Big Al

CATALOGUE : In process

LOCATION : Wadandi Country, Cowaramup, Western Australia

WITH : Fugazi Gallery

Big Al is contributing to this year's Fugazi Gallery Cowie International Zine Festival. Fugazi Gallery is a Gallery housing local and international disrupters who confront and challenge perceptions based in Cowaramup, Western Australia.

This Zine Festival sees dozens of artists producing a collection of zines in a travelling exhibition from Cowaramup, Los Angeles and New York. The Zines create a collection/ travelling archive for people to experience both locally in South West Australia and Internationally across the US.

Al's Zine explores the history of the Zine itself through an analog narrated script, between the character YOU and your chosen NARRATOR. From the witches to science fiction, riot grrrl and manifestos, the Zine of Zines challenges one's place in movements in time. Free Portal provided.

This is Al's first Zine and will be available once the travelling exhibition finishes in September 2024.

Thank you to Fugazi Gallery for organising the CowieI International Zine Festival.

To submit your Zine of Zines — please email your scanned copy to thatsbigal@gmail.com

All formats encouraged. All additions archived with your written permission.

To learn more about Fugazzi Gallery visit Fugazi Gallery.

To read more about Riot Grrl visit Grrrl, Collected.

CATALOGUE : In process

LOCATION : Wadandi Country, Cowaramup, Western Australia

WITH : Jenny (Potts) Barr, Daniela Palitos

Big Al was interviewed by local art critics, writers and art historians Jenny (Potts) Barr and Daniela Palitos in early February for The Local Art Paper.

The Local Art Paper (L.A.P) was est. 2019 and is a curated arts news site generating from the South West of Western Australia. The paper aims to bring in depth interviews with artists exploring their ideas, influences and studio practices.

From Jenny and Dianela on The Local Art Paper

“You will hear two distinct voices in the writing; we don’t always agree, and we see things differently but also the same- that’s why LAP works. We see our role as educational and advisory, to help artists grow through critical thought and engage with the field of criticism – talking about what they do and why they do it and enriching our world views as they go.”

Over hours of conversation - the group conversed on environmental art and feminism, conceptual comedy and absurdity, historians and heroes.

The interview is the first critical discussion Big Al has had about her work since transitioning from still life to the new desire to animate her works.

To interview will be available online at Interviews - The Local Art Paper.

To read about Jenny and Daniela, visit Meet the L.A.P team

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Mandoorn, Kenwick, Australia

WITH : Daniel Jan Martin, The Beelier Group, Hans Lambers, Andrea Gaynor

Big Al collaborated with Daniel Jan Martin on the Future Yule Brook Regional Park as an artist and architectural graduate. From Daniel Jan Martin on the project…

“This strategy for the future Yule Brook Regional Park has encompassed landscape planning, mapping and advocacy for one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world, extending through Perth’s eastern suburbs. From forests, to falls, to floodplain.

As development encroaches, a strategy for design together with conservation is vital. Over 10 kilometres, Mandoorn – Yule Brook and the Greater Brixton Street Wetlands makes up a 702-hectare corridor – an area of ongoing advocacy with The Beeliar Group for a future Yule Brook Regional Park.

This regional conservation protection is now urgent. The south west of Western Australia is one of 36 internationally-recognised biodiversity hotspots. Often expressed as an accolade, a hotspot is in fact a condemnation. The classification is given where globally significant biodiversity is in escalating conflict with human impacts. The highest concentrations of biodiversity in WA’s south west occur within four regions: the Fitzgerald Biosphere, the Stirling Ranges, Lesueur National Park and the Perth metropolitan region.

A Yule Brook Regional Park would contain around 70 percent of the floral species in each of these megadiverse regions, concentrated in less than one percent of the area. There are 857 endemic species of flora here, 58 rare and threatened flora, and 11 federally-listed threatened ecological communities.

