HIGH UP IN THE TREES

An infinite number of readings.

{That hue suits you well.}


{I'll keep you steady.}
 
We are standing on a pier on darkest night. No, we are on board a ship, somewhere below deck. Or is it somewhere in the bowels of a submarine’s hull. We are in a sea craft, waves lapping and determining our movement. The singular swaying light suspended from high above makes me certain there is water somewhere beneath our feet. Yes, there’s definitely water involved. I am reminded of Fred Astaire swaying and weaving and bobbing in order to convince Edward Everett Horton’s character that the Queen Anne was actually on the rough high seas in Shall We Dance, 1937. But just as I grow comfortable in my thoughts the clouds change and something new is revealed (“…for we are by nature’s strange design like children, who gazing upwards find “dragons in the clouds”, Graeme Murphy, 2012, choreographer’s note), and we are now on the ocean floor. Look up, ink darkness. We are moving as if underwater. That is what I see, that is the narrative I have orchestrated for my own pleasure. The dancers move as if held by water, weightless and fluid. Can you remember that childhood sensation of swimming in a pool or the ocean or perhaps a river, able to float and dive and glide, pretending you were a seal or a mermaid? The things you could do that on land remained impossible! For me, these dancers assembled they move as if the water held their limbs and it is beautiful to see such swimming upon the stage.

Beside me, Louise is seeing nighttime factories with their yellow strip lighting, car parks, industrial zones. We are both, in fact, at the world premiere of Infinity. We are in the State Theatre, we’ve spent the day in great anticipation of this event, and we are loving every minute of it. Slow down. Stay. Forever. Some things you don’t want to end. New things can be like that.

In Graeme Murphy’s The Narrative of Nothing (2012) my narrative is decidedly ocean bound as I watch the dancers move at times as though they were a school of minnows, all part of the one large shoal. At other times, two dancers stalk the stage, two parts, left and right or top and bottom, that make the one animal treading across the seabed. A crab perhaps. Quickly things move, and now I am reminded of seahorses I saw recently at the zoo. The seahorses wrap their tails in loop secure around the plants on the seafloor in order that they can anchor to a place. Sea otters, too, they do this with their kelp bedding. They fasten themselves in to sleep lest otherwise they’d drift away. They are truly a raft of otters as the collective noun for otters on the water refers. But, I’ve lost my train, this Sunday morning, I was telling you of dancers who at times look like plant and seahorse twinned together, and at other times like one sea creature with its many legs decorated with tiny mirrored panels. I am no more surprised this sleepy morning that I’ve lost my track than I am that animals and nature remain my guides even at the theatre.

From The Narrative of Nothing by way of a lounge whose décor leads me still to believe I might still be below the sea with its backlit tiles a greenish blue and jewels like coral within. (These jewels some “464,000 marbles and everyday objects”.) It is a treat to be invited to this other side of things, to sip wine, and to partake in people watching. But we can’t linger here in this other world, the bell rings and there is Gideon Obarzanek’s (artistic director of Chunky Move) There's Definitely a Prince Involved (2012) to meet. Around me, the audience laughs before the rug is pulled from beneath their feet. They’ve been lured by humour, that trusty hook. Reeled in close and tight before being reminded that just as love and pain are so far apart they are often the same, so too is humour and sorrow.

The absence of all pretence in Stephen Page’s (artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre) Warumuk − in the dark night (2012), featuring dancers from both the Australian Ballet and Bangarra, steals my heart. The night sky returns and a dancer makes his body flicker languid like a flame. The elements are direct, I know them but not like this: a lunar eclipse, a shooting star, the tides, fish, “the hum of the land” (Stephen Page, 2012, choreographer’s note). Powerful and direct, yes, but how else to describe what I have seen? Once more, I am unaware of the audience around me. House lights come slowly on and I’ve a chance to collect myself, to leave my journey slowly, to swallow the lump in my throat.
 
The audience thrice over applauds loudly its release. What a marvellous treat we’ve been invited to witness, to partake of for one glorious night. Thank heavens for the music and visuals that linger about the head as I wait greedily to see Infinity again next week. A second time around, this time with my Mum, I wonder what it is I will see, think, and feel.

+ Thank-you
+ In photo

One step ahead.

{One step ahead, with its cast from animal ranks pulled. Can you tell the long-billed marsh wren from the jungle runner? The wire-tailed manakin from the hopping mouse?}

From yesterday's dormouse to One step ahead, a second look, today I am a state of anticipation fantastical.

When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that
(Quotation from original King Penguin volume now modified and currently on display.)

{INFINITY: First look.}

anticipation |anˌtisəˈpā sh ən|
noun
the action of anticipating something; expectation or prediction : we are in anticipation of a brilliant world premiere; we are giddy.

