Surf's up in the city

If you live in Brisbane or missed Peter Walkers great exhibition on the Gold Coast here is a great opportunity to check his boards out.

Artisan’s latest exhibition, One True Religion: Peter Walker Surfboards, explores the evolution of surfboard design through Walker’s painstakingly handcrafted boards of all shapes and sizes.

Walker’s interest in surfing started as a teenager growing up in Sydney, but took a back seat when he moved to Tasmania to study furniture design. Now an accomplished designer and craftsman, Walker divides his time between Australia and working at the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States. It was in America that Walker met legendary board maker Dale Belze, and his passion for surfboard design was ignited.

One True Religion: Peter Walker Surfboards draws on innovations from the 1920s and ‘30s. “Forms have changed, the way people surf has changed, technology’s changed,” he says. “These boards are a bit of a hybrid mix but they’re definitely rooted in the old school.”

Surface decorations applied by Walker and leading contemporary artists, including Gerry Wedd lift these objects used primarily for sport and recreation into the realm of art. Notably however, the boards are functional and Walker loves to hit the waves on them.

“It’s completely different to surfing on a foam board,” he says. “They’ve got more weight, so they feel different in the water, and under your foot, and they behave differently. They’ve definitely got more glide and momentum.”

“I guess I’m trying to contribute to the evolution of surfboard design and culture,” Walker says. “But mainly I’m having fun.”

One True Religion is a fun and engaging exhibition for all ages, merging surf culture and handcrafted design in a unique display not to be missed.

One True Religion: Peter Walker Surfboards
25 August – 24 September 2011
Gallery Artisan
381 Brunswick Street Fortitude Valley Q 4006
www.artisan.org.au | info@artisan.org.au | 07 3215 0800

Peter Walker Exhibition

Peter Walker, a Sydney-born surfer, divides his time between Adelaide and working as Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design in New York. Always fascinated by hand skills and fine craftsmanship, Walker’s awareness of the complexity of surfboard performance and design led him to start making his own wooden surfboards – embellished with the work of leading Australian contemporary artists.
Walker has researched and references notable surfboard designers from the past with his series of new hollow boards. Tom Blake, an American who lived in Hawaii in the 1920s, was an early proponent of the surfing lifestyle. He invented the ‘skeg’ or fin which helped to stabilise a board through the water. He also refers to Californian Bob Simmons who in the period immediately following WWII incorporated the new technologies of fibreglass, Styrofoam resin and plywood construction with his experience as an aircraft engineer to experiment with the dynamics of drag and turbulence. The beautiful boards are all meant to be used – yet they take on a presence of sculpture within the gallery space.


The exhibition is open from 28th May to 10th of July at the Gold Coast Arts Centre.

On Saturday 9th July 3 - 5PM Join Peter as he discusses the design and shaping process of his surfboards and collaborations with other artists.

RSVP P 07 5581 6567 / E gallery@theartscentregc.com.au

Peter Walker to exhibit on the Gold Coast

Surfing and beach culture are integral to the Gold Coast lifestyle – that culture is also a great source of inspiration to artists who continue to engage with the rich stories and visual imagery of this dynamic sport.

We present two distinct but connected exhibitions in gallery one featuring a new series of beautifully crafted wooden surfboards by furniture maker and designer Peter Walker and ceramics by artist Gerry Wedd which reference both ancient and contemporary myths and legends of the perils of the sea and the underbelly of the the surf world.

Walker is a surfer and was born in Sydney and now divides his time between Adelaide and working as Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design in New York. Always fascinated by hand skills and fine craftsmanship, Walker’s awareness of the complexity of surfboard performance and design led him to start making his own wooden surfboards – embellished with the work of leading Australian contemporary artists.

His boards will be at The Gold Coast Arts Centre 28th of May to 10th of June.

Wooden boards as art

Get ready to ride the wave.

Peter Walker’s suite of original, hand crafted wooden surfboards provide a glimpse into the marine vehicle’s design evolution.

Paying homage to the surfboard’s origins in the Hawaiian’s long wooden planks used for ‘wave sliding’ or he’e nalu, Walker combines his furniture designer/maker background and his surfing experiences to create stunning boards that have been, in many ways, transformed from the utilitarian object to works of art.

This exhibition includes a variety of original plain wood Hawaiian-inspired boards, plus boards such as 8 ft Swastika and Finless Double-ender which incorporate intricate inlaid marquetry demonstrating Walker’s discipline and fine craftsmanship.