In July 2023, The Beeliar Group of scientists and professors determined that the industrial rezoning surrounding the corridor could not go ahead without strong likelihood of extreme environmental impacts. The Beeliar Group put forward a solution that would limit the industrial area by just 27% while protecting this trove of biodiversity for future generations.”

To learn more about the research behind the project, you can visit Future Yule Brook Regional Park by Daniel Jan Martin

To learn more you can visit ‘The Beeliar Group’s July 2023 ‘Vision for a Future Yule Brook Regional Park.’

To read more about this project you can visit ‘Ancient landscapes, remnant landscapes’ at Landscape Architecture Australia.

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Walyalup, Western Australia

WITH : Edited by Daniel Jan Martin with Noel Nannup, Nansen Robb, Clancy Martin, Mariela Espino Zuppa, in collaboration with And/And and WA Forest Alliance.

On Thursday, the 11 May WA Forest Alliance launched the Forests Atlas in the form of a one-night-only Exhibition at Moores Building, Fremantle. Dr Noel Nannup, Daniel Jan Martin and Jess Beckerling spoke at the event, whilst Big Al was MC and curated the exhibition. Proceeds from the sale of her original paintings went to WA Forest Alliance.

The Forests Atlas is a field guide to the forests of south west Australia. It blends maps with artworks, photography and story in celebration of the life and colour of these forests. From the waterways, to the ancient Jarrah, the Numbats, to the Black Cockatoos and towering Karri, the Forests Atlas paints a shimmering picture of the interconnectedness of trees.

To learn more about the exhibition space, visit the Moores Building Contemporary Art Space.

To learn more about WAFA, visit WA Forest Alliance.

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Walyalup, Western Australia

WITH : Edited by Daniel Jan Martin with Noel Nannup, Nansen Robb, Clancy Martin, Mariela Espino Zuppa, in collaboration with And/And and WA Forest Alliance.

The Forests Atlas is a field guide to the forests of southwest Australia. It blends maps with artworks, photography and story in celebration of the life and colour of these forests. From the waterways, to the ancient Jarrah, the Numbats, to the black cockatoos and towering Karri, the Forests Atlas paints a shimmering picture of the interconnectedness of trees.

“With the trees, we find our ancestors. With the trees, we connect to the past, bring knowledge forward, and walk into the future” – Noel Nannup

To order the Forests Atlas, visit WA Forest Alliance

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Wakayama Prefecture, Japan

WITH : Hiroyuki-san and Sachi-san

On a Mikan farm that has been in operation for over 100 years, big Al travelled to Wakayama to help two farmers with their Mikan Harvest. Using a Natural Farming philosophy, with no fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides, Al was interested in the process of maintaining, harvesting and distributing the Mikans throughout Japan from IBE Farm.

This experience was catalogued in the form of the IBE Farm memos, a written catalogue of activities, processes and insights into how the Natural farming philosophy was applied in the fields. Included in these were a series of photographs taken in the fields during the month-long harvest. The IBE Farm Memos remain a foundational project for an enduring curiosity in caring for biodiversity in agricultural practices for the artist.

To learn more about IBE Farm, visit Natural Cultivation on IBE Farm.

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Tokyo Prefecture, Japan

WITH : Tokyo Zokei University and Aiko Owada

In early December 2022, Big Al went to Tokyo Zokei University to give a lecture to the Bachelor of Fine Arts students. The lecture presented to students explored the work from artist residencies completed at Studio Kura and Arts Itoya. In addition, the lecture explored how different creative processes were used to create each artwork at each residency. The presentation covered six individual artworks, each investigating how agriculture had changed in Japan since modernisation. Before creating the works, Big Al gained experience as a farming volunteer and through the textural analysis of Masanobu Fukuoka's book The One-Straw Revolution.

Thank you to Zokeii University and owada-sensei for inviting me to share these experiences with the students.

