HEAVONEARTH

As an Artist Manager for The Drawing Book Studios and Affectors in Surry Hills, Sydney, I was fortunate enough to work with an amazing team to provide support to a world class stable of illustrators and animators. While organising a collaborative art exhibition at Rydges Central in Sydney, an opportunity arose to create a piece with an exceptional emerging illustrator named Tara Phillips. The exhibition was titled Affectors Mythology, which allowed artists to explore mythologies relevant to each other in any media. Our collaboration occurred entirely online, and I still to this day haven't met Tara in person. I was struck by her super-real renderings of pop-culture icons and portraiture. After discussion, Tara presented her interest in the tragic Japanese folktale of Kiyohime, a jilted lover who later transformed into a dragon to roast the object of her desire while he hid beneath a bronze temple bell. Tara produced a stripped down visual rendering of Kiyohime as the dragon, and we explored how to reproduce this in the exhibition space. I was gratefully able to source a 100 year old bento bell from an importer north of the city, and we explored the idea of projecting an image of Kiyohime's transformation upon the bell and framed illustration. The resulting work, showcased on the venues rooftop, may capture a grave sense of Kiyohime's unrequited love.