{Concealment in Calais sought (I), with a Leopard (Panthera pardus).}
{Concealment in Calais sought (II), with a Leopard Cat (Felis bengalenis) and a Jaguar (Panthera onca).}
{Concealment in Calais sought (III), with a Golden Cat (Felis aurata).}
Somewhat begrudgingly, we have pulled ourselves from the world of film, plucked ourselves from an orchestrated colour set, and returned to the studio, to the real world and its other commitments. Our eyes have been slow to adjust to the light, and to great disappointment, new scenes unfold without subtitles. People, too, prove unwilling protagonists and extras, and don't like to be studied as intently as when one watches a screen. In that time, we've seen Jean-Pierre Léaud age (from Antoine et Colette to Irma Vep), and revelled in every shot as an artwork, snot and all. Yes, it very much seems as though we have left our heads and hearts in the cinema. But if all good holidays must come to an end, what better way to do so than with a head full of ideas to make new work (why hello there, Stop Motion Collage of My Dreams), and a part to play in a show for a noble cause (enter stage left, 100 Cats).
With a hand-coloured backdrop adding rose to the sky and warmth to the water, Louise and I have created three new postcard collages, Concealment in Calais sought (I, II, III), to mark Off the Kerb gallery's one hundredth exhibition.
Opening Friday the 5th of September, 6-9pm, we hope to see you there.
100 Cats
(Supporting Ingrid's Haven)
Friday 5th to Friday 19th of September
Off the Kerb
66B Johnston Street, Collingwood, 3066, Victoria
Thursday and Friday 12.30 – 6pm
Saturday and Sunday 12 – 5pm
... The doctor and I stopped to look at the famous black panther, which died the following winter of lung-disease—just as though it had been a young girl.
All around us was the usual public of the zoological gardens, soldiers and nurse-maids, who love to stroll round the cages and throw nutshells and orange-peel at the sleepy animals. The panther, before whose cage we had arrived, was of that particular species which comes from the island of Java, the country where nature is most luxuriant, and seems itself like some great tigress untameable by man. In Java the flowers have more brilliancy and perfume, the fruits more taste, the animals more beauty and strength, than in any other country in the world.
Lying gracefully with its paws stretched out in from, its head up, and its emerald eyes motionless, the panther was a splendid specimen of the savage products of the country. Not a touch of yellow sullies its black velvet skin—of a blackness so deep and dull that the sunlight was absorbed by it as water is absorbed by a sponge. When you turned from this ideal form of supple beauty—of terrific force in repose—of silent and royal disdain—to the human creatures who were timidly gazing at it, open-eyed and open-mouthed, it was not the human beings who had the superiority over the animal. The latter was so much the superior that the comparison was humiliating.
(Barbey D'Aurevilly (1808-1889), 'The Famous Black Panther', Les Diaboliques. Trans. Ernest Boyd. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1925)
+ Les Fleurs du Mal: The Leopard Man and Le Corbeau, Bright Lights Film Journal
+ Philosophies of Non-sense: Jan Švankmajer’s Jabberwocky, and Faust, Senses of Cinema
+ "From the beasts of the jungle to the rats, cats and bats of Nosferatu, the films of Werner Herzog are full of the wonders of the animal kingdom," Herzog's ark, BFI
