HEIDE EDUCATION · HEIDE EDUCATION ©Heide MoMA 2014 Educational use only Page 7 of 34 Legacies of early twentieth-century modernism also underpin Floyd [s art, as seen in the abstract

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©Heide MoMA 2014 Educational use only Page 1 of 34

Exhibition dates: Saturday 15 March to Sunday 13 July 2014 Venue: Heide III, Central Galleries Curator: Sue Cramer

Emily Floyd Far Rainbow 2013 Pigment print on paper 35 x 36cm Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery Melbourne and Sydney This Education Resource has been produced by Heide Museum of Modern Art to provide information and support school visits to the museum and as such is intended for this use only. Reproduction and communication is permitted for educational purposes only. No part of this education resource may be stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means.

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Emily Floyd has been a practicing artist for fifteen years, during which time she has achieved widespread critical acclaim for work that intrigues because of its seemingly effortless conflation of intellectual pursuit with innovative sculptural play. Conceptual rigor and highly refined material resolution are distinguishing features of Floyd’s practice. Drawing on an array of literary, artistic and political histories and disciplines, Floyd’s objects and images promote a broad, cross generational social engagement with contemporary culture through art ‘Emily Floyd: Far Rainbow’ is a survey exhibition that draws selectively from the last ten years of Floyd’s career and also presents several new works made specifically for this exhibition at Heide. Floyd looks at themes of utopianism and community, while simultaneously exploring how some theories of learning and alternative education might be applied to contemporary art, or articulated through the art object. Jason Smith Director and CEO Heide Museum of Modern Art

Emily Floyd: Far Rainbow 2014 installation view Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Photograph: Christian Capurro 2014

Please note: pages 2-21 of this education resource have been extracted from Cramer, S. (ed), Emily Floyd: Far Rainbow, exh. cat., Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2014.

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Emily Floyd borrows her title for this exhibition from a 1963 Soviet science-fiction novel set on planet Rainbow, an imaginary location inhabited by a utopian community of artists and scientists. Floyd is inspired by visionary thinkers and their proposals for a better society and her art draws on several historical and contemporary examples. In this exhibition, she focuses on the world of learning and the child, using it to explore broader ideas about feminism, community and social radicalism. Her sculptures—‘philosophical toys’ as she calls them—build on a rich twentieth- century history of infant education and its relationship to modernist art. They use the simple geometry and bright colours of children’s wooden toys and blocks—like those made in the tradition of innovative architect and educationalist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) or by women artists at the German-based Bauhaus school of modernist art and design (1919–1933). Like them, Floyd values experimentation and play as foundations for learning and making art and for building a positive future. Floyd incorporates a wide variety of manifestos and speculative texts into her art through the use of letters and words in sculptural or printed form, or as patterned engraving on assemblages. Some works are engraved with the URLs of community, activist and theoretical websites, in recognition of the digital realm as a space for exchanging ideas. Floyd also borrows from the abstract language and typography of Russian Constructivist art as a reminder of the utopian aspirations of that early modernist movement, while political posters and radical publications of the 1970s and 1980s further provide her with a wealth of visual and conceptual material. Enlivened by the spirit of these activist traditions, Floyd’s works offer open-ended propositions that might help us navigate the complexities of contemporary life, and which ask us to consider what makes a good and productive society.


Emily Floyd refers to this room as the ‘straw room’ in reference to the seagrass floor-covering which, for many people, evokes memories of the 1970s. Among the wooden sculptures and assemblages there are

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner

http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/english/home.html

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also elements that recall the atmosphere of a playroom, including a small children’s chair made for Floyd in the 1970s by her toymaker father. The earthy colour and texture of the straw matting also provides a visually suggestive setting for works that allude to gardens or to working in the fields; for instance Gleaners (2012) in which two figures bend toward the ground. Their rounded forms recall the rural women scavenging for grain in Jean-François Millet’s social realist painting The Gleaners (1857). Three of the sculptures displayed here make reference to community gardens: Garden Sculpture (2012) echoes the spiral form of hanging garden ornaments; Organic Practice (2012) depicts the garden’s harvest and arrival at market; and Sun and Star Sculpture (2012) suggests the rhythms of night and day essential to the garden’s growth.

Emily Floyd

Sun and Star Sculpture 2009

synthetic polymer paint, ink and beeswax on wood (Huon pine and cherrywood) 140 x 140 x 10 cm

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/index.php?id=851&L=1&tx_commentaire_pi1%5bshowUid%5d=341

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Emily Floyd

Organic Practice 2009 cardboard, wood (kota, Huon pine, beechwood, New Zealand kauri) 60 x 61 x 40 cm

Offering a vivid parallel to our own planet under threat, the story of Far Rainbow, and Floyd’s optimistic re-telling of it, introduces themes explored in this exhibition. Utopian thinking of various types, both historical and current, is a continual source of inspiration for Floyd and a constant subject of her art, whether the utopian socialism of visionary industrialist Robert Owen (1771–1858) that accomplished the beginning of infant schooling in Great Britain— the basis of a major new work in this exhibition—or the radical tradition of anarchist ‘free-skools’, begun within early modernism and still current today—as signposted by her sculpture of the Anarchist symbol Gen-Existential Crisis (2006). The kindergarten too is a foundational concept of Floyd’s sculptures, which are informed by the basic geometries and primary colours of the wooden toys and learning tools used within Waldorf educational methods. These were based on the pedagogical theories of architect and Anthroposophist Rudolf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Rainbow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchistic_free_school

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education

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Steiner, whose innovative education approach, developed around 1919, promoted learning through play and the belief that a child’s education should have a foundation in geometry. Such interest has its roots in Floyd’s family life: her father and grandmother were toymakers who made wooden toys influenced by traditional European and Eastern Bloc folk toys and by Bauhaus, Russian Constructivist and De Stijl handmade toys. As children, Emily and her brother spent time in their father’s workshop helping with simple tasks, an experience that helped shape the underlying principles of her art.


Emily Floyd describes her exhibition at Heide as being ‘anchored in the world of the child and learning’ and in ‘childrens’ perceptions of space’. The rooms within it reflect her growing interest in alternative theories of teaching and learning, and how they might be applied within contemporary art, while also encompassing broader themes like feminism, community, and social radicalism and their contribution to modernist art and its envisioning of future worlds. Floyd finds her subject matter in the cultural rather than natural landscape and her work is distinctive for the way it ranges across a remarkable diversity of fields, from visual art to literature, social theory to philosophy, permaculture to graphic and architectural design. Her materials are mostly organic (various timbers and beeswax for example) and she draws on the history of handcrafts like toy making, yet she is very much an artist of the digital age who makes constant and liberal use of the internet as a research tool. This enables her to follow idiosyncratic lines of enquiry, make connections between things and draw together the information and ideas that underpin her art. Signalling this, URLs are engraved into many of her wood sculptures and assemblages—of community, activist, creative commons and free dictionary websites, Wikipedia pages, for example—extending an invitation to viewers to take up and continue this research.

