sammi needham : cogitate

On friday the 27th of November Visual Jazz held our first (potentially annual?) in-house exhibition. There were no punters, no auctions, no fancy gallery, what there was, was a huge VJ turn-out, a bunch of very talented and dedicated people and enough champagne to keep us all occupied for several hours.

We have this long curved wall when you enter our studio, it’s white, and it’s really boring. There’s been much talk of what to apply to it to spruce things up a bit over the years although nothing had really come to fruition. But 2009 is the year to get things done and the idea that was sprung was to flex our creative muscles a bit, get away from the computers and make something physical to adorn this eyesore once and for all. The VJ exhibition was born, the theme: One Wish. This seemed like a good flexible name for our first exhibition, as if you didn’t like the theme, you could just post-rationalise your artwork by announcing that your one wish to change the theme.

For some it was a several-month-long crafting of finite detail, for others it was a mad rush to the finish, but when the time came to unleash upon the VJ at large, we had a whopping 25 artists providing finished work for the exhibition. The analytics guys tell me that’s about a 26.23% participation rate, which is apparently quite good.

We gathered at about 4:30pm in front of the curved wall with all the art hung and shrouded in black covers. Our resident office MC Jonno gave us a stellar introduction alongside national CD Gavin Heron, at one point a single tear rolled down his cheek to illustrate the sheer passion that we all shared at that point, the anticipation was palpable. Then the pieces started to be uncovered…

One by one each artist took the covers off their work and shared a sometimes funny, sometimes powerful, sometimes insightful, always interesting story about why they had created their artwork and what ‘One Wish’ meant to them. We got through the 20 odd pieces over the course of an hour and a half and then the voting began.

Overwhelmed by the quality of work that was presented, the judging wasn’t easy. Winners had to be named though, and after 30 minutes worth of deliberating 4 prizes were awarded.

The adjudicating committee of exhibition organisers crowned their MVPs, both male and female.

The Sammi Needham trophy for ‘Best boy’ went to Matt ‘The’ Baron for his piece ‘Batman’. Co-developed by him and his 4 year old son Leo it introduces to the world a collaborating team that i’m sure will continue long into the future.

The Gavin Heron award for ‘Lady of the night’ went to Abby Kelly for ‘Make a wish’ for it’s sheer craft and beauty. No one could really believe the intricate fingerwork that must have been required to achieve this level of delicacy.

The Simon T Small encouragement award was fittingly awarded to Caroline Jeppe for the best damn Hamburger anyone has seen, but not been able to eat. It’s title ‘Eat Me’ teases you as it’s felt and plastic apparently contain magical powers, but should probably not be eaten, if only because it wouldn’t allow anyone to every appreciate it’s perfect form again.

And the people’s choice award, voted for by all VJ staff and awarded the coveted prize of 1 additional day of annual leave went to: James Cook, for “I want everything”. It’s a killer piece, literally a crowd favourite. All night there were people huddled around this artwork finding new details hidden within the fine line work.

Having all of the officialdom over, that’s when the party began. A tremendous night was had by all, we danced the night away on and over things that were never meant to be danced upon, it was a perfect warm-up to xmas party season.

We shot a great video from the night with everyone introducing their pieces, hopefully that will show up at some point somewhere within the mangled intertubes that we call home. Until then, here are most of the pieces that appeared in the exhibition. Enjoy…

Oh, and if you want a closer look, they will be on show in the VJ office until christmas.

Incidentally, we also had a live stream of the exhibition enveiling, and i think we even managed to attract about 3 people to watch it! Yeah!