ELSEWHERE

Lately...

With trusty 2B pencil in hand, I slowly darken the feathered markings around the second Great Auk's eyes.


As Olive looks out the window, a Moa has its scales polished with 2B.


Pat. Purr. Pat. Purr.


Olive oversees the portraits of the last pair of Great Auks and their fated egg.

This quartet is most days. Up the front, drawing. With Olive, my studio chum. She sits in the window and watches the world pass as I work, hour after hour. She curls up on my lap, and she slowly pushes me off the chair. In the lead up to a group exhibition at the Counihan Gallery (In Your Dreams) and a window display at Port Jackson Press Print Room in Smith Street, this quartet is most days.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I get to get outside to see the world at large. To take down an exhibition of our artists' books (Thank-you for having us, Maroondah Art Gallery), or to try on new glasses for tired peepers. And sometimes, and best of all, I get to head to the State Theatre with my Mum to see The Australian Ballet.

Lest you missed their beautiful performance of Sir Kenneth Macmillan's Manon with its plot twists, desire, opulence, rat-catchers, pickpockets, Spanish moss, harlots, courtesans and their clients, here is a link to Gracia's brilliant response to it (for Fjord Review).

All bathed, all drowned, in a golden light. Like Carle Van Loo’s 1737 painting, Halt in the Hunt, our stage palette is set. Rusty browns and sandy ochres give way to earthy greens. This is nature, human nature, with all its lust for power and pleasure, its poverty and its rat-catchers, harlots, and spinsters jostling side-by-side. Our eye, like in that of the painting, drawn to those of import in blue (des Grieux, our romantic, besotted and well-intentioned student-cum-hero) and red (Monsieur GM, “an old voluptuary, who paid prodigally for his pleasures”); colour long has been used to tell a story, and what a story Manon is. Our eye races through the painted stage scene, seeking to read all as it unfolds: a wagon of ‘fallen women’, a mistress’s fate; a Beggar chief, an opportunistic pickpocket. We might be on the outskirts of Paris, in a courtyard, a microcosm of society, but this shouldering of the wealthy and the affluent alongside the poor and wretched rabble could easily be a scene come to life from Gian Domenico Tiepolo’s Carnival Scene (or The Minuet), the pendant to The Tooth Puller (1754). If you wanted to know your fate, you’ve only to cast an eye about the scene: up, with wealth and furs; or down, deep down, grief and despair. And this, this is only the beginning. Keep up, look lively.

(Continue reading...)

You can read G's responses to earlier performances, such as Ratmansky's Cinderella, listed here, under Published Works. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting to hear about (the forthcoming) The Middle Room.


Camouflaged, not quite. In a line, not really. But awfully cute, one little rump.


Foreman Omar and thunder clap call Quittin' Time. Brushes down.


Two (garden bed) escape artists.


Coffee number 5, speedily swilled.


'My loyal, subjects, hear this...'


G CA HA Y & OU SE ENN SO have left the building, artists' books under wings.


Old boy takes a look at the day and decides to stay in bed. (Omar, in profile, showing his one good eye.)


Friday's New Frame Shuffle. Pair after pair after pair.


(Gracia) so looking forward to seeing Lucinda Dunn's Melbourne swan song. (Manon, The Australian Ballet)


One dear old boy basks in the sun. (Sunday's Street Surveillance)

With greenish plumage

As part of our forthcoming exhibition Not Quite Sure in the window of Port Jackson Press Print Room, as part of their Little Window of Opportunity in May, we'll be exhibiting all twelve of my hand-coloured birds from my recent artists' book A Flight of Twelve Southern Hemisphere Birds. I am delighted to be able to both exhibit this work in a different guise and to offer you these works as individual prints. Late last year, Senior Artist with The Australian Ballet, Juilet Burnett, was one contented recipient of a Kakapo with greenish plumage.

In addition, Gracia and I will also be exhibiting our last prints created with Bernie Rackham of Redwood Press. Relegated to scrap, tragically said lithographic proofing press is no longer.

A string of pearls and the niceties of autumn

In response to Gracia's recent post, when not at the drawing board or painting the front of the house, I am enjoying the niceties of autumn. From pink sedum top to mock orange bottom, this is a string of visual instagram highlights from recent autumn days (by way of the studio, naturally. It seems I can't separate myself from my work for even one post):


(Cobweb blowing on a Sunday. (Royal Botanic Gardens))


(One of us appears to have been hitting the books hard. Percy, your thoughts on Through the Woods by H.E. Bates?)


(Honey joys and paper planes! (Thank-you for the lovely Sunday interlude, Catherine & Robert. X))


(Thursday's still life. (Little King))


(Drawing made from sound. Sound made from drawing. (Slave Pianos, at Melbourne Now with Jurate))


(Dear Percy preparing to fly, or posing whilst waiting, you decide. (A late summer blow in))


(Oh you Great big Auk!)


(Earlier today, a frangipani in bloom in someone else's front garden.)


(Forty-two birds, the last three of the edition, all coloured, scored, and folded.)


(The elusive Olive and the pulled-up bed.)


(Mock orange (Philadelphus) perfumed riot in our front garden.)

Until the 15th of March. Be quick!

From Norway, long ago

Misreadings is a new zine by Gracia in which she does as title might indicate, she 'misreads' or 'makes up' possible meanings to a selection of images borrowed and in turn misread with permission from the photo archives of Perspektivet Museum (PEM), Tromsø, Norway. (The Perspektivet Museum houses the collections of the former Tromsø Town Museum and Troms Folk Museum, from which may of this images of daily life are from.) To me, this zine takes a few unexpected twists, flipping you from the beautiful to the sad in a page turn. (Those polar bear cubs!)

We sent a copy over to the Museum recently, and this, to our great shared delight, is how it was received. (The Director Astri Fremmerlid with Misreadings in hand, photographed by Mari Hildung, and reposted by us.)

You can have your own copy wrapped and sent to you too. Bound with a shimmery blue spine, it is available through our online store for $8.00 AUD. Take yourself to Tromsø! Explore the region, marvelling at how similar things look and how very, very different.













Here and there. There and here. If things have been quiet of late, this is why.

Precious Print

A collage from Gracia's artists' book, A headdress to show you how much I care (2012), features on the cover of the third issue of Materiality, and we are both so very excited. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of this precious beauty.

Thanks Alice.

This issue of Materiality examines the relationship between precious things and our identity—cultural and personal. Read about gold mining and selling, the lost thylacine, love letters, illuminated manuscripts, a broken doll, Japanese lacquer, saffron, trash vs treasure and interviews with a jeweller, a luthier and a gemmologist.

Materiality is a themed journal that includes fiction, essay, images and poetry, focusing on the physical and the material. Materiality sources content from writers, artists, conservators, curators, craftspeople, hobbyists, enthusiasts, photographers, materials scientists, engineers, designers and architects.

Cover image: A headdress to show you how much I care (detail), by Gracia Haby. Artists' book, unique state, featuring collage elements and pencil, 2012. Gracia Haby is a Melbourne artist. She and fellow artist Louise Jennison explore the possibilities of paper-based media, such as artists' books, zines, and postcard collages. See more of their work at gracialouise.com or follow @gracialouise on Twitter.

You can purchase a copy of Materiality through Pinknantucket Press for $15 (AUD) (hard copy) and/or $4.99 (AUD) (digital copy).

And the original artists' book, A headdress to show you how much I care, is in the collection of the State Library of New South Wales alongside her other collaged King Penguin tales.