ELSEWHERE

Back of the Spoon Press and cats' tails

(Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Concealment in Calais sought (I), 2014, hand-coloured postcard collage, with a Leopard (Panthera pardus))




(Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Concealment in Calais sought (III), 2014, hand-coloured postcard collage, with a Golden Cat (Felis aurata))

100 Cats closes this Friday evening, so you'd best be quick if you were hoping to make it along to meet and greet the many wonderful felines in this group show of fifty-odd artists at Off the Kerb gallery in Collingwood.

And now, work continues in the studio on something new. With ink, roller, paper mask, and the back of a spoon, I am printing a Budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulates) and a Plum-headed Finch (Neochmia modesta). Carved into small pieces of lemonwood, they will later be given collaged bodies by Gracia for our part of the Brimblebox 153 Birds project. But it will be a little while before I can share the results with you.

In the meantime, links to peruse:
Four cats sauntered into a gallery, and one cat said to the others, [Insert Joke Here].
Gracia's The Nutcracker Sweet, a twenty-four page (utterly adorable) artists' book she made at seven-years-of-age with mice and the Sugar Plum Fairy
What is Beauty? (on vimeo), our moving pieces collage especially for The Australian Ballet of all things beautiful in anticipation of their 2015 season

And finally, don't forget, our super month of free postage is still on. We are offering FREE POSTAGE ALL SEPTEMBER LONG on all orders through our online store. Simply enter the code 'Zarafa' upon checkout.

On foot

Gracia and I are beyond thrilled to have one of our collaborative collages in the October issue of The World of Interiors. Commissioned during the film festival in August, we scanned all manner of maps, books, and fragments from both the State Library of Victoria's collection and our own to create this piece to illustrate the Jounal of a Literary Tour Guide.

A little taste:

I organise literary tours. Some are large scale, such as the public 'Pre-Raphaelite Pilgrimage' I ran for the National Trust between The George Inn in Southwark and William Morris's Red House in Bexleyheath, for which musicians, artists and storytellers were dotted along the route in hidden gardens; and some are smaller, like a recent trip with four friends, retracing John Clare's footsteps from his asylum in Epping Forest to his cottage in Northborough. Clare walked the route in an impressive four days, and ate grass; we allowed ourselves a little more leeway. Often the number is about 20, which is what we’ll be in October this year, when we stay in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s house in Keswick and explore the scenery that inspired the Lake Poets. Literature is best approached on foot; it’s fitting that we measure poetry in metre, feet and lines. The natural cadence of walking mirrors the rhythms of reading and writing, and brings the words to life.

As the tour guide, I get the double pleasure of devising the route and then enjoying the walk.

(Henry Eliot is a literary walker.  He co-edits Curiocity, a map-magazine of unusual experiences in London, and is currently editing a documentary about mazes and labyrinths. He is writing a novel about the Medieval Earthly Paradise.)

Gracia has previously created three collages for The World of Interiors: Time on His Hands, 2012; The Genuine Article, 2009; and Greeks Bearing Gifts, 2008. They, too, oddly enough, have been commissioned during the film festival. Must be something in the air.

Within an Indian miniature painting

(The Bayadères at the Adelphi, printed playbill, Adelphi Theatre London, England, October 1838 (Image source: V&A))

G's spice-infused and fantastical piece on The Australian Ballet's production of La Bayadère for Fjord Review, Shades of Mysticism and Opulence, has recently been published. Here is a little appetiser:

Stanton Welch's new production of La Bayadère, a glittering tale of betrayal and unrequited love, is akin to finding one’s self within an Indian miniature painting. Swirling shades of burnt coral, gold, dusty pink, turquoise, and an olive green tinged with yellow guide us down the Orientalist path to Mythic India in a romanticised period. The magician's optical illusion in play, nature is contrived by hand and presented as an ordered frame to a stage. The trompe l'oeil effect in motion to both trick the eye and delight sees a Rajah's palace appear before the eyes. And just as an Indian miniature seeks to emphasize mood (or bhava) through rich lyricism, when coupled with the melodies of Minkus in response to the exotic theme, La Bayadère brings to life a daydream of the past through an explosion of dance.

To understand the landscape one needs to remember that La Bayadère, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa for the Russian Imperial Ballet, was first performed in 1877. As Welch explains of the ballet, "during this time, the Middle East in particular and all of Asia was really this mysterious, fantastic place for the West. You have to view it as a Russian concept of that place, it's not in any way meant to be authentic to the country, it’s authentic to a Russian's version or dream of what that country may be."[i] But in order to attain secure footing in this fantasy-scape of Bengal tigers, spice-hued costumes, and slippers that curl upward at the toe, one needs to surrender to the brilliant spectacle as it unfolds, teases, sparks, and entrances. It is impossible not to be a little awe-struck when the house lights come on. It is, in fact, a little like smoking opium with Solor, our warrior lead, at the behest of the fakir, Kalum.

