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.}