LUKE POWER COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Recent Works

Articulate Project Space

Created: 01 Aug 2019

Articulate Project Space

An exhibition of large paper works - cut, torn, edited street posters

This artist run space is a large warehouse occupied by five resident artists. The building invites experimentation for artists using spacial dynamics that are not available in regular size studios.

Within this exhibition space I worked with the architectural forms to change the dynamics of my paper creations, using levels throughout the building, the weight of heavy wooden support beams, open space to the roof, skylights, and large spanning walls. Hanging works so they would float throughout the building. The holes cut into these large found posters become peepholes that both mask and reveal structural qualities of their environment.

[latest_projects]

This collection of paper works is an exploration of line through random tearing, and layering from pulling apart and assembling.

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10 ft paper tear, on wood

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The joy of being a pickle

[latest_projects]

Paper Works: Torn Line, how it came about

Created: 10 Apr 2019

The process for these torn poster collage works began by collecting water logged posters off walls in Redfern after a heavy downpour over a few days.

Through play and exploration I discovered an incredible development in line making. By ripping along the edge of the poster I exposed multiple layers of print, sometimes more than 12 at once. It is a wonderful display of colour and pattern.

I imagine the graphic designers who made these posters never imaged their work glues to anothers, and shredded apart to become a graphic monster, standing tall, and wild.


Desert Collage

Created: 22 Jul 2017

There were 4 types of photos I took in my recent visit to Central Australia:

Luke Power - Desert Collage
Burnt out / crashed cars on the side of the road
Luke Power - Desert Collage
Objects found in landscape – scrap metal, tyres, wheels, car parts - no reference to sky
Luke Power - Desert Collage
Close-up rust shots of metal (found in a car yard dump) with no reference to land or sky
Luke Power - Desert Collage
Abstractions of rusty objects / cars with only blue sky background, no reference to land.

I took quite a few hundred photos and compiled them into this collage, a very hands-on editing process.

Luke Power - Desert Collage

In my 8-hour drive from Yulara to Pipalyantjara I saw possibly hundreds of cars by the side of the road. I wanted to document with photography a selection of the burnt-out rusty in APY Lands. They are abandoned either from breaking down, or a crash – spinning off the dirt treks, hitting a ditch, swerving to miss a roo or dingo. Many are burnt out and crumpled up. This aspect of the outback is a disruption to the pristine imagery we only ever see in tourism advertising.

Luke Power - Desert Collage

The top line of images are some of these cars I documented, January 2017. This layout is referencing Bonita Ely’s latest work for Documenta14 Athens, a collection of photographs showing prestine environments and waste / dumps in waterways and other places.

Luke Power - Desert Collage

In March I returned to APY Lands and stayed in Kalka, just 5 minutes from Pipalyantjara. I was a camera man filming the youth celebrating their lives with a fashion show; clothes provided by my partner’s not-for-profit organisation ‘Thread Together’

Luke Power - Desert Collage

Next to our Pipalyantjara accommodation was a car wreck dumping area. I wondered around and took photos. A sign warned “Be careful of buried asbestos”, a fairly serious concern, especially because this site was about 100 meters from the nearest house with children.

I was interested in framing object found on the ground, single shapes, for example circular objects. I lay many of these in a grid formation on the “ground” of my collage.

Luke Power - Desert Collage

I also become interested in photographing rusty object surfaces with no reference to sky or land – full shots of rust. Many of these I complied into a large mass of rust, right end of the collage.

Luke Power - Desert Collage
Luke Power - Desert Collage

Following on from the rust pile was a line of rusty objects I joined to form a new continuous horizon. It was to mimic the mountains, but with rust.

The left half of the image moved from found objects in the sand to full rust textured surfaces, abstract surface readings. I didn’t have enough images to continue with this development, so it then became lines of junk extending from the landscape into arms moving into sky. The sky being framed with black lines, like an abstract cage.

I printed a few copies of some of my material and while working out how to make an image of a flurry of wire sit next to each other, I realised by placing it end to end, it gave the appearance of a self-contained, floating object. I loved this effect.

Luke Power - Desert Collage

I then experimented with sections of cars I had taken photos of with surrounding blue sky.

Luke Power - Desert Collage
Luke Power - Desert Collage

Art for Charity Volunteers- Thread Together

Created: 22 Jul 2017

Cover & Connect is a large installation at the not-for-profit Thread Together. Made under the direction of Luke Power by a team of sewing volunteers, the same volunteers that help clothe thousands of people doing it tough through the charity work of Thread Together.

The patch work art is an installation is 10 x 6 meters and spans across the roof of the Sydney warehouse facility. It is a demonstration of the power of team work, and symbolises the strengths of the charity: to cover people in beautiful clothes with great dignity, to rescue and deliver brand new end-of line fashion stock that would otherwise go to landfill.

Luke Power - Art for Charity
Luke Power - Art for Charity

Thread Together collects over 200,000 items of clothes per annum from fashion houses that over-order stock to meet their market demands. Excess stock usually is written off and sent to land fill; not any more. Thread Together collect and now redistribute clothes to people in need: long term unemployed going for job interviews, women going through major body changes (such as cancer treatment or surgery), women escaping domestic violence, homeless shelters, and so on.

It is the teams of volunteers that help make this all possible. These volunteers from Adelaide’s Thread Together, also participated in the creation of Cover & Connect (Sydney).

Luke Power - Art for Charity
Luke Power - Art for Charity
Luke Ppower - Art for Charity

Adelaide Thread Together sewing club make bags to put clothes into for women in domestic violence shelters, all material taken from some of the incoming stock that has damage.

Here they have worked to create the two large installation pieces.

Installation of Cover & Connect as volunteers from Seafolly help pack newly arrived stock.

Cover & Connect is a permanent work on display for all volunteers and visitors to enjoy at Thread Together.

1/1 Anderson Street. Bankmeadow. NSW 2019.
http://threadtogether.org/


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