Borrowed and cut.

{Collage from Cutting the Collection, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, digitally printed zine, edition of 100, 2016.}

A love of collage led to a love of ‘collaging’ with words. More specifically, collaging with words about dance. Combining two things I love in the one place, for the time being at least. To me, the means are the same: an image is arranged until it can be ‘read’, until it can communicate something close to what I saw (in the case of dance) or see (in the case of a collage created from ephemera).

Cutting the Collection, a new collaborative zine made with Louise, features treasure found within the digital archives of the Performing Arts Collection. Skimming the surface of their dance, theatre, and circus collections, we harvested digital copies of raged-edged programmes, costume designs, and juggling balls. A mixed bag of images we in some way responded to and thought we could combine within the pages of an A6 zine to be created especially for the forthcoming Melbourne Art Book Fair at the NGV. Chiefly in the role of the fan, whilst also acting as the visually curious, we selected images of Moya and Fred Brown juggling cushions, c.1920s and Patricia Redmond and Owen Laurence performing as ‘Latasha and Laurence’. We collected more than we needed to tell a tale, all the better to whittle away the excess later on in the studio. This was our process. We dug about in the archives and left with a wealth of sepia-toned gems.

In the collages within Cutting the Collection, we have layered two or more elements one atop the other. In echo of the process of creating collages by hand, layers serve to mask or reveal, and all in some way to alter. And so you have illustrated costume designs replete with ruffled collars and long feathers atop photographs of stage sets for musical comedies. At first glance it might appear as though we have blanked out what was once a part of the scene, but the closer you look, the more you will see that the additional silhouettes are from a different period or of a different scale. A circus poster collides with a set from a vaudeville show. Our interest here is shape, yes, but mainly the new story it tells.

Pared back, in this way, whilst making these works we were thinking about the ephemeral nature of dance; the thrill of a live performance and the trace it leaves; notions of recording what was, whilst not ever able to capture or document it fully; and the importance of such collections. The transitory nature of all performance, filtered through our own memory of it or through the imagined memories documented by others before us, in the sense of the earlier material held within the Performing Arts Collection, is something we wish to explore further.

A live performance cannot be siphoned in its entirety into a recording (unless specifically created and/or staged for film). It cannot be ‘relived’ fully just by looking at a piece of staging; the work was beautifully fragmented before the curtain closed. The very idea of something so impossible to harness holds great appeal to us. Serving as an exquisite metaphor of life’s cycle, what occurred on the stage at the very moment can never be seen nor felt again. We are left with trace memories, borrowed or otherwise, with costumes that yellow and fade; we are left with silhouettes that tell a little of what was. This “state of vanishing,” as the choreographer Crystal Pite described, is both powerful and quite tragic.

Working digitally, we were able to cut up precious artefacts, and such temptation we can never refuse. Wish fulfilment! Stop the clock! Rewind!


{Two costume designs, one with gold trims and pink flowers, and the other with green sash and four strands of beads under the chin, by Attilio Comelli for act two from the musical The Girl From Utah, c.1913, upon a photograph of the stage set for the musical comedy Follow Through, 1930 or 1932.}


{Black and white photograph of Patricia Redmond, performing as ‘Latasha,’ upon a poster sign for Holdens Circus’ Saturday Big Matinee, and a black and white photograph of ‘Carter’s’ featuring Patti (Patricia) Redmond and Owen Laurence.}


{Photograph of Mona and Beryl Ferguson in costume for Going Up, 1919, upon a programme for A Tivoli Show presented by the Allied Works Council (Amenities Branch), featuring Jenny Howard, Tibby Roberts, Eddie Marcel, Marie Doran, Percy King, June Holms, the Loretta Twins, Fred Brown, Flannagan, Ted and Flo James, Mavis Reed, 1940.}


{Poster for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus featuring Con Colleano, ‘Wizard of the Wire’, United States of America, c.1930s, upon a black and white photograph featuring Ursula Irving and Gordon Girdwood.}


{Costume design, replete with orange sash, silver trims, and light green fan, by Attilio Comelli for act two from the musical The Girl From Utah, c.1913, upon a photograph of the stage set for the musical comedy Follow Through, 1930 or 1932.}

All images borrowed and cut with permission from the Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne. Thank-you for having us.