Ben Laycock

Community Art

2010-01-02T20:49:00.001-08:00

Ecological Time Line Mural 2006

The mural was created with a grant from the Mount Alexander Shire as part of the 'Footprints' project which went on to win an award from The United Nations for Local Government Environmental Initiatives

The mural is in Mechanics Lane Castlemaine Central Victoria and describes the ecological history of the shire in four parts

THE KOORI ERA

THE GOLD RUSH

THE PRESENT

THE FUTURE

THE 350.org campaign to limit emissions to 350ppm November 2009

Alice Laycock, Mahmoud Zain Elabdeen and I carved an ice tower with machetes, showeringthe spectators with ice. On top was a globe of food dye ice blocks that slowly stained the tower

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY BANNERS 2009

Sculpture

2006-04-02T03:49:00.000-07:00

The Twelve Apostles (big) found objects 2007

The Twelve Apostles (small)Found objects 2005

A Short History of Assimilation 2001
1 bullet, 1 bible, 1 bottle, 1 coffin, 1 shroud

Heros 2002
Granite, wood, bronze

Global Warming 2003
Materials: 44 gallon drum, oil, globe.

Exhibitions

2006-02-25T21:02:00.000-08:00

The River - Paintings by Ben Laycock
The Art Vault - Mildura
Opening Wednesday July 20th - Closing August 7th

Belonging - Does the land belong to us or do we belong to the land?

An expedition in search of the soul of the earth

Landscapes by Ben Laycock

Castlemaine Contemporary Art Space

above Stonemans Bookroom in Hargraeves St

Hours 10 - 6 during The Castlemaine Fringe Festival

Opening Thursday 31st March at 8 o'clock (not 6) closing - 9th April 2011

www.castlemainefringe.org.au

Bridge hand coloured colograph 30x40cm 2009

La Madrugada Gouache & pastel on paper 20x30cm 2010

Long Creek Oil on canvas 1x1.5m 2010

Diamond Gorge hand coloured etching 15x20cm 2010

Pink River Oil on canvas 1x1.2m 2010

Autumn Salon Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th February 2011 Lot19 Langslow St Castlemaine
Hours 12-4
http://www.lot19art.com/

Glenlyon Sculpcha Show
till November 7th 2011
10-4 everyday

CASPA COLLECTIVE CONCIUOSNESS
Paintings by members of The Caspa Collective
Candy Stevens
Yodhi Bergman
Robyn Walton

Ben Laycock

Opening Friday 8th October

Closing end of October

Castlemaine Contemporary Art Space

above Stonemans Bookroom
Hargraves Street Castlemaine
Central Victoria
Hours 10-5 everyday
http://www.caspagallery.blogspot.com/

Taradale Bridge gouche & Pastel on Paper 20x30cm 2010

Rock Pool gouche & Pastel on Paper 30x40cm 2010

Chambers Gorge Gouche on Paper 30x40cm 2010

Cape Conran Gouche on Paper 30x40cm 2010

Barmah Stump Gouche on Paper 30x20cm 2010

Autumn Salon Lot19 Gallery Langslow St Castlemaine
17th April - 2nd May 2010
Open Saturdays & Sundays & Anzac day 12-4

Conflagration Oil on Canvas 133x133cm 2010

Portrait Without a Sitter

Chairs made by artists as portraits

-till February 5th at CASPA above Stonemans Bookroom

in Castlemaine Central Victoria

Saint Vinnie Ben laycock Portrait of Vincent

Crimea River
Recent oil paintings
Phee Broadway Foyer
Mechanics Ln
Castlemaine
Wednesday 18th November - December 4th 2009

More of the Same
Paintings
Prints
Drawings
For those who missed out on the Festival show because they were too busy partying!
July 3 at 6 oclock at CASPA above Stoneman's Bookroom Hargraves st Castlemaine Central Victoria Australia
10 - 5 daily
Ph: 0401338284

