HIGH UP IN THE TREES

"Creating beautiful movements is often quite a clunky journey..."

{Perfect Partners. Principal Artists Amber Scott and Adam Bull talk about their special bond as pas de deux partners — and reveal their perfect rapport in the ecstatic bedroom scene from Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Manon.}

Creating beautiful movements is often quite a clunky journey...
Amber Scott, Principal Artist, The Australian Ballet

Watching Adam Bull and Amber Scott in The Australian Ballet’s Perfect Partners video I am reminded of something known but forgotten: the process does not look like the result. Clumsy movements come to equal something beautiful, something that hides effort and technique and enables you to see and feel that two dancers are moving as one. This is true of all art forms, and perhaps, wider still, all things. The hidden work, the research, the background, the meat fleshed out onto bones, it looks nothing like the end piece or what you see in your mind’s eye. Preparation, improving technique, and with no quick fixes, where and how things are made is so different and necessary.

To trial and error, and restarts, and things not quite there yet, you are, whip in hand, awfully fun.


{A detour to see the costumes of Colman & Fredrikson before they are put back on the rack. (All That Glitters, The Arts Centre)}


{Winsor & Newton Liquid Indian Ink Tests commencing in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...*}


{Louise's Great Auk received some smooth chest feathers.}


{Over my shoulder, Olive drinks from the fishbowl. Lay low, Ruby and Pearl. (A new collage palette is are taking shape.)}


{Let the oil pastel experiments commence!}

* One bottle of Indian Ink down (almost), multiple tests (all chiefly ugly), stained fingers (8) & thumbs (2), I think the optimism has gone. Plan B about to kick into action.

+ The Australian Ballet's 2014 Manon season
+ The Tutu (Behind Ballet)

+ Squeals of delight: Materiality, Number 3, Precious arrives (a pinknantucket preview)
+ And Zarafa Kept Walking (for In Your Dreams)

+ Aches, grumbles, and fatigue aside, we are throwing ourselves into Friday
+ You may need this too: Take that, Pear-shaped Friday Pickle! (Harvest mouse cute shot to the rescue)

Misreadings. Received. Reposted.

{Ideas come and ideas go. Misreadings.}




{ ....or the faces girls pull when they think you are not looking.}

A life reposted. On instagram. Little moments, from Percy drawn by my Mum, as part of her daily drawing project, to a collection of zines, an anthology of stories through word and collage, a treasure made of our printed things, in Hila’s hands. Occasionally little scenes shared by others are in turn shared once more on our instagram feed, denoted by two small white arrows on blue ground in one of four corners. Little scenes that brought about delight, extended. Recently, it was a tremendous thrill to see a copy of my zine Misreadings in the hands of the Director of the Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø, Norway. Captured in a photo by Mari Hildung, the Museum’s photographer, the Director can be seen, caught in the act of reading. In her own words, Mari informs, the Director is “very demanding, but not over demanding”. And in my own words, I am delighted and relieved. This zine in which I have added words to archived images from their collection is that rare thing: a favourite of mine.

To Northlings Astri Fremmerlid and Mari, thank-you kindly. I am so glad I fell into your flickr stream. I've greatly enjoyed summering in Tromsø.


{Our bundle of zines, including Misreadings, arrives at the Perspektivet Museum. (A repost from @marihildung)}


{The Director of Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø, Norway is happy with Misreadings. (A repost from @marihildung)}


{Pausing as I cut out a new collage palette to repost dear @h_shachar's recent zine bundle.}


{We rolled up our yoga mats and headed home for a homemade pavlova. (A repost from @pasadenamansions)}

+ Spot the familiar titles in Pinknantucket's growing zine collection post Sticky Institute Zine Fair

Sleeping on the job.

{The slow process of things, it is messy.}

The front of the house, an oven. A great open oven. Or perhaps a boiling pot. "Steak done in six minutes—lobster broiled in twelve!" Your own innards done in ten. Your pets, half the time! It’s terrific for paint drying. Not so terrific for fair skin, one’s sanity grip, and one’s physical endurance. Thin soles, how terribly hot, so quickly. Goggles pool with sweat under the tin veranda. Bruises form on legs where they’ve pressed too firmly on the step of the ladder. Paint flecks grace the forearms. Giving a facelift to the front of the house is as slow and hard as you’d expect. But it is also incredibly rewarding. And incredibly good for throwing frustration at. "'At me again, sir!' exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair; 'at me again, and again!'" (Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, Book the Second: Riches, Chapter 26: Reaping the Whirlwind). Sandpaper scouring-s, high-pressure water squirting-s, paint lashings, nails and putty and rough: it takes it all, swapping cares for satisfaction. A job done, in part, and the happy singsong of warm muscles. And best of all, to this backdrop of labour worthwhile, contented pets snoozing by the new front gate. Curled in balls of slumber, flaked like sausages, or liquid on the newly revealed bluestone step, the pets and the neighbour’s pets, those sleepy foremen on shift rotation, they make it all worthwhile. Happily sunning their bodies as we work slowly, we may be at the foot of the mountain, but the company is good and the view splendid.