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-de-stijl.htm

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Legacies of early twentieth-century modernism also underpin Floyd’s art, as seen in the abstract lexicon that underpins her work, but also her interest in avant-garde typographies and the aesthetics of protest and revolution reaching back to Russian Constructivism. Significant too are notions of a ‘useful’ art developed at the German-based Bauhaus school of art and design (1919–1933). The contributions of women artists at the Bauhaus to ‘minor’ practices such as toy making is of particular influence, notably that of artist and teacher Alma Buscher (1899–1944). Having been sidelined into weaving, considered appropriate work for women, Buscher argued her way into the Bauhaus wood-carving workshop creating objects that blur the lines between sculpture and toy, art and play. Buscher’s influence on Floyd’s work is evident in her artistic approach and design. Floyd often refers to her sculptures as ‘philosophical toys’. They are playful in appearance yet intended to provoke thought and stimulate learning and they tap into a rich history of infant education and its relationship to modernism. Some of Floyd’s sculptures are scaled-up versions of actual toys, notably Steiner Rainbow, which is based on a nine-part wooden toy inspired by Steiner’s educational ideas and used today in Waldorf schools, and Steiner Cave, a new work for this exhibition based on a similar, but cave-shaped toy. Floyd’s sculpture, like the toy has the appearance of a stylised grotto, though, when its five coloured bands are stacked together as a single unit, it also resembles a rainbow. Floyd uses abstract shapes deriving from the Russian Constructivist–inspired cover of the 1967 paperback edition of Far Rainbow in a new sculptural work of the same name. Far Rainbow (2014) is the centerpiece of a colourful environment occupying the length and much of the height of Heide’s front gallery, which also includes a new series of screen-prints, Ripple (2013–14), and a large-scale geometric wall painting titled Help from the Periphery (2014), in reference to a Montessori concept about how children take in impressions of external reality. The sculpture is loosely based on a 1970s reconstruction of a primary-school classroom set up by Robert Owen in 1816 for the children of workers at his cotton mills in New Lanark in Scotland. Owen’s belief that ‘to train and educate the rising generations’ was the best means of eradicating society’s ills was fundamental to the schooling programs he put in place

1. In

2013 Floyd visited his schoolroom, which she described as ‘a recreation of Robert Owen’s original room, remade by contemporary residents who run the “New Lanark Village” co-operative. In the sculpture Far Rainbow she re-stages certain physical elements of the classroom; for instance, translating the children’s bench-style desks to long rows of plywood tables. The huge wooden triangles and circles sitting on the tables make reference to the strangely oversized, instructional objects in the New Lanark classroom, such as a large free-standing counting frame and handmade wooden globe, but also typify the elemental geometric shapes found in Montessori education.

1 ‘To train and educate the rising generations will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will

be subordinate’. Robert Owen, The Social System, 1826, cited on New Lanark World Heritage Site, http://www.newlanark.org/robertown.shtml.

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-constructivism.htm

http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/alma-siedhoff-buscher

http://montessori.org.au/montessori/approach.htm

http://www.newlanark.org/tour-classroom.shtml

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Emily Floyd from the series Ripple 2013–14 screenprint on paper 110 x 70 cm

Emily Floyd from the series Ripple 2013–14 screenprint on paper 110 x 70 cm

Printed by Trent Walter, Negative Press, Melbourne (Ripple magazine, published by the Community Child Care movement in Melbourne 1976–1982. Edited by Frances Floyd; graphic design by Mary Featherston, Dennis Bryans, Jenny Adam and Dennis Floyd; written articles collectively authored by Community Child Care, Ann Morrow, Winsome McCaughey, Sue Morris, Jenny Adam, Frances Floyd and including contributions by Ruth Crow, Margaret Guilfoyle and Eva Cox)

Comprising more than forty screenprints, the series Ripple introduces themes of feminism and community to Floyd’s abstracted classroom, linking Owen’s early nineteenth-century socialism (not a term he used),

2 to a local example of late-flowering modernism and a largely unacknowledged feminist

history. Edited by Frances Floyd (Emily Floyd’s mother) and with graphics and layout by noted modernist designer Mary Featherston, among others, ‘Ripple was the ‘information paper’ of the Community Child Care movement in Melbourne between 1976 and 1982. This modest broadsheet was progressively minded and boldly designed and sought to promote collective action within communities to achieve ‘the best possible outcome for children’ and social liberation for women through improved childcare services

3.

In these screenprints, Floyd re-presents pages from this publication and associated printed material contained within the Ripple archive she inherited from her mother, overlaying them with the same geometric shapes of the Far Rainbow installation using a bright, fluorescent palette of pinks, reds, blues, and yellows together with an olive green. She makes strong visual use of the ever-expanding concentric circles of the ‘ripple’, a visual motif inspired by the broadsheet’s title and used on the cover of one issue

2 See V.A.C. Gatrell’s introduction to Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Report to the County of Lanark,

Penguin, London, UK, 1969. 3 Christine Mehring, ‘Alma Buscher “Ship” Building Toy 1923’, in, Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity,

eds Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2006, p. 157.

http://www.featherston.com.au/category/design-for-learning

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that symbolises grassroots activism, how change might start small but grow as its effects radiate outward.

Emily Floyd Child and Adult Sculpture No52 2009

synthetic polymer paint and beeswax on wood (Huon pine, New Zealand kauri), blackwood shelf 66 x 10 x 50 cm

In the ‘straw room’ of the exhibition at Heide, Floyd presents Child and Adult Sculptures Nos 1–8, a series of works that plays with the instructional forms of the classroom,. Each has a small rectangular board arranged on a shelf—like a writing slate or child’s hand-held blackboard or abacus—which has been machine etched with densely patterned configurations of texts sampled from the internet, on subjects as diverse as science fiction, poetry and permaculture. Beside or leaning against these, are long, coloured blocks bearing engraved URLs, echoing the browser bar on a computer screen or, with a nod to the analogue world, titles imprinted on book spines. Not immediately legible, the text-based patterns look like calculations, computer data or diagrams. Some are based on a grid and have the look of fabric or tile designs, while others dominated by circles create compositions that resemble toy figures, cogs or wheels. The works have the aesthetic charm of a Steiner wooden toy, their muted colours carefully selected, the grain of particular woods—Huon pine, New Zealand kauri and blackwood—attentively chosen and itemised in lengthy medium descriptions. These ‘philosophical toys’ can function as research tools for the internet age. Should viewers choose to activate them in this way, they could follow the lead of the many URLs engraved into them—whether by trying to access actual addresses or taking a cue from their subject matter and googling the concept of ‘gestalt theory’ or ‘the ecology of games’.

