With a focus on collaboration, and the intersectionality between art, design, music and architecture, Melbourne-based artist and curator Geoff Nees shares his creative approach, and how it can be seen in his artwork featured in the latest retail project by Carr, The Hour Glass.
You have more than two decades of professional practice and collaboration. How would you describe your approach to seeking inspiration and realising your ideas?
Artists get asked this question a lot, which I often ask myself too. I operate on the principle, as many of my colleagues do, that everything has already happened. It’s all about the archive and being aware of what has come before.
Similarly, in music and literature, it’s always good manners to acknowledge your references – it shows that you’re paying attention.
Specifically, I take inspiration from Italy’s great artists and designers from the early and mid-20th century. They seemed to do everything, and incredible relationships with fabricators and patrons, spanning many years with every imaginable outcome. It puts to bed the myth of the artist as a solo entity. It doesn’t take a village so much as it takes an industry.
The Hour Glass features one of your pieces in the lounge area. Can you tell us about this piece and the thinking behind it?
The “Untitled” piece I made for The Hour Glass is part of an ongoing series of hand-folded paper relief works. It’s a very simple idea. Nothing is added to or taken from the paper, the surface is displaced and casts shadows. Depending on the light source, the piece will look different at various times of the day, much like a sundial – very fitting for a retailer selling watches.
Focusing on the specific piece in the lounge area, do you have an intended feel or effect you’re trying to achieve, or is it more abstract?
My interest is in the atmosphere. Subtly, it is also about time – the time spent creating the work, time as a relative concept, and the currency of time.
What drew you to pursue a career in a creative field?
It was always environmental. I wasn’t so much drawn to the creative industries but more so repelled into a career in the field. We moved around a lot when I was growing up, but my formative years were spent languishing in a regional Victorian town where there was no discernible culture or creative community.
I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something artistic, so, like many kids in my situation, my first creative act was to leave that limiting environment.
Growing up with a cultural deficit does make you appreciate it even more when you come across it for the first time. It was a revelation, and since then, I’ve continually been drawn to that original experience.
What do the next 6-12 have in store for you?
Over the next year, I’m working on a broad variety of projects, big and small, a solo exhibition and several commissioned architectural projects. But the one I’m most anxious about is designing a tattoo for my 19-year-old daughter Harriette!
Read about the Carr team’s thoughts about the empowering nature of sketching.
