Chris Beasley - Print Maker/Artist

Chris Beasley is an Art Gallery Guide and an artist/print-maker.

Details about the exhibition

Inspired by……… an exhibition by 26 volunteers at AGSA 

(Art Gallery of South Australia)

Light Square Gallery, 39 Light Square, Adelaide 

https://www.tafesa.edu.au/adelaide-college-of-the-arts/light-square-gallery

Wed 5th August - Friday 21st August 

Monday to Friday - 10.00 a.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Official Launch:   

Jason Smith, Director, AGSA 

Thursday 13th August, 3.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Music is original music by David Innocente 

"One Thing Led to Another"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Inspired by Art and Volunteering, an exhibition with me, Tanya Ingerson. This podcast is an interview that I did with Chris Beasley. It was really fun. We kind of connected on some very interesting, common things that we love about art. We talked about weird art. Albert Drewer, who anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed by him and his printmaking. And well, there's just so much that Chris talks about with loving being a gallery guide, what she's got out of art, been an artist for 40 years, so she has a lot of background. And well, I'll let you have a listen. So sit back and enjoy the chat I had with Chris. Chris, thanks for being on the podcast. It's delightful to be here. We've actually just finished well part way through a gallery guide meeting. So it's really kind of nice to have this little break and have this chat today. What do you do as a volunteer at the Art Gallery of South Australia?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I'm a gallery guide, so I take tours of both the permanent collection and also exhibitions that come up. I've only been here for uh two years. Have you done any? I was kind of meaningful. Yes, I have. Yeah, what ones have you done? Uh Dangerously Modern and I loved that one. That was that was a a dream to uh to tour for. Yeah. Why was it a dream? Um well my other life is uh well is was uh as an academic uh that specialises in gender and sexuality. So for me to do uh a tour which did talk about um the changing position of women and changing position of women in art was inevitably very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah I can see how you would have loved that. So how you've kind of touched on it. How long have you been a volunteer?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Uh a volunteer in this organisation for two years.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Um so what do you love about being a volunteer?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Um I think it's hard not to say stereotypic things, but probably it is the ability or the the the opportunity, probably more importantly, uh to talk about art every every time you come in here, not only on tours but also to the other guides, uh, and to have that as part of the sort of thing you talk about even when you're at home, because you're developing a much larger um base of knowledge, a much greater sense of um being able to talk about a whole range of techniques. So that that opportunity to broaden your knowledge and to talk about it uh in all sorts of settings and listen to people's understandings about art is for me always interesting.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Isn't it interesting? I find it fascinating that these little surprises happen to me when um my husband sometimes will be asked something about what I'm doing, and they'll reference an exhibition or some works, and he will have all of this knowledge that he's been listening to me. He could be a guy too. I think he could listen to me talk about the works here so much.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Absolutely, yeah. I do the same. I've I um practice on my poor partner who may not have always been that interested in every detail of every exhibition, but he is now.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Oh, um now you're going to be part of the Inspired By exhibition for Salah this year, which is my goodness, I think it's only about a month away, a little bit over, it's not far.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

What is your art practice? Um, I I guess my art practice has been about 40 years, so I have to kind of reduce that very long period to something that's going to take only two minutes to say. Um, I'd say that my I started off with drawing, like many people, you start with drawing. Um, then I immediately went into oil painting and uh mostly portraiture, but uh some landscapes and uh other things of of course, and then increasingly printmaking as well. Um as we we just listened to a tour where one of our guides talked about it's a way of producing work uh cheaply and quickly and producing many of them, and so I found printmaking has been quite helpful as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I um I feel like I discovered, absolutely did not, but discovered Albert Durer, and just I'm obsessed by that artist. Incredible isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

What do you think about his work? I love that kind of etching, I love that kind of detail because I I guess I was trained in doing detail. Um I've become less detailed over the times uh uh that I've done uh artworks, but I agree, I mean Escher also fascinates me for and actually partly because it's a little weird. So there's something that edge of weirdness, jurors is also weird. They're never um there's always something slightly uncanny about them.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Totally. So for this exhibition, we've all been asked to create or exhibit works that were inspired by something. What are you inspired for or by for the works that you're going to exhibit?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

I've got six works and they come from probably five traditions in my works. Uh some of them are from uh landscape series, uh, some of them relate to my childhood in Alice Springs and uh and in I think actually one of the things that in is in all of them is slightly what we just talked about, that is an interest in the uncanny. Wow. So there's always something a little bit odd about them, which I do in in portraiture as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Now, one last question. What do you love about art?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

That is an enormous question. It is an enormous question. Uh and even though I heard you say it as one of the questions earlier, I must say I still I was trying to think what would my answer be. Um I think for me there's a there's several elements to it. I don't know if this applies to you. Um perhaps, first of all, it's uh there is the enjoyment of learning techniques. I really do like that. There's something because you you can never learn enough. So it's the unending nature of the activity and the uh effect upon you as well, which is I find very meditative. So even though portraiture drives you mad, like you know, that one light spot, you know, someone's eye, you know, is really pernickety and irritating. But at the same time, there is a sort of joy in capturing feeling satisfied with that. So there's the pleasure of um learning a technique, and and as you are doing it, it's meditative. So there's that, but it's also that it's communicating with other people and that discussion that you have as a result of that sort of work. And in relation to being in the art gallery, of course, there's the additional thing that you're um discussing things with a much wider group of people, both the the people who come into the gallery but also the people who work here. So there's the the art practice part, but there's also then because I was one of those people, I'm ashamed to say, whose understanding of art history was extremely patchy. Okay. So uh it was I had little bits of knowledge, as I guess most people have, about a few things. Uh, and it's I've certainly learnt a lot more in the time that I've been an a gallery guide here.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Wonderful. Thanks so much, Chris, and I can't wait to see your works in the Inspired By exhibition. Thanks. I hope you're not disappointed. I'm absolutely not. Well, I hope you enjoyed that chat that I had with Chris. Uh, so much fun. I love that comment that she made about art that it's you never you can never learn enough, which is I think resonates with so many of us that are artists and passionate about arts and um and her interest in the uncanny. Oh, I just love that so much. Please join me next time when I interview another artist that will be participating and exhibiting in our upcoming exhibition Inspired by. Details at the bottom of this podcast. Until then, bye for now.