Leah Heiss

I have just returned from the opening of the Refashioning the Fashion exhibition at Object gallery in Sydney. The opening coincided with How You Make It a show curated by Kate Rhodes + encompassing works by a range of contemporary fashion practices. The opening went well and the refashioning show was a really eclectic mix of work by offbeat jewellers (Tiffant Parbs, Julia de Ville etc).  Anyhow - here are some pics:

Here is a link to the residency website which is coming together, from here you can download a pdf that shows all the images: Subtle Technologies

Well - I have basically, roughly, technically finished my residency. There are of course a few bits and bobs that still need to be tidied up - as ever - however, the bulk of the work has gone baby gone. On Wednesday one full set of prototypes were couriered to Sydney for the refashioning the Fashion exhibition which opens this Friday 20 June at Object Gallery. Another set of diabetes projects were taken to BIO2008 conference in the US (a huge biotech conference that gets around 20000 attendees).

Here are a few pics of the finished prototypes. Photography by Narelle Sheean - she comes highly recommended!

 
Images: Left - diabetes applicator + reloader necklace set
Right - stack of diabetes rings

Image: diabetes applicator necklace

 Image: diabetes 2-part ring 

Needless to say the past few weeks have been really chaotic - deadlines tend to bring about this kind of mayhem. I am really happy with the outcomes though and the experience of working with NanoVic and also Catapult Innovations (product engineers on the diabetes project) has been enourmously exciting. There are a whole range of project refinements that need to be thought about to bring these pictured prototypes to their optimum operational ability - however, for the time being I am going to slowly tidy things up and have some much needed time out. Hooray…

At last - I can show the world some pics of the vessel I have been labouring over. After many attempts we have decided that this crazy form is too blobby and resembles a computer mouse too much to register. So - here are some pics. The latest vessel (top pics) is the SLA print that I had done at ARRK in Melbourne. The outcome is really beautiful though the process is costly.

The pics below are some of the works in process. These are plastic prints that show the range of variations I’ve been through. This one is known as the gourd:

Below is the stone model - an early prototype:

I have just realised that I am working for about $10 an hour! This is hilarious as you would get paid more cash in hand in a burger shop than that. Not that I’m complaining - after all 3 degrees and a lot of projects have brought me to this point. So, the point is that? Well - it’s art of course. It’s all for the love of art!

The projects are all galloping towards their completion in a completely insane way. I am currently surrounded by different types of glue, magnets, sticky tape, circuits and much electroluminescent cable. It’s really beautiful stuff though quite unforgiving. It won’t bend and won’t be superglued. So stage three is to recreate the circuits with thinner EL cable. It’s great stuff though not as bright + whiter in colour.

Photoshoot is this afternoon + tomorrow. The diabetes neckpiece is getting put together today by the engineers + will hopefully be functioning in time for the shoot. It will be great to get some really fabulous shots of this work - and even greater for it to be picked up by the courier next week to take to Sydney for the Object show.

The end is nigh -

Detail shot of part of the arsenic water vessel with EL cable behind