Arthur's art is now a site to behold

 

PERFORMANCE artist Arthur Wicks, who builds off-beat vehicles to demonstrate the irrel­evance of machines, has turned his talents to cyber art.

The retired Charles Sturt University teacher is putting images of his work on the Internet on a site called War And Peace so they can by seen in another dimension.

And Mr Wicks, of Wagga Wagga, wants to make the journey by worldwide visitors to the web site something of a challenge.

Participants will move through the site in their own sequence, with choices at different points, and there will also be maze-like con­frontations they may need to back out of.

"It will be like a person looking through a gallery or watching a performance and their sequence of choices of what they look at next will dictate the story-line," Mr Wicks said.

The project has received a $17,000 grant from the Australia Council's media board and $3,000 from the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

 

Mr Wicks' perfor­mance art includes a wheeled survival boat he rows on tram tracks, a pedal-driven laminated "armoured" car which he took to Amsterdam and Berlin and a pedal-driven mobile rocking chair that stands more than 2m high.

He describes the Mad Max-type contraptions, which are built to look as though they could col­lapse at any moment, as "barely engineered, nearly built and nar­rowly operative".

"We're having a few hiccups but hope the site will be going in a month or so," he said.

It can be found on www.csu.edu.au/faculty/vpa/exhib its/war-and-peace/

 

— DENIS GREGORY    OFF-BEAT:

THE SUN-HERALD — STATEWIDE July 13,1997

Arthur Wicks and a creation in Wagga Wagga River Park. Picture: Denis Gregory