The chance to be transported to a place where Gods' leap, snakes slither, and saris swirl even in the ballet world does not come often enough.... (continue reading)

Additional links to peruse:
George Paton Gallery: Artist's Books (reprised) exhibition on wotwedid
100 Cats opening at Off the Kerb
Dream Worlds and $10,000 Tutus on Broadsheet
World Ballet Day, 1st of October, 2014
Militant Surrealism: Jan Švankmajer Shorts Part II as part of the Czech and Slovak Film Festival
Support Materiality's Pozible campaign

And don't forget, we're offering FREE POSTAGE ON ALL ORDERS placed through our ONLINE STORE ALL SEPTEMBER LONG. Enter in the magic code word, 'Zarafa', upon checkout. Lenni is ready to help with the wrapping.

And finally head across to our instagram account to see a little of our collaged response to beauty in light of The Australian Ballet's 2015 season. For us, beauty can be found in nature, untamed or otherwise, but more on this later.

000 brush

(A small hyperlapse video from earlier today. Leafing through a copy of our winged Twelve months, an explorer tales at George Paton Gallery: Artist's Books (reprised), University of Melbourne.)

When I am not with a 00 or 000 brush in my hand, painting the stripes and numbers on a handful of pewter footballers for a collectables store, I am...


(In a opium haze, recalling the hypnotic procession of the Shades. (Looking forward to revisiting La Bayadère later in the week with my Mum.))


(Admiring Lenni, atop the fridge, by the light of the golden tortoise, as he waits for his fifth breakfast. (Feline Fanciers, please note the endearing chest swirl.))


(Giving in to the temptation of a new pair of Moomin scissors at Odette.)


(And admiring the marvellous yellow.)

"A domesticated animal which has never been reduced to servitude, a cat, the emblem of Independence, is sitting at Liberty's feet"

(1, 2, 3... 4 of 100 Cats, plus a ring in. In seven seconds. Blink and you'll miss them, three new artworks for Off the Kerb gallery's 100 Cats exhibition.)

When my eyes, drawn like a magnet
To this cat that I love,
Come meekly back again
And I look inside myself,

I see with amazement
The fire of its pale pupils,
Clear beacons, living opals,
Looking at me fixedly.
(from Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire, trans. Geoffrey Wagner, New York, Grove Press, 1974)

Opening this Friday evening, 100 Cats at Off the Kerb in Collingwood, to raise awareness and funding for Ingrid's Haven, a non-profit, no-kill shelter in Broadford. For our part, we have created three postcard collages with hand-coloured scenery and feline additions. A Leopard (Panthera pardus), a Leopard Cat (Felis bengalenis), a Jaguar (Panthera onca), and a Golden Cat (Felis aurata) all feature, and all three works have been beautifully framed. In support of a good cause, they are ready for good homes.



100 Cats
Supporting Ingrid's Haven, a non-profit cat shelter
Friday 5th – Friday 19th September, 2014
Off the Kerb, 66B Johnston Street, Collingwood, Victoria

Opening Night
Friday the 5th of September, 6-9pm

We hope to see you there, cat lovers et al.

To peruse

Glasses on! As of today, editions of In your dreams, blurred and distinct (2014), (for a game of spot the red herrings) A Catalogue of Bodies (2014) As if from the clouds, restless (2014), Twelve months, an explorer (2014), and the pocket-sized 38.1500° S, 144.3500° (2013) are available for you to peruse as part of George Paton Gallery: Artist's Books (reprised) until the 5th of September.

George Paton Gallery: Artist's Books (reprised), coordinated by Sandie Bridie, Craig Burgess and Alice Mathieu, presents four decades of investigation into the possibilities and limitations of the artist book form.

George Paton Gallery: Artist's Books (reprised) will transform the George Paton Gallery into a reading room with a range of contemporary artist's books displayed on shelves available for viewers to peruse at a reading table. On display in vitrines in the gallery will be archival material remaining from two earlier exhibitions held at the GPC; Artists' Books/Bookwork's from 1978 and Artist's Books and Not(e) Books from 1982, curated by Tim Guest.

In the catalogue introduction to Artist's Books and Not(e) Books, Guest provides a definition of the artist book:
'Artists' books can most simply be described as those books which have been conceived, designed and produced by visual artists. As distinguished from those books about artists, such as a monograph or catalogue raisonée, or those about art, artists' books are instead complete artworks in themselves: they are artworks that are presented in the form of books.'

On loan from University of Melbourne archives will be works such as: Ed Ruscha's Small Fires (and Milk), 1964, Marcel Broodthaers' A Voyage on the North Sea, 1973, artist's bookworks by Sol LeWitt and many more.

The exhibition is supported by the University of Melbourne Archives

Thursday the 4th of September:
3.30pm: DISCUSSION 'On the archiving of artist's publications' and LAUNCH of Re-Print #1: 1 2 3 (1992) Stephen Bram and David Morrison by 3-ply
At the launch of Re-Print #1, John Nixon, Rebecca Coates, Justin Andrews and other invited speakers will discuss the archiving of artists' publications, during an informal conversation moderated by Sandra Bridie, Director of George Paton Gallery and an artist with a sustained interest in books as conceptual vehicles.
5-7pm: CLOSING EVENT, George Paton Gallery: Artist's Books (reprised)

EXHIBITION DATES: Tuesday 26th August to Friday 5th of September

George Paton Gallery
Second floor, Union House, University of Melbourne

Playing favourites

Hard to Be a God


The Salt of the Earth


Trespassing Bergman


German Concentration Camps Factual Survey


Antoine et Colette


The Epic of Everest


Fish & Cat


Manakamana


Goodbye to Language


Jauja


I Hired a Contract Killer

Before my head and hands settle down fully into work mode, here is my list of top films and documentaries seen at MIFF 2014.

