HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Propelled by oars, sails, or an engine.

{Primary transport for the dispelling of fallacious beliefs (Museum of Applied Science of Victoria), cover.}

Because this morning my head is in building a new web site and as a consequence I am combing the archives in search of imagery. Because I am left weary by the succession of hot and humid days. Because of this I am sharing with you today an artists’ book of mine that I’ve previously not had a chance to show you. Created in 2009, Primary transport for the dispelling of fallacious beliefs (Museum of Applied Science of Victoria), is one of the smallest I have tinkered with and it once, in original guise, belonged to a Graeme Pond, whomever he is. The shipping models within  include, H.M. Bark 'Endeavour'; 'Thermopylæ' Clipper Ship; 'Nyora' Screw Tug and Salvage Steamer; P.S. 'Weeroona'; and 'Mary' Pearling Lugger (c. 1939). Such great names to be found in the nautical world. Clipper Ship. Pearling Lugger. Tugboat. Friendship Sloop. And my favourite, a clinker (Viking ships were 'clinker built', my sea dogs salty).














{Primary transport for the dispelling of fallacious beliefs (Museum of Applied Science of Victoria), page details.}

+ Greyhounds, Mastiffs, Malamutes
+ I catch the eye of Marzipan at the Astor Theatre, and I am beyond delighted that she graces me with her presence on the couch before a screening of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest
+ Towards the end of summer
+ How glorious White Night, and the chance to see the familiar painted something other. Exploring the city at 4am, it looked fantastical. (And so very littered too.)

In conversation with Ana.

{Installing our exhibition By This Unwinking Night at Latrobe Regional Gallery, 2012.}

Ana Pina recently asked Louise and I a couple of questions about our work and our day-to-day. You can read our response here, as part of The Interview Series (and below, too, in the interests of archiving things big and small). Thanks for interviewing us, Ana.

And for today's interview I bring you a creative duo with an eclectic body of work and an exquisite sense of humor: Gracia & Louise. They are two Australian artists that collaborate frequently, sharing their creativity and love for paper as an artistic media. They create zines, artists' books, unexpected compositions and collages where the influence of vintage and the animal world meet. Discover them, it's worth it!

Tell us...
Who are Gracia and Louise?
We can be described as two artists who often work collaboratively. We make artists’ books and other works on paper, and have been busy at this since 1999. Melbourne-based, we work from home, in any room of the house that suits purpose, and we are besotted with paper for its foldable, concealable, revealing nature. In our work, we like to play with the idea of things not always being as they first appear. Our artists’ books and other works on paper, from collages, prints, drawings, and zines, are in the collections of the State Libraries of N.S.W., Queensland, and Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia, Tate (UK), and others.

Gracia is High Up in the Trees
Louise is Elsewhere
And together we are Gracia & Louise

Have you become what you wanted to be when you grew up? What inspires you to create?
The answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes, we are both working full time on our artwork (supported also by freelance graphic design work, and teaching students to paint through Open Universities Australia at RMIT university). This is a wonderful position to be in, one both of us have aspired to since little and one we’ve actively taken steps towards. But there is so much we want to do. So many works to make and to find the means to make. We would love one day to be in the position to publish a book of our artwork. “Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea,” said Iris Murdoch, and this sums up this feeling of still reaching, still going, still polishing and perfecting, still trying to make the work one sees clearly in the mind’s eye. Whilst we’ve still ideas and interest, we’ll keep going, trying to make that work you are happy with, though deep down its completion is unlikely. This is what inspires us to keep climbing up the mountain, and we are not ready to begin the descent.

Share with us...
Your artistic media of choice.
Paper for its brilliant diversity and abundance, from beautiful new sheets of hot-pressed paper to draw on and bind into book format to found papers and books to modify. Along with having a natural affinity with paper, it is also something that is relatively small and easy to store. There is, for example, nothing to stop you making a series of postcard collages on the lounge room floor. It requires little space. There is no excuse not to draw in a sketchbook. There is also, depending on your taste, little financial outlay. You can always find paper to draw on and art supply stores sometimes have great sales.

The favourite corner of your workspace.
No favourite corner for it does not matter where you work. You don’t really notice your surrounds when working as, like blinkers on a horse, the work is the sole focus. It does not matter that there are dishes in the sink and clothes to wash for once you start on those tasks, the day is all but gone. You can be doubled over in curious pose as you glue piece after piece in a collage, your body’s comfort deemed irrelevant for the moment. But there are a few requirements, like a good light source so as to see what you are doing. And the company of sleeping pets sure helps the atmosphere. Finally, if the noisy neighbour is crashing about and breaking his furniture with an axe*, a little classical music as a sound buffer helps.

