ALANA WESLEY

KONJO (根性)

Konjo* is a socially engaged project that is still in development. Inclusive of video and sculpture, this project explores the cultural idiosyncrasies of Japanese baseball, with a particular focus upon the superstitions that make the game so unique.

It is necessary to establish that baseball in Japan is BIG. Japan was first introduced to baseball 152 years ago during the Meiji restoration era by Horace Wilson. Hiraoka Hiroshi famously brought baseball gear and guidebooks to Japan in 1877 after visiting the States, and formed Japan’s first organised baseball club.

Whilst Hiroshi did this nationally, it was Dr William Clark and Professor David Penhallow who first promoted the game here in Sapporo, coaching students and gifting bats and balls to the Hokkaido University campus (then an agricultural college) in 1877. Ultimately, the first Hokkaido based baseball club was formed on this campus in 1901.

Today, baseball is officially deemed Japan’s most popular sport. The game- both in Sapporo and beyond- continues to attract new supporters and birth new traditions. In a broader sense, baseball promotes teamanship, young talent in the field, and arguably grants the nation with a sense of self-definition.

This project puts Sapporo residents who have, in some way, been affected by baseball at the forefront. Be they a merchant of a sporting goods store or a die-hard Nippon-Ham Fighters fan, participants of Konjo were asked about the practical and mystical rituals behind Japanese baseball games. Interviewees discussed unique cheering behaviours, novelty

ballpark foods, go-to pre and post game warm ups, even the Curse of the Colonel and Ichiro’s habit of eating curry rice everyday. All these questions in an attempt to answer one important question: are the Japanese baseball gods real?

*Japanese word for ‘grit’ or ‘tenacity’

Ever felt like working in the arts has made you want to scream?

Lucky is a visualisation of that scream.

Lucky is a lo fi film which tragicomically explores the highs and lows of working for the arts; not only as an artist, an actor or a key player, but as a labourer from the sidelines. Inspired by autobiographical experiences working from the lowest rung in galleries, theatres, venues and everything else in between for the last 15 years, Lucky challenges the ideal of "making it big" and instead depicts a relatable, yet comical landscape full of wannabes and dreamers and burn outs and schemers.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlLqeWMKG0

Versions is a video inspired by the 19 year long friendship between Lloyd Williams and Alana Wesley. Using their respective interpretations of their platonic origin story as impetus, both artists delved into their shared history; and realised that their own versions of “mutual”events were often inconsistent and incompatible.

The fragments of these mutable memories are illustrated with archival images from their respective photo albums. These images are often completely unrelated to the actual lived events. In this sense, both Williams and Wesley become unreliable narrators ; they blur timelines, perspectives and assumed truths.

Like an ongoing game of exquisite corpse, both artists continue telling the story at the point where the other has left off. The resulting series of vignettes may not amount to an accurate or logical account of a friendship, but rather attests to the ability of relationships - and the stories attributed to them - to grow and develop like a palimpsest.

Versions showed in 2023 as part of the ‘Desire Lines’ exhibition, which was exhibited in Flow Studios in Sydney.

Watch Versions here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg-iJJ7cl1k

The Collectiologist is a project that is a little bit about the objects people collect and a lot about why they collect them. This project is the culmination of ongoing interviews and discussions with people who collect a wide variety of things, from the everyday to the obscure . This body of work includes text, photos and sculptures. Coming from the perspective of a person whom has never collected anything themselves, but is perpetually invested in how people relate to objects , this project is an opportunity to develop a new collection from naive clay sculptures, each of which will be a replica of an object in every participant's collection.

Though the machine is physically gone I can still hear it.

You have reached the Wesley residence on 9344 6656.You have 3 NEW MESSAGES.

Sure, at the time I knew that most of these messages would be from friends I had just seen in the playground, or telemarketers named Rob, but that moment of anticipation before pressing the play button through to the dopamine release that was attained after listening is one that I still miss.

Maybe you miss it too.

Or maybe I am alone in my love for the 1935 invention that is the answering machine.