{A succession of mornings that all look a little similar.}

+ Recently, a Birthday xo
+ Our zines arrive in W.A. (Enjoy them, Hila.)
+ (Louise's) New Year, new licence
+ "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan." (James Lovelock)

Sticky Zine Fair 2014, done, dusted, and with heart on sleeve.

{1, 2, 3, we are all set up, our zines unfurled. Let's begin this year's Sticky Institute Zine Fair.}

Zine box packed (including new titles): tick
Float of small bills to change a $50 note used to purchase a $3.00 zine in the first hour of the fair: tick
Hand-written price labels: tick
Printed price list: tick
Calculator = big dreamer/mathematically challenged: tick
Paper bags for purchases: tick

In all zine fair preparation, one thing has to be forgotten; it is the way of things. Halfway between home and the tram stop, carrying a box of zines, I recall that one thing: deodorant. I have neglected one of the niceties key to manning a stall. Leaving Louise to perch with our stock propped between her hip and a brick wall, to the small local milk bar I dash. Scanning the shelves, I find the Keep Your Self Nice section of Emergency Requirements. Ear cleaners, cotton buds, Aeroguard, eucalyptus oil, Oral-B toothpaste, dental floss, tampons, and, there, pushed a little way back from the front row assembly, one dusty stick of ‘Brut’ for $4.60. In momentary panic and applying the usually foolproof principle of Better Something Than Nothing, I purchase said stick of Brut*, for Men, for me, not a man, with an earmarked-for-change $5 note. An unwise decision, a fool’s choice, my own comedy of errors, but a hiccup now out of the way. For if it is true that you will forget one thing to take with you or do in readiness for a zine fair, it is also true that one blip is inevitable before all runs smooth. All good planning has one blip built into the fabric, and smooth was the rest of our zine fair course.

Zine fairs are curious things that, from a stallholder’s perspective, float on a sea of nerves tied to excitement. Stalls are set up, goods arranged, and hopes high. Some zines are fanned out, others are stacked, some, a jumble, others, a neatness. If there is one similarity between stalls it is that every surface of table is used. No, the one similarity is Love or Enthusiasm, or Whatever-It-Is-You-Want-To-Call-It. This is, to me, what links all manner of zines, from the colour copies to the black and whites, the stapled to the glued, the perfectly square to the loosely folded, the personal to the political to the Just Because bandits and the Why Not a Zine About Cats crew. Regardless of topic and regardless of means, zines are made with love. I’m sure of it. And manning one’s zine stall is hard work. You’ve stapled your heart to the table for everyone to see. Or not see. (And such a procedure, that’s painful, right? Even if we have made some seventy-plus different zines over the years.) To man a zine stall requires nerve. And it is tricky not to adopt an over-eager expression akin to a puppy seeking adoption. In between ‘pick me, pick me’ hopefulness sits a vacant far-away stare (which I demonstrate below). Four hours is a long time to sit behind one’s folded lorikeets and collaged tumblers in the Swiss Alps. The mind wanders — It’s been awfully hot lately. I wonder if anyone will pick up the last copy of Fallen by the wayside and other songs I don't believe I know. (They did.)

So to all those who stopped by our stall and said hello, both those we knew and those new, to those who purchased a zine or two, and those who stopped to talk about collage, ideas, source material, birds: thank-you. To Sticky Institute, too, a big thank-you for organizing yet another Festival of the Photocopier. It was swell.

* At the second milk bar between home and tram stop, I purchase a small deodorant for women with inoffensive scent. Why I did not head here first is between me, a muddle, nerves, and the frazzle of summer. Later, in the bathrooms of the Town Hall, I leave on the shelf my curious Brut purchase for Anonymous Pits In Need. I hope it came in helpful. Brut: the essential Australian fragrance not for me.


{This. This is stallholder glaze.}


{The neat formation.}


{The early afternoon. From behind the stall table. It looked like this. Sort of.}


{...and this. Over the shoulders of GORE journal, as captured by my Mum, Pasadena Mansions. (Thanks for coming along, guys. XO)}


{To this. The last throes! A zine fair draws to a close.}


{Farewell, beautiful Melbourne Town Hall. You've been marvellous.}


{Tram-ward. Homeward. Crash-ward.}

+ Two (familiar) grinning loons as drawn by the ever-clever Pasadena Mansions (who is no doubt making her own zine of drawings this very moment).