Open Studio
above Stonemans Bookroom
Corner of Mostyn and Hargraves Streets Castlemaine Central Victoria Australia
during the Castlemaine Fringe Festival Friday March 27 - Sunday April 5 2009
Hours 10-5 everyday

Glenlyon Annual Sculpture Show
Opening Saturday 25 October 6pm
Closing November 4
10 - 5 Everyday
Glenlyon Shire Hall
Barkly St Glenlyon

ESTUARY 2
Recent Paintings Drawings & Prints
Opening Tuesday NOVEMBER 11 at 6 oclock
Closing November 30 2008
CASTLEMAINE CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE

Half Pool oil on canvas 60x80cm 2008

Fingal Beach Gouache & pastel on paper 30x50cm 2007

Sandy Spit Gouache on Paper 40x60cm 2007

August 14 - 31 2008 Brightspace St.Kilda

ESTUARY - The river rushes headlong down the mountain. when it hits the plain it
starts to wonder. By the time it nears the coast it is meandering in all directions, searching blindly for an outlet to the sea. the pounding surf has built a bulwark of sand that blocks the way. the river turns in on itself, gathering in eddies and pools and bilabongs, swamps, marshes, wetlands, bog. The river rises, breaches the wall and rushes out into the open sea. the tide floods in. the river and the sea dancing around each other in arabesques and curliques.
Above it all, perched on a rock, sits the artist, with a sketchbook in his lap and a pencil in his hand.

Blue Lake Gouache & Pastel on Paper 30x60cm 2008

Escarpment Oil on Canvas 60x90cm 2006

Blue Water Oil on Canvas 60x50cm 2008

Bird's Eye Oil on Canvas 60x90cm 2007

May 10 - May 31 2008 Castlemaine Contemporary Art Space
Abstract Art from the Archives

Untitled Pastel on Paper 60x80cm 2005

Untitled Oil on Canvas 60x80cm 1999

Untitled Gouache on Paper 30x40cm 2004

Untitled Gouache on Paper 40x60cm 1999

AGUA PROFUNDA -Painting the Invisible
August 2006 Brightspace St.Kilda

When we look into the water we see the world around us or we see the bottom ofthe pool, but the water itself is invisible.I have lived in the bush and painted the bush pretty well all my life, except for a twelve year stint in St.Kilda, but even then, firmly ensconced in the built environment, the source of my art has been the natural world. In these ominous times of global warming, resource depletion and mass extinctions, creating environmental art becomes a political act of vital importance. The anthropocentric naval gazing that so fascinates the art world nowadays - exploring every nuance of the minuete of human existence ad nuseum -is a conceit we indulge in at our peril. It's time to get out of our heads, get out of our cities and start to empathise with the world around us before its too late.

Squiggly River Oil on Canvas 1x2m 2006

Weeping Willow Oil on Canvas 60x120cm 2006
Ant Hills Pastel on paper 60x80cm 2006

