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Thank-you for all the love shared in regards to this recent post. It means a great deal to me. Such kindness and support inspires me to keep making work which comes from a place of honesty. And, of course, I can't wait to get back to both feeling 100% and to finishing a book of beloved mammals with G featuring my lemonwood engravings.
(Four lemonwood engravings on Japon Proofing 225gm paper of a Brown mouse lemur (Microcebus rufus), Polar bear (Ursus maritimus), Sea lion (Zalophus californianus), and a Stick-nest rat (Leporillus conditor) are available for sale through our online store.)
From the two of us, a huge thank-you to every single one of you who came by our stall and said hi, and big love and thanks to Megan Patty and all the staff at the NGV. We'd love the chance to do it all again.
'To feel' is where it all begins. It is the thread that binds Choreographer and Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela’s premiere work Frame of Mind to William Forsythe’s Quintett, a so-honest-it-hurts love letter to his dying wife.
Presented side by side, both works, uniquely tender in their fragility, give a physical framework to heartache. Born from the tight knot of personal experience, both works spiral outward and give expression to longing and vulnerability. To be entrusted with something deeply personal yet universal, raw yet understated, is a rare gift.
Opening with Forsythe’s Quintett, which premiered in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1993, it is shown through action and heard through repeated stanza, that a state of longing and a kernel of hope can appear temporarily fixed. And so for 26 beautiful minutes, I found myself suspended within a constant sensory loop as an elderly man sang a simple refrain: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. ...continue reading
This special issue of the La Trobe Journal focuses on the development of artists’ books as an art practice in Australia. The digital revolution has led many to question the future of the book, yet more artists are involved with making books than ever before. Artists, printmakers, letterpress printers and binders are creating and designing books that draw upon and extend the traditional format.
In delicious anticipation of The Australian Ballet's Madeleine Eastoe's second last Melbourne performance, Gracia and I, by way of heartfelt thanks, collaged our bouquet. We borrowed a promotional photo by Georges Antoni with Madeleine Eastoe and Chengwu Guo for The Dream, and went all out with a riot of pink blooms.
In other dance news, the second of Gracia's considered (and amusing too) Dance Massive 2015 pieces has recently been published on Fjord Review.
Head over to read Shout Our Loud and be swept along to Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe's Meeting, and Rebecca Jensen and Sarah Aiken's Overworld. There are silver automatons! And fancy dress costumes too!
If Chunky Move’s Depth of Field, the beginning of my Dance Massive 2015 marathon, was to show me a seasonal pattern unshaped by human hand, Meeting revealed a pattern defined by sixty-four small-scale robots whilst Overworld writhed in a chaotic pattern of YouTube fragments tethered to the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. The tenuous link between these Dance Massive performances is solely that of my own programming: one night, two performances seen back-to-back, separated by an hour, at the North Melbourne Town Hall.
As with all festivals, cinema, dance, or otherwise, the festival patron looks for common threads in the works they’ve elected to see. Processing, reeling, and ruminating, before bouncing to the next performance: what is the best palette-cleanse? Perhaps the answer lies in making myself something of an automaton using the technologies of homeostasis. Perhaps with a stack of programmable cams at my core, stable equilibrium could be maintained. I’ll let you be the judge.
Gracia's collaged lovelies now come as a brilliant and glossy poster featuring all sixty-three of the Salvaged Relatives from editions I, II, and III (2014–2015) in their modified Ballet Russes costumes.
And speaking of dance, you can also read G's thoughtful and beautiful response to Chunky Move's new work Depth of Field, here, on Fjord Review. It is the first of many Dance Massive 2015 pieces, which I have been lucky enough to see as well. From Meeting to Catalogue and a preview of Tiny Slopes, a work in progress, it is proving a massive blast.