A day at work.
This is always varied. We are fond of early starts. In the early morning, working before other tasks crash into the picture is preferable, and whilst ideas feel within hand’s grasp.

A business tip.
Advice both received and followed: love what it is you do and keep going, no matter the obstacle. Focus on turning shortcomings into something else; flexibility and resourcefulness are indispensable tools. Yes, just the usual stuff to keep one coasting along, really.

An advice to your younger you, and future plans.
The answer to the above is perhaps what we’d whisper to our younger selves though it is probably something we’d dismiss with a shoulder shrug, and to focus on turning a mistake into something other is perhaps what the future holds. There is nothing that cannot be salvaged and transformed later if you are happy to keep altering your intentions. So, we’ll keep climbing the mountain for now, making new works and dreaming large.

Let us know…
A personality that influences you.
These questions seem to be getting harder, the further we progress. Shades of a certain hobbit’s adventures are drawn. One personality? It’s probably wise to point out to you at this stage that editing is not something that comes easily to either of us, and minimalism is not our hallmark. We gather influence from a wide range, knowingly and otherwise. We keep, we collect, we hoard. We store, we mull, we squirrel. We are influenced by things we have seen and read. By things ordinary and peculiar. By things darkly beautiful, and other things so light, so fleeting, they need to be tethered lest they float away. And we are supported by the love and interest of our loved ones near and dear, our family and friends.

A book you think everyone should read.
Everyone should read more. Any book, new or classic, long or short. We’d like to see reading seen less as a leisure pursuit, something people say they do not have time for. Today, a combined list of recent reads we’ve loved (though others may not) would include something by Patrick Hamilton, Charles Dickens, Tove Jansson, Thomas Hardy, and something published by Little Toller Books for bringing the natural world indoors to the armchair reader-cum-explorer.

An unforgettable movie.
To pick only one, even if we each answered and together that made two, why, this is impossible. One brilliantly unforgettable film? There are so many, too many. Given that we have recently watched The Story of Film: An Odyssey, (an eight-part, 15-hour series) learning and in awe of film from 1895 roots to present day, this is not something we can narrow down no matter how hard we try this morning. But this we can say, we are looking forward to this year’s film festival. To that stretch of days in winter when 50+ films are seen, sometimes four stacked one atop the other in a single day. A quick look back through August 2012’s archives, and there are all the films seen and loved. Roll on, MIFF 2013, we’re ready.

A city to fall in love with.
By now, you will have sensed a pattern. You know there is no one city we can answer. All have their charms, some more than others, and all have their shortcomings too. Time away is wonderful. Perhaps we will leave it at the city best to fall in love with is either the one you are in or the one you travel to next.

A favourite food and drink.
Lest we sound too unsure of our footing, too unable to make a choice, like two who dither day and night save for when it comes to collaging or drawing and limiting visual overload, we will answer in unison: coffee. By far the favourite drink for us both. It is a little after 9am as we prepare this for you and already we’ve had two strong coffees and a third is not all that far off. As to food, anything home-cooked is best. When you can be liberal with spice and all is well and relaxed. It is these meals that we remember most.

A guilty pleasure.
None that we feel a sense of guilt spring to mind, really. Perhaps, at a stretch, frittering away time could fall under this banner. Scratch that, good ideas can sometimes appear when one lolls about and we are terrific at pottering.

* Since penning our reply, said Noisy Neighbour has moved out, moved on. At last! Hurrah! After three long years and one month and fourteen days, all now tranquil. We are painting the kitchen afresh in celebration of a nest that now feels larger and more peaceful. Swish, swish, swish, go the brushes. Quietly, quietly, soft tread. Shh. Hush. Lest we become the noisy ones.

+ Forthcoming excitement builds

A composition based on the stories collected from old seafarers.

{A composition based on the stories collected from old seafarers (II), Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison for MIEL books}

Hot night, little sleep, but have awoken to good news. Published twice yearly, MIEL books literary journal 1110 is available for pre-order. Earlier in the year, Louise and I were invited to create work for the forthcoming issue 1110/5. We created three images for Éireann and Jonathan to choose from, and above, the scene you see is the scene they selected. I cannot wait to hold a printed copy in my hands and to read the words that will accompany our collaborative collage piece, A composition based on the stories collected from old seafarers (II). I am in a state of quiet anticipation. This is a fine place to be on such a grey morning as this. I am also awaiting news from Louise who headed off early this morning for an interview at the RSPCA to become a volunteer. A jelly on tenterhooks, she was. A stomach in knots. I have my fingers crossed that the good luck, good news of the morning lingers here a little while longer.