Green Pool Pastel on Paper 60x80cm 2006

Groundcover Pencil on Paper 60x60cm 2006

Gariwerd Pastel on Paper 30x40cm 2004

Dry Creek Pencil on Paper 60x80cm 2005

Cape Schank Pastel on Paper 50x50cm 2005

Snake River Pencil and Oil on Canvas 1x2 Metres 2006

Kow Swamp Pastel on Paper 60x80cm 2004

The Yarra at Warrandyte Pastel on Paper 60x100cm 2006

Drawings

2006-02-25T20:54:00.000-08:00

Turpin's Falls Pastel on Paper 40x60cm 2006

Murray River Pastel on Paper 80x120cm 2004

Maldon Pool Pastel on Paper 40x80cm 2005

Claypan Pastel on Paper 60x80cm 2004

Crow Paset on Paper 15x15cm 2004

ROSE'S GAP Pencil on Paper 30x40cm 2005

BIG HILL Oil Pastel on Paper 50 x 80 cm 2005

Biography & Curiculum Vitae

2006-02-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

Biography

Walk into Ben Laycock’s studio in Castlemaine and you will find yourself surrounded by the natural world. On every wall and surface hang bright canvases, some over two metres tall, of luminous waterfalls, sprawling desserts and ancient inland rivers. “Australia has been drifting around the ocean for fifty million years,” Ben explains, “It is now very flat, worn away by countless floods until it resembles a vast canvas, painted by the weather,” The sheer volume of work - oil paintings, gouaches, prints and drawings- is testament to Ben’s sense of connection to the land.
A superb example of Ben's mature work is Snake River (2008). A zigzag of white-blue water weaves its way across an eroded desert. On either side deep grooves, runoffs and ditches crackle with primordial energy. “Ben continues. “I’m trying to show the way these natural forces shape and reshape the land, without end.” In many of Ben’s recent paintings this idea is explored from an aerial perspective. “I often find myself painting from a bird’s eye view, much as aboriginal people do. It’s the only way to see such a flat landscape.” The result is highly personal, a spirited vision of the power of nature.
Before becoming a full time artist Ben lived a largely nomadic life, crisscrossing the country with his partner and young family. He kept a journal throughout this period, recording the various people and places he visited, particularly his encounters with aboriginal people and the desert. These travelogues formed the foundation stones of what was to become his major preoccupation. “It took a long time to grow, this idea of painting the power of the land.”
When asked to reflect on the origins of this feeling for landscape, Ben recalls his childhood at Dunmoochin, the thriving artist’s colony on the outskirts of Melbourne, established by Clifton and Marlene Pugh in 1951. “I grew up surrounded by potters and painters in the bush. Clifton Pugh was one of the first painters to campaign on behalf of the environment - and one of the first to own a Toyota Landcruiser. I remember our first big trip across the Strzelecki desert. I was thirteen years old. We started at Tibooburra and drove to the Flinders Ranges and Lake Fromme, following faded tyre tracks through the desert. We’d stop for lunch and find aboriginal artefacts. Now that’s authentic! It was my first experience of the desert and I loved it.”
When he was nineteen Ben left Dunmoochin and built a small house deep in the forest at nearby Christmas Hills. “I wanted to go deep into nature, deep into the wilderness, far from the madding crowd” After that he travelled to South America for twelve months, returned to Melbourne, and studied printmaking at the VCA. Ben continued to paint and enjoyed a sell out show at United Artists Gallery in St Kilda. Soon after, he received a Travel Grant to visit Nicaragua, where he was commissioned to paint a mural of The Story of Creation According to the Bible and the Humanitarian Achievements of the Nicaraguan Revolution on a chapel belonging to Catholic Marxists. Ben completed the mural, returned to Melbourne, and found that he was torn between a life of art and a life of politics.
Thus began an extended period of soul searching for the young artist. He took up various revolutionary causes, but avoided any organised groups. “I’m not a joiner. I just wanted a revolution on my own. Pretty crazy really.” To make ends meet he painted murals, printed posters, did graffiti and neglected his painting. One day he strapped a pack on his back and walked away from it all, embarking on a personal “Odyssey” into the outback. He hitchhiked to the Kimberleys via the tiny aboriginal community of Nyripi in the Western Desert, then across to Dunk Island in Far North Queensland. The trip revitalised his passion for the landscape and established a working pattern that has continued ever since: “I’d do drawings on site, come back to St.Kilda to finish them off, live on the dole, scrimp and scrape, have a show, get a fist full of dollars and head off again.”
After years of wayward travel he finally moved to Central Victoria, where he built a house from recycled materials in Barkers Creek. Since then there have been fewer inland trips, and his work has become increasingly abstract but always feeding off those trips to the desert. “Lately I’ve become increasingly obsessed with water, with the way it shapes and reshapes the land. Water brings things to life!" Indeed, water appears in all but a few of Ben's most recent works. It often spreads like a network of veins across the vast,empty plains. The result is epic, abstract, surreal. “Water is something that speaks to the unconscious, " he says, "it dissolves reality."
In Philosophers Falls (2010), for example, a central cascade of luminous, ethereal light radiates out into the rock-shelf itself, dissolving any distinction between water, earth and air. This alchemy is achieved with curling, fluid brushstrokes, each of which contributes to the overall pattern of energy. This pattern unifies the painting, showing that nothing can be excluded from the never-ending flow of life.
These days Ben’s work rarely displays overt political messages, but he feels that any act that sides with natural world, against the many threats that would diminish it, is a political act. “We must be grounded in the spirit of place in order to defend it.”
In a work like Conflagration (2010), for example, the perils of rampant development are presented with visionary power. Twisted flames and blazing apparitions rise menacingly above a coastline of poisoned water and rock. A solitary dog scavenges on the edge of an abandoned pipeline. This apocalyptic image shows us what the world might look like when our connection to nature is severed. We neglect the ecosystem at our own peril. The alternative to this can be seen in Pink River (2010). Here a ribbon of water splits the canvas in half, spreading left and right into the red sand. The rich palette and spirited brushwork underscore a sense of natural joy and harmony: this is undisturbed country, where everything is naturally in flux. “Go out into the heart of Australia, as far away from the city as you can,” Ben says. “Stand still for a very long while. Let the sun bleach your skin. Let the wind scour your bones. Eventually the clutter and trivia of quotidian existence will wash away. And then you’ll begin to feel a resonance between your soul and the soul of the earth.”
Ben’s work has strong affinities with the Deep Ecology movement, which stresses the inherent value and interconnectedness of all life. This interconnectedness must be realized personally, as Rainer Maria Rilke, one of Ben’s favourite poets, knew well:

Earth, isn’t this
what you want:
rising up
inside us invisibly
once more?
Isn’t it your dream
to be invisible someday?
Earth! invisible!
what is it
you urgently ask for
if not transformation?
Earth, my love
I will do it.

To see Ben’s landscape painting is to see the landscape as the artist does, from the inside. “My response to the landscape wells up from the unconscious. I want my work to evoke an immediate, visceral response, before thought, beyond thought” he says. The act of painting becomes an act of transformation, allowing us to see the invisible spirit of place. These highly personal and symbolic paintings restore our fractured relationship to the land and make possible a greater intimacy with the earth.
Ken South 2010

Curiculum Vitae

SOLO SHOWS

2009 Fee Broadway Castlemaine

2008 Brightspace Melbourne Caspa Castlemaine
2006 Brightspace Melbourne Caspa Castlemaine
2005 Convent Daylesford
2004 Brightspace Melbourne
2003 Convent Daylesford
2002 Convent Daylesford
2000 Steps Melbourne
1998 Durack Broome
1997 Steps Melbourne
1991 F.O. E. Melbourne
1989 Emerald Hill Melbourne
1985 United Artists Melbourne
1982 Pinacotheca Melbourne

SELECTED GROUP SHOWS

2010 Lot19 Castlemaine 'Autumn Salon'

2007 Brightspace Melbourne, Museum of South Australia, Adelaide 'Tracks in the Desert'
2006 North East Sculpture Event Wangarratta

Qdos Sculpture Biennale Lorne
2005 CASPA Gallery, Castlemaine 'Three Mediums'
2004 Pennyschool Gallery, Maldon 'The Tree Show, a Bushwazie group show '
Maritime Art Awards finalist exhibition Melbourne
2003 John Glover Memorial Prize finalist Show Launceston Tasmania
The Barn Gallery, Montsalvat Melbourne 'Origin:Dunmoochin Second

and third generation artists from the Dunmoochin artistic enclave.'