+ Infinity | Behind Ballet

+ You're invited (Artist's talk, By This Unwinking Night, Latrobe Regional Gallery)

This is where the dormouse lives.

{This is where the dormouse lives, 2012.}

The Isle of Wight (1950), “that Victoria paradise of England”, was the fifty-second in the series of King Penguins. It is illustrated and described by Barbara Jones. Sixteen colour plates and five black and white illustrations in total, with a cover designed by Clifford Barry. In 2012, to a single copy, I made several alterations. This artists' book of mine I have called This is where the dormouse lives.
 
“Everything here [in the Antler Room] is made of the antlers of stags, on which rather limited medium much ingenuity has been exercised. I was told that all the antlers came from deer in the Royal parks, but the furniture looks as if it was inspired by the suite sent over from Hamburg for the 1851 Exhibition and the clock has a distinctly German air, so perhaps the antlers were sent to Hamburg to be made up.”

{On the gallery floor early in the month of February with my version of The Isle of Wight. In the cabinet above this book there sits two of Louise's drawings. One is of a Blue-crowned hanging parrot and the other is of an Orange-breasted bunting.}

+ The first aerial travlellers, 2011
+ One step ahead, 2011-2012
+ Testing the laws of hazard, 2012

+ My Mum's A Drawing a Day takes shape.

Flouting the rules.

{No photography allowed.}

rule |roōl|
noun
1 one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere : the rules of the gallery were understood.

We are with friends and family, we are flouting the gallery rules of No Photography. We are equipped with cameras, iPhones, grand-scaled iPads; we lack not the wherewithal. We are a gathering of rule-breakers whose villainous ways are recorded by gallery security system.

(Thank-you, Latrobe Regional Gallery, for allowing us this naughtiness, and for turning your beautiful gallery space into our lounge room upon each visit.)

+ In memory

+ bloggers + cats archive

Something new.

{Practice hoops; avoid scrapes.}


{Home to the densest of grass and the pinkest of blossom.}


{Admiring all that you do.}


{Here I'll stay.}


{In search of a different world.}

grid |grid|
noun
1 a framework of spaced bars that are parallel to or cross each other; a grating : the metal grids had been pulled across the foyer.
2 a network of lines that cross each other to form a series of squares or rectangles : a grid of 443 postcard collages on the wall.

To meet yet a grid I did not care for, this Sunday evening you can see this ring true with a new blog template in place. Eyes above. Look right. To the grid, and to you, enjoy, my friends.

In other recent news to share, though of sadder nature, The Fox and the Hare passed away. You can read the obituary here. Tissues and pocket-handkerchiefs not included.

(All of the above postcards can currently be seen on the gallery wall, playing their part in an Unwinking Night. A complete list of works can be dowloaded here.)

About this mighty metropolis.

{These days. These weirdly-shaped days.}

Twenty-one baby coati kittens
Several mad Germans
1 collage from Belgium

This is what it takes to lift one from the post exhibition install blues.

All that work and then what?


{...Pick Yourself Up, that's what.}

+ Ever busy and inquisitive coati kittens born at Melbourne Zoo take over and explore every available surface in their enclosures green. Such adorableness!
+ The Mad Square: Modernity in German Art 1910-37 at the NGV until the 4th of March, 2012. Such inspiring brilliance!
+ From Frips, a collage feathered and glued to bring luck in 2012. Thanks Frips. xo

(Image details: Still from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1919, directed by Robert Wiene (1873–1938), and Rudolf Schlichter's (1890-1955) Tingel tangel, 1919-20, watercolour, 53 x 45.5 cm (detail shown).)

You're invited.

{You're invited. (Please click to enlarge or print.)}

Thank-you.

We would like to thank all at Latrobe Regional Gallery for their assistance with our exhibition, By This Unwinking Night, and the marvelous opportunity we’ve relished. Thank-you Julie Adams, Fiona West, and Maria-Luisa Marino. Thank-you Shelley McDermott and Anthea Williams.

We would like to thank all at NETS Victoria for their help and provision of beautiful cabinets in which to house books. Thank-you Georgia Cribb, Emily Jones, and Sherryn Vardy.

We would like to thank Shari Altman, Ria Bauwens, Marieke Berghuis, Des Cowley, Fliss Dodd, Brydie Dyson, Camilla Engman, Elaine & Peter Haby, Alexandra Hedberg, Susan & John Jennison, Olivia Meehan, Susan Millard, Kristi Moore, and Francesca Sasnaitis, for the original postcards they have sent our way over the years which are now included on the gallery wall with new additions, be they tailed or furred.