Top 8 films seen (in order seen):
1. Locke (Director: Steven Knight)
Behind the wheel of a BMW, an ordinary evening commute sees an average life fall apart in Steven Knight's solo-protagonist, single-setting, real-time thriller. As Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) takes phone calls hands-free en route from Birmingham to London, his chances for personal and professional happiness crumble with every revelation and confession that complicates his conversations.

With a Welsh accent and a weathered brow to match his war of words, Hardy channels the greats of the stage as he monopolises the screen, restrained in physicality but brooding with intensity befitting his star-making turn in MIFF 2008's Bronson.

2. Goodbye to Language (Director: Jean-Luc Godard)
A dog explores a forest. A naked couple, in the midst of an affair, discuss the modern world. A windscreen wiper shifts water off laminated glass.

One of the most anticipated films at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language shows that the 83-year-old auteur is as keen to push boundaries as ever, with his use of clips from cinema's history, 3D split screen, poetry and avant-garde sound design ensuring a perplexing and radical cinema experience. A legend of cinema's past and present, Godard may have presented us with a window into its future.

3. Manakamana (Directors: Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)
From the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Laboratory, responsible for Leviathan (MIFF 2013) and Sweetgrass (MIFF 2010), comes this quiet, rhythmic meditation on pilgrimage in the age of mass transportation.

A procession of individuals – some in pairs, some alone – take a cable-car trip to Nepal's Manakamana temple. Over the course of each journey, these passengers talk, move around or gaze out at the landscape. The result is a unique cinema experience, not least for the spectacular views of central Nepal's mountains and jungles.

4. Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demeure) (Director: Denis Côté)
Clanking and shuddering, various machines fulfil their purposes, waited upon by human assistants. For a while, the workers silently complete their duties; later, they speak about what they do. What is their relationship to the apparatuses they attend to? Are they masters, slaves or equals?

An exploration of humankind's interaction with machinery, Joy of Man's Desiring is the latest work from uncompromising Canadian director Denis Côté (Bestiaire, MIFF 2012; Vic + Flo Saw a Bear, MIFF 2013). A deliberately observed cine-essay and paean to work, it is as formally rigorous as it is subtly — and subversively — humorous.

5. Jauja (Director: Lisandro Alonso)
In Incan mythology, Jauja was a land of impossible plenty, where all man's material wants could be satisfied. For 19th-century explorer Captain Dinesen (Viggo Mortensen, in his first Danish-speaking role), the lure is too hard to resist, yet when his daughter runs off with a young soldier, Dinesen must confront the brutal wilderness and the dangerous wild man Zuluaga in order to find her.

Argentinean director Lisandro Alonso (Fantasma, MIFF 2006) returns with another accomplished, mind-bending filmic reverie in Jauja, winner of the Un Certain Regard FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes. A meditative, hallucinogenic and thought-provoking enigma of a film, it revels in the sonic and cinematographic potential of cinema, both mystifying and enticing even as it burrows deep into the unsettling marrow of human love and cruelty.

6. Fish & Cat (Director: Shahram Mokri)
An unsettling score, an experimental approach that follows a dozen characters without cutting, and a jet-black sense of humour … These are just a few of the remarkable elements that have seen Shahram Mokri's Fish & Cat garner multiple awards overseas, including the Venice Film Festival Special Orizzonti Award for Innovative Content, paying tribute to the film's unique composition: a daring exercise in perpetual motion, it is shot in one 134-minute, nonlinear take by A Separation (MIFF 2011) cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari.

Inspired by genre films, Mokri focuses on a group of students camped by a lakeside forest for a kite-flying festival, choreographing a cryptic time warp as the camera weaves seamlessly between characters and perspectives, building an atmosphere of ominous tension. Just what is going on in this forest, and what are the men in the nearby hut cooking?

7. Mafioso (Director: Alberto Lattuada)
Italian comic great Alberto Sordi ("an irrepressible mixture of clown, blowhard and matinee idol", according to the New York Times) plays a southerner made good in Italy's modern north. When he takes his blonde bombshell wife and children back to his Sicilian village for a holiday, his joy at being surrounded by family and the scenery he so missed takes a turn for the sinister when the local don asks for a favour to be returned.

Bouncing between devastatingly funny crime comedy, fish-out-of-water satire and mob farce, Mafioso is packed with eye-popping details, exhilarating mood switches and tons of Italian hospitality, southern style.

8. Hard to Be a God (Trudno Byt Bogom) (Director: Alexei German)
A legendary and frequently overlooked enfant terrible of Russian filmmaking, Alexei German spent nearly half his life on this incomparable film: inspired by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's 1964 sci-fi novel of the same name, he wrote the screenplay in 1968, shot between 2000 and 2006, and died before post-production was finalised in 2013 by his wife, Svetlana Karmalita, and son Alexei German Jr (whose Paper Soldier screened at MIFF in 2009). A notorious perfectionist, German's uncompromising attention to detail lent the film a semi-mythological status for years. It is finally here and does not disappoint.