+ We've been here before. From a recent Elsewhere post, early tables sat behind: “Sticky Institutes's The Festival of the Photocopier 2013, 2011, and 2010; IMPACT 7's mini zine fair at MUMA 2011; The Wonderful Paper Things Fair 2011 and its twin The Wonderful Creative Things Fair 2011 at St Helier Street Store + Gallery; The Emerging Writers' Festival's Page Parlour 2012, 2011, 2010. (Did I miss any? The Secrets of the Photocopier 2008 exhibition perhaps, and impromptu tables after talks and workshops, and launches in libraries too.)”

The quartet sported green wings.

{Louise's Four Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) who visited my garden one summer’s day in hand.}

There are many places you can see a Trichoglossus haematodus or two, but today, there are two places I can guarantee you'll see a couple of orange-chested, green winged 'screechers': in our back garden feasting atop a seed bell in the company of common sparrows and tree doves (with their feathered pantaloons on display in the heat), and at the annual Sticky Institute zine fair.

Let yourself be blown dishevelled into the Town Hall this hot Sunday morning and pick up your copy of Louise's beautiful new zine. The thirteenth in an ongoing series, it is a something of a charmer for the pocket; all the love with none of the mess.

Can't make it along in person? Look for instagram updates throughout the day and pick up a copy of Four Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) who visited my garden one summer’s day through our online store for $3.00(AUD).

Sticky Institute Zine Fair 2014
Melbourne Town Hall
Sunday 9th February, 2014
12noon–4pm

+ Frequently heard screeching and chattering, the Rainbow Lorikeet (Birds in Backyards)
+ Exploring the SLV's zine collection
+ Schulz: The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature (Vulture)
+ From where it's slightly cooler, right? *positions self closer to fan*

In summation.

{Omar demonstrates 'how to do summer'.}


{Hot happy mess makers. Our tiny reno comes along slowly, slowly.}

Because sometimes I like seeing the colours shift from week to week, from green to soft blue to rusty orange. Because sometimes I like seeing the similarity of poses that appear. (Hello, Forward Bends. Hello, you up the back there, Pets in Arms.) Because sometimes I like to see a snatch of memories once more, and I am stalling for time. (Other tasks call, and I am letting them wait for a moment. Other tasks call, and I am somewhat defeated by the weather, taking two steps backwards with chisel and hammer in hand out on the front veranda.) To images repeated across platforms, and double-dips of all kinds. (I'm looking at you, little mouse on the balcony. You, too, Percy Portrait Drawn.) To you, glorious square, glorious grid, and the glorious image relations you form. To order and disorder however they come. To hashtag overload.


{Jelly Legs finds a Happy Hound.... and both promptly collapse.}


{Chisel. Hammer. Googles. Whack. Whack. Whack. (Hoping for gold underneath concrete.)}


{A cat ball of happiness in summer-scorched leaves.}


{Great Yellow Mail Day. (thanks to Melbourne Theatre Company, Palace Opera & Ballet, State Library of Victoria, and WSPA Australia.}


{9:35am, two shade dwellers scurry up and over the hill, homeward.}


{Omar. One elegant sun baker. One king of recline. One master of summertime leisure.}


{Let's take these warm armpits home. (The morning Percy amble)}


{Percy says, 'carry me like a piglet under your arm'.}


{Please pass me that reference book on birds. And the one on mammals too. Something new is coming.}

+ Counihan Gallery exhibition program 2014 (Hello Zarafa)
+ One more time
+ 1, 2, 3, 4 (new zines are here)
+ Inside the Iron Closet: What It's Like to Be Gay in Putin's Russia (GQ magazine)
+ Keir Choreographic Award (CARRIAGEWORKS)
+ Animals Sitting on Capybaras (thanks to pinknantucket press)

Misread in Tromsø.

{Misreadings in hand.}

misread |mɪsˈriːd|
verb ( past and past participle misread |-ˈrɛd| ) [ with obj. ]
read (a piece of text) wrongly.
• judge or interpret (a situation or a person's manner or behaviour) incorrectly: had she been completely misreading his intentions?
• interpret a collection of someoneelse's photographs to suit own end: in order to keep herself amused she misread the scenes before her before binding them into a zine to take to Sticky's annual zine fair.

Ever wondered who lives in that house nearby with the round window in the front door? Or who tends that garden with the ‘spoilt cat lives here’ plaque in the pot of mint? (And just how do they get their rosemary to grow so seemingly fluffy?) That man, over there, leaning forward: what is he looking at? (And who put that dog on the table?) That woman sitting opposite on the city-bound 96: is she going to the dentist? Or perhaps on her way to bluff through a PowerPoint presentation in an office with tinted windows? To fall asleep in a meeting with her eyelids open?