We would like to thank, too, our dear families and dear friends, for their post on which to lean and their ears and hearts lent.

We would like to thank you, the visitor, for taking a look at the things we have been working on and take delight in sharing with you, and we wish you well as you weave your path through galleries four and five, meeting the cast of characters we have assembled.

Yours in paper covered,
Gracia & Louise


{A different world found, writes Olive.}


{But under which are you?}


{A Swiss holiday abruptly ends.}

+ HAPPY 36TH BIRTHDAY, DEAR LOUISE. Here's to a sensational year of adventure. xo

A merry dance.

{One step ahead, cover. (The olingo is an excellent climber.)}

The King Penguin is both the second largest species of penguin and a series of pocket-sized reference books by Penguin. Released at the tail end of 1939, seventy-six volumes later, the series ended in 1959. (A very neat two decades, if I do say so.)

Of those titles, five I have modified. I have previously taken delight in showing you The first aerial travellers (Ballooning, published in 1948, is the thirty-sixth in the series), and today I can show you One step ahead. It features a cast tailed and feathered running through Janet Leeper’s English Ballet.

English Ballet in its true and original guise was first published in 1944 and features 16 colour plates. It is the twentieth book in the series. One step ahead in its equally true state replete with menagerie winged and clawed is an original artists’ book by me, made in 2012.

Here is a little look at a few page details.








{One step ahead, with its humpback whales, siamang gibbons, wood mice, long-billed marsh wrens and more.}

+ You can see this book on display in the exhibition By this unwinking night.
+ Fine impressions in the Cowen Gallery of the State Library of Victoria is on until next Thursday the 16th of February.
+ You can keep abreast of other new things as they occur by way of our near-to new facebook page.

In a series of flying leaps.

{Before the hush that darkness brings, I search for trinkets and beetles in the earth.}


{Holding still.}


{Afloat for now.}

As if from postcard collage leapt, the other day Louise and I trampled through the long yellow grasses of Royal Park in search of a tiny goat out of place and stone’s throw from the urban jungle and busy roads. It would seem we’ve emerged from a week-long exhibition install to find the world every bit as odd as those we tweak and nudge upon the page. Asian elephants in Cannes and goats in the park, but of course. Let us add to the brew not a tiny female goat but a giant rodent adept at peddling. Such brilliant Monday tomfoolery, she cried. This Tuesday feels so tame.

Mind how you go, my friends, it certainly is a wilderness out there.
 
+ Lest you missed the news and our various tweets and updates throughout the day, Miss Louise Jennison, Motorist/Eyewitness, crops up briefly in the following videos here and here.

This gallery is no longer closed for installation.

{Closer.}

As of yesterday, Saturday the 4th of February, our show By This Unwinking Night, is open. This is somewhat hard to believe. We’ve been so long getting it ready that to sit back and find it is done, why, it’s hard to switch into new gear. Working towards this exhibition has been little short of wonderful. It has been wonderful to be focused upon one big body of work. It has been wonderful to see a wall of 443 postcard collages ranging in year from 2006 through to 2012 hang in neat grid some 12 metres in length and now on a wall. It is hard now to fathom how such a grid was planned out on two drawing boards side by side in the lounge room. Yes, seeing it all done, it can be seen why we left a New Year’s Eve party well before midnight, and spent our days and nights working. You cannot often shut yourself away and just work: it remains a privilege.

So, friends, today I will take you back to Thursday the 2nd of February when we were still with small hammer in hand and a laser level tickled our necks.

By This Unwinking Night
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Saturday 4th of February – Sunday 1st of April, 2012
 
Currently showing at
Latrobe Regional Gallery
138 Commercial Road, Morwell (Victoria)
(The gallery is right next to the train station, travellers among you. It is also open everyday of the week.)
 
+ The middle of an Unwinking Night, Louise's Sunday post features a glimpse at her beautiful birds in flight. Near to my head there swoops a Common cuckoo, a Pink-footed shearwater and a Red-tailed Minla. Duck!

The Winged Shimmy.

{Louise's birds get ready to fly}

Where parts of Tuesday had distinct feeling of trout swimming up stream only to be eaten by hungry bear, today, the work, the preplanning, and the tinkering flowed dream-like and we’ve now left the gallery having completed much. Compositions, sequences and patterns all fell into place, and the feeling, the feeling is good.
 
Taking tired self off now to complete a list of works.
 
shim•my |ˈ sh imē|
noun ( pl. -mies)
1 a kind of ragtime dance in which the whole body shakes or sways.

verb ( -mies, -mied) [ intrans. ]
dance the shimmy.
• [with adverbial of direction ] move swiftly and effortlessly : the Zebra finch shimmied right to the top of one of the cabinets.