that bloom but once a year and only at night. In the night garden light sculptures, installations and projections burnish the inky darkness, creating a sensory, evocative world full of salacious suggestion, delicate beauty and an ominous shiver of fear.

In association with Arcade Screenprinting, Dirty Kitsch, The Forge, The Velvet Garage and Little Flowers, and for the fourth year in a row, Tortuga Studios is proud to present some of Sydney’s most intriguing artists as they tend to their garden beneath the shadows of the night.

Follow the glimmer along Mays Lane to visit the night garden that blooms at Tortuga Studios, its tendrils lighting the sultry dusk of Applebee and Hutchinson Streets from sunset on Friday September 26th 2014.

Corner Applebee and Hutchinson Streets
St Peters
Friday 26th September 2014 6.30pm
FREE

Image credit: Chthonic 4 (Bliss) by Garth Knight

The post In the Night Garden 2014 appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

Tortuga studios has had a busy 2014, back in January all hands were on deck for the creation of the Junk Jukebox. This video shows its creation and installation and features Tortugan musicians who spontaneously took to the revolving stage at the St Peters warehouse to test it out before it was shipped out and given a whirl at Bondi and Coogee beaches.

When Sydney’s creative industry needs something made that’s out of the ordinary they often get it made at Tortuga Studios. Alien Proof Construction are the backbone to the set design crew at the warehouse and constructed the revolving stage featured in this video.

Waverley and Randwick Councils, GPY&R Sydney teamed up with Will O’Rourke and The Glue Society to commission the Junk Jukebox made at Tortuga Studios.

Vectorpunk also stabled at industrial pirate island of Tortuga  produced this video and rendered the animation. Thanks to other Tortugans, Stuart Macleod and Alex Holver for capturing the original footage.

The Junk jukebox was made to encourage Sydneysiders visiting Coogee and Bondi beaches to dispose of their litter in public rubbish and recycling bins. Music was used as a behavioural change motivator in a campaign that encourages beachgoers to dispose of their garbage in bins.

When the Jukebox was tested at Tortuga studios, Tortugan musicians stepped forward and created a spontaneous memorable jam as The Revolving minds. Featured in the jam is Sid Sidlow on guitar and sitar effects, Mashy P on Animoog ipad app and Reuben Alexander on drums.

listen to the whole jam at….

https://soundcloud.com/mashy-p/the-revolving-minds

The post The Junk Jukebox set out to sea at Tortuga appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

This Friday 20th Dec, 6 till 9pm
Tortuga Studios , 31 Princes Hwy, St Peters

Fifteen feet of Bundy bear looms up ahead, a small pink waistcoat with Meet Me At The Ettamogah Pub barely covering his moulting pelt; beneath a wealth of weary Best & Less bras, deep in a sagging divorce bag, Mad Max II is immortalised on VHS, and a stuffed squirrel perkily chokes on its nuts.

A bedraggled flamingo is working it at the edge of a perfectly manicured lawn, while a guinea pig in a floral bow-tie struggles with a severe case of turf burn. This is it. This is the lawn sale, the one-time, once-only chance-of a-lifetime haggle-fest, the chance to pick up a work of art for the price of a small bedraggled puppy listed as “untrainable”. 

The auction will feature the work of over 30 artists, including Alien Proof Construction, Pete Strong, Bunkwaa, Pirate Photography, Lu Campbell-Smith, Philippe Vincent, Dean Sewell, Will Coles, Andrea Davies, Azelia Maynard, Justin Harvey, Brian Paisley, Reuben Alexander, Rachael Lafferty, Sam Ash, Isaac Gallagher, Terry Archer, Swerve Harris, Gawaa, Chris Lego, Terhor, Shanta, Gre Richards, Jasmine Poole, Kathy Leung, Denis Mizzi, Abbey Piaud, with more still to be confirmed…

So sharpen your elbows, get your jostle on and dig in for a bargain basement bonanza on anything that can’t be screwed down.