It is in this space of loss and longing that fellow Sydney based filmmaker Ashleigh Pepper and I began to workshop Love in the Time of Objectophilia. Inspired by barbershop quartets, pop bands from the 1950s and 1960s, theatrical music videos and the beeps made from our various old-school devices that have since gone to the tech graveyard, Pepper and I decided to hire an acapella group. We began writing love songs for them to sing- but the object of desire in these songs is literally just that. These love songs are not dedicated to a Mary-Lou or our next-door neighbour named Bobby – they are for redundant oberge. Lyrics like “I guess we’ll have our moment though your time in the sun is gone” and “I’d be waiting all through the night to hear from you baby, my sweet Canon device” are earnestly sung to each item. And in many cases these feelings do not go unrequited.

There is a word for people who are romantically engaged with objects: an objectophiliac. I have sometimes wondered whether it is a term that applies to me. I have not reached a verdict.

Because maybe there’s a touch of the objectophiliac in all of us. Surely, I’m not the only one who has anthropomorphised an item by giving it a name; or felt a sense of loss when it finally broke. In an age of hyper capitalism where objects are not only mass made, but designed to become redundant so consumption can continue, this sense of “object mourning” is easily cultivated. Just last week I was in a discussion with a group of people and they were fondly reminiscing about their burner phones from yesteryear as though they were deceased loved ones.

Who knows? Maybe when Pepper and I fish out our old answering machines for this project there’ll be a little present for us; a time capsule from 2003. And it won’t be a message from Rob, or the snotty kid from Maths class. It will be a message from the machine itself. It might say-

You have one NEW MESSAGE.

We’ll get that same sense of anticipation. We’ll press play.

I love you too.

It will say .And when we hear this, we’ll finally know that, in love, we are truly not alone.

Trace/Place was an Installation/Photographic/Audio Project developed on residency with the Belgrade Art Studio and presented at the Kulturni Centar Grad Gallery, Belgrade in August 2019 and later at Prop Gallery in Ashfield in 2024.

Taking on the role of a quasi anthropologist examining material culture, Wesley collected found objects throughout the city of Belgrade. These objects ranged from the reverent to the trashy; literal to the absurd. Wesley proceeded to curate the objects into an archive, transforming them into modern day “ruins” to be decoded. This archive posed as a space that could potentially grant insight into contemporary, everyday Serbian life.

The archive sought to affirm that overlooked objects have the ability to indicate time and space.Yet, Trace/Place also mocked the cold,didactic nature of museum displays by contrasting these highly curated artifacts with a series of personal stories contributed by Belgrade locals. Ultimately, Trace/Place expanded upon what ruins can be defined as and the narratives that they can tell; particularly in a country that is still picking up the pieces. It suggested that whilst artifacts can give us a better insight into history and culture, they are but small pieces in an expansive organism that is always shifting and adapting. They are traces in a history that is still being made.

The project included a video ‘Using Inat in a Sentence’, the physical artefacts themselves and a series of photos and stories contributed by Serbian Australians. The responses of the latter mainly centred around their experiences of being part of the greater Serbian diaspora living in Australia.The photos contained an object of their choosing that reminded them of Serbia.

Photographs by Max Goodman (www.maxgoodmancreative.com)

Watch Using “Inat” in A Sentence : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3mMLi8Hwb8&feature=youtu.be

An all-too-relatable existential spiral as told through infomercials

Basket Fruit was a playful, topsy turvy take on dry colour theory. Inspired by the visual trickery that can be created with complimentary colours, Basket Fruit was a wearable art piece and performance that transformed the fruit and veg one would usually have in their fruit bowl. The piece included a typical Carmen Miranda fruit hat, covered in wax casts of fruit and veg. In the headpiece however, green avocados turned red; oranges blue. Complete with a colour wheel themed ruff, make –up and undergarments, the performance was finalised with a visually surprising fruit cutting ceremony to a remix of Fruit Opera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHdQLiTqheA&list=PL-6XPSLliNGSlx9gUfAAEXN-FB7XXbV08&index=8

Parting explored how objects can cause us to grieve, stagnate and remember. Made from various objects that somehow reminded their contributors of heartbreak, Parting was a series of "fossilized" mementos in amber resin. For some, letting go of these possessions was cathartic; for others, it was painful. Above all, Parting unveiled how objects can transcend their physicality and retain emotional weight, even with the passing of time.