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Emily Floyd Sculpture with External Links, No.4 2009 synthetic polymer paint, ink and beeswax on wood and engraved wood, (Huon Pine, beechwood, cherrywood), blackwood shelf 24.5 x 60 x 20 cm

Themed in dark green tones and natural wood colours, Sculpture with External Links Nos 1–4 (2009) takes up similar themes. The series comprises four intimate ensembles of wooden objects, again arranged on shelves. Its title references the section ‘External links’, commonly found at the foot of Wikipedia pages below ‘Further reading’, under which is listed websites related to each particular entry. Within these works, Floyd gives her own ‘links’, again inscribing URLs into long wooden blocks, among them familiar research tools like www.thefreedictionary.com, alternative search engines like www.brightplanet.com, and new copyright models like www.support.creativecommons.org. Some of the foundational elements of internet communication, like http//: or the @ symbol also appear on building blocks, as cyber equivalents of the traditional ABC, thus embodying digital literacy and making. The four distinct tableaux in Sculpture with External Links are like fanciful cities or miniature worlds a child might create during play. The more rounded shapes evoke organic ground-hugging forms of architecture, the taller straight-edged ones suggest modernist forms, and there is an onion-shaped dome recalling the Russian Orthodox church spires that have earlier appeared in Floyd’s works. The key to each ensemble is a little block printed with an emblematic image—like a keepsake or souvenir of the utopian project they refer to. These include the so-called ‘hobbit house’ in Wales, an example of eco-friendly, rammed-earth architecture, and two buildings by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach, Switzerland—his First Goetheanum built between 1913 and 1919 and his Heizhaus (1914), famous for its unusual flame-shaped form that indicated its function as a boiler room. A fourth image, of Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi spinning on a loom, symbolises Gandhi’s program of passive resistance against colonial British rule. Gandhi saw the charkha (Hindi for spinning wheel) as a powerful instrument for self-reliance and the alleviation of poverty and, in an act of defiance, would often spin in public. Floyd presents as a readymade sculpture one of the simple portable charkhas invented by Gandhi which she purchased from his Ashram in the northern Indian city of Ahmedabad where the spinning wheels are still produced.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

http://www.brightplanet.com/

http://www.support.creativecommons.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_church_architecture

https://www.goetheanum.org/The-Goetheanum-Building.133.0.html?&L=1.

http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/galleries/Other_Buildings/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charkha

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Emily Floyd

Nomadic Shepherds 2013

wood,synthetic polymer paint

200 x 100 x 100cm

A rainbow palette re-appears in Nomadic Shepherds, a vibrant mobile of coloured wooden rings hanging on wooden rods suspended from the ceiling. The overlapping circles and colours create intense optical effects or visual ‘ripples’, and bring to mind children’s hoops, quoits and the interlocking circles of the Olympic Games logo. They also relate to Steiner’s Eurythmy, a physical movement discipline still taught today in Waldorf schools, in which participants wear single colour gowns and through their collective flowing, often circular, movements to music create harmonious relationships. The work’s enigmatic title makes reference to collective forms of governance practised by nomadic shepherds in Rajasthan and points to an interpretation of this sculpture as a kind of diagrammatic model of social organisation.

http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/Rudolf_Steiner_and_Eurythmy.php

http://www.montrealgazette.com/travel/Nomadic+shepherds+from+Rajasthan+herd+their+sheep+camp+outskirts+Delhi+December+2013+These+shepherds+still+cling+pastoral+nomadic+life+trekking+long+distances+search+pasture+their+sheep/9266112/story.html

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Emily Floyd

A Garden 2011 two-part epoxy paint, composition board, wood (wenge) overall dimensions approximately 150 x 450 x 40 cm

Throughout Floyd’s work the ‘communal garden’ is used as a metaphor for a utopian society characterised by productivity, sustainability, and founded in the value of working together for the common good. As places of nurturing, growth and potential, gardens also have parallels with kindergartens; indeed the word kindergarten translates literally from German as ‘children’s garden’, an idea also evoked by Floyd’s playful arrangement of sculptures in this room. At Heide, the sculpture Garden, spells out its own title in large three-dimensional letters, and is emblematic of the significance of this theme in her work and, in this context, also makes a connection, as Floyd says to the ‘Arcadian Heide landscape’.

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Emily Floyd

Garden Sculpture 2009 wood (beechwood) hemp rope 420 x 61 x 61 cm

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Emily Floyd has used alphabet letters as discrete sculptural units since the early 2000s, turning language into a material thing and allowing letters and words to be physically moved around and re-arranged, with many of her sculptures incorporating piles of random letters that resemble rubble. Embodying theories of literary deconstruction in a manner both serious and playful, such debris may suggest the death of master narratives as described within postmodern theory, or the excess of information and contending theories and ideas which confront one in the world today. One such work, Complex Issue (2006} a jumble of letters collapsed in a corner, appears to express doubt about the capacity of language to clarify or express the issues of the day, while also implying that new meanings might be made from these building blocks of language.

Emily Floyd Life Had Taken the Place of Dialectics 2003

oregon and Victorian Ash wood, synthetic polymer paint, synthetic flocking overall dimensions approximately 70 x 120 x 90cm

The earliest sculpture in this exhibition, Life Has Taken the Place of Dialectics, tackles as formidable a literary work as Dostoyevsky’s 1866 novel ‘Crime and Punishment’. It focuses on the novel’s climactic scene set in a Russian Orthodox church, in which the main character Raskolnokov owns up to the crime of murder. In a vivid tableau, the words used by the narrator to describe Raskolnokov’s spiritual transformation are arranged in blood-crimson letters at the foot of five white ‘onion-dome’ spires, standing in for the authority of the Russian church. Floyd says: ‘I made Life Has Taken The Place of Dialectics almost to remind myself, in a naive way, that art is not just about concepts, Dostoevsky’s existential fable warns that true meaning will never be found in the world of ideas, it is the product of lived experience. I hope this phrase might act as a kind of antidote to didacticism’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment

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Emily Floyd

Modern Ladies 2006

synthetic polymer paint, stain and oil on Victorian ash, synthetic polymer paint, synthetic flocking overall dimensions approximately 285 x 126 x 42cm

Small mounds of letters lie at the foot of three sculptural figures in Modern Ladies a work concerned with female identity and its relationship to modernism. In this work Floyd appropriates and reworks three women from Pablo Picasso’s depiction of Spanish sex workers in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) re-shaping their angular early cubist forms into sturdy, yet curvaceous figures that also refers to the limbless female torso on the front of the original paperback edition of Germaine Greer’s ‘The Female Eunuch’ (1970), a now historical text central to second-wave feminism. In conversation with the curator, Floyd recalls the book as being always on her mother’s and her mother’s friends’ shelves: it ‘infiltrated domestic life and effected change’. Floyd’s female figures rise up with a sense of authority from the letters that lie between their legs. ‘I replaced Picasso’s bowl of rotting fruit near the women’s sexual organs with piles of letters, to give the women a voice, and to give the sense of something abject that disrupts the symbolic order in the way that feminism does’, Floyd says. ‘The breasts of Picasso’s ladies become, in Floyd’s treatment, oval-shaped openings that animate the figures, like the ‘holes’ in the classically modern, open-form sculptures of British artist Barbara Hepworth. A further textual reference is art critic Anna Chave’s feminist re-reading of Picasso’s painting from 1994, which Floyd had read prior to making this work. Chave expresses a sense of self-identification with Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles’ as ‘disruptive figures who impetuously signal their clientele to get lost, while damning the consequences’. Floyd’s Modern Ladies are imbued with just such a rebellious air: their surfaces are flat as if they could have jumped out of the painting or a book, yet also solid to give material presence and a sense of strength. ‘When I finished the figures I thought, they looked like angry feminists, and liked that about them’, Floyd said.

