ELSEWHERE

"Do they ever sleep?"

I was delighted to come across this recent post by Ramona Barry, one brilliant half of handmadelife shared with the equally brilliant Beck Jobson.

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Take Flight

Two of our favourite artists/collaborators have been so so very busy this past few months. Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison have achieved what would be impossible for us — have work ready for a new show and go to over 40 films at the recent Melbourne Film Festival. Do they ever sleep?

Geelong Gallery plays host to their latest show All breathing in heaven which continues their exploration of both animal and human worlds and where they intersect. Through the time honoured traditions of collage and drawing these two magical makers have created a world of their own that is totally beguiling.

The ladies of hml are big fans, having bought journals, zines, prints and collages in the past so we cant wait for the road trip. How amazing to see so much of their work on display. We often joke that in some parallel universe we would be as talented, intelligent and beautiful as these two and produce work as seductive. We will have content ourselves with being fans and collectors.

Ramona Barry
handmadelife
20th August, 2013

Thank-you, Ramona and Beck, "makers, collectors and fine purveyors of all that is crafty", for the handsome compliments you have paid us. We think you two are "talented, intelligent and beautiful" too, and we both blushed ear-to-ear upon reading the above. See you in the MIFF 2014 queue to swap tales of films seen and films to come, if not before that. Perhaps we'll bump into you at the Gallery.

Double checking all 464 postcard collages are behaving themselves.


All works holding their position, & an artists' book with a Plush-capped finch on the cover safely delivered.


All in order.


One last look.

In other images shared recently on instagram, we two chatting on channel 31 about Hooded plovers and honeybee scissors.

And in other news recently shared, G and me at The Australian Ballet's dress rehearsal of La Slyphide last night. I cannot wait to see this performance again next week.

About time, all the time, in time

A Jungle Grows in all Spaces is a collage made up of thirty-three moving parts that Gracia and I made for our part in Pinknantucket's Materiality, Number 2: Time. In the lower left-hand corner of this current issue, our collaged work appears. Making this flip book about all returning to nature in time was a real treat. We hope to make a small iPhone film of our work moving, should time permit, later today.

You can purchase a copy of the second issue of Materiality as either hard copy or as pdf download through Pinknantucket Press.

The second issue of Materiality is all about TIME. It examines our relationship with time as it is observed and measured by our physical environment, our bodies and our material culture. Inside you'll find fiction, essay, image and verse about the stuff of time: clocks and watches, calendars, sundials, timetables, time capsules, death certificates, and many other things besides. 

You'll read about how capitalism co-opted time through the invention of time clocks, the development of medieval books of hours, the rise of the squirrel people, Viking bone structures, the frozen remnants of Antarctic expeditions, and crack patterns in paintings. A special edition zine by Mike Lynch is included in the back pocket. The TIME issue also features flip book illustrations by Gracia + Louise and Albertine Hamilton.

You can peruse Materiality, Number 1: Book too, and read, amongst other things, G's piece about sourcing books for collage.

Thanks for inviting us to be a part of this, Alice, and for all your hard work as well.

Q&A

Q&A with Timothy Roberts for The Lives of Animals — Gracia Haby, St Michael's Grammar School, 16th August, 2013 (published here)

Q: Can you describe the major themes of your current exhibition?
On the eve of our five-day-install of our work at Geelong Gallery, we are looking forward to the whole glorious process. Louise Jennison and my work for this exhibition, All breathing in heaven, is part of a three-person exhibition with Stephen Wickham. In reply to Stephen’s photographic grid (along one wall of the gallery space), 464 of my postcard collages will be arranged in columns dictated by colour and 23 of Louise’s birds (with one butterfly included) will appear to take flight. Louise’s birds have initial appearance of flight, but are actually pinned to the wall like specimen collections of old. Beauty in its place, tagged and recorded. These hand-drawn birds of Louise’s have nowhere to fly in the gallery; this is not their habitat. They will be boxed within my postcard collage grid. With my postcard collages (previously exhibited at Latrobe Regional Gallery as part of our exhibition By This Unwinking Night (2012), and including new postcard collages set in Geelong), I am chiefly looking to add one thing only to the scene that will alter its reading. Sometimes the new animal inhabitant will be hard to spot, a chameleon camouflaged in the floral arbour, and other times it will dominate the landscape. For me, it is what the animal I have collaged in place is doing that is of interest to me and what I see these works to be about. Are they scuttling or seeking shelter? The title of each scene, too, will serve as clue. (It will also serve as red herring.) This configuration along one long gallery wall features collages from 2006 to 2013 that will give way to Louise’s birds. It includes collages created as part of my Dear You series in which I write the narrative on the reverse side of the postcard too. Many people think I have found them this way, with a story on the reverse, which I find amusing. For me, like titling an artwork, it is another space in which to play and direct reading.

...

