HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Smitten for whiskers.

{With a Siamese cat upon her shoulder, once more.}


{With too much kitten belly to fit in the frame.}


{Lenni bellows like a lion.}


{And appeals to our every soft spot.}


{Lenni slumbers like a leopard in a tree.}


{Little Lenni Lion-heart, the thief of hearts.}

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau

This, this is little Leonard. Little Lennie, the vital ingredient, restoring our home to the correct number of paws, slaying us with his charm. Yes, it seems the heart doesn't work without a Siamese in the house.

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau, founder of the Club des amis des chats, you were so right.

{Jean Cocteau, photograph by Jane Brown, 1950}


{"—— Telephone the house —— See if the cat's all right ——", Fluttering Hearts, 1927}

+ Thank-you Birdie
+ Thank-you Frips
+ Thank-you Carolyn and Tosca
+ Writers and Kitties

+ Bravo Louise! And should you like, you can vote for Louise's artists' book, A Flight of Twelve Southern Hemisphere Birds, to win the People's Choice Award (as part of the 2014 National Works on Paper exhibition at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery).

In your dreams, blurred and distinct.

{Make-believe sat vigilant in the small enclosure.}

Stephen Bush, Michael Doolan, Daniel Dorall, William Eicholtz, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Dylan Martorell, Steaphan Paton, Kate Rohde, Kate Shaw, Sally Smart, Van Sowerwine & Isobel Knowles, Yandell Walton, Sharon West
In Your Dreams
Curated by Edwina Bartlem and Victor Griss
Until Sunday 8th of June, 2014

Written on the gallery wall, until it is erased, my piece about falling into dream.

In your dreams, blurred and distinct

Carrying with her the protective warmth of a day spent given over to work, she lies on the bed and waits for sleep with open eyes. She waits for the familiar smudges of furniture to emerge from the darkness of the room. At her side, a small cat burrows, trying to make a well between her waist, the crook of her elbow, and the mattress beneath. Clockwise, clockwise, round and round, the little frame of the Siamese cat, now more bone than flesh, slowly, awkwardly, rhythmically rotates in his search for sleep, but he cannot settle. At night, the long black cat that follows him by day cannot be seen, but is still felt: his long shadow, his time soon up. This nightly courtship, a dance performed as comfort sought, as constant as the stars.

The twisted bedclothes tell of the fitfulness of limbs extended and tucked in close only to be extended and tucked in once more, of pillows plumped and folded in half and stuffed under head. Left, supine, right, prone, comfort pursued and sometimes found, sometimes not. And now in crumple of linen and acceptance, she lies still listening to the sound of the cat’s purr and waits to feel his body go soft and yield to sleep. A little black nose near her own, minutes pass in stillness, sleep will come.

In the semi darkness, the kaleidoscopic patterns of the day augment themselves overhead. The chatter, the noise, the missed opportunities, the words meant, felt, but not spoken, the tasks left undone, swim overhead until the quiet cloak of sleep falls and takes them away, all consciousness lost. The expectancy of sleep, of entering the dream state, mirrors the soft welcoming hum of conversations heard in those intoxicating moments before the curtain rises at the theatre. The atmosphere has an air of expectancy as the audience awaits the tease in the wings that will surely come. From the orchestra pit, brass and woodwind flex their muscle. This delicious state of expectation is no different to the liminal place between falling asleep and dream state; to her it bears the hallmark of theatre. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. In the distance, Prokofiev’s beautifully eerie time-keeping score, and the twelve chimes of midnight.

Falling asleep is as hard to chart as its fuzzy and changeable borders. The map is in constant flux, night after night. But the Dream Realm rewards its explorers and when the curtain rises, revealing signposts from the day tied to something altogether more obscure and not yet fathomable, she can take to the stage and soar, weightless. It will be some time before she must wake to house lights, conscious of her heavy limbs. For now, in dream, as in audience, she can feel what it is like to step inside the melodic sweeping circles of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake with the swan maidens by frozen lakeside ready to take flight, and perform Odile's thirty-two fouettés; and over in the wings, spy Joseph Cornell hunched over, scissors in hand, making yet another boxed-world gift for Tamara Toumanova. Odette’s mad beating of her wings at the windowpane, a harbinger of death, the ultimate lost soul.