Thirty scientists are sent from Earth to a present-day planet stuck in a perpetual medieval existence, to bring it through renaissance. German's camera fixates on one burly inhabitant (or is he?), treated by the locals as a kind of god. Like him, we observe this world, in as close to documentary vérité of the Middle Ages as we're ever likely to get: it's a narratively anarchic cinematic immersion in a violent, grotesque world so palpable you can almost feel it. At 170 minutes of richly detailed black-and-white historical mimesis, Hard to be a God is a living diorama not for the weak stomached; but for cinephiles seeking a big-screen spectacle of unparalleled visual and aural grandeur, there's nothing that comes close.

Top 8 documentaries (in order seen):
1. The Salt of the Earth (Director: Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado)
Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado spent much of his life travelling around the world, capturing human life in environments beautiful and harrowing alike. Some of the hardship he saw, however, proved too discouraging, with the much-admired artist eventually retreating into wildlife photography.

The Salt of the Earth offers a wide-ranging profile of the ageing photographer, taking in his latest project: an attempt to record the natural beauty of the wildlife in his homeland. Co-directed by Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club, MIFF 1999; Wings of Desire, MIFF 1987) and Salgado's son Juliano — who provides some incredible archival footage of his father at work — this documentary is a deeply human reflection on disillusionment and the artistic process.

2. The Epic of Everest (Director: Captain John Noel)
In 1924, mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set out to conquer Everest. It was their third attempt, and their last: they disappeared on the ascent, sparking an as-yet unanswered debate over whether or not they reached the summit.

With them on the expedition was Captain John Noel, whose official film of their exploits has now been restored by the British Film Institute. Already an extraordinary document (Noel was filming in chillingly harsh conditions with a customised camera, and his images are both breathtakingly beautiful and historically significant), the restoration highlights Noel's majestic compositions, whether of the climbers, the mountain or the local Tibetan people.

The original coloured tints and tones of his images have been reintroduced and, combined with a new, suitably foreboding score by Simon Fisher Turner, they ensure that Epic of Everest is not only a moving tribute to the mountain and those who live and die on her, it's also an exhilarating tale of bravery and sacrifice.

3. The Great Museum (Das Große Museum) (Director: Johannes Holzhausen)
Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum is one of Europe's most magnificent cultural institutions – a 19th-century temple of classical paintings, books and ancient artefacts. Over the course of 2012 and 2013, as the legendary Kunstkammer rooms are prepared for reopening, Johannes Holzhausen's camera is permitted to wander the museum's corridors. From a remove, Holzhausen observes diligent restorations and stressed backroom discussions, imperial uniforms and Breughel paintings.

Remarkably adept at peeking behind the scenes, The Great Museum is akin to peeling back the layers of a revered masterpiece; featuring neither voiceover nor music, it is a rhythmic, immersive experience.

4. German Concentration Camps Factual Survey
In 1944 and '45, cameramen with the Allied troops documented the horrors discovered as Europe was liberated from the Nazis. The footage was assembled for a documentary by a brilliant team that included editor Stewart McAllister, Alfred Hitchcock and Australian writer Colin Wills. But the film was difficult, progress slow and it missed its moment. By the autumn, British priorities for Germany had evolved from de-Nazification to reconstruction, and so the film was shelved, unfinished.

Nearly seven decades on, the documentary has been completed, the picture restored and the narration recorded exactly as it was written in 1945, its factual inaccuracies and political biases intact. German Concentration Camps Factual Survey is an extraordinary cultural artefact depicting the Holocaust through a 1945 lens.

5. My Name is Salt (Director: Farida Pacha)
Year after year, Sanabhai brings his family to a seasonal, saline desert, where they harvest what they proudly proclaim to be the world's whitest salt. Knee-deep in brine, in the glare of the blinding sun, they toil ritualistically for eight months, only to have their Sisyphean stone roll back down the mountain when the monsoon floods the desert and all traces of their work.

Hardship and exploitation loom large in this film, but director Farida Pacha lets this speak for itself, instead fixing her gaze on the poetry and ritual of Sanabhai and his family's existence. Exquisite camerawork and a haunting score help Pacha expose the austere beauty of the subject.

6. National Gallery (Director: Frederick Wiseman)
Prolific and celebrated documentarian Frederick Wiseman (At Berkeley, MIFF 2014; La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, MIFF 2010) has spent much of his career analysing cultural institutions, casting a patient, often critical eye on collectives and hierarchies. Here, he turns his gaze to London's National Gallery and the many artworks contained therein, poring over the intricacies of paintings while listening in to the valuable insights offered by the museum's guides.

There is a subtle political purpose to this film, too: Wiseman — as always, sans voiceover — contrasting the assertive staff with the silent visitors. Acclaimed as one of the director's most thought-provoking films, National Gallery is both quiet rumination on elitism and paean to great art.

7. Trespassing Bergman (Director: Hynek Pallas, Jane Magnusson)
One of the greatest of all filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman was also an avid film viewer, his cottage on Fårö Island containing over 1500 videotapes spanning silent cinema to some of the major art films of the 21st century (and a few surprises, including Die Hard). In Trespassing Bergman, directors Jane Magnusson and Hynek Pallas visit the great master's home, bringing along a small posse of directors — including Michael Haneke, Claire Denis, Alejandro González Iñárritu and John Landis — to examine his personal collection.