The Living Room was the product of a month long residency at Our Neon Foe Gallery, Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt. The collaborative project by Alana Wesley and Paloma Maine took a static , familiar space and pushed it into disorientingly fluid territory.  

Both artists brought together their respective performance and installation based practices to create a work that reconciled a highly curated and controlled domestic space with a free flowing body of water. The space challenged viewers expectations of the built environment and the feelings of stability that come with being "at home ". 

 For both Wesley and Maine,  water is an unequivocal element; tranquil as it is ominous,  transparent as it is mysterious and primordial as it is alien. They used water's paradoxical qualities to paint their living room. The result was an installation that ebbed between claustrophobia and  tranquility , but inevitably flowed with life.

In their first collaborative project, Sydney based artists Frankie Chow and Alana Wesley extended their respective investigations into the horror of the everyday to create a site-specific series through a month long residency at the Broken Hill Art Exchange in May 2018.

The resulting body of work ,titled Two Down was a collaborative project about culture, gender, nationality and mateship. But also beer.

It included performances documented through film, objects , photographs and sound.The landscape of Broken Hill was particularly relevant for their residency as it aesthetically mirrored the deserted "outback" landscapes which shape the horror in iconic films such as Wolf Creek and Picnic at Hanging Rock .Markedly, it was also was the inspiration for the text Wake In Fright. Both artists were particularly engaged with the latter text in developing this work , given both the book and film’s rendering of toxic mateship and controversial criticism of culture.

Through their investigations during the BHAE residency, Chow and Wesley further delved into how a fearful relationship with Australia’s landscape is depicted throughout the Australian horror genre ; and how this fear is largely derived from a white, colonial fear of the unknown .Ultimately, their work portrayed them as Others in this landscape- both culturally (both artists are from Australia, yet look and/or appear "foreign") and as women. The result was an artistic body of work that portrayed Australia’s habitat and its national culture as equally ominous threats.

Stills 1-2 from The kangaroos had been respectable corpses; in the next they were trailing their insides

Stills 3-6 from Drunk Traffic

Stills 7-11 from I’ve Always Been Here

12-14 Flipside (photographs)

Stills 15-17 from Dangerous Rock,Tomboy Foolishness

Stills 18-19 from Lines

Stills 20-23 from Lemon Peril

Stills 24-29 from Self Portraits

The Salton Sea; a man made "ocean" that was a  place to relax, breathe in the sea air.. surrounded by the Californian desert. What could possibly go wrong? This installation explored the tragic downfall of the Salton Sea . Taking the form of an abandoned tourist office, inclusive of souvenir postcards and now long crusted over by salt , the work shone light on the looming environmental disaster and the ironic decline of a place formerly known as the  "miracle" in the desert.

At The Dictation desk , viewers could come to get the tips they needed in their life.They had the pleasure of telling me what they enjoyed, or what they’re good at. I’d then tell them everything they just told me right back to them – but "bigger", "better" and definitely bossier.   The Dictation desk took a humorous look at the ridiculousness that is mansplaining and the structures that enable toxic masculinity. It was a  performance where viewers had a brief session with me , got a business card, some  patronising life advice  and  (if I liked them) a glass of whisky.

Keep Calm is a humorous reflection upon the everyday stresses that come with living in contemporary consumerist society ; and the band-aid mechanisms that people engage with in order to reunite with their "Inner Zen".  Whilst traditional Zen gardens attempted to capture the majesty of nature in a microcosm, in urban life we are often distanced from the natural world. Thus, we must foolishly compensate with man-made novelties, from stress balls to overpriced candles, to get our temporary fix. Keep Calm is on display as part of the Eden Unearthed festival in Eden Gardens, Macquarie Park , Sydney until mid February.
 

Incubate explores the emotional labour women regularly invest towards men, only to often find themselves emotionally shattered in the process.The installation also investigates the word labour as a double entendre for not only physical and emotional exertion, but reproduction. As people casually allow themselves to walk over the egg shell rug , they thus not only destroy the artists'  creative endeavours , but decimate the labours of hens whom have spent time and effort making sure their eggs would hatch. The work is thus a call to arms for us to become more conscious of the frequency with which emotional support is both given by (and expected of) women, and yet the rapid rate that it still goes unnoticed- or ,swept under the rug.