Or perhaps this time she will take the role of one of Balanchine’s four different temperaments — melancholic, sanguinic, phlegmatic, choleric — and feel how movement is weighted to the floor even in elevation, as though some giant magnet below the stage was being held in place. Perhaps Balanchine himself will wield the giant magnet, which enables that off-centre tilt, the pelvis thrust forward and the feet flexed. The placement of each part of the body is rendered both perfect and odd. The leap from her usual place in the hubbub of the stalls to the stage, an easy feat behind closed eyelids, and the pursuit of the spotlight’s glare is momentarily courted.

Dusk films over mirror, the scene changes, the boom gates of Gustav Mahler’s seventh symphony sound. Crack! Nightscape navigation proves temperamental. From Odette’s frozen dream state, unfastened from Balanchine’s collage of moving parts, she now finds herself on Eldey Island where the last pair of nesting Great Auks are having their portraits drawn for posterity — no, correction, that’s not as it first appears, it never, never is — where the last pair are strangled in the year 1844*. Moments are suspended as the scene unfolds, as if on stage. The hunters move in altered time; sailing aloft in slow motion over the shellfish banks and scrambling over the rocky face of an island shaped like a 'sack of flour'. In the background, Ketill Ketilsson’s giant boot accidentally cracks the last egg of the species on a block of lava during the tragic dance-cum-skirmish off the coast of Iceland. The "non-flying flatfoot", Plautus impennis, and its spinning top egg, now relegated to fairytale. Nesting in sagas, parables, paintings, and roosting in song by day, buried in dream by night, the bird appears to her as symbol awaiting reading. It reminds her that she is never far removed from nature: a peacock’s feather in the house, unlucky you’ll be; an eagle, synonymous with triumph, Agamemnon’s omen of victory; curses, like chickens, they come home to roost; two in hand are better than one; and a robin and a wren misfortune bound. This is wearing to the bone, this witness ride, adding turrets to our ‘castles in the sky’ as we read Nature's hieroglyphics.

Crack! Black night takes us back to theatre's sanctum. Quickly racing, this nighttime navigation affords her the chance to create one endless performance of her sole devising. In the muffled distance Pergolesi's Stabat Mater flows into Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Mandolins, and she finds herself enveloped by a black curtain that folds its giant fabric arms about her before letting her loose in Jiří Kylián’s Bella Figura. Whirling in the glowing dark, the bodies of the dancers seem to ripple and convulse, as if for one moment their bodies contain not organs, but a surge of water, a spill of jelly. There is the loud crack of a thigh being slapped, to echo the Eldey Island scramble. It is followed by the distinct and familiar sound of feet as they land, and bodies as they fall to the stage floor, part artifice, part universal truth, part tabula rasa upon which the mind may project its own meanings. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. A leg swings for the briefest moment like a pendulum oscillating back and forth from a central point, signalling time here is soon up; cover the furniture with sheets, close another wing, grow smaller. Unyoke, unhook; time soon to say goodbye. In every little thing, a reference to mortality crashes in and proves hard to shake.

Somewhere in the distance, a cat purrs. And in accord, they turn over.

Gracia Haby
2014

A handful of words dedicated to our elderly Siamese cat Omar.

* Off Cape Reykjanes on the southwestern tip of Iceland, on the 3rd of June 1844, the last known breeding pair of Great Auks were strangled and their sole egg smashed as they tried to escape from three men seeking to collect them as trophies for museums and private collectors. Alfred Edmund Brehm describes the flightless Great Auk when on land as being “an unfortunate creature tied to one spot", and Eldey Island was commonly referred to as a "sack of flour" dusted with white seabirds. At the time of extinction, an egg was worth six thousand crowns. The Razorbill, Alca torda, is the only one of the genus’s twenty-two species alive today that the Great Auk is related to, all knowledge of the Great Auk, from breeding behaviour to call, went with the last known pair.

Performances referenced:
Both Stephen Baynes and Graeme Murphy’s choreography for Swan Lake (2012 and 2002), Jiří Kylián’s Bella Figura (1995), and George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments (1946), as performed by The Australian Ballet.

Music referenced:
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.7, Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Sergei Prokoviev’s Waltz-Coda and Midnight from Cinderella, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Mandolins.

Books sighted, both directly and indirectly, in the above:
Anita Albus, On Rare Birds, translated from the German by Gerald Chapple, University of New South Wales Press Ltd., Australia, 2011
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 1996
Graeme Gibson, The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany, Bloomsbury, Great Britain, 2005
Patrick Hamilton, Twopence Coloured, Faber Finds, Griffin Press, Australia, 2011
Katherine Mansfield, The Collected Stories, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 2007
John Williams, Stoner: A Novel, Vintage Classics, Random House, London, 2012
Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann, selected and translated by Peter Wortsman, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 2012

+ In your dreams, blurred and distinct is available as a hand-stitched zine through our online store, and at the Counihan Gallery too, for $6.00.