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79766

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Eunuch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Eunuch

http://barbarahepworth.org.uk/

http://annachave.com/annachave.com/annachave_publications_files/New%20Encounters.pdf

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Emily Floyd Gen-Existential Crisis 2006 two-part epoxy paint on composition board 253 x 295 x 35 cm

Floyd’s sculpture Gen-Existential Crisis is representative of anarchism’s symbol of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism, the letter A surrounded by the letter O. Typically coloured black or red, this symbol is presented by Floyd as a large white sculpture, almost three metres in radius, leaning against the gallery wall. The shift in colour and context away from political agitation and street demonstration to the ‘neutral’ stylish aura of the art gallery yields other associations. The sculpture’s whiteness, simple geometry and its display leaning against the wall all align it with minimalist art. This giant white monogram could also be likened to the labels of Chanel, Yves St Laurent, or Calvin Klein, which use their initials to create their company logos. Precedent for the Circle A’s use within fashion exists in its adoption by the punk movement as an insignia which, as indicative of a watered down version of punk, came to stand for a more generalized idea of rebellion. This work encapsulates the crisis for Generation X, of which Floyd is a member: how to create genuine political identity when in Western capitalist culture political symbols morph easily into commodified signs. In the context of this exhibition, with its focus on theories of teaching and learning, Gen-Existential Crisis acts as a signpost to the alternative pedagogy offered by anarchist ‘free skools’ with their emphasis on autonomous community, self-reliance and resistance to consumer-driven values.

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Emily Floyd Abstract Labour 2014 two-part epoxy paint on aluminium, steel overall dimensions approximately 300 x 150.5 x 40 cm Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne

Emily Floyd Preparatory CAD drawings for Abstract Labour 2013

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Connections between art and play are explored in Floyd’s outdoor sculpture Abstract Labour, a fifteen-metre-long sculpture situated on Heide’s forecourt. The work proposes sculpture as a social space that at times can function as a learning environment. Its fourteen painted aluminium letter-shapes which spell out the work’s title have been designed to house books or coloured blocks for children to play with, so that the work can function as a temporary library and encourage interaction, reading and discussion among visitors to the museum. The books serve as ‘external links’, analogue equivalents of the URLs engraved into other works by Floyd. The words ‘abstract labour’ cannot be read at a glance or easily consumed as they would be in a sign or advertisement: some letters are inverted; others are upside down or lie sideways. In order to be read, this 3D typography must be actively looked at and explored in the round, discovered in the process of an encounter with the work.

Emily Floyd

Mood Board 2014 ink and paper collage on paper 76 x 56cm

The brightly coloured arcs, circles, triangles and rectangular posts which combine to make up the letters draw inspiration from archival images of early adventure playgrounds. Floyd collects such images from the 1960s and 1970s for their reflection of a period when children’s free, open-ended play was not restricted by council by-laws and safety regulations as in the playgrounds of today. The work also conveys her interest in the connections between the forms of modernist abstraction and the kinds of shapes found in outdoor play equipment. Its title comes from the writings of social theorist Karl Marx and his ideas about the exchange value of labour within capitalism, though takes liberties with Marx’s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

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concept. For example Floyd's work is the tangible, concrete outcome of her labour but is abstract in appearance, which is interestingly different from Marx's concept in which abstract labour (a generalised notion) is opposed to concrete labour (tied to a particular worker or outcome). The books on the shelves of Emily Floyd’s sculpture Abstract Labour (2014) are for members of the public to enjoy. Visitors are invited to take a book to read during their visit to Heide or may take a book home, as long as they return it or replace it with another. In this way visitors will help to fulfil the artist’s concept of this sculpture as a library, a site for the exchange of knowledge and ideas. Letters and words used in visual and concrete ways are also an integral part of Floyd’s two-dimensional works. Her interests in typography, graphic design and the modernist tradition of political posters reaching back to Russian Constructivism led her naturally to the activity of printmaking. Working collaboratively with various print workshops, she has produced editions of etchings, lithographs and screen-prints. Drawing from the literature and visual material of 1970s activism, Floyd’s Ripple screen-prints in Heide’s front gallery link thematically to an earlier series of etchings It’s Time (Again), which takes its name from the catch-cry used by the Australian Labor Party during its successful federal election campaign of 1972. The series considers the progressive social movements and cultural climate of the 1970s and includes references to the development of environmentalist practices like permaculture, an Australian form of sustainable agriculture. As in concrete poetry, which also gained in recognition as a literary form in the 1970s, Floyd arranges text on the page in ways that amplify its meaning. (For further information on Concrete Poetry see Heide education resource Born to Concrete.)

Emily Floyd

Permaculture One, from the series It's Time (Again) 2008

etching and acquatint on paper Image size: 29.5 x 21 cm, Paper size: 29.5 x 21 cm

Emily Floyd Permaculture Two, from the series It's Time (Again)

2008 etching and acquatint on paper Image size: 29.5 x 21 cm, Paper size: 29.5 x 21 cm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqMCZBjvmD4

http://www.heide.com.au/assets/files/Education/HeideEdResourceBornToConcrete.pdf

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Floyd takes a different approach in her suite of four lithographs All Day Workshops, where the geometricised titles of each print function as kind of patterned architecture or base that orients the figures within the pictorial space of each image. Each work puts forward an example of collectivism or related idea. Herrnhut Commune takes its title from Australia’s very first but little-known utopian commune established by German immigrants in Penshurst near the southern Grampians, Victoria, in 1852, and shows a commune member working in the garden, while Social Insects depicts a beekeeper and beehive, as an instance of humans working in harmony with nature, and an example from nature of a highly structured co-operative community. A fourth print, the Structure and Silence of the Cognitariat, shows a clenched fist coloured green, lending an environmentalist meaning to this widely used symbol of solidarity and resistance.