Did we mention there’s crab racing? And performances by The Rusty Spring Syncopators, The Sample Minds and Loonatic Spectacular. And crabs. Don’t forget the crabs.

Come early for a 6pm Sample Minds performance and stick around for an amazing evening to remember and grab yourself a xmas prezzie bargain while your at it.

The Rusty Spring Syncopators playing at 7.30..

“Drawing bigger and better crowds each gruesome vicious night with their cruel brand of crusty blues, rusty rags and manky-janky jazz, the “Original” Rusty Spring Syncopators have caused such a riproar in the barrelhouse that they may fairly be described as “gods”. Armed with the sounds from their hand-crafted junkyard contraptions and channeling the energy of a forgotten American yesteryear, this band beats out a mean tune.”

The post The Lawn Sale appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

This river of creativity has flowed through community empowering events, free festivals, political activism, urban art, underground electronic music culture and soul searching surrealism and contains within its matrix many memories, concepts and ideas.

Sydney has been Vectorpunk’s home since 1987, it’s colourful and active extended musical and cultural underground has been an inspiration and catalyst for creativity.

Landing a part time job recently at the Ace Props warehouse in Sydney’s Petersham inspired the theme for this exhibition

Walking into Ace Props for the first time struck a chord with me. The tumble down warehouse in Petersham where the event props are stored was a sight to behold, random storage for a thousand parties and events, the place reminded my of my creative river. It was as if this place is where Sydney’s party river deposited all the flotsam and jetsam of decades of social gatherings that are now washed up in a giant billabong drained of water to reveal the colourful and surreal deposits.

The crooked tumbledown warehouse full of party props ran wild in my imagination. The symbols of bygone eras are stacked high mixed up with an array of curiosities and collectables all radiating the memories the the events they attended and gathering dust until they get a chance to be celebrated again.

Props to the Props is an exhibition of the art of Peter Strong at Tortuga Studios, 31 Princes hwy, St Peters.

The opening night will kick of at 6pm on Friday 15^th November and will feature the music of The Sample Minds plus D.J’s and visuals.

Expect new and old multi media works from screen print editions to painting and digital media on canvas, paper and light boxes, inspired by life, the universe and the surreal collection of props at the Ace Props warehouse as well as Australia’s colourful musical and political underground.

The post Props to the Props – A Solo Show By Peter Strong appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

As the Gregorian cycle grinds through its shuddering revolutions, sparks cast into the gloaming, we entice you to explore a dark world that glimmers with life.

(please tuck your friggatriskaidekaphobia snuggly beneath your arm).

In the crevices of a darkened world in the back streets of St Peters glow exotic urban flowers that bloom but once a year and only at night. In the night garden light sculptures, installations and projections burnish the inky darkness, creating a sensory, evocative world, full of salacious suggestion, delicate beauty and an ominous shiver of fear.

In association with the Sydney Fringe Festival, MAYS, INDEX, Wundermite, The Forge, Dirty Kitsch, Arcade Screenprinting, Tabula Rasa and Natural Knots Dreadlocks, Tortuga Studios are proud to present some of Sydney’s most intriguing artists as they tend to their garden beneath the shadows of the night.

Tucked into corners, skirting the line between heresy and transgression, the night garden feeds on folklore and superstition, never more than tonight, Friday 13th…

So follow the glimmer along Mays Lane to visit the night garden that blooms at Tortuga Studios, its tendrils lighting the sultry dusk of Applebee and Hutchinson Streets from sunset on Friday September 13th 2013.