Photos taken by Ivana Jovanovic
facebook.com/ivanajovanovicartist

The oyster has always been an object assosciated with desire. The Romans feasted upon them throughout imperial orgies, the Victorians featured the oyster as a symbol of sexuality throughout various works of underground erotica and Cassanova allegedly ate 50 for breakfast.Yet , in other contexts, such as in Mormon religion, oysters and pearls are consideredsymbols for wisdom and purity.  In Mangiare Pulito , or "clean eating" from the Italian , the paradoxical qualities of the oyster are explored. Here, the oyster becomes both an object with which one could clean themselves, yet also a strong aphrodesiac.

Raw Soul #2: That tune we heard at the shops the other day was nice, I thought as I finished my SPAM sandwich  was an installation that took the form of a decrepit kitchen.The viewer was invited into the space via a corridor that was covered with tacky wallpaper and a series of faded family photos. The space itself was lowly lit, abject and claustrophobic, with a dirty fridge and fake flowers adorning the window. The installation was inspired by the notion of Raw Soul (see Raw Soul #1 for definition) and the experience of suburban abjection in Australia. That tune..was part of the Raw Soul series , exhibited as part of the BVA (Honours) exhibition at SCA in 2016. 

Photos taken by Max Goodman http://www.penumbracollective.com.au/Max-Goodman

Raw Soul #1 : The night that Barry taped over it

The façade of this installation was inspired by the typical red brick veneers of Australian suburban homes, whilst the swan fountain  situated next to the installation  harked back to the kitsch paraphernalia that is often found in suburban gardens. The film that played on the TV was made up of various infomercials, interspersed with sections of wedding footage, giving the impression that someone had recorded over the initial contents of the tape.

The scene was largely inspired by the household I lived in throughout my childhood, which was located in the south eastern suburb of Eastgardens. This installation is also heavily based on the idea of Raw Soul; a term that was created by Jeremy and Tim Smith and refers to  a phenomenological experience that is composed of the feelings of revile, pathos and melancholy. It is triggered when one looks upon an object, person or scene which, or whom, earnestly persists in an activity where no hope or improvement is possible. I felt that this feeling defined my time in my childhood home.  I hope that other viewers could relate to the experience too. This work accompanied Raw Soul #2 and was shown as part of the SCA Honours exhibition, 2016.

Indifferent Christmas overturned the conception that the holiday season is a time for being-and sharing - with family and friends. Instead, the performance depicted a loner, sitting inside a  smashed snow globe, eating a microwaveable Turkey dinner in front of a television playing infomercials. Instead of a Christmas tree, there is a cactus. Instead of bright fairy lights , there was just one dim overhead light illuminating the performer on a couch.

In a season which focuses upon being energetic, giving and social , this performance was both a comical and melancholic portrayal of the Christmas season.Indifferent Christmas revealed what it looks like -and how it feels -to be alone and lazy during such a revered holiday, stripping the celebration of all its grandeur and frivolity.

See the ridiculous article by the Telegraph that highlights the blasphemous nature of this work. 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/climate-change-variety-hour-clover-moore-slugs-taxpayers-10000-for-radical-sydney-university-review/news-story/c169a60081169368c13543f5a98f46a7

Performance at the Oxford Art Factory Cube Space. The work entailed myself go-go dancing in a clear cube, the interior of which was adorned with kitsch 60s paraphernalia.I was dressed in a skimpy jumpsuit and wearing sunglasses. These glasses were coated with two way mirror film, meaning that viewers could see me but I could not see them. Throughout the performance I would put on lipstick and kiss the glass, not knowing whom (or whether anyone at all) was kissing me on the other side. Blind Kiss explored themes of voyeurism, sexuality and anonymity. 

‘Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things’-Arthur Schopenhauer

In 2015, a lot of people around me seemed to have lost people in various capacities.Working from that realisation, Requiem was the product that came from a process of gathering contributors stories  of loss- everything from the songs they associated with their experiences to the objects which triggered their memories. As healing can often be prompted from the act of sharing, I asked each person to read someone else’s story. As discourse continued,the ice could gradually thaw.