Emily Floyd Herrnhut Commune from the series All Day Workshops

2012 lithograph 105 x 75 cm

Emily Floyd Social Insects from the series All Day Workshops 2012 lithograph 105 x 75 cm

Floyd’s striking series of six graphic relief works build on her architectural use of text in All Day Workshops, extending it into three dimensions. Wooden letters are attached at various angles to a flat surface, some parallel to it, some protruding outward into space. Partially painted in bright colours, the relief components work visually together with flat painted areas of colour that mirror or shadow their shape, amplifying the densely patterned and three-dimensional effect. The letters in each work spell out a statement spoken by scientist Lamondois and captain Gorbovsky in Far Rainbow as, in the face of The Wave’s unstoppable path, they debate what is most valuable to humanity, including: ‘The most important thing we have on Rainbow is our labour’ and ‘When this experiment is over we will build anew together’. But the tightly compacted words merge into each other and run from one line into the next, so that we must actively decipher them to extract their meaning.

http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/land-exploration/land-management/australias-first-commune

http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/land-exploration/land-management/australias-first-commune

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Emily Foyd When this Experiment is Over We’ll Build Anew Together 2013-2014 synthetic polymer paint on wood, paper and aluminium 77 x 58 x 15 cm

Emily Foyd The Most Important Thing We Have On Rainbow is Our Labour 2013-2014 synthetic polymer paint on wood, paper and aluminium 77 x 58 x 15 cm

Floyd was drawn intuitively to these texts from the novel, and they seem to illuminate in poetic rather than literal ways aspects of her art, like her interest in collectivism and view of art as a form of experimental labour. In combining geometric shapes with elements of relief, these works bear a debt to the abstraction and materiality of Russian Constructivism. Their spatial and cryptic aspects also contribute to their futuristic appearance; perhaps they portray the future cities of speculative fiction or the control panels of the starship sent to rescue the children from The Wave, or contain the encoded hieroglyphics of the zero-physicists’ research on planet Rainbow. ‘Here on Rainbow there is experimental new material’, says Lamondois, characterising the work undertaken on planet Rainbow, words that might also describe Floyd’s exhibition at Heide, for here, within her own evocation of Rainbow, she displays the fruits of her research and labour as an artist. Floyd’s created worlds and ‘philosophical toys’ build upon and add to a rich history of modern art’s relationship to the kindergarten, evoking the perspective of the child but also connecting with the internet age. From modular sculptures like Steiner Cave with movable parts implying ideas of free-play, to artworks inscribed with URLs that invite viewers to continue research, or bodies of thematic works that draw together a multitude of reference points both past and present, Floyd’s works offer open-ended propositions that might help us to navigate the complexities of contemporary life, and that ask us to consider what might make a good and productive society.’

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This resource is designed to support both students and teachers of visual arts in secondary classrooms and addresses middle school years 8-10 and VCE Studio Arts study design Units 1—4. The resource references specific aspects of curriculum although teachers can easily adapt tasks to different outcomes and key knowledge according to the needs and interests of students. The resource can address Area of Study 3, Unit 1: Interpretation of art ideas and use of materials and techniques, Unit 2 Area of Study 2 key knowledge; inquiry into the comparison and contrast of artworks and aesthetic qualities of artists from different times and cultures and Unit 3: Professional art practices and styles. References to Unit 4: Art industry contexts is addressed in questions that reference key knowledge including information about the gallery, curatorial and exhibition design and other considerations involved in the preparation and presentation of the exhibition. Through the investigations of themes, ideas, materials, techniques and processes evident in Emily Floyd’s work, students can better come to understand how art communicates as a visual language. Symbols and metaphors, materials and technical processes collectively present alluring aesthetic qualities that transmit linked ideas and messages. Suggested tasks and reflective questions support students’ research to address key knowledge and skills in VCE Studio Arts and exploring and responding aspects of middle school curriculum (AUSVELS) Further classroom discussions and tasks to be led by teachers may also provide students with the opportunity to reflect upon and evaluate their own art making explorations and design processes. Teachers can use the reflection questions to evoke classroom discussions to assist students practice in the use of appropriate art language and terminology to annotate their thinking and working practices. Floyd’s artworks offer open-ended propositions that might help us navigate the complexities of contemporary life, and which ask us to consider what makes a good and productive society. Techniques Emily Floyd employs numerous techniques in her art works with a focus on sculpture, construction, assemblage and printmaking including etching, screen-printing and lithography. Letters and words used in visual and concrete ways are also an integral part of Floyd’s two-dimensional works. Her interests in typography, graphic design and the modernist tradition of political posters reaching back to Russian Constructivism led her naturally to the activity of printmaking.

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When viewing the exhibition seek out examples of Emily Floyd’s work that utilise different techniques of printmaking, sculpture and assemblage. Floyd has inscribed URL addresses on many of the wooden components in her sculptures. Note down some of these for further inquiry back in the classroom.

• What are the qualities of the materials and techniques? • What affect do the materials and techniques offer the viewer?

Title Techniques and materials

Qualities Effects

Sculpture with External Links, No.4 2009

Sculpture synthetic polymer paint, ink and beeswax on wood and engraved wood, (Huon Pine, beechwood, cherrywood), blackwood shelf

Organized

Smooth textures

Organic, natural materials

The organization of shapes creates the look of an imaginary world

Cool green is a soothing natural colour

Placement on a shelf causes the viewer to peer into the sculpture

The inscribed URL’s make me curious as to what more information I can research

Social Insects from the series All Day Workshops 2012

lithograph print

Students can share their observations in small group discussions and use the information tables to draw conclusions about meaning and messages contained within the artworks. They can research some of the URL addresses they have collected to support their inquiry.

• What messages and meanings are communicated by the art work?

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What makes you Think, Puzzle and Explore in this exhibition?

• What do you think you know or what have you discovered about the artist and about her artwork?

• What questions do you have about the artist and her artwork? • Is there a particular artwork or aspect of artist that you want to explore or know more about?

Work with classmates and find someone who…

• Step 1: knows an answer to any of the questions you have identified. Write the answer in your own words and have your partner sign the sheet in the appropriate space. Offer your fellow student an answer you know to one of their questions.

• Step 2: Join another pair and swap partners to share new information, perspectives and viewpoints that answer any of the questions on your sheet.

The teacher can facilitate a classroom discussion to evaluate the student’s knowledge exchange.

• What are the broad themes, ideas in Emily Floyd’s art works in the Far Rainbow exhibition? • What has influenced her ideas and where has she sought her inspiration? • What types of materials and techniques does she employ in her artworks? • How are her art works produced?

In small groups students can make sculptures from recycled materials to create a collective work of art that addresses themes identified in Floyd’s work.

• Make a collective sculpture that tells a story about the garden, permaculture, environmental concerns, art, play or puzzles.

• Explore how the visual elements can encourage inquiry into the message conveyed by the artwork.

Use techniques of construction, assemblage of found objects and typography when making your work. Employ visual elements such as texture, colour, form and line and think about balance, harmony and contrast when creating your composition. Incorporate different cardboard textures such as corrugated card, shoe boxes, wood offcuts, discarded plastics, cylinder shapes and lids. Surfaces can be covered in coloured papers or painted with acrylic paints. Students can collect specific items from home or teachers may choose to visit a material recycling centre such as Reverse Art Truck to purchase items. Use high quality glue or a hot glue gun to adhere objects together. (Make sure to take extra care if using a hot glue gun)

http://www.pzartfulthinking.org/think_puzzle_explore.php

http://www.reversearttruck.com.au/

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Emily Floyd employs a broad variety of materials and techniques within the exhibition including sculpture and various types of printmaking. Consider how Floyd’s methods have been inspired by her broader interest, in typography, graphic design political posters, for example—and by her personal experiences. For instance, Floyd’s father was a toy-maker, who worked with wood, shape and form. As children, Emily and her brother spent time in their father’s workshop helping with simple tasks, an experience that helped shape the underlying principles of her art. Consider how Floyd’s choices of techniques and materials reflect her interest in children and play, education and social activism. As you view the different art works:

• think about how the techniques used by the artist contribute to their meaning • examine the qualities of the materials used and contemplate how they support meaning. • how do visual elements such as colour, shape and form, and principles of contrast and harmony

reinforce the ideas conveyed? Use the table below to support your note taking.