Other filmmaking heavyweights, too, are given the opportunity to talk about their personal relationships with Bergman's films, with Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Lars von Trier, Takeshi Kitano and many more offering their (often irreverent) thoughts on the legendary auteur's output and his influence on their own. With excerpts of the master's work scattered throughout, this is a must-see for all Bergman fans.

8. Virunga (Director: Orlando von Einsiedel)
The Congo's Virunga National Park is home to some of the world's last surviving gorillas. It's also home to armed conflict and oil reserves. On this volatile turf, Emmanuel de Merode — a Belgian prince — and his fellow rangers are the last line of defence between the companies, poachers, corrupt officials and militant groups that threaten the park's endangered inhabitants.

Director Orlando von Einsiedel spent two years in Virunga, documenting the armed rangers' often life-threatening, literal fight to protect biodiversity: indeed, just days before Virunga's debut at Tribeca, de Merode was hospitalised after being shot four times. Powerful, stirring and visually spectacular, Virunga packs an emotional wallop.

(All film descriptions from the MIFF 2014 listings)

Plus,
Fifty-three films in seventeen days: Gracia's top MIFF 2014 films

Counting from one to fifty-three

Sepideh—Reaching for the Stars


The Great Museum


Virunga


Hope


Aunt Hilda!


The Story of My Death


My Name is Salt


The Immigrant


National Gallery


Tomorrow We Disappear


Iranian


Amour Fou

As I slowly refine my list of top films and documentaries, here is a list of Gracia's MIFF 2014 posts to peruse, and a complete list of all the films I saw over the course of seventeen days. I'm sure it goes without saying, it was marvellous.

Read Gracia's MIFF related posts:
In the theatre where films are shown for public entertainment
Picture house etiquette
MIFF's homeward dash
Fifty-three films in seventeen days (with her top 10 films, and top 5 documentaries)

Films seen:
1. Love is Strange (Director: Ira Sachs)
2. Irma Vep (Director: Olivier Assayas)
3. The Salt of the Earth (Directors: Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado)*
4. Locke (Director: Steven Knight)
5. Two Days, One Night (Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
6. Force Majeure (Director: Ruben Östlund)
7. Epic of Everest (Director: Captain John Noel)*
8. Blind Dates (Director: Levan Koguashvili)
9. The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet (Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
10. Antoine et Colette (Director: François Truffaut) and Father Christmas has Blue Eyes (Director: Jean Eustache)
11. Fantasia (Director: Wang Chao)
12. The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga (Director: Jessica Oreck)*
13. Masculin féminin (Director: Jean-Luc Godard)
14. Catch Me Daddy (Director: Daniel Wolfe)
15. Han Gong-Ju (Director: Lee Su Jin)
16. I Hired a Contract Killer (Director: Aki Kaurismäki)
17. Iranian (Director: Mehran Tamadon)*
18. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Director: Corneliu Porumboiu)
19. Goodbye to Language (in 3D) (Director: Jean-Luc Godard)
20. Clara and the Secret of the Bears (Direcor: Tobias Ineichen)
21. The Hope Factory (Director: Nataliya Meschaninova)
22. Honeymoon (Director: Jan Hřebejk)
23. Mankamana (Directors: Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)
24. Abuse of Weakness (Abus de Faiblesse) (Director: Catherine Breillat)
25. Sepideh—Reaching for the Stars (Director: Berit Madsen)*
26. The Great Museum (Das Große Museum) (Director: Johannes Holzhausen)*
27. German Concentration Camps Factual Survey*
28. The Story of My Death (Historia de la meva mort) (Director: Albert Serra)
29.  Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demeure) (Director: Denis Côté)
30. My Name is Salt (Director: Farida Pacha)*
31. National Gallery (Director: Frederick Wiseman)*
32. Rohmer in Paris (Director: Richard Misek)*
33. Amour Fou (Director: Jessica Hausner)
34. Casa Grande (Director: Fellipe Barbosa)
35. Remote Control (Alsiin Udirdlaga) (Director: Byamba Sakhya)
36. Hope (Director: Boris Lojkine) screening with the short film Stone Cars (Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green)
37. Fandry (Director: Nagraj Manjule)
38. Jauja (Director: Lisandro Alonso)
39. Trespassing Bergman (Director: Hynek Pallas, Jane Magnusson)*
40. Concrete Night (Betoniyö) (Director: Pirjo Honkasalo)
41. Our Sunhi (Uri Sunhi) (Director: Hong Sang-soo)
42. Titli (Director: Kanu Behl)
43. Tomorrow We Disappear (Directors: Jimmy Goldblum, Adam Weber)*
44. Aunt Hilda! (Director: Jacques-Rémy Girerd, Benoît Chieux)
45. Queen & Country (Direcotr: John Boorman)
46. Ne Me Quitte Pas (Directors: Sabine Lubbe Bakker, Niels van Koevorden)*
47. Fish & Cat (Director: Shahram Mokri)
48. Mafioso (Director: Alberto Lattuada)
49. Blind (Direcotr: Eskil Vogt)*
50. Virunga (Director: Orlando von Einsiedel)
51. Black Coal, Thin Ice  (Bai Ri Yan Huo) (Director: Diao Yinan)
52. Hard to Be a God (Trudno Byt Bogom) (Director: Alexei German)
53. The Immigrant (Director: James Gray)

* documentary

It is odd to think that this time last year, after MIFF, G and I installed our work at Geelong Gallery as part of All breathing in heaven with Stephen Wickham.