Drawing to a close.

{Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, And Zarafa Kept Walking, 2013}

Today, a friend sent me a marvellous passage from an essay by Hélène Cixous that struck a chord.

At dawn, barely awake but not yet having passed to an upright position, still on all fours and on the run, still clothed in sleep, but already convoked, I put on the brakes, I slide very slowly towards day. Between the day and the night there is a long vivacious but fragile region where one can sleep even while being awake, where even standing on two legs one is still a phantom, where the doors do not yet exist in us between the two kingdoms, where what will be past survives, lingers, stays (oh I lack a word in French), Steht. Lightest Ecstasy.

It is a fragile region that can be shattered by a too brusque gesture, a magic hour that can be chased off by too brusque an encounter with an inhabitant of the day.

And today (and all tonight long) is your last chance to catch sight of our works on paper in the window of the Port Jackson Press Print Gallery.

Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Not Quite Sure
Until Wednesday 21st of May, 2014

Little Window of Opportunity
Port Jackson Press Print Gallery
84 Smith Street, Collingwood

Come Thursday, we fold up our leap of leopards, bundle away our Dear You correspondence, deflate our giraffes, and call an end to the chattering of birds (for the time being). The circus is ready to roll homeward.

Though no longer in the window will they be, a full set of Louise's hand-coloured birds and editions of the two four-coloured prints will still be available from Port Jackson Press Print Gallery.

Thank-you to those of you who made it along to see the display, and to those of you who purchased a Yellow-fronted Kingfisher or similar to tuck under your wing and take home with you.


{Louise, fastening monkeys in place.}


{Last week, delivering a fresh crop of giraffes and recently ripened leopards to the gallery by late afternoon light.}


{Today is the last day to see Not Quite Sure in the window. Come Thursday, it all comes down.}

And coming up, as part of In Your Dreams, we'll be conducting a workshop for little people as part of the gallery's Family Day.

Sunday 25th of May, 2014
11.30am - 12.30pm
Make an artists’ book from a single sheet of paper with Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Bring anything you’d like to draw and / or collage with. Also feel free to bring a toy or item you’d like draw or illustrate, papers you’d like to collage, and any favourite pencils, pens, glue sticks and scissors from your pencil case. 
(Bookings essential through the gallery)

+ Whirligig
+ These days in nine frames
+ Goodnight Lenni

In Your Dreams, with a muffled voice.

{The final polish of our part of In Your Dreams, ♫ Music: Gerda Struhal, Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti's Keyboard Sonata in E Major, K.163/L.63/P.206}

When we spoke at the Counihan Gallery yesterday afternoon about our installation of work, this is what we hoped we said, but as we were both so nervous and feeling raw about our dear Omar under the spotlight’s gaze, we’ve no actual idea of what we ended up saying. The birds in my chest did not remain sedated, as promised, from the morning’s vegemite toast, and a knot formed around my throat. All the words I had planned to say and all the thoughts I had ordered into place in the shower disappeared from view. (Capricious beasts!) My feet, always a true barometer of my mood, tapped and refused to keep still, just like they did at the funeral of my parents friend the day before. (May! The full gamut of emotions up to the end it seems.)

This brand new body of work was made especially for the show upon learning that the theme was dreams in its many guises. And the installation of this work was a direct response to the space we were allocated in the gallery. It was both a practical solution to a corner, allowing us to hang the maximum number of works, and a playful interpretation of an inkblot. The two walls are a mirror image that is not quite right, in reference to slipping into dream state and the unclear shapes our dreams assume in the morning light. From the beginning, we intended the works to read as one giant collaged installation made up of different layers. From works written and drawn directly on the gallery wall, to works on paper nailed, and finally works framed and hung. That the inky black of the floor served as a secondary mirror was an unexpected surprise.

The text component was written after all the works had been completed, but was the foundation of the work all along. We always knew it would tie everything together. In the back of our minds, we always knew what it was about at its nubbly heart.

The work is about loss, of our Omar, of species, of possibilities. Its about all the things that are now only in our dreams.