Q: You have stated that ‘the animal is there to question our very behaviour, those moral principles one governs the self by, and to explore the relationship with the natural world.’ How does your current exhibition expand on these themes? Does your art have an overarching moral theme or message?
I am primarily interested in what the animal in my collages is doing more than what type of animal they are (that is secondary). I am interested in putting them in scenarios both obvious and less so. Some promenade through a scene whilst others lurk seemingly undetected, such as in my artists’ book Testing the laws of hazard (2012). Most are out of proportion with their environment. They don’t fit and yet they do, such as in my artists’ book, All that’s bewitching by the water (Capri) (2012). Most are in some ways a self-portrait of how I see or feel my own place in the world to be. With Louise’s birds, the important part is the environment you do not see. In my works there is a landscape but it might not be the right one, and in Louise’s works there is no branch or nook. Upon first glance, I think our work looks cheerful, but upon closer reflection it is anything but. We use the animal almost as a lure to pull you closer.

We also try to leave our works open-ended. You can see in them what you will. You can make of them what you will. You can see yourself. You can see your own link or association with nature. You can see human nature reflected in the movements and actions. You can see charm. Along the way, some people have seen our zines to be artists‘ books, or our ‘this’ to be ‘that’ and as this is something beyond our control, we’re fine with that.

(Read in full)

All flying, all done

Installing an exhibition is one of my favourite parts of the working process. It is when you get to see at the one time all of the work that had previously been stored under weights or wrapped in tissue. Regardless of how much work and planning has gone into the pre-gallery preparation, there are always small changes to be made to the final hang. The space dictates this. No, actually, the space allows this. It allows you to change a couple of things around (when you are the one installing the work, I should specify).

Our initial plan had been to hang my twenty-three birds and one butterfly at the end of Gracia's ordered grid of 464 postcards. A regimented grid that gave way to the more organic placement of my drawings. At first glance, it might appear, we thought, as though the birds were attempting to fly away with the curtain of postcard collages. But upon seeing the space with fresh eyes on the first morning of the install, and after laying out the work along the gallery floor (as opposed to other spaces), and noting the height of Stephen's photographic beauty, we had a rethink. Two ideas immediately presented themselves. The first, to place my bird drawings at irregular intervals atop the ordered collage grid of G's postcards as if they were giant hand-drawn collage elements. And the second, which we went with, to box the birds within the postcard collage grid, almost like placing them in a tomb. The birds are in line with the top and bottom postcards. I liked this as it really gave a sense of them being like specimens collected. They cannot fly, and even if they could, where would they go? The gallery space is not for wildlife. In writing this, I am reminded of G's description of a part in Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake for The Australian Ballet where she describes Odette, when committed to the sanitorium, as being "like a wild bird trapped in the house".

There is the human ache of the story, yet the movements are also keenly birdlike. Perhaps none more so than in Odette’s frantic flailing of arms-cum-wings as she realises her lover’s betrayal in Act I. Sometimes she appears almost with tragic broken foot or wing, still drawn as if by magnet’s pull to her Prince Unfaithful. She folds over again and again, collapsing in on herself, and with wings crumpled and now made heavy with tears she offers up all her hurt and agony to him and for all to see. Confusion manifest. A mad whirligig of a bird one moment, sorrow-bound the next.

By the narrative familiar but presented anew, there is such lightness. But not lightness without ache. Never without ache. When we are presented with the heartbroken Odette committed to a sanatorium by Royal Command, at the beginning of Act II, she moves as though part dancer, part bird, so convincing her portrayal of a wild bird trapped in the house, beating its wings at the glass. Clipped wing. Nature confined. Sedation required. One moment rocking herself to self-soothe, the next retreating to the “safe” confines of a corner. Against the tall white windows that serve as bars to the little box prison, her wings flap and beat. Such futility! If you have ever rescued an injured bird and taken it indoors, you know the choreography. Upon awaking from shock’s stupor, it tries to escapes the man-made confines, and it is heartbreaking to watch.

(Read in full)

Gracia Haby, Louise Jennison, Stephen Wickham
All breathing in heaven
Until Sunday 13th of October, 2013
Geelong region artists program
Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong

Post MIFF 2013, post Geelong Gallery install

The post MIFF 2013 blues were this year kept at bay by the Geelong Gallery install of Gracia and my component of our exhibition, All breathing in heaven, with Stephen Wickham. I will shortly be sharing with you more details about this exhibition which opened today and runs until mid October, but first things first, farewell MIFF.

As Gracia commented in her MIFF farewell post (which I urge you to read in full), "in 17 days, we’ve been to Romania, Denmark, Quebec, Chad, Kurdistan, Turkey, Vienna, Iran, Japan, Russia, Scotland, and Mexico. We’ve seen 6,030 minutes of footage. We’ve queued for food rations at a refuge camp, seen inside hospital wards, chemists, school rooms, bathrooms, and tiny bedrooms. We’ve seen homes like our own cluttered one, and those like paintings neatly orchestrated. We’ve seen the wilderness torn apart. People torn apart. Families too, and their subsequent mending...".

