Bay of Fires

Every year, as part of the DesignIsland festival , Arts Tasmania invites an overseas designer to run a retreat workshop.  It is held at an eco-lodge in one of the most beautiful and remote parts of Tasmania, the Bay of Fires.  Mid-career participants are selected from across Australia by local Arts Councils.  In May 2009 David Trubridge was asked to host the workshop and he came with his partner Linda as co-host.

David writes: We arrived at the lodge after an induction by Gloria and Nola, two local Aborigines, and then a two hour walk down a wild and empty beach.  The coast here features a series of low, sea-rounded granite headlands interspersed by sweeping beaches and flowing dunes, all of the purest, finest white sand.  With no silt, the sea is as clean as a wine glass, and from the lodge's headland vantage point we could see far into it's depths.  Ruled lines of swells rolled in, rose up in glittering translucent green, and, in a wisp of spray, thundered into dazzling whiteness.  A pod of dolphins followed up the coast, turning in unison to surf each wave as it passed, their black bodies weaving tightly together down the rising curl of water.

A magic place, untouched by humans.  A place in which to sink deeply into the rhythms and energy of nature as it always has been since the beginning of time.  This was the basis for our workshop.  We devised a programme aimed at reaching a source of inspiration found only by a deep, intuitive and bodily connection with the landscape.  Making full use of the stunning location, it was held entirely outdoors with a series of expressive, investigative exercises interspersed by short breathing/meditation sessions.  Linda, who is a trained Yoga teacher and also a sculptor, ran the latter.

The workshop was based on a number of ideas which form the basis of my design philosophy, and which are expanded upon further in other parts of this website.  Briefly:

1."Cultural Design" In response to both the environmental crisis (brought on by extravagant and profligate lifestyles) and to the current recession, design is looking for new meaning and relevance.   In the past all cultures were defined and expressed by their artifacts and art.  I suggest that maybe we too could find cultural and spiritual nourishment from long lasting objects, and that this may reduce the never-fulfilled craving for consumer goods. Utilitarian and technological design, while very necessary, cannot alone solve our problems, because it does not address the undernourished cause of the craving.  This also places design in the arena of ritual and process rather than its current, limited focus on ephemeral style and fashion. 

Question 1: How can design nourish us as well as solve practical problems?

2.Separation from nature.  Since the development of the alphabet, when language became disconnected from the rhythms and patterns of nature, humans have become increasingly isolated from nature.  Now, through population overcrowding in vast cities, that disconnect has reached a crisis which allows us to abuse and destroy the ecosystems that support us with clean air, food, water and materials. 

Question 2: How can we reconnect to, and value sufficiently, our life-support systems?

3.The creative process.  Over-specialisation has 'ghetto-ised' art, craft and design into separate disciplines, creating another withering disconnect.  I believe art, craft  and design are verbs, not nouns – that they are all essential components of one creative process.  If designing objects does not begin with the generative art part of the process, then there will be no originality or integrity, only the reshuffling of increasingly worn, pre-used forms and vocabulary. 

Question 3: How do designers first work as artists, drawing from their particular source of inspiration?

To answer these questions, we started by looking at some of the most recent painting by  Aboriginal women of the Australian central desert.  It is an art that is utterly contemporary and abstract in a western sense but is also one of the most finely attuned to landscape and tradition.  How has this art of a tiny minority, living such a tenuous existence on the margins of the world, come to strike a chord with so many people in so many places?  We tried to look, not at the art itself, but at the process by which they achieved their results.  I drew much of my understanding of this process from a book on Aboriginal women's art called “Breasts, Bodies, Canvas – Central Desert Art as Experience” by Jennifer Biddle.  The author refers extensively to the writing of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty who developed the concept of phenomenology to explain the deeply intuitive connection humans once had, and some Aborigines still have, with nature.  She also claims that some of the women's art is a cry of help to the west for a suffering land.

The workshop asked how can we, in some way, make a deeper connection with the Bay of Fires landscape?   Then, from that point of contact, we can go on to develop our own personal expression that speaks of us – of this place – at this time.  It was not about imitating the women's art in any way – it was an attempt to emulate a bodily connection, to understand the role of rhythm and to follow some of the process they go through in making marks.