To add distance and to serve as additional challenge, I knew it needed to be collaged together, those words, in the second person. It was written in the days when Omar could still snuggle at my side in bed, albeit awkwardly. And it was transcribed directly onto the gallery wall when he could no longer sleep by my side, but chose to stay on his little heat pad with his head supported and elevated by a pillow. The opening reveal was his last night with us, and when it comes time to erase the sentences from their temporary roost in early June, he will have been buried for 32 days. This very personal work of ours is dedicated to our Siamese cat, our home studio’s constant. And this was why it was so very hard to talk about, the dust of sorrow settling on us both like a cloak. It is hard to shake the sadness, but it should be. This reminds us of all the good things, and it is why, of course, we now have 13-week-old Lenni, not as a substitute, but to catch all the excess love, lest we burst.

Working from home, it seemed only natural that many of those things which bind tight our dwelling would feature in some way, direct or otherwise, in the work. It is, simply, about all the things we love, radiating outwards from a chocolate-socked Siamese gent and encompassing, nature, dance, the beloved colour palette of early 19th century printing, the Victorian Can Do spirit, and places we have yet to travel to, save in dream. It is about caring for and watching our elderly pet fade away and grow smaller. The comparatively sped up process from life to death allowing us to see our own ending. This is what happens. Shadows grow longer. We get older until finally we stop. And it was in witnessing this arc that we were reminded of choreographer Graeme Murphy describing the short careers of ballet dancers and how many swan maidens he will get the privilege to cast throughout his career. It is about knees that now creak. And it is about things no longer attainable. The body is not a perfect machine that can keep going. Equally, it is about feeling weightless and unaware of your own heavy limbs in the theatre, living vicariously through the choreographed movements of another.

Woven into the work, always, something to unsteady you and make you question your first reading. Inspired by the short story patterns of Katherine Mansfield — tangerines, marigolds, and .... suddenly the rug is pulled from under your feet, and you land some place else — we sought to bottle this sensation. Of this I am sure I spoke of during the talk on the weekend. I distinctly remember looking at the audience of assembled faces as I recounted her story of a vagrant with "eyes [that] snapped like two sparks" and "a breast [that] beat like a hammer" who befriends a kitten in a wood yard only in one beautiful and gut-wrenching line of text see to its cruel demise: "He tore the little cat out of his coat, and swung it by its tail and flung it out to the sewer opening." I remember reading this short story late at night and had my eyelids drooped I would have missed the outcome. In one neat line, a kitten goes from being cradled in a warm pocket to a violent death. It was so simple and effective in its telling that I wanted our work to carry a little of this feeling. We sought not to beat people over the head with facts about extinction of species at human hand, but to do it quietly, but no less effectively. It carries a warning about the plight of the Hooded Plover and fellow seabird, the Sooty Albatross. And it is only when you look closely at Louise’s pair of Great Auks and their spinning-top egg that you realise they are portraits of the last known pair who also met a tragic end. It is only when you look closely at the Great Auk on the second of the two walls that you see it is actually strung up with rope and in the process of growing limp. He is no acrobat, but he could be, if you prefer.

This work tips its hat to the choreography of Balanchine, an assemblage artist of a different kind, creating collages of moving parts ("Balanchine loved to think of himself as a gardener or a chef: he’d say, 'God creates, I assemble.' He was always looking for just the right ingredients to put together to make the perfect meal."), and Jiří Kylián’s continual exploration of the liminal place between dream state and waking. It is as much a glass half empty, as it is half full, we hope. About the big things and the small, about all the great things dreams enable.

Good night.

(Referenced in the thoughts above, Eve Lawson, quoted by Rose Mulready in her piece, Assembling Balanchine, from The Australian Ballet's Vanguard programme 2013, and the short story, Ole Underwood, written in 1912 by Katherine Mansfield.)

+ To accompany our installation of new drawings, collages, artists' books, and text, we have also made a 32 page zine, In your dreams, blurred and distinct. Hand-stitched with black thread, it is an edition of 100, and it is available through our online store and at the gallery too, for $6.00.








{In Your Dreams, as it took its final shape.}

Goodbye dear Omar.