FEATURING THE WORK OF THE FOLLOWING ARTISTS (in no particular order):

Pirate Photography
Alien Proof Construction
Ed Horne & Charlotte Hayward
Chris Fox and NAIL IT!
Pete Strong
Alex Holver
Bunkwaa
Ivan Smith and Datascene
Terhor
Azelia Maynard
Justin Maynard
Will Coles
Damian Martin
Pete Manwaring
Circusworks
Justin Harvey
Reuben Alexander
Terra Incognita
Sarah Sharky + MILKCRATE EVENTS
The Workshop Chef (not to be missed)
Jasmin Poole + Mike Rossi
Val Schulte
Isaac Gallagher
Mark Swartz
Lu Lu Cat
Sarah Breen Lovett
Yvette Hamilton
Rogue Simian
Terry Archer
Kai Archer
Jo Shand
Sergio Abugattas Tenaud
Zoe Adler Bishop
Rob Anyone
Dan Nimmo
Chris Retallack
Andros
Raul Manriquez
Alessandro Berini
Ramie Moussa

wrangling and untangling words

The post IN THE NIGHT GARDEN 2013 appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

Plucked from the darkened reaches of a salacious psyche, the scratched pen and ink work of Robert Smith is utterly compelling. The product of a decreasingly addled mind, this libertine collection spirals through Escher-like distortions, surrealism and pop-art schlock, and is streaked with a dark humour that is peppered with rancor.

Inspired by Beckinsky, Dali, Zappa, Pink Floyd and The Velvet Underground, Smith considers himself an anarchist and rudeboy, “’cos I’m pretty rude”. His work is just that, rude, evolved, confronting and anarchic.

Tickling the more disturbed corners of the mind, Smith delivers thoughts and emotions in a graphic pictorial spray. He says it is the regurgitation of loneliness and rejection, a “bleakness” borne of the looming menace, “You know, nuclear warheads and women chaining themselves to fences, that stuff…”

The experiences of a childhood spent in a small village next to an American army base in the UK is irreparably tangled with a later life lived on the edge. Smith stabs a story of personal corruption onto canvas in a salvo of styles, light illuminating the darkest shadows, his mind mapped and on display.

The post IN FEAR OF BOMBS – by ROBERT (BOB) SMITH appeared first on Tortuga Studios.

Tortuga Studios is proud to present
PERCEPTIONS OF THE MIRACULOUS
– New Paintings by Rowena Post

We invite you to the Opening Night Friday the 19th April 2013.

Skeletons of recollections past emerge from the marks Rowena Post has nurtured into the surface of her artwork.
The shifting hues and line work speak to the viewer of both our and others’ realities.
Dissolved and shimmering visions….Moments of clarity or just mirages?

Just as it has taken the artist some time to create her stories using lines and planes of colour manipulated into a kind of symbolism or language, it takes time to unravel the riddles and mysteries of each painting. The viewer takes away their own personal story from their experience of the painting.

In these works the artist intends you to  glimpse both the realistic and the spiritual where both are related to the rawness of life, the reality of death and abundance and the presence of hope.

The works reference the local and late Australian artists such as Ken Whisson, Ross Laurie, Angus Nivison and Ian Fairweather. They were also informed by artists such as Joan Miro and James Gleeson among others.

Working now in the New England region of New South Wales Rowena’s work nonetheless is still influenced by moments captured and carried from years spent living in the outskirts and suburbs of Sydney which have found their way into abstract landscapes flavoured with colours typical of her new home and surrounds.

The melding of the vastness of the land and country with the years spent in the intestines and gritty jowls of the concrete and red brick 70s permeates some of the more intense works.

Layers of paint were applied and worked over in a sunlit studio. Chooks, the dog and the occasional visit by a magpie provided a respite or gateway in the silence to prompt these pieces of story.

The echo of a yell from the past and the persistence of the sun swept landscape with its trees and their skeletons mix together as stories past and present converge.

See more of Rowena Post’s work:
http://pinterest.com/post8/
www.artiepost.com.au
or contact via:
rowena.artiepost@gmail.com

Opening Night Friday the 19th April 2013
Exhibition 19th – 28th April 2013

Gallery Hours :
11am – 7pm Wednesday-Sunday
Or by appointment
Please call : 0402 573 321 or email tortugastudiosinc@gmail.com

The post Perceptions of the Miraculous – Rowena Post – Solo Show Opening 19th April 2013 appeared first on Tortuga Studios.