With a flourish of trumpets, an assembly of links

(The clock chimed and they resumed their song.)

An assembly of links for you to peruse.

• Recently posted here, a Q&A with Mati Rose McDonough for her guest interview series conducted as part of her Daring Adventures in Collage 5-week e-course, in May 2014, is now available for you to read at your leisure. We chat with Mati about our working patterns, inspirations, favourite colours, and how to side-step your inner critic.

• Our JOLLYJULY sale continues for the remainder of the month. Receive 30%-off your entire order when you type in the discount code JOLLYJULY. Our 30%-off sale includes our recent four-colour lithographic offset print print, Turning the Tables on Alfred Court, in which the animals have the upper hand, turning the tables on French acrobat, circus owner, and animal trainer, Alfred Court (1883-1977). In 1925, Court's menagerie boasted a collection of 25 lions, 8 tigers, 9 hyenas, 7 wolves, 3 cougars, 12 polar bears, 16 panthers and leopards, 5 jaguars, 2 cheetahs, and an extensive assemblage of exotic animals, including antelopes, llamas, and camels, alongside several monkeys, porcupines, and mongooses.

• Cutting triangles in the afternoon, and getting very wet, but enjoying the pretty patterns of hard work. Tiling, it turns out, is not unlike bookbinding.

• "I do not remember a time when I did not try to invent pictures and make for myself a fairyland amongst the wild flowers, the animals, fungi, mosses, woods and streams, all the thousand objects of the countryside; that pleasant, unchanging world of realism and romance, which in our northern clime is stiffened by hard weather, a tough ancestry, and the strength that comes from the hills." (The Tale of Beatrix Potter on The Public Domain Review)

• Golden Snub-nosed monkeys hide when it rains as water in their nostrils makes them sneeze.

• One, two, three: G looks back at some beautiful family photos with Siamese cats from the mid-seventies.

• One, two, three: A peek at some new collaborative postcard collages with handcoloured details.

Thirteen winter views

(A library of artists' books, a photocopy of zines, a warmth of coats, and crowd of people await. (En route to the opening of PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books.)


(Calling in on the herons for afternoon tea.)


(The last hurrah! (Glazing 42 tiny cyclists for Antique Toy World. Next up, tiny football players.))


(Tuesday's working table is littered with tiny cyclists being glazed.)


(A morning of Camels, Cobras, Dogs, and Frogs culminates in Brushtail Possums Up a Tree Harvesting Mandarins.)


(A fine hound under the right arm, a new cheap-chips printer under the left. (Percy and Friday's errands dash.))


(Left Bank. Right Bank. Left Bank. Right Bank. In Clifton Hill.)


(Little Lenni Len-oir sings for an early supper.)


(Your Sunday office is ready. (Complete with paw prints 'in the snow'.))


(One of these things is not a tiny pewter footballer. (Sunday's workbench with Lenni.))


(A new web site for a friend is built.)


(Earlier this evening, Not Our Cat called in to the Feline Hotel for his nightly supper.)


(Lenni oversees the daily drawing, and finds he cannot resist a little pencil play.)

All in a row, thirteen winter views from recent days. A baker's dozen! From a speedy trip up to Ballarat and back for the opening of PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books to the lovely quiet of working at home as dusk settles.

To read and see more of PAGE.PRINT.POST, G's recent post, Folded, stapled, and held snug in a (winter) jacket, will fill in the gaps. The exhibition at the Post Office Gallery in Ballarat runs until Saturday the 9th August, 2014.

And, lest you missed it, G's recent written response to the Keir Choreographic Award Semi-finals at Dancehouse (which I was lucky enough to see too) is up on Fjord Review.

....

Asked to question what we see and redefine what we think we know, I take especial delight in watching the stage being prepared in between the performances in both the upstairs studio and downstairs theatre. It reads like a part of its own performance as plastic sheeting is unrolled and props are quietly placed in assigned positions. And it is in this moment that I am given space to absorb what I have seen and ready myself for the next journey into the unknown.

These commissioned works are in glorious flux, still assuming final shape, dust still settling. Akin to the soldier’s awkward dance performed on a pair of crutches, with the legs not allowed to touch the ground, in Dead Flag Blues, these works are not for the idle. As they should, these works ask a lot of the audience. They are "new and unsettled" in both their feel and energy, notes judge Becky Hilton. And from where I sit, this is what the award is all about, and it is exciting.

(Continue reading)

A sale! A display! Yippee!

For those of you who do not receive our newsletter or who may have missed it mentioned on twitter, instagram, and facebook, we're holding a HUGE sale in a bid to make way for all the new things we have up our sleeves and swimming in our heads.

From now until the 1st of August, head to our online store to snap up zines, prints, and cards for a song.

Receive 30%-off your entire order when you type in the discount code JOLLYJULY.

The sale includes our recent prints, And Zarafa Kept Walking, and Turning the Tables on Alfred Court, and our newest zines, The Suggestion of Opulence, Nuit Noir, and In Your Dreams, Blurred and Distinct.

Yup, 30%-off everything!



And opening this Saturday at 4pm, PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books at the Post Office Gallery, featuring a couple of our artists' books and zines in very fine company.