Together, we saw a reworking of the Brothers Grimm (Blancaneives, director: Pablo Berger), witnessed police procedure courtesy of Romanian new wave cinema (Child's Pose, director: Călin Peter Netzer), seen a film by a filmmaker defying the twenty-year-filmmaking ban imposed on him by the Islamic republic authorities (Closed Curtain, director: Jafar Panahi), and a film by the world's oldest filmmaker too (Gebo and the shadow, director: Manoel de Oliveira). We've seen Edward Hopper's realist paintings reimagined and used to tell a slice of American history from the 1930s to the '60s (Shirley — Visions of Reality, director: Gustav Deutsch), and seen a film shown in nine different chapters selected at random that draw upon the writings of anti-fascist author Günther Anders (differently, Molussia, director: Nicolas Rey). We followed a young Kurdish rebel through the Turkish forest ravaged by war (Jîn, director: Reha Erdem), and seen what is left of life after serving a 30-year prison sentence in a film that draws upon the experience of Kurdish-Iranian poet Sadegh Kamangar (Rhino Season, director: Bahman Ghobadi). We saw life through the eyes of an illegal immigrant in Tijuana (Workers, director: José Luis Valle), and listened to the daily confessional of a wife in a war-torn Middle Eastern village (The Patience Stone, director: Atiq Rahimi).

July sure was busy, and August too. As always, keep up via instagram.

Nearly at an end

As we prepare to wave goodbye to MIFF for another year, there's just enough time for me to share with you these three recent posts of Gracia's about the many films we have seen:

Pepe and the finely dressed felines of Paris
Le Joli Mai (Director: Chris Marker); Wadja (Director: Haifaa Al-Mansour); Tower (Director: Kazik Radwanski); Coming Forth by Day (Director: Hala Lotfy); Blancanieves (Director: Pablo Berger); Viola (Director: Matías Piñeiro); The Best Offer (Director: Giuseppe Tornatore)

and

And lo! the homeward dash
The Villiage at the End of the World (Directors: Sarah Gavron/David Katznelson); Gebo and the Shadow (Director: Manoel de Oliveira); My Sweet Pepper Land (Director: Hiner Saleem); Vic+Flo Saw a Bear (Director:Denis Côté); Blackfish (Director:Gabriela Cowperthwaite)

and

Fables and poems
The Day of the Crows (Director: Jean-Christophe Dessaint); A Hijacking (Director: Tobias Lindholm); Shirley — Visions of Reality (Director: Gustav Deutsch); The Selfish Giant (Director: Clio Barnard); Rhino Season (Director: Bahman Ghobadi); The Major (Director: Yuri Bykov)

...and this sparrow too, in a moments pause between film screenings.

As my second coffee of the day brews, I find myself in complete admiration and awe of G's ability to string together such wonderful sentences about all the brilliant films we've seen at this year's fest.

(Image credit: The Wreckers of the Limited Express (Lubin, 1906), a hand-colored detail from the database of 35mm nitrate film frame clippings collected by Italian film historian Davide Turconi (1911–2005) from the Josef Joye Collection in Switzerland and from other unidentified sources. The collection consists of 23,491 clippings in total (usually two to three frames each). The vast majority of the frames cover the early years of cinema (from ca. 1897 to 1915).)

Grey-rumped Treeswift (A MIFF 2013 intermission, III)

Sunday morning, and several more films I have seen since last I popped up Elsewhere. (I've even booked a couple more sessions, one as part of the surprise screenings recently announced.) Thirty-three thus far! We are now over halfway, and all of them have been in some way inspiring and challenging. Head over to Gracia's blog to read her recent MIFF post, Pepe and the finely dressed felines of Paris to glean further.

JUNE
Grey-rumped Treeswift   
(Hemiprocne longipennis)

Family: Hemiprocnidae
Migration: Non-migrant

Distribution:
Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Bali, and Sulawesi in Indonesia.

Habitat:
Semi-evergreen and evergreen forest, also mangroves or mature parkland. Usually found in groves and forest edge. Unlike most swifts, this Treeswift perches on twigs in the treetops to rest.

June's bird is one you may recall catching a glimpse of here.
Hear one (Recorded in Indonesia: Togean Islands; Batudaka Island)

(Cropped photograph of an actual Grey-rumped Treeswift by Filip Verbelen.)

Yellow-billed Kingfisher (A MIFF 2013 intermission, II)

Nearing the halfway mark of MIFF 2103, I've seen 24 films so far and I've 30 more still to see. It is brilliant and exhausting. To learn a little of what I've seen and felt head over and read G's recent post And so we are at twenty in the quiet of it all.

JANUARY
Yellow-billed Kingfisher
(Syma torotoro)

Family: Alcedinidae
Migration: Non-migrant

Distribution:
Widely spread throughout lowland New Guinea and the adjacent islands, extending to northern Cape York Penisula in Australia

Habitat:
Lower levels, margins of tropical rainforest; scrubs on watercourses; adjacent eucalypt woodland.

An adult male singing (Recorded: Varirata National Park, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea)

(Cropped photograph of an actual Yellow-bellied Kingfisher by Geoff Jones.)