To learn more about University, visit Tokyo Zokei

To learn more about sensei-owada, visit Aiko Owada

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

WITH : Aiko Owada and Makita Sayaka

Hatake Seed Works was an artistic experimental fieldwork project in Ibaraki prefecture Japan. Alongside artist and farmer Aiko Owada and architectural graduate turned thatcher Makita Sayada, a field overrun with weeds was sowed using the techniques of Masonobu Fukuoka in late Autumn 2022. Between the fruits of an organic Mikan orchard, the three artists went about weeding, cutting and discarding the weeded plants over randomly thrown Japanese vegetable seeds. The randomised seeding method and weed covering aimed to test how alternated methods to mechanised and controlled farming practices could be challenged.

To learn more about Aiko’s artworks, visit Aiko Owada

To learn more about Makita’s work as a thatcher, visit Thatched Living: Nostalgic Living

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Saga Prefecture, Japan

WITH : Sierra Sanchez and Silvia Husek at Arts Itoya

The Yoke was an exhibition experience that was an invitation to question.

To question is the essence of Masanobu Fukuoka's 1975 book, The One-Straw Revolution. Over the last three months, Al read this book while working and living on multiple farms across Japan. Masanobu's Natural Farming method, or 'do nothing' farming, proposes a technique that returns agency to nature, to mystery, to only doing what is necessary to grow food. Al began to question how this method could be applied to all the in-between spaces, all the vacant plots, and all the 'nothing' spaces in our cities. Through artworks of collage, video, and an interactive dining experience, you are invited to look and look again at the 'nothing' spaces that surround us in our cities. What if the in-between, the Yoke or Yolk of a 'nothing' place, could be the main event?

To learn more about the artist residency and exhibition space, visit Arts Itoya

For more information on The One-Straw Revolution, visit this site on Masanobu Fukuoka’s Farm

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

WITH : Matthew Forsyth, Rebecca Merlic, Colin Peele, Anna Abl, Sanae Nicola, Eugenio Nuzzo, Georgia b Smith, Nick Uglow, Sabina Kafkova at Studio Kura.

Unthings was an exhibition created after a month-long artist residency at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan. The exhibition explored the works of Masanobu Fukuoka through the process of painting, collage and drawing, writing and performance. The artworks were presented as an interactive studio experience - where visitors were read a script and shown an invention - the Unthing Machine amongst a series of sketches, process drawings and collaged photographs to the walls. This machine (performed by Rebecca Merlic) showed how following all of the handwritten steps - one could change their perception of the taste of a seemingly ordinary item of food. In changing our values, we change how we use our environment for the production of food - a proposition to change how we design the in-between space in our cities - thus creating an opportunity for biodiversity and food outside our usual palettes.

To learn more about the artist residency and exhibition space, visit Studio Kura

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Bibbulman Country, Donnelly River + Walyalup, Fremantle, Australia

WITH : Shupiwe Chonge, Blake Poole, Baz Emerald, Georgia Herbert, Nansen Robb at Early Works Gallery

Taking Shape is an annual artist residency designed to nurture and support emerging career artists. Creatives of all types are encouraged to focus on their craft and produce works to be exhibited at the following group show. All disciplines welcome, these works are designed to reflect the surrounding environment and expand each artist’s own creative development.

This year’s inaugural event occurred in May in the Donnelly River Timber Mill Village on Bibulman bodjar, Western Australia. Six artists living and designing under the same roof for a week. This incubation period was the perfect time for the artists to share their skills and learn from each other’s practice. Painting, soft sculpture, pottery, engraving, dyeing, audio and video art are just a few of the mediums that were experimented with. Many cups of tea were shared amongst the quaint mill cottages. Picturesque vistas of the ancient Karri forest inspired many of the works created at this unique artist retreat.

During Big Al’s week at Donnelly River, she used gouache and oil painting to study the happenings in the Karri forest, from ground to sky. Investigating stories around Donnelly, she painted moments shared by the artists that were reminiscent of events in Donnelly River when it was a timber milling town decades ago, connecting now to then through paint.