This,too,was a station was a socially engaged work that took place in Hornell, Upstate New York in 2015 in association with Alfred University. The work focused on a site that was rumoured to have been a safe house on the Underground Railroad and required 5 months of investigation into whether the rumours were true. This research involved visits to various confirmed sites that were part of the railroad , interviews and workshops with residents and extensive historical research. The aim of the work was to make residents in Alleghany County (where Hornell is located) have more discussions about history and its relationship to the present, gain more agency and open up discourse regarding culture and race in what was a 98% white community. After this research, a letter was discovered (which was sent from an Ohio historical database) written by the son of the Thatcher house that confirms that the site was, indeed, a safe house on the Underground railroad. Though there were issues I had with with the final presentation of this work, largely having to do with the investigation into Underground railroad symbology and quilts (which have historiclally been found to be defunct) the work seemed to have catalysed such discussions which I hope will proceed into the future. 

Inspired by the film Paris,Texas and a recent trip to Vegas, After the Show was a work about voyeurism and disconnection. I performed for hours in a  makeshift Vegas motel room and assumed the role as a Vegas showgirl who was rehearsing/doing mundane things in that room such as removing make up,talking on the phone, watching TV (Leaving Las Vegas) etc. The room was in a glass cube covered with two way mirror film , so viewers could watch me as long as they wanted, however I never knew who was watching,nor when. The work provoked questions surrounding the ethics behind voyeurism and the idea of the everyday as entertainment.

Staking Claims (Stills from video recorded performance)
Here I drove a series of stakes into the ground which were marked with personal accusations towards me (such as being called a yank) and a variety of offensive actions (such as manipulating me, using me etc.) As I painfully, but cathartically, push them into the sand I take on these things which anger me and make them dissapear ; stripping them of their power and ultimate claim over me.

Using a pungent and unhomely scent, a scratchy soundtrack playing Non Je Regrette Rien and various props and bedding I constructed an abject installation in a basement in COFA. The scene acts as a remnant of what once was- throughout the bedroom are traces of 'Holly’.We do not know what happened to Holly or what prompted her gruesome fate. How long has Holly been in the basement? What lead her there? Why are all the eyes on the family photos scratched out? And, finally, what has become of her?

This performance collaboration too place at Smiths Lake, near Foster, north of NSW. Scarlett Stevens and I constructed a performance in which we, in long gowns, would perform everyday activities in the absurd setting of the lake. Of course, these everyday actions, such as playing cards, smoking, or weaving get out of hand when you are not a housewife at home- but rather a Siren on a lake.

This work was compiled of a cast ant farm with live ants. Viewers could both watch the ants and listen to them , as a contact mic picked up their movements.

C**tless Hundreds included scripts that were purely sourced from the expletives used from films known for their excessive swearing: Goodfellas , Glengary Glen Ross , Casino , Reservoir Dogs and Scarface. Each script transcribed only the swearwords within the script, creating a unique text based work in which the words lost their impact through repetition. The installation was also accompanied by a sound work in which iconic scenes from the film were "reverse-censored" by bleeping out all of the non-expletive words within that scene.

This work, created from manipulated plywood and cast plaster objects attempts to play with spatiality, perception and the everyday. The objects are derived from a  range of everyday objects but are recontextualised into a strange landscape where they become distorted, vulnerable and unrecognisable.

This kinetic sculpture involved a quilt of plastic bags that had been sewn together , placed into a corner of a gallery space, and appeared to "breathe". Upon the continually expanding and retracting quilt, a series of images of lips inhaling and exhaling were projected. The work was accompanied by two 3D Prints . One of these prints was made by recording myself inhaling and then printing the sound waves that derived from the recording, whilst the other print was a sound wave of my own exhale.

Do you ever read the books you burn?'- Clarisse McCellan, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

The Hatebook Inventory was an ongoing relational project
held by “The Librarian” through Paper Plane Gallery. Inspired by the idea that disliked books were just as powerful as loved ones, The Hatebook Inventory was a physical catalogue compiled from peoples most hated books. The Librarian played a Matchmaker role , initiating a 'book dating service' through the inventory. Through a unique system of cataloging, people could visit the library,submit a book they disliked and be given a book that they could possibly love, or be “compatible with” in return. This project initiated multiple and surprising relationships between unloved books and jaded readers. 
http://hatebookinventory.blogspot.com/