Title Ideas Techniques Materials Visual elements and qualities

Support for artwork meaning

A Little Community, from the series It's Time (Again) 2008

Propositions for future action to save the planet; calling for environmental action

Printmaking; etching and aquatint on paper

Paper and ink Clean lines Black and white contrast Text and shape

Clean lines in text and shape together with contrast of black and white make the work easy to read

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Techniques and materials together with visual elements contribute to the meaning of art works. Examine your own art making processes:

• What techniques and materials have you selected? • How do they support the communication of your ideas? • Has Floyd’s use of various techniques and materials inspired you to explore further?

Make annotations in your visual diary detailing your findings in relation to your own design process.

In the exhibition Far Rainbow, Emily Floyd focuses on the worlds of learning and the child, using it to explore broader ideas about feminism, community and social radicalism. Floyd finds her subject matter in the cultural rather than natural landscape and her work is distinctive for the way it ranges across a remarkable diversity of fields, from visual art to literature, social theory to philosophy, permaculture to graphic and architectural design. Select art works in Emily Floyd: Far Rainbow that appeal to you and identify the ideas and themes that each work addresses. Consider the following:

• World of learning • Children and play • Social action • Rebellion and anarchy • Community action and activism • Environmentalism • Feminism

Refer to the curator’s essay and draw on your notes to respond to the following key knowledge questions with reference to two selected artworks;

• What is the subject matter of the art works? • How have cultural contexts of Emily Floyd’s life impacted the production of artworks? • How has Floyd interpreted this subject matter in the art works? • What has influenced or inspired the production of each art work? • How has Floyd developed aesthetic qualities in the artwork to reinforce ideas communicated by

the work? Prior to undertaking this task teachers can facilitate a group discussion using the questions as stimulus. Teachers can record student observations and conclusions on a white board (or other devices) to support and enhance students’ use of appropriate art language. Categorized words in groups under headings to support organization and assist students to use concepts appropriate to the study. Headings might include: subject matter, metaphors and symbols, cultural contexts, artist’s inspiration, techniques, aesthetic qualities and visual elements.

A mood board is a collage of found or drawn images collected, collated and adhered to a surface that attempts to evoke a specific feeling or idea. Sometimes they are used by graphic designers to create a visual illustration of a proposed concept or idea.

• Review your notes and experience of visiting the exhibition to select a theme inspired by what you have seen to produce your own mood board.

• Use a heavy cardboard or foam board as a base for your mood board.

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• Paste pictures, shapes, text, patterns and other interesting imagery on the board. You may like to use paint to under paint or add or emphasise colour or graphic symbols over the surface of your images to reinforce your theme.

• Spray the mood board with a light coat of varnish. • Create a wall label for your artwork with a title, date, and brief description about the work and

what motivated you to create it. • Place on display.

The rainbow is a natural scientific phenomenon admired all over the world for its wondrous beauty. It has been interpreted as a popular component of mythology across cultures and throughout history. The rainbow offers a universal symbolic meaning of promise and a hope for something better. Emily Floyd makes many references to the rainbow throughout her work in the exhibition. As cultural symbols, rainbows have been frequently used to represent diversity and other progressive ideals. For Floyd, these associations are not abstract but have personal meaning; as a teenager in the 1980s she attended, with her mother Frances Floyd, the launch of the Victorian Rainbow Alliance an umbrella organisation of feminist, environmental, indigenous-rights and other allied radical community groups. In her correspondence with the curator, Floyd recalls the event as having a positive atmosphere of ‘optimism, creative resistance and inclusion’.

• How many different visual elements can you find in Floyd’s work that reference the rainbow? • Examine shapes like crescents and arches, and colours; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo

and violet. • Make quick representative sketches of the artworks in your notebooks and list the titles and

materials used to make these artworks. • What aesthetic effect does Floyd’s selection of colours produce? • Refer to warm and cool colours, primary and secondary, complimentary and analogous colours.

Examine how colours reinforce recession of backgrounds and protrusion of foregrounds and how colours have been selected to reinforce positive forms and fill negative space.

• Consider other visual art elements such as line, shape, form, balance, contrast and rhythm. • What are the ideas that Emily Floyd is exploring in her rainbow artworks? • How does the symbol of the rainbow support her ideas?

When viewing the exhibition, name specific artworks that reference the rainbow and reflect on ‘the hope for something better’ that this work can offer the viewer. Research how rainbows are formed and how they have been historically interpreted across cultures such as Aboriginal, Native American and Chinese communities. Select one of Floyd’s rainbow art works you have identified in the exhibition.

• How does the work inspire hope? Reflect upon the title of the work, the idea behind the work and identify how Floyd has used visual elements of the rainbow to reinforce optimism.

• What does the rainbow mean to you? • What hopes and dreams do you have for yourself? • What hopes do you hold for the future of society? • Make a list of words that could possibly offer inspiration, for example; hope, love, peace,

freedom, creative expression, life and light, harmony, respect, prosperity.

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Locate Floyd’s set of six graphic relief works in the exhibition including, The Most Important Thing We Have On Rainbow is Our Labour 2013-2014 and When this Experiment Is Over We'll Build Anew Together 2013. Can you read the text? Floyd’s striking series of six graphic relief works build on her architectural use of text, extending it into three dimensions. Wooden letters are attached at various angles to a flat surface, some parallel to it, some protruding outward into space. Partially painted in bright colours, the relief components work visually together with flat painted areas of colour that mirror or shadow their shape, amplifying the densely patterned and three-dimensional effect‘ . The letters in each work spell out a statement spoken by scientist Lamondois and captain Gorbovsky in the science fiction novel, Far Rainbow as, in the face of The Wave’s unstoppable path, they debate what is most valuable to humanity, including: ‘The most important thing we have on Rainbow is our labour’ and ‘When this experiment Is over we will build anew together. Does it matter that the text may not be easily read?

• Propose why Floyd has used text in her work? • How does the text support meaning in the art works?

Analysis of artworks

• What materials has Emily Floyd used to create the graphic relief art works? • How is the text organised? • What effect does this create for the viewer? • With reference to the curatorial notes and your own viewing experience, propose why Emily

Floyd may have organised the letters and words in this way and take notes on your conclusions. • How do the visual elements contribute toward the art works meaning?