{Little Omar passed away peacefully at the vets this afternoon, held to the very end. He is now wrapped warm beneath an old world rose in his favourite spot in the garden. Thank-you all for your love. XO}

On Friday afternoon, dear Omar was peacefully put to sleep. His little body was in too much pain, and he had stopped eating and drank little. Slowly and sadly, he was shutting down. He would strain to purr in our company, but his breathing had become more laboured. He could no longer be comfortably cuddled, and after writing about him sleeping by my side (for our installation of work as part of In Your Dreams), he no longer came to bed. His movements became less and less as he grew skinnier and weaker. He struggled to rotate in his small heated bed. His fur lost its lustre. His sore eye that had refused to heal bled when he scratched it. In those final days, he asked only that one of us sat with him at all times, and lightly rested a hand nearby. He was the embodiment of the flesh being weak but the spirit willing, and it was heartbreaking to watch and the grief unshakable. We slept around his little bed in the lounge room, waiting and listening, and offering him a little sip of water when he licked his lips. But none of us really slept, we just waited and occasionally dozed. After a cursory sniff, Percy and Olive gave him a wide berth, and they quietly retreated to other parts of the house. And we prepared to say goodbye to our dear old cat of sixteen-and-a-bit years.

Louise dug a generous grave for him beneath the mock orange tree, his favourite spot in the front garden. She dug it wide and deep so he’d be safe and warm, and she selected an antique flowering rose from the nursery to serve as a tombstone. A white rose crown, and some pansies, too, for his slippers. We selected a shawl to serve as a shroud, blue like his eyes, and soft, and we tucked it inside the little carry case to take to the vets when the time came. We had made two appointments with his preferred vet, Craig, one earlier, just in case his pain was too great, and one later, fingers crossed (for tomorrow).

Come Friday morning, we knew it was the earlier appointment. As many people had assured us, we knew when it is the right time, when all quality of life was gone. It was the last thing we could do for him, to give him a peaceful end. I held his tiny little head until we buried him beneath the soil and it was in these preparations that something sad became more bearable. As we fell apart, we had only to follow the plan. Craig wrapped him tenderly in the shawl, curling Omar’s long soft body into a little pose of sleep like the letter C.

Now a candle burns in the front window overlooking his little grave. I try not to think of his little body out there in the rain instead of inside where it should be with me. I try not to dwell on all the things we last did together, but I miss him terribly. I know we had to say goodbye, but I never knew it would be so hard and the gap so large. Our house feels so quiet and wrong without him.

Thank-you all for your kind emails, tweets, comments, and photos. It has meant so very much.


{Last time atop my shoulder on Thursday morning. From the very first time I met him as a small kitten, he has loved to sit on my shoulder. He raced up my arm as a kitten and mewed, Pick Me, and I did. (Earlier times, thanks to instagram: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)}


{Preparing to say goodbye today to an old and faithful friend. Dear Omar, we will miss you. XO}


{The very last photo.}

A state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts.

{Unfolding, unfurling. All over again.}


{The last two "non-flying flatfoots" and their spinning top egg relegated to fairytale.}

Still warm from our window install at Port Jackson Press Print Gallery, we took our tiny hammer, nails, detailed map, pencils, new works, and other necessary props to the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick. Pin balled from Collingwood, by way of an artists’ book and zine stall at Clunes Booktown festival (quite the prettiest pocket of cultivated wilderness), one monumental install of new collages, drawings, prints, and 2B wall scribbles (dedicated to an elderly Siamese cat) took place, fuelled by coffee, sparked by nerves, bolstered by gumption, and a glossy kernel of faith.

It has taken the last of my words, so in their place, I offer you the following visuals of 1 + 1 = 2.

In Your Dreams
Curated by Edwina Bartlem and Victor Griss
Opening this Thursday, and on until Sunday the 8th of June
Counihan Gallery, 233 Sydney Rd, Brunswick


{Whipped Cream signage in place.}


{Hold that position. (Seen, unseen)}


{That was the very last pair (I) in hand.}


{Today, we installed in a different kind of window. (From Port Jackson Press Print Gallery to the Counihan Gallery in mad whirl.)}


{From two gallery installs to a 2nd day at Clunes, we are liable to flake at any moment. Today's song sheet reads 'Patch Me Up, Prop Me Up, String Coffee'. (Ondine silhouette (Margot Fonteyn) and Leaving it to others)}


{Coffee brews. Omar purrs. Heater roars. Getting ready to revisit yesterday. With hammer and nails, and a fresh pair of eyes.}


{One repeat offender, a Hooded Plover (from Geelong Gallery).}


{2B mania on a Friday. Louise draws a fish on the gallery wall.}


{The final spit and polish.}


{Tick, tock. Tick, done.}

Thank-you to everyone who stopped by our stall at Clunes over the weekend. It was a pleasure to meet you, to discover so many Poirot fans and budding twitchers. Until next time.

+ A little heart ache xo
+ Meanwhile, Perce sleeps, dips, meditates, and bends