Should you wish to pre-order a copy of 1110/5, do please head here.


{A composition based on the stories collected from old seafarers (III).}

1110/5 is to be published early April and will ship from April 15th. To whet the appetite, Ilse Weisfelt, Marion de Man, Ben Terrett, Shari Altman, Heather Smith Jones, Wil Freeborn, Helena de la Guardia, Ivan deBoom, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Mónica Naranjo Uribe, Elsa Mora, Yuko Matsui, Lisa Congdon, Brian Aldrich, Lisa Solomon, Cathy Cullis, Kathryn Clark, Marie-Klara González, Leo & Pipo, Éireann Lorsung, Amy Friend, and Camilla Engman are but a few of the artists involved.

+ Because everyone loves a sneak peek
+ The Sociable Weaver bird make spectacular nests
+ The beautiful process of setting up a museum display
+ Two painted ladies from Sweden make light work of kitchen painting

And thank-you to those of you who swung by the recent Sticky Institute zine fair. It was good to meet you. Good to a part of the throng. Good to be in the beautiful Town Hall surrounds.

A troupe elaborately costumed.

{Encircled.}

What is it we see when we look at a costume for the body, a costume hanging on a rack to be worn or upon a mannequin? For me, I see the body that is not there. I see the person or the form that has worn or will wear the outfit that is before me. From a procession of horses in Jompet Kuswidananto’s work The Cortege of the Third Realm no. 2 (2012) currently being exhibited as part of Rally: Contemporary Indonesian Art at the NGV, to one’s beloved winter coat quietly waiting in the wardrobe on its padded coat hanger, it is not the absence of the body that is first noted. The eyes may register the absence but the heart registers a figure within and with that a memory of a figure. My heart registers longing for the snugness of a winter’s coat hanging in wait, with suggestion here enough to draw a whole. And by focusing on what is there rather than what is not, I see the horses in the artwork on display. They are perhaps all the more visible than had they actually been there in the gallery space. This impression of the horses saddled and ready is fashioned from leather, metal beads and buttons, hessian, drums, guitars, cotton, silk, metallic thread, rope, wood, polyester, horse hair, electrical cord, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene, and the aid of digital sound and negative space. Just as my coat in the wardrobe of wool (80%) and silk (20%) conjures the leisure pursuits of my favourite season, winter, and becomes a sum greater than its parts. It is a coat to be worn. A coat to wear to the cinema, to the zoo, on crowded tram on way home from the theatre, on a long beach walk. It is a coat for adventure. Looking at my coat draws experiences had and experiences to come and it is from this footing that I approach the exhibition Ballet & Fashion currently on display in the Fashion & Textiles Gallery, (also) at the NGV.

These costumes have been worn and it is this knowledge read visually as much as known that makes us peer at them closer, trying to dissolve the space between us and them. Looking at these pieces, we think of the body, who it was who wore them, and how the costume moved. This is, for me, why costume displays, such as this, feel alive, the very opposite of static. Though removed from their stage environ they still speak of movement. Frozen, inert, lifeless, like a statue: this is not what I see when I look up close at the costumes built to quiver and fly by Toni Matičevski for BalletLab's Aviary: A Suite for the Bird (with millinery by Richard Nylon) and Vanessa Leyonhjelm’s Divergence tutus of industrial mesh. Nor is it what I see as I marvel at Rei Kawakubo’s lumps and bumps costumes for Scenario. Just as downstairs in the Contemporary Exhibitions space and in the foyer of the NGV, the figures of the musicians and horses are visible even without their being there, so too, the dancers in Ballet & Fashion.

Is it the memory of the body that tells us this? Seeing costumes on a mannequin in a display case that previously you have seen move and leap and bend on a stage, is it this memory of a performance that makes these costumes come alive? Perhaps it is. But it is also told to us by the art of sound and the moving footage projected on the wall. On the screen, Graeme Murphy’s Romeo & Juliet shows us how these costumes by Akira Isogawa encase the body, how the fabric reflects the lighting. We hear Prokofiev’s score and the scene is set. From footage to costume, our eyes piece it all together. This is how it is worn, how the skirt looks in movement or when the leg is extended. This is also what happened in the gallery downstairs with our horse parade and its accompanying audio. And in the neigbouring work, The Contingent (2012), with its 5 minutes of sound looped, and its suggestion of a knot of figures drawn by five hats, five pairs of white shoes, LED headlamps and electrical chord. In works such as The Contingent, and The Commoners (2012) playing their instruments in the foyer, on the small accompanying screen the costumes, the various accoutrements, those props particular, are shown on the body. A meld of costume, body, and sound. Look from screen to costume and back to screen and the image is complete. As with the theatrical costumes on display in Ballet & Fashion, the body isn’t missing, it just requires you to work, to imagine, and to recall. And indeed there is something rather eerie, as you look at these costumes almost ghostly. I can easily imagine the dancers in 2 Lips and Dancers and Space (for Nederlands Dans Theater III) at nighttime when the gallery is deserted, traveling, leaping, and climbing downstairs to meet up with the "playful yet unsettling marionettes" that are the musicians and horses in Rally. They appear to have a life of their own. They are both absent and present. They are like a phantasm. They are capable of movement when we observe them and when we turn our backs.

