Come join me in exploring these complex issues through art and words. To be viewed online and where possible utilizing pop-up methods locally. #TooHotToHandle is curated by Fern Smith. The works will be hashtagged leading into the celebrations of IWD– month. More detail here #TOO HOT TO HANDLE? – FernArtz
Category: Fern Smith
Updates on Fern Smith’s art activities
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Like the Sun – Basil Bracken Toucan
Basil Bracken Toucan – 20th Anniversary Remastered edition – Recorded one afternoon around the turn of the millennium at Ebden studios version 1, in the donga out the back, with 1 microphone gaffa taped to a pole, gaffa taped to a bar stool. If you listen very closely you can hear the 385 bus hurtling past. -
Car Boot Recordings 2021 
Singing in Coburg 
Cover of First Album
Basil Bracken Toucan my son is a new edition to the FernArtz website. Read all about him
Launching
Car boot recordings by Basil Bracken Toucan 2021
The fish and Jimmy the Cricket
The mirror and the razor
Eyelids -
Enough is Enough
When going through change you tend to fall back on what comes easily. For me that is drawing. While drawing one can allow the mind to fly free or listen intently to what is around you.
I am emerging; from COVID-19 as part of our life with the lock downs in Victoria appear to be easing. In the past twelve months I have relocated away from my shop front studio if fifteen years in Merlynston Melbourne to Portarlington a Port Phillip Bay village whilst in is mix undergone a major operation. All these changes has had a huge pact on my art practice.
The time moving away from my studio has given me a great deal of time to reflect and ponder the best way for me as an artist to move forward. Concurrently with my pontificating global and regional human rights issues have emerged “black lives matter” and “enough” showing the fragilities of our liberal democracies while playing out on in media.
My change and the worlds change, all moshing around in my head, brings me to developing four conceptual art bodies of work around common everyday Australian terms; “to hot to handle”, ‘’a rod for my own back”, “drunkard” and “stain”. I expect they will take about awhile to fully mature and present in the material form. As an artist is is called the development and designing phase. Where research such as looking at: the personal is political, the personal is private and slang usage in the everyday. What would be the best vehicles for this creative participatory exploration?
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Haiku – Fishing nets
They stood in a tin
Sea washing this way and that
Casting came to naughtFS 23Oct 2020