PAGE.PRINT.POST
Post Office Gallery
Federation University Australia
corner Sturt & Lydiard Street, Ballarat, Victoria 3350
Wednesday 16th July to Saturday 9th August

See you there!

Pointe shoes and tutus

The suggestion of opulence in hand

Once more Gracia has me in awe of her self-described collaged words for Fjord Review. This time, she has written about The Australian Ballet's recent double bill, Imperial Suite. To whet your appetite, here is a little bit:

....

Our self-confessed borrower of many things, Balanchine saw no shame in taking a bit from here and there, for this was process. He tips his hat at jazz and Lindy Hop dancers (as we saw in The Four Temperaments (1946)), and he transforms it and makes it his own. Much like a collagist, to me, he created collages with music and the human body and fused them together to make something not possible without the other; to make something unique.

With this in mind, Ballet Imperial assumes a dreamlike quality. It is like seeing the world as I imagined it looked in 1941, one aspect of it, polished and at its absolute prettiest. So keenly does it evoke the period that I feel as if I have been transported to its premiere in Rio, South America, to a performance that received "a rapturous reception and 18 curtain calls..." Ballet Imperial has since gone through several transformations. The bejewelled tutus have been replaced with long flowing white chiffon swathes, the cavalier no longer sports "lace sleeves and a collar of white ermine," and the set that conveyed a sense of the inward-looking Winter Palace has been stripped. For a production staged by New York City Ballet in 1973, the name of the work was altered to reflect this shift and the music that is its source, Piano Concerto No. 2. But in this production, presented as part of Imperial Suite, we are seeing it as it first appeared at that premiere. In its original guise, the tutus and tiaras are back in place, so too the suggestion of the Neva River beyond, blue and shimmering.

And so here we have, in Ballet Imperial, a remodelled version of a Russia that no longer exists, and it is a sumptuous meld of all the things one thinks of when one thinks of Balanchine and his choreography: pure classicism bound to modernity. Reminiscent of theatre of the silver screen, which presented as something of a dream during wartime, rationing, and the Great Depression, there is something of this pure and extravagant escapism to be seen as Adam Bull sends a gentle ripple down two threads of dancers. Orchestrated ensembles form squares, diamonds, and circles on the stage, further illustrating to me the idea that "dance is music made visible”. As new formations assemble, the impression is not unlike looking through a cinematic kaleidoscope.

....

And to continue reading, you know the drill, please head here or here or here.

You can read other responses to dance pieces here and here, and you can pick up a copy of our collaborative zine celebrating Balanchine's Ballet Imperial, The suggestion of opulence, through our online store.

Speaking of our store, come Monday morning we are having a HUGE sale. We're making room for all the new projects we have in mind. It'll be big, so keep posted.

Nuit Noir

Following on from February's Four Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) who visited my garden one summer’s day comes a new zine in glorious B&W. Nuit Noir is the fourteenth zine in an ongoing series of small folded zines, and for those who couldn't make it along to Tonerpalooza last month, it is now available through our online store for two gold coins.

For $2 you get a pocket-sized Pied Heron (Ardea picata), a familiar Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus), Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen), a White-winged Chough (Corcorax melanorhamphos), and a Pied Currawong (Strepera graculina). This zine was a great chance for me to revisit watercolour.

As always, I am looking forward to extending this series. Will mammals feature next? You'll have to wait and see.

Zipping along

Found! One slumbering Lenni and a head full of Dreams.


The second of two new zines for Tonerpalooza, with a little feline assistance-cum-interference.


Tonerpalooza, in the Queen's Hall, enters its last hour.


Misreadings in hand. (So very delighted to meet you face-to-face at last, dear @oliviatokyo. Enjoy your copy of Misreadings and other zines.)


The late afternoon light in the library. (It was a hoot! Thank-you familiar faces and new bods for coming along to Tonerpalooza, presented by @stickyinstitute and @library_vic, and saying hello.


Blown into the State Theatre (by way of obligatory mirror portrait) for the newness of @ausballet's Bodytorque.DNA.


Forty-two 1950s pewter bike models primed in Warhammer's Skull White, of course.


Pass me my 000 brush. A box of 1950s cyclists ready to paint for Antique Toy World.


With a siamese cat upon her shoulder.


Kitten Interference. (Wrapping a big card order for the UK is proving a challenge. Lenni loves paper, but paper doesn't love Lenni.)


An impromptu portrait especially for @pasadenamansions and her pastel workshop in Rock Hampton.

From binding and folding new zines in readiness for Sticky Institute and the State Library of Victoria's Tonerpalooza in the Queen's Hall to filling card orders, it has been a big week (and a bit) that has zipped by. In between which, little pewter cyclists have been picked up and primed in Skull White. I'd forgotten just how slow and fiddly painting little models (for Antique Toy World) can be. And in between all of these things, the day-to-day, which in winter means trips to the ballet, not once, twice, but thrice. I was lucky enough to see Ballet Imperial two times, once on opening night with friends, and again on Wednesday with my Mum, and Bodytorque.DNA as well.

....

