The Wasp Project

source: alcorsoorgau

Tricky Walsh builds circuits. Her installation practice is either;
A composition of interconnecting components that construct conceptual and interdependent environment/relationships. Or Assemblages of (made) deconstructive machines that illustrate a system of social and architectural orthopaedics. Sometimes both. She also paints, makes comics and films.
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source: bedfellows

I met Mish Meijers and Tricky Walsh in the summer of 2011 while participating in a show curated by Las Hermanas Iglesias at Flux Factory. I had encountered their works before meeting them at the urging of the Hermanas sisters. Their works and practice, both solo and collaborative, impressed me; I could sense that they were kindred spirits: storytellers, makers and advocates of absurdity. Meeting them only reinforced this.

Mish Meijers is an inter-disciplinary artist based in Hobart, Tasmania. Her solo practice experiments conceptually and physically with surface tension: how one material conforms or abrades against another. She constructs sculptural tableaux with an alchemical and discordant sensibility. Her work distorts the inherent worth and significance of her objects with regard to popular culture, gender determination and functionality.

Tricky Walsh, who is also based in Hobert, Tasmania, employs interdisciplinary methods and materials in her work. Concerned with the tensions that develop from seemingly oppositional forces; she implements two and three-dimensional processes as a means of describing physical and philosophical systems of discovery and invention. She creates conceptual environments and machines reminiscent of architectural structures, woven with aspects of personal narrative.

Meijers was a 2009 CAST studio resident and in 2008 she was awarded the McCulloch studio residency in Paris. Walsh is currently on the CAST gallery program committee and is represented by Dick Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania. They both collaborate with Alicia King in the installation/performance group, The Holy Trinity.

They have been working together for seven years with their ongoing collaborative project “Henri Papin – the Collector”, that examines social anthropology through the superfiction of an obsessive character and his psychological schema. They recently started “The Subterranean Plant Society” – a fictional society that promotes a new collaborative practice focused on spatial and material concepts as governing forces in their artistic integration. Meijers and Walsh co-chaired and founded the Artist Run Initiative Six_a in Hobart until its closure in 2011.
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source: mishmeijers

Mish Meijers is a multi-disciplinary artist whose solo practice experiments in surface tensions: how one material conforms or abrades against the matter of another. Whether in actuality, or within conceptual content, she distorts the inherent worth and significance of her objects with regard to popular culture, gender determination and functionality, in an alchemic and at times discordant sensibility to construct her sculptural tableaux.

Apart from her solo practice Meijers maintains a rigorous collaborative practice that has seen her do several large scale one of projects as well as the The Holy Trinity collaboration, however she primarily collaborates with artist and partner Tricky Walsh for The Collector: Henri Papin now in its eighth year.

The Collector Project is an examination of psychological schema of their fictional and obsessive character (Henri Papin). The exhibition outcomes of this project manifest as immersive, large-scale sculptural installations encompassing various media and technology, and most recently, performance.
The Collector Project works thematically around the concepts of Memory, Reconstruction, Collection and Preservation, Narrative, Social constructions, Psychology and its related physiological manifestations, Architectures – external and internal, machinery – imagined and real.
In 2012 they were awarded a Qantas Foundation Art Encouragement award, were commissioned to make a new works for Monash University Museum of Art and Detached Cultural Organisation, and were included in the 2013 Mona Foma festival. The Collector project has been a recipient of Australia Council and Arts Tasmania funding, The Rosamund McCulloch studio award and has undertaken residencies in New York and Paris.

Meijers is a finalist in 2013 Hobart Art Prize, recently Meijers finished a permanent commission artwork for the Tasmanian Art Gallery and Museum with artist Tricky Walsh and has been the recipient of OZCO and Arts Tasmania funding. Meijers was a finalist in the 2012 Substation and Paul Guest prizes and in the 2010 Churchie award.