Select a phrase, a word or words that are inspirational for you.

• Draw a grid with a pencil within a 30cm square, make three levels of horizontal spaces and as many vertical lines as you require.

• Reference shapes like the crescents and arcs of the rainbow to develop block-type fonts. Sketch out the letters of your words inside the boxes of the grid.

• Fill the block spaces with your font to create a visual text block. • Use gouache or acrylic paint to apply warm colour to fill the positive form and use cool colours

to fill the negative space created around the fonts. Text as art does not necessarily need to be easily read, manipulate your work so it creates a ‘game’ of reading for the viewer. Extension activities

• Photograph your work and upload to a digital design program to change the colours or add alternative patterns within the negative areas surrounding the font.

• Create a tonal drop out version of your design and make a print to be used to transfer the image to a lino block.

• Use horizontal or vertical lines to cut into negative areas around the letters to create texture. • Create a one-colour ink relief print or produce multi coloured blocks to produce a series of

relief prints.

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Reflection Review your work and evaluate what works best to reinforce the ideas behind your selected word.

• What type of fonts worked best for these exercises? • What visual effect have the colours produced? • What techniques have developed the most satisfying visual response for you and explain why

with reference to how the aesthetic qualities and visual elements support the communication of your ideas?

Evaluation can be undertaken in a group to enable all students to review different interpretations of the exercise. Teachers can encourage the use of art language through further questioning such as;

• What types of colours have been used? Primary, secondary, complimentary or analogous. • What effects do the combinations of colours create? • What typefaces have been used? Regular, italic, bold or decorative. • What other typeface treatments have been applied? Outlined, three-dimensional, condensed,

extended, textured. Use whiteboard note taking or other digital technologies to record student descriptions and reinforce language development. Vocabulary notes can be referred to when students are asked to write further analysis tasks.

Emily Floyd’s work draws on the abstraction of the Russian Constructivists through combining colour, geometric shapes and elements of relief. Constructivism in art and design originated in Russia in the early 20th century and was created in service of socialism, rejecting ideas of art as an autonomous practice. It had a great impact on modernism of the 20th century and broader influences in art and design through the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements where creative evidence can be located in graphic and industrial design, architecture, fashion and in some areas extending to both music and theatre. Research Russian Constructivist artists such as Alexsandr Rodchenko (1891–1956) and El Lissitzy (1890–1941). Look at examples of art works made by German abstract artists, Ella Bergmann- Michel (1896–1971) and the sculptures of Hermann Glöckner (1889–1987) and American born artist John Ernest (1922–1994). Review the work of Bauhaus artist Alma Buscher (1899–1944). Having been sidelined into weaving, considered appropriate work for women, Buscher argued her way into the Bauhaus wood-carving workshop creating objects that blur the lines between sculpture and toy, art and play. Buscher’s influence on Floyd’s work is evident in her artistic approach and design. Floyd often refers to her sculptures as ‘philosophical toys’. They are playful in appearance yet intended to provoke thought and stimulate learning and they tap into a rich history of infant education and its relationship to modernism.

• Locate examples of an artists’ work that utilise geometric shapes and designs similar to the artworks of Emily Floyd.

• Can you identify the theories and ideas behind their art works? • How are these artists’ work similar to or different from Floyd’s work? • Make reference to visual elements such as shape, line, colour and form and visual principles

such as balance, contrast and rhythm. • How are the ideas of the Russian Constructivists linked to the ideas of Floyd’s artworks? • How has Floyd drawn upon the work of Bauhaus artist Alma Buscher to make her artworks?

Extended written task Select two artworks of Emily Floyd presented in the Far Rainbow exhibition and two of those made by artists from different historical or cultural contexts.

Compare and contrast these artworks with reference to;

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• interpretation of subject matter • communication of ideas and meaning • cultural context • materials, techniques • aesthetic qualities and style evident in the art works

Reflection questions for personal art practice

• What do you consider are some current issues and concerns in society? • Do you have any ideas that could lead to solutions for these problems? • Reflect on the exploration process in your art making, do any of your visual ideas focus on

problems or solutions? • How could your art inspire philosophical contemplation for the viewer? • What aspects of Floyds’ aesthetic inspired you? • What visual elements can you employ to support the communication of ideas?

Heide Museum of Modern Art occupies a unique position in the development of modern and contemporary Australian art and in the overall art and cultural history of Australia. Heide boasts a national reputation for artistic excellence and scholarship and has presented more than 260 solo, group or thematic exhibitions of modern and contemporary art since 1981. The changing program of exhibitions draws works from individual artists, private and public collections, as well as from the Heide Collection. Heide is a public gallery that draws on government funds, philanthropic trusts and public donations to exhibit art that educates and inspires the community. Sue Cramer is a curator at Heide Museum of Art. She has worked collaboratively with the artist Emily Floyd to organise and present art works for exhibition in this exhibition. Floyd describes her exhibition at Heide as being ‘anchored in the world of the child and learning’ and in ‘childrens’ perceptions of space.

• How does the title Far Rainbow support the themes and ideas of the artworks represented in the exhibition?

• How have the artworks been grouped and presented, and how does this configuration support the themes and ideas of the artist?

• How did the organisation of the artworks, positioning of walls and wall colour and installations support your navigation through the exhibition?

• Can you locate information in this resource to inform you how the artist has been involved in the installation of this exhibition?

• Did the lighting support the mood of the exhibition, has this had an impact on how you read and understand the themes in the exhibition?

• How have interpretative wall panels helped you to understand more about the artworks? The artist? The issues presented by the artist in the exhibition?

• After viewing the exhibition consider the themes, issues and ideas raised by the artist. Do you have an opinion or response to them? Explain your response.

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How did this exhibition come about? Emily Floyd: Far Rainbow is part of a series of survey exhibitions at Heide that look in-depth at the work of significant Australian artists. I have followed Emily’s work for several years now and was keen to put her name forward to be part of the program. Heide invited Emily early in 2012 to present this exhibition, so the ideas developed for it over two years. What processes do you employ when curating an exhibition such as Far Rainbow? The most important thing for a curator when working on a survey show is to work closely with the artist. Emily and I discussed our ideas together, for example there were certain works that I had already seen that I knew I wanted to display and other new works that Emily made especially for the exhibition. We always tried to consider what work would go together into different spaces and how these would develop the themes of the exhibition. We both looked very carefully at the gallery to see what works we could fit into the available space. This was especially important because many of Emily’s works are very big. Of course I had to do research. This included reading everything I could find on Emily’s work and I also asked her a lot of questions, especially when I was writing my essay for the catalogue. She was very good in answering them for me. It is also the curator’s job to write the wall texts that offer some introductory remarks about the works on display.