Doveton Gallery Castlemaine 'This is where we live.' Inaugural exhibition

Bushwazie environmental art movement, part of Mamunya: A celebration of the box-

ironbark forest
Swan Hill Drawing Prize finalist exhibition
Nillumbik Prize finalist exhibition Melbourne
1998 Castlemaine Fringe Festival
Castlemaine Drawing Prize finalists exhibition
The Australian Arts Crawl Kyneton
1997 Shinju Matsuri Festival Broome
1996 Castlemaine Fringe Festival
1987 Ben Grady Gallery Canberra
1986 Ben Grady Gallery Canberra

TRAVEL

2006 South America, U.S.A.
2004 The Tarkine. Tasmania
2002 The Kimberley. W.A.
2001 The Flinders Ranges. S.A.
1999 Bruni Island Tasmania
1997 The Pilbara. W.A.
1990 Cape York, Far North Queensland
1988 Arnhem Land N.T.
1986 The Western Desert W.A.
1985 Nicaragua Central America
1984 Japan
1978 Europe, North and South America

GRANTS and PROJECTS

2006 Ecological Timeline Mural, part of Mount Alexander Shire 'Footprints' project, which received a special comendation for Best Local Government Environmental Initiative at

The United Nations World Environment Day Awards 2007
2005 Launched CASPA Castlemaine contemporary art space
2004 Mentor for Independent Learning Project. Castlemaine Secondary College
2003 Mosaic mural project. Winters Flat Primary School
Launched the Bushwazie environmental art movement
2002 Art Liaison Person.Yakanarra Aboriginal Community. The Kimberley. W.A.
2001 Tonksculpture Prize exhibition curator
Mentor for School Holiday Program, Marree Aboriginal School. S.A.
2000 Arts Editor of The Journal community newspaper
Mentor program for V.C.E.art students at Castlemaine Secondary College
1998 Artists in Schools Grant to produce a mosaic tile mural with the children of Winters Flat Primary School
Visual Arts Coordinator for the Castlemaine Fringe Festival
1996 Castlemaine Cultural Columns Project. Working with various ethnic groups to produce images of their culture to adorn power poles in the C.B.D. of Castlemaine
Port Fairy Folk Festival 20th Anniversary celebrations. Produced lantern sculptures and fire sculptures
1989 Vic Health Grant to produce a mural at the Kensington Community Health Centre with El Salvadorian refugees
1988 Vic Health Grant to produce a mural at the Kensington Community Centre with El Salvadorian children
1986 Produced a mural with the children of The Noonkenbah Aboriginal School in the Kimberley W.A.
1985 Visual Arts Board of The Australia Council Travel Grant to produce a community mural in Nicaragua, Central America
Joint recipient of a C.D.E.P. grant to set up The Galleon Cafe in St. Kilda

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

2001 Australian National Gallery Australian print collection
1991 St. Kilda City Council
1985 National Gallery of Victoria. Michelle Endowment for the Arts
St.Kilda City Council
1982 Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council

PUBLICATIONS

2010 Trouble - May issue 'Greetings from Brizvegas'
1997 The Aboriginal Independent. Cartoon
1996 Green Left Weekly Front cover image.
1989 Sunday Telegraph Feature article on Emerald Hill Gallery
1988 Sunday Age Feature article on the Kensington community mural
1987 Art in Australia Survey of Ben Grady Show
1986 El Nuevo Diario. Nicaragua Feature article on the community mural
1985 The Age Review of United Artists show

SALIENT POINTS IN MY ARTISTIC TRAJECTORY

2005 Living near Castlemaine with my partner and two children
1992 Moved to Castlemaine, Central Victoria and built a house in the bush.
1980-81 Studied Printmaking at The Victorian College of the Arts
1979 Began living in St.Kilda
1975 Built a house in the bush at Christmas Hills
1960-74 Grew up in Dunmoochin artists community on the outskirts of Melbourne.
1956 Born, Melbourne.

Oil Paintings

2006-02-22T15:47:00.000-08:00

Deep Water 60x120cm 2005

Pool 100x120cm 2004

First Light 120x100cm 2003

Mountain Lake 100x120cm 2003

McDONALD RANGES 130 x 100 cm 2004

DISTURBANCE 100 x 120cm 2004

Still Water 60 x 120 cm 2006

CREEK 100 x 60 cm 2004

TREZONA GORGE 100cm x 120cm 2004

CAPE SCHANK 100cm x100cm 2005

WATERCOURSE 120cm x 70cm 2002