These costumes, from the sculptural reveal of Ralph Rucci to Giles Deacon’s fiercely beguiling, “beauty with bite” Black Swan, are there to tell a story, to enhance a character, to let us see the body. They are written in a language centuries old and easy to read. In a language made up of symbols and visual prompts. I think it is what they communicate, their chatter, that I like best of all. From Viktor&Rolf’s playful gold dunce caps by way of Christian Lacroix’s Can Can dancer with wonky Toulouse-Lautrec leanings to Romeo’s moulded pistol in leather and Lady Capulet’s shibori technique spiked shrug all exaggerated and assuming fantastical proportion, the character is unmistakable and we are only at the beginning.

These costumes, they are beautiful in their own right, but for me they are function and effect above all else. They must work in the story, make the wearer feel the character they are playing, and they must be sturdy and strong, able to withstand the rigors of performance and repeated wear. As I look at the details and await the hooped burqa to illuminate, Louise tells me of her morning at The Australian Ballet looking at the costumes being adjusted, restored, and replicated for the forthcoming production of Don Quixote. She tells me of fabrics being dyed to exact colour match. Of the fittings and precision. And of straps being replaced on the Swan Lake costumes for those offering a stronger hold. Yes, these costumes need to be robust. This is an understatement. They are to be worn, sweated in, spun about in. They will travel, be worn by many. They will be taken in. They will become a second skin, if only in the sense of how it appears to the audience. They are costumes to respond to stage lights. Necklaces appear on padded backing, but the audience does not see this. The orchestral buffer and the gloss and majesty of live performance ensure that this is not seen. For me, our eyes do not seek out the strings of a puppet and the same applies to the art of ballet costumes. Costumes for effect, to delight those in the seats night after night; they are a balance of durability and delicacy. Built to last but also fine, netted, and feathered. Built from traditional materials and others quite unexpected. And perhaps built to ride horses about the gallery at nighttime through the varied collections of international art.

+ Rally: Contemporary Indonesian Art, Jompet Kuswidananto & Eko Nugroho is on until the 1st of April, NGV International
+ Ballet & Fashion is on until the 19th of May, NGV International
+ Don Quixote opens in Melbourne on the 15th of March

+ Happy Birthday to you, dear Louise
+ The embroidered dance costumes of Jose Romussi
 
(Quotes X2 above plucked from the NGV's free Rally ebook and Ballet & Fashion catalogue.)

Tether me to the earth. I feel giddy.

{Reading symbols formed.}

Dear you,

It’s in the tea. In the leaves of the tea. In the beverage I rarely drink. Such prophesy! Unbeknownst happiness. Love. Light. Travel. What joy this reads! Good fortune twined to the discovery of an undeveloped talent. Such news delivered by a man with rosy cheeks belonging to a cherub! Tether me to the earth. I feel giddy. I feel weightless. I feel as though at any moment I could take flight. Ascend! Upwards! Hit my head on the roof of the sky. Be this true? What are the exquisite chances? I’ll take it, if only for an hour. I will believe those symbols at the bottom of cup true. Much happiness. Love dear. Pleasant conditions. A mug I’d be to refuse.

Yours bewilderingly ecstatic and with singing heart,
X

+ The Sticky Annual Zine Fair takes place this Sunday at the Melbourne Town Hall from 12noon until 5pm. Dear ones in Melbourne, hope to see you there.

+ A through the keyhole peep at a small part of a collage especially for MIEL books. One of a trio of new images, Louise and I look forward to revealing more about this project soon.

“Thrown up like a call on a silver trumpet,” the words visible beneath a dance of zebra...

{Page details from, More than I was led to believe (Amsterdam), an artists book made in 2009. It is just one of the many books made for A key to help make your own world visible which at last have own page. A real home, at last, that lists any particulars known.}

As slowly grows 2013's list of performances and films seen, I take a quick look back to the month of October last year when Louise and I took ourselves off to Paradise.