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Establishing who is a performer and who is actually walking home or on a grocery dash (or crashing the party with their Jack Russell) was a chief part of the playfulness of this piece. Asked to look closely at the obvious and the less obvious, it became a game of ‘spot the performer’ that actually made everyone within frame a part of the work. The mother and toddler that rested under the tree near the corner — were they a part of the piece, like the woman in the red scarf seen purchasing a parking ticket? The joggers too — that was orchestrated, right? My imaginary cast sheet for Depth of Field includes the motorists on the freeway, more than likely oblivious to the work they were a part of. Their credit: moving tail light providers. It also includes commuters on the tram. Their credit: neck ‘crickers’. And a windblown plastic bag seen rising and settling in own reenactment of a scene from Sam Mendes’s film American Beauty (1999).
This post was initially intended as a thank-you to all of you who swung by our stall at yesterday's Festival of the Photocopier, but as I was piecing it together my twitter feed was awash with gruesome details. Though I've yet to find the stomach to watch the recently screened Four Corners exposé, Making a Killing, on the greyhound industry and live baiting, it makes me very glad that I volunteer fortnightly at the RSPCA. Even when I get snowed under with work, my time spent cleaning, walking, and caring for those beautiful dogs helps me to feel like I am making a difference. It is something I will always find time for.
"Putting together animals, gambling and prize purses is a toxic mix. It's capable of turning men into monsters." Making a Killing, reported by Caro Meldrum-Hanna and presented by Kerry O'Brien, went to air on Monday 16th February at 8.30pm on ABC. It is replayed on Tuesday at 10am and again at midnight on Wednesday. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 at 8.00pm on Saturday, ABC iview or abc.net.au/4corners.
I look forward to continuing to share more views from the working table and otherwise here at Elsewhere in this broken-in New Year. May it treat you well too.
And before you forget all that 2014 brought with it, from Wayne McGregor’s Chroma to Lucinda Dunn’s last performance in Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, here is G's recent and fantastic post (for Fjord Review) of her 2014 dance highlights.
Choc-full December is racing by and Christmas is almost here, but not before I share with you two links to Gracia's utterly brilliant recent written pieces on Fjord Review.
(Find us a nicer early evening than looking at artists' books in good company at the State Library of Victoria. Bet you can't. (Paul Valéry, Album de Monsieur Teste, 1945, Éditions de la Galerie Charpentier. "I have always wanted", Paul Valéry wrote to André Gide: "to invent the story of a young man who thinks" (18 May 1896). The "young man who thinks" stands for Monsieur Teste. This enigmatic figure first appears in La Soirée avec Monsieur Teste. Valéry had meant to dedicate this story to Edgar Degas, but Degas rejected this." [Source: National Library of the Netherlands])
(Benzaldehyde. Methyl cyclopentenolone. Ethyl vanillin. Noses at the ready. A Hyper-Natural perfumed dip. (NGV: "Anchored within the world of scent, Hyper-Natural explores how designers in the medium of scent select synthetic fragrances to put together extraordinary designs. These designs, when built, become extraordinary works of scent art. Curated by former New York Times perfume critic and author Chandler Burr, Hyper-Natural introduces us to the thoughtful, intricate, fascinating, and virtually unknown medium of design—invisible, powerful— and expands our concept of design itself."))
And now I must return to the studio to paint the edges of these recent collages with gold gouache if they've any chance of making Wednesday's post, but more on that later.
Some good and recent things to share with you and hopefully delight.
(A suite of seventeen collages made especially for and exhibited as part of In Your Dreams (Counihan Gallery, 2014), and accompanying dream text, assembled in a handmade Solander box guarded by Petrouchka.)
Three short (45 seconds in total!) instagram videos that sum up September:
(What is Beauty? Especially for @ausballet, a moving pieces collage of all things beautiful in anticipation of their 2015 season launch. Featuring paintings, patterns, and illustrations by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, François Gérard, William Morris, and Walter Crane; dancers Marilyn Jones, Amber Scott, Leanne Stojmenov, Natasha Kusen, Andrew Killian, Lana Jones, Nana Gollner, Nora Kaye, and The Australian Ballet's Corp de Ballet; assorted birds, botanical specimens, lantern slides and other harvested delights.)
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.