new website on the way - stay tuned

http://www.taragilbee.com

will become a final platform to showcase all the projects and works in a more easily navigated way. Not long now!! but taking a little longer than expected.... hopefully soon!!

The Fever Ships

Current research project:

‘The Fever Ships’ is a creative research project that explores multiple sites with a relationship to Quarantine and migration in Australia. The new artworks developed will be a contemporary approach to this historic material and will associate thematically with borders, protective barriers, palimpsests of the past and marks within the landscape, internment and forcible detention. These themes point to a much broader context of Australia’s medical, migration and maritime legacy, and the global movement of people. The project will link into current political concerns, as well the layers of past experience that inform these. The research project will link into the archaeological investigation of more than 1000 inscriptions dating from the 1830s to 1970s, with the help of the Sydney University Research Associates currently conducting a project at the Manly, NSW Quarantine Station.( see the following article for more information on the site and works of this group

http://www.academia.edu/837228/Wish_you_were_here_Historic_inscriptions_from_the_North_Head_Quarantine_Station_Manly_NSW

The artworks which are planned, relate not only to these inscriptions but also to other sites and material related to their isolated geography and conceptual potential. Each site is in variable condition and has a different range of visitation. Through the use of archival materials, objects and images, I aim to find ways to reinvest the layered palimpsest of the sites historical forms with renewed social value whilst mapping out their previous ideological referents. This work will avoid historical re enactment or referencing the heritage of the sites in a documentary form. It is the material and subtle forms that will be drawn from the site and the conceptual embodiment of the site which is brought forward into the final forms of the artistic work.

Cold Light showing as part of Frühlings Salon : Galerie Pavlova

This image will be part of the Frühlings Salon. A group exhibition within Galerie Pavlova. This Gallery has recently opened with the aim to be a premium platform for Europeans to experience the best in contemporary photography from Australia & New Zealand.

see image for map of the open weekend

Double Crossing

January 2014

@ White Space

What happens at the White Space when a bunch of experienced artists are given just one week to create a new work with another artist with whom they’ve never worked?

Fun, chaos and delicious disaster? Beauty, whimsy and all things sublime? The beginning of something? The end of art as we know it? Wretched works? It’s all the drama of a double crossing for sure.

Celebrate the shakedown with us and as we publicly expose what scientists only dare to reveal behind locked lab doors.

Research team includes:
Alex Prado and Clayton Tremlett, Andrew Goodman with Oliver Cloke & Kathy Heywood and Scott Sanders, Gabrielle Brauer, Tara Gilbee and Heidi Romano

The elixir images

The elaboratory's elixir

This is another snap shot. More documentation and full outline to come. I guess that is the trick with keeping up making the work, documenting and posting.

Video of one of the rooms for 'The Elaboratory's Elixir'

Jacques Soddell 'The alchemical table' sound works (quick snap shot)

click on this link to see a short clip of one of the installations (Tara Gilbee and Jacques Soddell)

vimeo clip

or try this in url

https://vimeo.com/62221982

Part of the review article on ABC

Periscope, the flagship event of the Castlemaine State Festival's Visual Arts program, takes place across three unique sites. The Hunt and Lobb building, an old Police lock-up and Tute's Cottage, an original miner's cottage - decaying with the passage of time yet surrounded by an extraordinary garden, bursting with life.

Tute's Cottage is a sensory experience unlike anything I have encountered. As I wander from room to room I try to identify the various aromas and where they are wafting from. There are apothecary vessels of all shapes and sizes in this alchemic laboratory, and I am invited to participate and interact, making each encounter unique. The level of detail is extraordinary. I left feeling like I had just experienced something very special; although not certain what.

to read the full review:

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/03/27/3724589.htm

Midlands Express: News article

The Alchemical Table

Feb. 18, 2013, 2:17 p.m.

Curator and artist Tara Gilbee is holding an event which is an introduction to a year long, slow art process she has been 'cooking up' called The Alchemical Table on Sunday, February 24, and Sunday, March 3, at 7pm.

Set amongst the historic atmosphere of Tutes Cottage, The Alchemical Table invites you to feast upon the nature of experiment. Playing with your food is not only encouraged but is the creative act itself. Be introduced to new concoctions, explore new sensory combinations and clink potions in glass vessels. Drawing inspiration from the garden, together with food, fragrance and sonic ambience, the abundance of nature and its transformative effects are big players in the ensemble experiment. Become an ingredient yourself, consuming and producing your role under the guidance of the alchemical conjurers. This is one part performance, one part dinner party, and three parts curiosity.

Tara said she started drying a year's worth of fennel and creating other liquid inspirations with Quince vodka and Quince syrups, to build the mythical apothecary that will inhabit Tutes Cottage in Greenhill Avenue, Castlemaine. The project was made possible through the Mount Alexander Shire community grants.

Led by Tara Gilbee, The Alchemical Table is a dinner as artwork and artwork as dinner. Head concoctor of elements, Nikki Valentti, draws upon her culinary talents to propose new combinations of food in an environment of experimental play. Artists Jacques Soddell and Kent Wilson are on hand as lab partners to facilitate the process and test hypothesis.

All contributions will be recombined and reprocessed into an installation artwork that opens on Friday, March 15, within the visual arts program for Castlemaine State Festival.

All are welcome to dine. Bookings need to be made online prior to the event

The seats are limited to 15 places for this free event, so get in quick to avoid disappointment.

Images from the event: yes people missed out and were disappointed because those that came, loved the event and felt very special :-)