Antony: Paradise
Arts Centre Melbourne, Gallery 1, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
October 11th — October 27th, 2012
Presented by Melbourne Festival

Outside, a blustery, busy, part bright, part grey spring day. Inside, a calm sanctuary carefully prepared from paper, and assembled by the workings of light and sound, offering up a space transformed. Antony Hegarty has transformed the familiar space of the Arts Centre’s Gallery 1 into an intimate shrine. Where once a large, open, public territory, now, a paper hideaway nestled within the dark embrace. A collage show exquisite, this is Paradise found. The guiding light mapped out on the floor, that bright snail’s trail, leads the way to paper haven entrance, whilst the heart is pulled by the music that plays (Music: William Basinski, Disintegration Loops 2.1 & 5). On the wall, a blue ghost lightly haired appears (Untitled, 2006, Ink on paper), and a crash of hippopotami bathes by a green torn expanse (Untitled, 2011, Oil on newsprint). There, a large black bird swoops; a collision with printed submarine imminent. Hatched from a torn image of a bird, wings tucked and with pen drawn, the text legible by its body reads, “battling way through” (The Ice Ship, 2007, Drawings and collage on magazine page). And there, a polar bear, bleeding, the record sleeve serving as an open casket (Cut Away the Bad n.2, 2007, Ink and collage on printed page on LP sleeve. This collage familiar to many as the cover of Antony and the Johnsons fourth album, Swanlights, released October 2011.) Nature, what have we done? These works speak, whisper, coax, and roar. They tell those within earshot of the beauty of the meditative process in Black Parts (2007, Magazine pages and tape). Here, the black paper torn repeatedly has formed to make something anew from the cast aside. Washed, burned, drawn-over, drawn-out. Cut into paper, found, claimed, adorned, and now on wall lit by light so as to halo make. Nature altered and cut into, a wedge for an arctic spruce (Cut Away the Bad n.1, 2007, Cut printed page), additions and subtractions and rearrangements abound. All considered, all inviting you to peer, closer, closer still. Paper’s adaptability has here made for beautiful play. “Thrown up like a call on a silver trumpet,” the words visible beneath a dance of zebra serve as perfect mantle for the works in this exhibition (Untitled, 2011, Gold leaf on magazine page). Standing close, ear to glass, you can hear “the drumming of the hooves … Lovely, urgent, wild, barbaric sound … It was one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard.” Yes, the longer you stay in a place, the clearer things become. This is some exquisite and dark sanctuary. Stay.

The January clutch. The working space.

{Thirteen instagram squares draw January's days for me. Or do they?}

As I sit down with Louise to draw up answers to Ana Pina’s questions (as part of her interview series on her blog), I am thinking about what I require in a workspace. Very little, it transpires. I may favour natural light, and I like my pets around me as I tinker, but I don’t have many requirements of the space. The same for Louise; natural light is best to draw by, the colours easier to see, the subtleties of tone and shade too, but there is no favorite space or particular pattern. Working from home, I can work anywhere. I usually work on the floor, stretched out in cobra. And as my work is small, so too are the requirements of the space. I need somewhere to place collages in progress that are not yet glued. Preferably somewhere out of the way of Omar, Olive, and Percy. The cats are terrific weavers through a space and don’t knock things too much, but Percy has little time for stepping around paper progress piles, he favours through the middle. To work I don’t need for the house to be in order. If anything, my most productive days are those when the house is in disarray. Perhaps the chaos around serves as a way to focus on the work before me. Perhaps the dishes in the sink and the clothes to be put away serve as blinkers, as a type of tunnel vision. Besides, once one starts those domestic chores (that are never ending), the morning is gone, and so too that brilliant idea that was bobbing about in your mind’s eye. Chores and emails are great ones for absconding with freshly-formed or still-forming ideas. Visible but for only a short time, sometimes ideas are like bright trinkets to be fished out of a choppy sea.

This is what is on my mind today, this first February day. Above is January fragmented. It shows a little of the month and how it felt, though it doesn’t show the indoors where mostly I have been. It’s the bright light highlights. Of chief glaring omission, Omar and Olive. (Instagram can never have its fill of cats and so I’ll endeavor to include those handsome ones in next square roundup here.) I guess that is what happens when, like ideas plucked, one pulls together quick snatches from 31 days and squeezes them into thirteen squares. Things are never really as they seem at first glance. Fine detailed work is done in messy homes and a clutch of photos depicting the great outdoors could lead you to think that this is often where I am.

+ This photo might lead you think I am more handy than I am
+ From the interview series: Sandra Juto, Paula Valentim, Nina van de Goor, Bianca Tschaikner