Throughout all five works, links are drawn that are in part a result of a theme explored, but not solely. From Cilli’s "ode to the human brain" and its workings, in particular the differences between the left and right side to Harbour’s abstract exploration of the dualities of extroversion and introversion within a performer specifically, we are taken on a fast and furious journey through the body. Or, to appropriate John Adams, a short 79-minute ride in a fast machine. We are shown that the body can be moulded, bent, spun, thrown, pulled, and stretched in an existing vocabulary. It can be still and controlled, even after moments of high brashness (Control). It can slither in its encasement of skin and vinyl as order is sought and possibly found. It can turn inward as it looks within, as movements are passed from one dancer to the next like a game of Chinese Whispers/Broken Telephone, and the traditional front-of-the-stage outward projection is shifted to the centre as we view an intimate circle (Corpus Callosum). It can even appear to glide unbeknownst to its self, as celestial bodies momentarily take over the navigation (I Cannot Know). An arch here, a curve there, and lo! a double helix is indirectly referenced. Particularly pleasing for new work, we are reminded that pointe shoes can extend the range of possible movements, and hair can be released from a bun, and worn as fantastically wild, almost animalistic, extension of character, in the case of Vivienne Wong (Same Vein), or to amplify one’s rock star swagger credentials, in the case of Ingrid Gow (Control).

....

(Bodytorque.DNA)

You can read Gracia's fantastic written response to Bodytorque.DNA in full here.

And her equally brilliant piece on Chroma, lest you missed it, also from June, too (and especially for Fjord Review).

....

At times the ten dancers appear to swim underwater like serpents released from an abstract painting, suggested by the large rectangular opening in the back wall, only to materialize into crabs with pincers to wound and protect the next, providing, as Wayne McGregor explains, “a graphic sketch or relief from this sense of white”. Just when you think you have decided that the dancers are an abstract painting transferred into human form, testing their legs for the first time in the gallery when the lights are out, the tempo shifts, a trumpet sounds from the orchestra pit, and the dancers draw shapes in the air on their own imaginary canvases. The choreography, a changeable, magnetic beast, that sees Lana Jones become a broken marionette finding its centre line, Juliet Burnett, a hummingbird mid flight, and Andrew Killian and Leanne Stojmenov, a pair of cranes engaged in a courtship dance. Playing with the blank canvas of abstraction, this is choreography digested and re-moulded to form new movements each time. ''The choreography is there and the steps are all the same, but it's about encouraging the dancers to take it into their bodies and mould it,” explains Chroma restager Antoine Vereecken.

....

(Chroma)

To me, winter couldn't get any better than at the State Theatre for three very different ballets.

Moonlight blue and grandeur

(Collages created especially for Behind Ballet's Styling Ballet Imperial)

This weekend, G and I invite you to Sticky Institute and the State Library of Victoria's Tonerpalooza: a festival of zines. We'll be there, in the Queen's Hall on Sunday, from midday until 4pm, with a host of our zines, and we hope to see you there too.

We'll be unveiling two brand new zines made especially for Tonerpalooza. One, a pocked sized dark night by me, Nuit Noir, which features a Pied Heron (Ardea picata); a Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus); an Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen); a White-winged Chough (Corcorax melanorhamphos); and a Pied Currawong (Strepera graculina).

The other, The Suggestion of Opulence, which features all things blue and shiny for Balanchine's Ballet Imperial. This brand new zine includes all ten digital collages, which were created especially for The Australian Ballet's Behind Ballet blog. We had so much fun working on these collages in celebration of winter ballet and Imperial Russia, and I cannot wait to see Imperial Suite with my own eyes.

And speaking of dance (as you perhaps wait in the wings for your turn to see Bodytorque.DNA or Imperial Suite) you can read Gracia's written response to The Australian Ballet's Chroma (especially for Fjord Review).

....the programme concludes with two works by my own champion of truthfulness and humanity, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort (1991) and Sechs Tänze (1986), which reference his first love: circus acrobats. The symbolically charged, theatrical Mozart double act takes us full circle, covering “aggression, sexuality, energy, silence, cultivated senselessness and vulnerability”. Poured into the two works (18-minutes and 15-minutes long respectively) is the push-pull of emotional affections. As one is dragged or tied by a length of their own skirt, in Sechs Tänze, another has their limbs dissected, followed by rapid-fire movements that either quickly assume the position of a corpse or roll into darkness. If one must be garroted, this is how it should be done. There is the familiar slap of a hand against flesh, in Petitie Mort, and the rewarding sexually charged swoosh of a foil cutting through negative space. Six men and six (fencing) foils as willful as if of flesh and bone, six women and six black crinolines on wheels and also seemingly with a mind of their own, and one cloud of floating black fabric, we see outlines traced by foil’s tip and shapes from nature drawn when one body partners with another. All is held in perfect balance, and it wears the fine corseting of Joke Visser. Though five years separate these two works, bookended they read as one exploration that swings, or in the case of the black crinolines, wheels from the poetic to the physical.

Zelda in Lemonwood

On Sunday, I took part in one of David Frazer's one-day Wood Engraving Workshops. In his purpose-built beautiful printing studio in Castlemaine, I discovered how to etch into a small block of lemonwood (Calycophyllum candidissimum), a portrait of our budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), Zelda. It is a technique I feel very much at the beginning of understanding, but one I feel quite excited about exploring further.

Just incase the week escapes me, I hope to see you at Tonerpalooza: a festival of zines, in the Queen's Hall, at the State Library of Victoria, this Sunday the 22nd of June, from 12–4pm.