The Thousands

Most creatives don’t enjoy the idea of the wider public looking closely at something they haven’t finished yet. It takes bravery to fling open the doors of your working space and let people cast their beady, judgmental eyes on work that is incomplete. But there is also a lot of art theory centered around notions of deconstruction – theory that argues the execution of a project is witnessed in the undertaking of the artistic process itself. Open studios and corresponding artist discussions, like those PICA has done regularly for many years, give us the rare opportunity to appreciate and explore the idea that the art product is not necessarily the end product.

This time around, the artists will discuss their residencies with Melbourne-based critic Lauren Brown. Tom Penney is granting us a temporary passport to explore and be amused by ‘Friend World’. Penney has been working in PICA’s Clock Tower Studio, utilising digital and 3D software to construct a sardonic mimicry of the Perth community with both sculpture and super-sized screens as his mediums. In Studio One, Abdul Abdullah, Casey Ayres and Nathan Beard have been developing a project that will premiere at the 2012 Next Wave Festival: ‘The Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ sees these three musketeers delve into mixed race identities, via an installation where they will create an ‘embassy’ space for a fictional pan-Asian empire (you can help fund it here).They, too, slide open the silk screen doors of their studio tonight (take your shoes off on the way in).