To learn more about the exhibition space, visit Early Works Gallery

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Walyalup, Fremantle, Australia

WITH : Daniel Jan Martin (editor) and Liam Mouritz (editor) with Landscape Architecture Australia

Big Al wrote an article for Landscape Architecture’s August Issue Matters of Time.

At the heart of North Fremantle community, not-for-profit organization APACE is foregrounding an approach to the environment that fosters ecological and community resilience, embraces change and gives natural systems room to move.

APACE, located on the land of the Whadjuk people of Noongar Country, was one of the first alternative energy sites in Western Australia and was named Appropriate Community and Education. Known today as APACE, the project is interesting both from ecological and community perspectives. Evolving from its beginnings as a sustainable living demonstration, APACE today runs on the funds it makes as a not-for-profit organization. The organization now provides revegetation, landscaping and recycling services, an organic community garden, a seed collection and seed bank, environmental project management and education and training in regeneration. Its on-site retail and wholesale nursery sells seed stock endemic to the Swan Coastal Plain. Over the four decades since its inception, the project has expanded its role in the North Fremantle community from demonstration site to catalyst for ecological regeneration.

To read the article, visit Landscape Architecture Australia

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Walyalup, North Fremantle, Australia

WITH : APACE Native Nursery

Completed as Big Al’s Architectural Thesis project, an Infrastructure Catalogue, Thesis Essay and series of Trace Drawings were completed for her research project at Notre Dame University.

The gradual managed retreat proposal created two futures (staying or leaving on their current site). The two futures for APACE Nursery developed in this project used social, ecological, and built infrastructure in coordination across 100 years to respond to the predicted flooding of the Derbal Yerrigan. Each future uses a path to connect or keep each site’s program operating on both sites independently - depending on the future APACE chooses. APACE’s social legacy requires volunteer-run events and materials that are maintainable, easily constructed, and available. Tracing and historical archives revealed a design for a wetland site that, with the aid of a levy, can ecologically regenerate the shoreline and continue APACE Nursery’s legacy of regeneration. Precedents and painting informed a linear shed, creating a just public space incorporating accessibility and an adjustable program for APACEs built legacy.

Other community groups located on Swan River Trust Land could use this architectural research to investigate their own managed retreat strategy. To understand the hidden processes of an organisation, researchers can use the social, ecological, and built infrastructure tactical toolkits from the thesis to investigate other sites along the Derbal Yerrigan subject to predicted flooding. The legacy of this managed retreat strategy for APACE Nursery goes beyond built form. It is a legacy in the form of an expanded social movement and a dynamic tidal ecosystem.

To learn more about APACE Nursery, visit APACE

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Noongar Country, Australia

WITH : Ariel Katzie, Kim Mints, Robert Jenkins, Peche, Jarred Seng

The photobomb event hosted at The Little Wing Corner Gallery asked artists to paint live on original photographic prints by local photographer Jarred Seng. 10% of profits were donated to the artist’s charity of choice, with works being silent auctioned on the night. Live performances accompanied by Chip Hazard and People Taking Pictures.

To learn more about the exhibition space, visit Little Corner Gallery

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Walyalup, Fremantle, Australia

WITH : Three Stories and the Railway Hotel

The Three Stories Decade party asked Big Al to paint an artwork live. This work was silently auctioned over the following week, contributing a percentage of the profits to Ningaloo Reefs - Protect Ningaloo campaign. The blue ink artwork took a total of 5 hours to complete and was completed during several local live performances.

To learn more about the campaign, visit Protect Ningaloo

CATALOGUE : Archived

LOCATION : Walyalup, Fremantle, Australia

WITH : Third Wheel Cafe

Place Creatures was a month-long artist exhibition and Opening Night at Third Wheel Cafe in South Beach, Fremantle. Place creatures is a body of work that explores the emerging patterns in nature and how people could inhabit its objects.

Each piece is inhabited differently.

Some host dangling dwellings, some host sails to catch the wind, and some host strange houses on stilts. All depict how we can find beauty in the found things - and the ways we could inhabit them.

To view one of the artworks, view one of the selected works