To make up stories and mull over possibilities likely and unlikely is a pastime of mine and it is not especially unique. We all read people and situations around us; we speculate, ponder, observe. We give new meanings to a series of images we find on the internet whilst searching for cabinet cards featuring ‘hidden mothers’ obscured from camera’s eye by lace cloth or chair back. In the photo archives of the Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø, Norway, I found a treasure trove of photographs from their extensive local collections from the (former) Tromsø Town Museum and (former) Troms Folk Museum. Presented with such a collection, of a different world in a different time, my pastime ponderings gloriously liberated. And so sprung Misreadings, a new zine for you and destined for this Sunday’s zine fair at the Melbourne Town Hall.

Images dovetailed into ideas, and words were written based on each image and the order it was collected in. Photographs plucked from a stream fitted each corresponding notch, and this is the result:




















{In the early morning, in the haze of a hot day obscured by cloud, Misreadings is documented. In the background, runners run and people dart to work or to the shops or to we know not where.}

All images in Misreadings borrowed and misread with permission from the former Tromsø Town Museum and Troms Folk Museum collections now in the photo archives of Perspektivet Museum (PEM), Tromsø, Norway.

+ Misreadings is now available for $8.00(AUD) through our online store

Message over means.

{As if from the clouds, restless is one of four new zines for 2014.}

zine |ziːn|
noun informal
a magazine, especially a fanzine.

Zines, being many things to all people, are, to me, wonderfully liberating. The briefest of dictionary definitions decrees it so. Sticky define a zine as this:

“The general consensus on zines is that they are independently-produced cheap short-run publications not intended for mainstream distribution, and created because of passion rather than profit. Different zine-makers have certain opinions on what zines can and can’t be — whether they can be produced by a group of people rather than just an individual, for instance — but that is a sufficient broad definition. It often involves a lot of photocopying.”

And of this broad, all-encompassing wholly egalitarian definition, I agree. I, personally, have little interest in a more detailed, fleshed-out definition or zine manifesto outlining what constitutes a zine and what does not constitute a zine. My interest lies in the content of the printed page and not where the resulting content fits in or doesn’t fit in (but then I never was one for rules). My interest is in the actual making of a zine and this is source of my pleasure. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? To me, the message, over means, is where my interest lies; guts over cataloguing, hands down. To me, a zine can be printed in colour, editioned by hand, and folded with a bookbinder’s precision. And this is, of course, exactly what my latest zine, As if from the clouds, restless is. It is a full colour print of an original artists’ book that features the Swiss Alps as I’ve imagined them on one side and my accompanying text on the reverse. It is a way for me to share multiples (100 copies) of a unique-state artwork. It has been guillotined to narrow band and hand-scored and –folded by Louise. Each edition signed and numbered, and given small blue waistband to hold it steady. It is one of four new zines that Louise and I will be taking with us to the indoor fairgrounds of the Sticky Institute’s annual zine fair.

Four Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) who visited my garden one summer's day is another new title, a pocket sized zine by Louise in the tradition of Lunch, 2013, A beating of winges (I), 2012, Birds that like to display, 2011, and others.

This coming Sunday we invite you to come along to the Melbourne Town Hall and say hello as you peruse our and our neighbours paper wares.










{A slighter smaller Swiss Alps Extension.}


{Sticky Institute Zine Fair}

+ All four new zine titles will be available through our online store in the coming days
+ World's oldest flamingo dies at Adelaide Zoo, leaving its friend as the only flamingo in Australia

Plus,
The State Library of Victoria are offering a tour of part of their zine collection as part of this year’s Festival of the Photocopier on Saturday the 8th February between 2-3pm. Bookings are essential. Meeting on the library steps at 1.45pm.

As they’ve kindly done for the past few years, the State Library of Victoria will be giving a few lucky Sticky fans the chance to tour their mightily impressive zine collection as part of this year’s Festival Of The Photocopier.

As well as being sent huge donations of zines from across the country for decades now, the SLV also receives one copy of every Australian zine stocked with Sticky – meaning their collection of this nation’s zinery is hefty and unparalleled.

The tour takes place on Saturday 8th February between 2-3pm, meeting on the library steps at 1.45pm.

- See more at: http://blog.stickyinstitute.com/?p=1198#sthash.tX6ZYtDh.dpuf

As they’ve kindly done for the past few years, the State Library of Victoria will be giving a few lucky Sticky fans the chance to tour their mightily impressive zine collection as part of this year’s Festival Of The Photocopier.

As well as being sent huge donations of zines from across the country for decades now, the SLV also receives one copy of every Australian zine stocked with Sticky – meaning their collection of this nation’s zinery is hefty and unparalleled.

The tour takes place on Saturday 8th February between 2-3pm, meeting on the library steps at 1.45pm.