How was the artist involved in curatorial aspects of the exhibition? As I have said, it was very collaborative. Emily was involved in all aspects of the selection and presentation of works and the development of the concept for the exhibition and its title. After all, it is fundamentally her exhibition. My role is to facilitate and support the artist and to offer my advice and feedback and discussion of ideas. And because I am very familiar with the Heide gallery space, I had particular knowledge about that too. An important part of my job as curator was to work on the exhibition catalogue, which is a big task in itself. I wrote the main essay and we commissioned an essay by another writer Amelia Barikin. The curator is responsible for sourcing the images for the catalogue, doing the list of exhibited works, the artists’ biography, and many other hidden tasks that lie behind preparing a publication, before you finally send it off to the printer. Both Emily and I worked closely with the designer of the catalogue Liz Coz who was responsible for the appearance of the publication. What are some of the curatorial considerations you have given to the presentation of Emily Floyd’s work in this exhibition? One important thing is that the sculptures all go directly on the ground, none are on plinths, and this gives a sense of direct interaction between the viewer and the work. We were also very conscious of how works were grouped in various rooms, thematically but also visually. I guess the Straw Room (as Emily calls it) is a key example where the individual works come together as a single installation. It was Emily’s idea to put the straw matting on the floor. Often one idea leads to another. For example, once we had decided on the title Far Rainbow (Emily’s idea), which comes from a Russian science fiction novel from 1963, we wanted to emphasise this theme in the selection of works. So we decided to include Existentialism vs Science Fiction (2010), a sculpture inspired by futuristic versions of the game of chess such as seen in the 1960s TV series Star Trek. What consideration has been given to the way audiences move through the exhibition in when installing the art works? You always think about the visual impact of the works visitors will see first upon entering the gallery, and also how works can be positioned to entice audiences through from one room to the next. We refer to what we call ‘sightlines’, that is, what viewers will see from particular points in the exhibition, like

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when standing at the exhibition’s entrance, or when peeking from one room into another. Because so much of Emily’s work is sculpture, we also wanted to encourage viewers to walk around the works and see them from different angels, in the front room for example. As you move around the front gallery space to see the Ripple screenprints you will also get a variety of views around and through the large circle and triangle sculptures. Where has the work been sourced from and what considerations and practices have been applied to the transportation, preparation and preservation of the artwork as they have been transported, stored, presented and finally returned? Yes, there are a lot of tasks involved in putting an exhibition together, from the curatorial work through to the packing, crating and transport of works. The works in Far Rainbow mostly have come from Melbourne, but some are borrowed from interstate and one from overseas. Heide’s Registrar Jennifer Ross is responsible for organising the packing and transport of works and does a detailed report on the condition of each work too. Heide’s Exhibition Manager also has an important role in organising some of the practical aspects to do with bringing the exhibition together, like painting the walls and organising our team of workers who install the works in the gallery space. Some of Emily’s sculptures are very heavy and this posed particular challenges when it came to lifting them into position, but we got there in the end. One of our installation crew is responsible with the curator for doing the lighting of the works. For this exhibition, Emily and I wanted even lighting throughout the gallery space with no spotlights on individual works. The temperature of the room is constantly monitored by our Registrar. Artworks don’t like any major fluctuations in temperature so we have special air conditioning to keep it nice and even whilst the works are on display.

Emily Floyd Model for Abstract Labour sculpture at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2014 installation view Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne

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Sue Cramer. (ed), Emily Floyd: Far Rainbow, exh. cat., Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2014.

Emily Floyd artist listing Anna Schwartz Gallery http://www.annaschwartzgallery.com/works/works?artist=19&c=m Monash University Art Design and Architecture, Volume Control: Emily Floyd (video, 56 minutes). Recorded 11 March 2013. http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/fineart/news.php#!/fineart/reaction/volctrl-2013-03-11.php Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, ‘Emily Floyd, The Garden (here small gestures make complex structures) 2012’. https://www.mca.com.au/artists-and-works/building-commissions/emily-floyd-the-garden-2012/ Ocula, Emily Floyd. http://ocula.com/artists/emily-floyd/?gclid=CP6e5eGBir4CFVckvQodkn0AsA Rachel Kent ‘’In conversation: Art and activism in a changing world’, Art and Australia, vol 48, no.2, 2010, pp 34-39 Sarah Tutton, ‘Emily Floyd against herself’, Artlink, vol. 27, no. 1, 2007, pp. 72–3. Studio Round, ‘A Conversation With Emily Floyd’, Broadsheet, 2010. http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/arts-and-entertainment/article/emily-floyd-conversation

http://www.annaschwartzgallery.com/works/works?artist=19&c=m

http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/fineart/news.php#!/fineart/reaction/volctrl-2013-03-11.php

https://www.mca.com.au/artists-and-works/building-commissions/emily-floyd-the-garden-2012/

https://www.mca.com.au/artists-and-works/building-commissions/emily-floyd-the-garden-2012/

http://ocula.com/artists/emily-floyd/?gclid=CP6e5eGBir4CFVckvQodkn0AsA

http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/arts-and-entertainment/article/emily-floyd-conversation

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Heide offers a range of education programs that draw on its unique mix of exhibitions, architecture and landscape to provide a rich learning experience that goes beyond the classroom. An education focussed visit to Heide Museum of Modern Art:

provides a stimulating environment which helps to put learning into context, and promotes an understanding and appreciation of our rich, cultural heritage

encourages motivation, by stirring curiosity and developing an intrinsic fascination for art that can only be satisfied by firsthand experience

supports students to make cross-curricular links between different subject areas

greatly benefits students who learn best through kinaesthetic activities

nurtures creativity and enables social learning

provides learning through experience and interaction which encourages students to build on prior expectations and beliefs to create new realities

is a cultural experience that all students can enjoy Looking at original works of art with a suitably trained educator also encourages the development of the following skills:

literacy: by encouraging discussion and extending vocabulary

observation: by focusing concentration on detail

critical thinking: by demanding questions and informed conclusions

reflection: by considering rationales behind thinking processes All education programming and resources at Heide align with the VELS curriculum frameworks and VCE Study Designs. Further information about curriculum links is available at heide.com.au/education/school-visits/curriculum-links/ Teacher Professional Development Heide offers a range of professional development programs for teachers of all year levels, including lectures, guided tours and workshops. Programs are designed to meet the VIT Standards of Professional Practice and Principles for Effective Professional Learning. Bookings Bookings are essential for all programs. For more information or a booking form visit heide.com.au/education/school-visits/or contact Heide Education: (03) 9850 1500 [email protected]

Teachers are encouraged to visit Heide prior to a booked school visit (complimentary ticket available) to familiarise themselves with the exhibitions and facilities.

Heide is committed to ensuring its programs and activities are accessible to all. Schools recognised as having a low overall socio-economic profile on the Government School Performance Summary are eligible to apply for a reduced fee. Please contact Heide Education for more information.

Keep up to date with the latest Heide Education news and special offers by subscribing to the Heide Education e-bulletin at heide.com.au/subscribe

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Documents

HEIDE EDUCATION · HEIDE EDUCATION ©Heide MoMA 2014 Educational use only Page 7 of 34 Legacies of early twentieth-century modernism also underpin Floyd [s art, as seen in the abstract