At 11am this morning, four artists were locked inside Oh Really gallery, without food, water, clothes or air except for that we made up the last part because its Friday and we do what we want. But the locked-up part is true, and they’re not allowed to leave until 5pm tomorrow.

The idea of the Lock-In is to take artists out of their usual habits, processes and environments and see what comes of it. They might work together, they might work separately, they might feed off each other creatively, they might just eat each other. Jamie Nimmo is one of the trio behind the Oh Really collective, who are always trying new things to widen the walls of the creative minds they work with. He just called me up to tell me a bit about the Lock-In and accidentally found himself being interviewed while he was supposed to be at work (sorry Jamie Nimmo.)

The four artists are Joe Wilson from N.A.S, Chris Bennett from the College of Art, Joe Purtle who is tall, dark and apparently handsome and Claire Wieland, who graduated from N.A.S in 2008. “Joe [Wilson] and Claire have been to one of our culture jams before.” The culture jams are monthly nights run by Oh Really which combine improvised music with live action painting. “They tied their hands together and dipped them in these different coloured Indian inks and then drew on the walls, wearing these black big plastic bags cut up and designed in a way which made them look like this big, black, feathery entity drawing on the walls. A world music band was playing live as well.”

So I guess virtually anything could come out of the experiment? “Basically. This is the first time we’ve run the concept; next time it will be with a new group. The idea is to start mixing and matching different sorts of artists – we figured it might be cool to mix abstract painters with street artists, or landscape people with 3D artists… The main thing is to just sort of throw four different artists into the room, and let them have free run of the walls and the tools and anything they want to bring and use.”

The best part is you can go and watch them do it until 5pm Saturday (tomorrow), at Oh Really Gallery – 55 Enmore Road, Newtown.

If you miss out, head to the next culture jam, on Thursday July 9.

Posted by steph in Art, Events

Tags: Artist Run Initiatives, Chris Bennett, Claire Wieland, culture jam, Jamie Nimmo, Joe Purtle, Joe Wilson, newtown, Oh Really