For further play between old and new, Walker has collaborated with a select group of artists to express their ideas of adornment. Ranging from Stephen Bowers’ antipodean willow pattern of beach culture, Gerry Wedd’s coral-like magnification of Paulownia wood cells to the culturally inspired board of Phil Hayes who appropriates Chinese characters with the ubiquitous Magpie, as well as Quentin Gore’s paisley pattern indicative of Indian henna painting designs.

But do not be fooled by mere surfaces, these boards can all be used to carve up a fluid path across a shifting wave. A perfectly balanced resolution of sport, ecology and craft.



























For details on the exhibition check out : www.jamfactory.com.au
and the next post.

Surfboards as art...

Surfboard art is potentially about as good as urban tribalism gets. Unlike site-specific graffiti, it gets around. Boards are bigger than T-shirts. But like trash talk T-shirts and customised utes, a lot of so-called surf art is anything but. All from central warehouse casting. Skulls, skeletons, flame licks, crystal tubes, Nirvana sunsets, yoghurt waves, pneumatic mermaids and terrytoon dolphins, doth not pure Corduroy make. Not in art terms anyway. Gotta go deep into the creative Green Room to pull it off. Furniture designer-come surfboard maker Peter Walker has been in there for some time, acquiring the skills necessary to shape boards but also investigating what happens when artist and designers get on board at the concept end and ride it through to the end. Walker was Head of the Furniture Design Studio at the JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design Centre in the late 90s. Since 2001 he has divided his time as Associate Professor of Furniture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, and Adelaide where he designs and builds hollow wooden surfboards. Each board is uniquely made (predominantly from a light timber – Paulownia), sealed, vented and fibre-glassed.

Making Waves spotlights a series of artist and designer collaborations. The assembled quiver of around 15 boards includes a number of Walker’s own designs as well as pieces conceived and designed in partnership with artists and designers known to the artist. Stephen Bowers is in the pack. In this work, Bowers’ distinctive blue and white Chinese export ware motifs, usually found on his outsized ceramic platters and vase forms, transformed the board into a totemic object embedded with OkkaChin-fusion motifs and references. The Bowers/Walker board in this current exhibition is a refinement of this original concept. In the earlier work Bowers painted directly onto the timber. In this subsequent work he laid down areas of white and applied his blue line and wash illustrations over the top. The crispness of effect has been enhanced by drop shadows which cause each unit of design to read as if a fragment of blue and white porcelain. Combined with the highly polished fibre-glass finish, the effect is visually striking. It implies fragility. No way this board is going to get wounded in action. But Walker maintains that each one is surf-ready. As he sees it, “It’s essential – their functionality is implicit in the artistic worth – even if some of them don’t get wet, they could, and that potential is paramount.”

It’s hard to see these beautiful objects getting waxed let alone exfoliated on a limestone reef. But Gerry Wedd’s just might. I think he’d be up for it. His board’s shape is customised in size and shape. The “skin” design has been sourced from the cell-like structure of the Paulownia timber used in its construction. The end result is reptilian. A bit of croc for Wedd’s Middleton slop. Walker’s own interventions are startling to say the least. Boards have been thrown in to the fire or heaped with hot rocks. Risky. He tells of one board getting away, fully alight before he could save it. The association of fire licks with foam flicks rocks. Respect, not only for each artist’s ideas, but for the surfboard as something with its own history, something clean and distinctive in a dirty old mixed up world, underpins the project. Walker’s epiphany came in the form of a Dale ‘The Hawk’ Velzy memorial paddle-out in San Diego in the company of around 2000 surfers. He’s been to the Tom Blake well and drunk deeply. As Walker comments, “The boards themselves are a study of the design evolution of the surfboard, with each one referencing earlier innovations and developments, spanning from 1920’s to the present day, while incorporating subtle changes… The boards themselves could be considered “a work of art”, combining performance/practical design considerations, iconic sculptural forms, particular proportional relationships between material characteristics and form, detailed attention to craftsmanship”.

This article is from the Adelaide Review


If you are in Adelaide and want to check it out :

19 Morphett Street
Adelaide SA 5000
AUSTRALIA
T: (08) 8410 0727

Opening Hours:
Morphett Street Retail/Gallery
Mon-Sat 10-5pm
Sun + Pub Hols 1-5pm


Also check out Peter's other work at : http://walkersurfboards.com