Other projects and ARI
Meijers + Walsh opened the Artist Run Initiative 6a in Hobart which operated from 2007- 2011 and initiated other collaborations within this structure including the major works Battery operated and supercharger (Nextwave festivals 2008 and 2010 respectively) and an Asia link collaborative residency with House Of Natural Fibre in Jogjakarta which resulted in a performance and installation piece at the Sangkring Art space. They have also exhibited in various locations nationally in the collaborative project installation/performance group The Holy Trinity. (CAST gallery – Hobart, Hell gallery – Melbourne, The Chrysalisseum – Melbourne, Boxcopy – Brisbane.)
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source: trickywalsh

Tricky Walsh is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is concerned with the integration of mysticism with scientific reasoning. Her work, which is architectural in nature, and broadly spatial in practice utilises the construction of concepts and devices which allow for the development of both physical and philosophical systems of discovery and invention.
She is represented by Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, and MARS Gallery in Melbourne, and has been the recipient of Australia Council and Arts Tasmania funding, and in 2009 won the Hobart Art prize for her sculpture The Wasp project.

She works collaboratively with artist Mish Meijers on numerous projects, while both maintaining rigorous solo practices. They are in their eighth year of collaborating on The Collector Project; an examination of psychological schema through the use of their fictional and obsessive character (Henri Papin) The exhibition outcomes of this project manifest as immersive, large-scale sculptural installations encompassing various media and technology, and most recently, performance.

The Collector Project works thematically around the concepts of Memory, Reconstruction, Collection and Preservation, Narrative, Social constructions, Psychology and its related physiological manifestations, Architectures – external and internal, machinery – imagined and real.

In 2012 they were awarded a Qantas Foundation Art Encouragement award, were commissioned to make new works for Monash University Museum of Art and the privately funded Detached Cultural Organisation, and were included in the 2013 Mona Foma festival, organised by the Museum of Old and New Art. The Collector project has been a recipient of Australia Council (2012) and Arts Tasmania (2010-2012 inc) funding, The 2008 Rosamund McCulloch studio award and has undertaken residencies in New York (2011) and Paris (2008).
They have recently completed a large suspended sculptural commission for the newly reconfigured Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart.

Meijers + Walsh opened the Artist Run Initiative 6a in Hobart which operated from 2007-2011 and initiated other collaborations within this structure including the major works Battery operated and supercharger (Nextwave festivals 2008 and 2010 respectively) and an Asia link collaborative residency with House Of Natural Fibre in Jogjakarta which resulted in a performance and installation piece at the Sangkring Art space. They have also exhibited in various locations nationally in the collaborative project installation/performance group The Holy Trinity. (CAST gallery – Hobart, Hell gallery – Melbourne, The Chrysalisseum – Melbourne, Boxcopy – Brisbane.)
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source: trickywalsh

The Wasp Project 1: The Factory
Entry and Winning piece of the 2009 Hobart Art Prize (sculpture)

“The Wasp Factory covers an area of several square metres in an irregular and slightly ramshackle tangle of metal, wood, glass and plastic.’
– Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory.

The Wasp Factory determines the fate of things, in Iain Banks’ novel of the same name, the protagonist of the novel; Frank creates an intricate, insect-specific torture device from ruined remnants found in the tip in order to determine the outcome of specific future events.

In this initial Wasp Project – The W.A.S.P. parasites crowd the workings of obsolete machines, wreaking havoc with the cogs and blind to the effects that their busy toil causes. From a distance they look like burrowing ‘white ants’ slowly deconstructing their host body, up close, they are miniature urbanised areas that emphasise the difference in scale between the two separate structures – The rational, practical machine and the disordered, random plague.

The Machine element – inspired by a visitation to the Musee des arts et metiers (all time favourite source of inspiration) in Paris late 2008. Coming across a room full of weaving machines and looms and being confronted with an enormous mechanical loom from the 1700s with its ‘readable’ structural mechanics and its beautiful form was completely and almost devastatingly moving. I am inspired mostly by architecture and machinery whose workings can be visually ‘read’ and made sense of. This work seems to be a turning point for my investigations from optical machines to using the eyes and the manner of looking as devices for mechanising structures.